called the rule of law. there is something called the constitution. and we don't go into the law business in order to push agendas. if you want to push an agenda, the business you want to get in is on capitol hill. but i think that using a judgeship or as you say u.s. attorney's gig to push somethinthat is really sically an ideological end is really the beginning of the end of the rule of law. and the beginning of the end of thinking of law as something that is slightly more elevated than politics. host: ok. we'll go to the independent line. jane in winston-salem, north carolina. you're on the air. calle yes, good morning. i'd like to ask a guest about what happened to the czars and just what is their position? i thought they were supposed to be some type of judges. host: jane, what are you referring to, czars? caller: president obama's czars that he appointed when he went into office. we never hear of them. host: the car czars, things

like -- the people who were appointed to run different aspects of the economy? caller: yes. just what is their position? host: yeah, i don't think tha is related to what it is talking about. guest: it's not a judicial position. host: margey, republican line. go ahead, margie. caller: i want to insert some of the data and statistics that you're using. i pulled jeff sessions' september 22, 2010 speech from the floor of the senate where he talked about judicial nominees. and in it he talks about a meeting that was held with liberal professors, lawrence trodd, marsha greenburg as soon as george bush got elected and they for the first time in the history, he says, and to me he's a credible source, that they proposed -- and this is from "the new york times,"

changing the ground rules for the confirmatioprocess. now, this is not a quote, but jeff sessions that they proposed shifting the burden onto the nominee so that the nominee would then have to >> live coverage from the national press club. [applause] the doctor margaret hamburg was unanimously confirmed last year, the second woman to serve at the job. she is a graduate of harvard medical school and one of the youngest elected. prior to having the fda, she held key positions at the

nuclear threat initiative. earlier, she served as assistant secretary for policy and evaluation in the u.s. department of health and human services under president clinton. in the 1990's it as commissioner, she was celebrated for curbing the threat of tuberculosis. she faces and new challenges from that and other issues today, including the impact of health-care reform on her agency, the need for more inspectors, and more efficient clearances for live-saving medicines, as well as faster response to food safety scares. today, she will discuss regulatory science, the signs of developing better and new tools,

standards, and approaches. welcome to the national press club, dr. margaret hamburg. [applause] >> thank you very much. it is a pleasure to be here. i enjoy looking out and seeing some friends and colleagues in the audience. it is wonderful to have my parents with me as well. i have to confess that when i first agreed to come give a talk at the press club today, i had a very clear idea about what i was going to talk about, and it was going to be about the passage of the new food safety legislation. however, that legislation is still being debated in the halls of congress. instead, i decided to talk about another subject close to my

heart, medical products and regulatory science, which is an issue that more and more people are recognizing as critical to progress for patients. we lived at a time of huge opportunities to improve health, translate breakthrough discoveries and innovation into benefits for people to allow better diagnoses, treatments, and new opportunities to prevent or cure disease. we are more poise than ever to deliver the promise of science in the service of patients but to do so will require the advancement and more effective application of regulatory science, the discipline at the very heart of our mission at the fda. if our efforts are to be successful, we need a full

engagement of the scientific community and beyond. this must be a top priority for us at the fda and for our nation. this is something that i had not focused on so much before i became the fda commissioner, but in this role, i have become profoundly impressed about the importance of regulatory sciences. unlike to offer some thoughts this afternoon and what the fda can do to better serve the public health and realize biomedical research. i am pleased to announce today we are releasing a white paper, a framework for fda possible regulatory science -- for fda's regulatory science.

let me begin by making sure that we are all on the same page about what is meant by regulatory science. some of you probably heard me talk about this before. some of you probably have worked on related issues, and some of you have no idea what that means. i am referring to the science and tools needed to assess and evaluate a product safety, efficacy, and performance credit regulatory cents and false the development of new methods, standards, and models to speed the approval and ongoing oversight of medical products science underlies the foundation of the food and drug it ministration. today, a century after teddy roosevelt signed the act that led to the creation of our agency, our goal remains to embrace our origins as a

science-based agency that relies on data-driven decision making to promote and protect the health of the public. we sit at a critical juncture. science and technology are changing our world in far- reaching ways. we're seeing an explosion of a ideas and capabilities from around the globe. do any of us believe we have adequately delivered on the opportunities of science today? those science -- although science and technology have progressed rapidly, we have not seen equivalent progress with the diseases and conditions that affect our friends and families. we have been fighting a war on cancer since it was declared in 1971. 40 years later, many cancers are

still difficult to treat and some are incurable. if you are a diagnosed cancer patient today, the standard best practice treatments you receive from your doctor will likely include toxic drugs that were approved for treatment more than 20 years ago. in another realm, there is increasing alarm about the problems of antibiotic resistance. we worry which could cause. today cannot mechanisms have been -- today, mechanism have been reported for drugs approved for clinical use. people actually talk today about a potential return to the "pr-e antibiotic era."

clearly, we must encourage more judicious use of these important drugs to it and proved infection control, rational prescribing, and better patient compliance. resistant bacteria will continue to develop. no matter what, we need new and better drugs, and we need them now. yet the research and development pipeline is distressingly low. the number of newly approved antibiotics has fallen steadily since the 1980's, and the range of new antibiotics is disturbingly limited to the types or class's of antibiotics available and diseases they can treat. overall, the reality is that billions of dollars have been invested in biomedical research.

in 2008, more than $80 billion by the private sector and more than $30 billion in the national institute of health. we have witnessed the result of discoveries that hold major promise advance in fields like synthetic biology, stem cells, and nanotechnology. right now, we lack the ability to effectively translate many of these developments into vital products for those that need them. the number of new therapies is actually in that decline, while the cost of bringing them to market has soared. to put it simply, there is a troubling gap between advances of science and available patient care. we need to build a bridge across this gap, and that bridge is regulatory science in my view.

a bench scientist may develop a new approach to a disease, a clinician may be able to show it works, but regulatory sciences must develop them into those products that hold so much promised. but we cannot take advantage of the breakneck speed of biomedical research unless we also emphasize innovation and regulatory science. just as biomedical research has evolved over the past few decades, regulatory signs must also involve in important and powerful ways. regulatory science is an essential part of our overall scientific enterprise, yet it has been under appreciated and underfunded. because of this, we have been unable to apply the best possible science to the task before us, and we are left to

rely on 20th century approaches of the treatments of the 21st century. it now is the time to move forward. a robust field of regulatory signs would allow us to effectively translate many of those breakthroughs into therapies and cures. it can enable us to use our knowledge biological pathways to help eliminate in effect of drug candidates earlier in the pipeline and help foster the use of advanced data and bio markers to find faster paths to disease targets and. without advances in regulatory science, promising therapies may be discarded during development because we lack the tools to recognize their potential, and

because of outdated inefficient review methods unnecessarily delay the approval of treatments. on the other hand, but significant dollars in many years may be wasted assessing a novel therapy that, with better tools, might be shown to be unsafe at an earlier stage. i should emphasize, regulatory signs comprises an array of disciplines and approaches. it takes place in laboratories but also involves clinical research and statistical tools, things like bio-imaging, and affirmation gathering systems as well. regulatory science is important for multiple products and its stakeholders. the knowledge informs a whole body of innovation rather than a single product. it will take new investments,

approaches, and partnerships for regulatory signs to evolve the way that by medical and life sciences research has in recent times. but we must pursue it. some $2.7 billion in over a decade of time was spent sequencing the human genome, which was successfully completed about 10 years ago. yet, some 30 therapies or fewer actually have that genetic tests as part of their labeling. that is why we need regulatory science. even though we know there are promising cell-based therapies, we still don't know how to define the right number of cells to infuse what happens to them after they are placed into the body, and that is why we need regulatory science. we don't have good models for predicting toxicity in humans,

which leads to a lot of time and money spent by pharmaceutical companies each year developing new therapies with a failure rate often as high as 90%. that is why we need regulatory science. we increasingly call on the safety-focused science to use data set and reported information to monitor the post-market environment for safety signals and risk concerns, but we still need meaningful strategies to quickly evaluate concerns and a short the proper balance of risks and benefits. that is why we need regulatory science. we need a regulatory sense to place the emerging, promising areas of science and technology fully at the service of public health. how do we move forward? we make investments in projects driven by a regulatory sense that really work. i want to give you a few examples.

the fda is working to optimize the dosing of drugs and therapies so patients receive the most benefit at the lowest risk. a case in point is the updated the building for a widely prescribed anti coagulant that about 2 million new americans and consumers take each year to prevent blood clots, architects, and strokes. the optimal dose the berries and was known to be influenced by several factors, including age, diet, and use of other medications. then, the fda evaluated the determination that the genetic makeup also influences how a patient responds to the drug. that change to the label provides health-care providers with a genetic test that can improve the dose for individual

patients. this is an example of the personalization of medicine, or tailoring a particular therapy for a particular patient. it is a regulatory science at work. you heard a little bit about tuberculosis and my background dealing with it in new york city. it is, in fact, a worldwide surge that has eluded us for centuries. i worked hard to turn the tide on tuberculosis back in the 1990's. although i pushed hard, as did others, dealing with this resurgence of tuberculosis, we still lack of effective diagnostic tests as well as the combination drug products that would make a real difference to treatments. with regulatory science comes

promise. this past week, the fda awarded $2.9 million in grants to support regulatory science for tuberculosis, including projects to develop new markers for vaccines, to create a specimen repository, to design new models for the drug design products, and to develop new points of care tests. in addition, a foundation has been working with others to advance the critical path to tuberculosis program, involving companies with tuberculosis candidates to accelerate the development of new tuberculosis drug regimens. a promising research is underway using stem cells to restore brain function lost in patients with parkinson's disease and to treat various other medical conditions. the fda is helping to

scientifically develop valid standards and manufacturing processes for stem cell therapies so they can be produced reliably and safely. without these, the technology promise cannot be realized. basic research studies are developing -- for these markers to be applied in clinical practice, ushering in an era of personalized madison, the agency is using new signs to guide the assessment of sub-populations of the responders and use of new diagnostic tests in that context. another important challenge is the development of medical countermeasures. in august, the health and human services secretary announced an

important initiative to develop the countermeasures we need to strengthen and speed our nation's response to bioterrorism and naturally occurring disease threats it. this was a top priority for the administration and our nation. the review identified our agency as critical to the success of the overall enterprise, and we were awarded $170 million to support our efforts. activities will include enhanced review and novel manufacturing approaches for the highest priority countermeasures, assessment and optimization of the legal policy and regulatory framework for countermeasures, and advancing our regulatory science base and collaboration'' to improve his evaluation, create viable pathways, and speed development.

this is the greatest infusion of regulatory science dollars in any project to date and shows recognition across government of the importance of filling the mission at hand and a key role of the fda and making it happen. the fda has been working hard with nih, foundations and industry to develop something called an artificial pancreas for juvenile diabetes. it injects the right amount of insulin automatically. you can think of the potentially enormous value this has for patients with type 1 diabetes and their families. this is a complex task, and for patients to benefit, we have to develop a testing path that insures the devices that controls blood sugar level without risking hyperglycemia. next month, we are holding a meeting on establishing

standards for approval of this artificial pancreas. this kind of innovation and exemplifies the type of progress we hope to make across a wide range of diseases. all this is just the beginning. through the new regulatory sense initiative, i have made it our priority to work with our partners to lead the effort to advance the field. the bulk of our resources will be used to mobilize external partnerships, particularly with academia, and support studies in major regulatory science research areas. in 200011, which will continue to make investments in areas that support our plan and to establish pilots and feasibility studies. we hope to expand its activities in the next two years to establish centers of excellence funded by the fda and focus on a collaborative, a multi

disciplinary research activities, most likely house in an academic setting. these centers will be true collaboration, bringing academia and scientists together to conduct research in targeted priority areas. we are also working with the national institutes of health for a new initiative to encourage research in the field. just last week, which jointly awarded more than $9 million to four projects. they include research on nano particles,a heart-lung model in, innovative trial drug design strategies, and a strategy for preventing eye irritation so, let me begin to move toward the end, but i really want to

underscore that the leadership from the fda requires more than just a vision for what is needed and the external partnerships to work together on these projects. we must also possess the tools and knowledge necessary to advanced regulatory science from the inside out, which means we are accelerating efforts to recruit, train, and retain outstanding scientists and build the science base within the agency. after all, i think it is obvious that the agency charged with evaluating the safety of the central product must possess the scientific capacity equal to if not greater than that task. all these issues, as well as the promise of regulatory signs for seven critical public health areas, are outlined in this paper that i referred to earlier. you can find a copy of the paper on the fda website, and i think

we also have copies for distribution today as well. hopefully, this paper will persuade you that regulatory science really matters, and the time to act is now predict regulatory science can deliver us better, more targeted therapies and more swiftly. it can impact not just individual health but improved our health-care system more broadly, and it can lead to significantly lower costs for the drugs and medical products that we need. the power of regulatory science is greater still. as a nation, a major priority is to focus on investments that benefit the entire nation. investments that will grow our economy, that will increase high-value jobs in key sectors, that will foster innovative products that will drive

economic development, that will enhance the safety and value of our exports, and elevate our global economic competitiveness and overall economic prosperity. investing in regulatory science is, in fact, uniquely positioned to do all of this as well. but, probably what matters most to all of us on a day-to-day basis, that a robust field of regulatory sense will truly enable us to reap the benefits of modern science. scientific advancements are rife. these can be transformed into therapies to alleviate or prevent much suffering and products to enhance our quality of life. this will take time, this will take effort, but we can do it, and it will make a difference. thank you very much for your

time and attention, and i hope you will join me in strengthening our regulatory science. [applause] >> thank you very much for your time today, dr. margaret hamburg. it has certainly been a challenging schedule for you. we have a lot of questions here. please keep them coming up predict earlier this week, your agency announced a two-day meeting. how soon will companies and consumers seek cheaper alternatives to expensive biologics? >> we are very pleased to be able to begin to really implement this new program for those of you who are not sure what they are, they are

basically this sort of generic equivalent of biologic drug products. they are complex molecules in many cases, so the science of it evaluating them is not as straightforward as chemical generic drugs. so we have a complex set of scientific issues to address as we look at establishing the regulatory pathway for follow-on biologics. we are moving forward in a concerted way. we have a team that cuts across

the agency that is working on this. but i think it is important to recognize the biologics for the reason of science. there are more complex. we will not have a one-size- fits-all approach. they will have to be assessed to be able to show equivalents and substantive ability for these so-called follow-on biologics because we want to be able to assure patients and their health care providers that when these new products are substituted for the original innovative products, they will in fact have the same biological effect. it is a complex challenge. i cannot put a date on the

timeline for these innovations. they are expensive products as they currently exist in terms of the innovative products, so we see a lot of opportunity to make these important products more available to people at lower cost as we move forward in this effort. >> how vote does congress's continuing resolution in pecker plan to boost the investment in science as well as the -- how does congress's continuing resolution plan to boost the investment in science? >> i do feel strongly that the fda is a very unique agency in the government. we have a wide array of products that we are responsible for overseeing -- drugs, medical devices, biologics, vaccines,

dietary supplements, cosmetics, certain products that emit radiation. now, tobacco products, and food safety and nutrition. we regulate products that account for somewhere between 25% that every dollar that consumers spend on products in this country. we regulate products that really matter to people. they use them every day from the time they wake up in the morning and have breakfast to the time they take their medications, put on their sunscreen, where their cosmetics, brushed their teeth at night -- just in so many ways, we impact people's lives in ways that really mattered. we are unique. there is no other agency in government or entity in the private-sector or in academia

that does what we do and has the authority and expertise to do what we do. if we cannot do our job, there is no one dared to backstop behind us. there is a growing recognition that the fda has not been adequately funded. a strong fda is in everybody's best interest. i am optimistic that despite these difficult economic times, we are going to continue to get some of the critical support in key areas that we need moving forward. >> you discussed antibiotics and its resistance. why are antibiotics still routinely administered to animals? >> it is a very important question.

historically, there has been a very considerable use of antibiotics as part as animal and agriculture treatment. for many years, individuals and organizations and public health have raised this very concerned about what is the impact of the use of antibiotics on animal populations. we are in the midst of very serious scrutiny of these issues, and we have made recommendations in support of the judicious use of antibiotics. no one wants to deny antibiotics to animals that need medical treatment. but to use in certain preventive

contexts, where it is not clearly medically indicated, it is a growing concern and an area in working with our partners in government, both the cdc and usda and others, we are taking a very serious look at. >> this refers to a recent new york times article of two brothers with cancer. one brother was refused and medical trial and diet. what concerns do these real- world store is raise for you? >> i think that situation really speaks to the importance of regulatory science. it speaks to the importance of continuing to advance our knowledge of certain bio markers that can indicate potential opportunities for targeted

treatment and the importance of continuing to understand the underlying mechanisms of disease so we can target therapies more effectively. it also speaks to the importance of developing new strategies for clinical trials, new, more adapted clinical trials that can enable us to get the kind of answers we need to know whether something works or not, but without putting individuals at any unnecessary, additional risk. so i think it is obviously a circumstance that is very poignant for the individuals involved and where we feel very real responsibility to make sure that we are working with the company to support the

appropriate, technical, and ethical scientific studies. at the end of the day, what it really speaks to is the importance of strengthening regulatory signs so we can serve the public better. >> yesterday, i was at a small gathering predict according to the story, a respected and skilled investigators needed in certain liquid to complete a study. the fda, he said, had an abundant supply but refused and any. if you other scientists in the room nodded knowingly, apparently having similar experiences. do you think this goes on and how do you combat it? >> i am sure there is an occasional episode of that kind of behavior, but i think it is

far from the norm. there is an enormous amount of collaboration. for many years, fda scientists worked on the nih campus. we are involved in many activities, including this new one that just began this year, that is an fda-nih initiative to support regulatory science. we also created a new council with representatives from nih and fda that meets on a regular basis, that develops shared agendas, and shares information and strategies for working on important public health concerns. so i think that that is probably an isolated case. >> how do intellectual property

concerns slow research and what can you do about that? >> that is a very complex set of questions and probably best answered by a lawyer, not a doctor. but i think that intellectual property it is obviously influencing on the patents of drugs in terms of market share and incentives for other companies to develop new products. there are, sometimes, technologies that are patented and affect people's ability to use them as well. from my perspective, at the end of the day, we have to always keep our eye on public health and the importance of achieving important public health outcomes and adjusting unmet

public health needs. intellectual property should not be the kind of barrier to achieving what is necessary to meet medical needs. we must have systems that recognize the intellectual property from work in our country. we must always collaborate around important science. >> regulatory science has been the theme today predict and regulatory signs keep up with the pace of scientific change? >> i think that right now regulatory science is not as robust a field as it needs to be. part of the challenge is to strengthen regulatory science to expand the capacity is in the field, both in terms of the

trained individuals, the resources to support the regulatory side, and that debt and breath of research so that regulatory science can go forward in parallel with advances in biomedical research. if we fail to do that, we will continue to fail to realize the advancements we are making. >> one of the advances you were talking about was the artificial pancreas and dealing with juvenile diabetes. it is a growing health problem. it was very rare two generations ago. what meaningful strategies is fda implementing to address obesity in america? >> obesity is a major priority for this administration, with important efforts being

spearheaded by our first lady. the fda along with many other entities of government has an important role to play. our involvement really comes in terms of our nutrition activities and in terms of what we do to provide consumers with accurate, reliable, and accessible nutrition information, things like the nutrition facts panel on the backs of food that lays out some of the nutrients and the percentage of daily values in those products so people can make more informed choices. we are currently working on how to present that kind of information and a sampler, more understandable way on the front of packages so that those of us who lead busy lives can run down the growth restorer pilot and quickly assess which is the high

sodium product or which is the high-calorie products and hopefully make more informed choices. so, that is really the main focus of our activities to support that. >> in general, what is the fda doing in the area of preventive medicine? it could save huge amounts of money and prevent unnecessary pain and suffering. >> prevention is the cornerstone of public health. it is an important principle to organize many of our activities around, i would say, first on the food safety side. prevention is key. our goal is to have the systems in place to better position us to work with food producers, manufacturers, and distributors to prevent contamination and

food-borne out bricks in the first place. the food safety billick is an important tool to help support us on those efforts. on the medical side, we are very involved in various medical products to prevent disease. vaccines is obviously one of the premier modalities that we regulate the that is at the core of prevention. it is obviously very, very important, if you can prevent a problem from happening in the first place, that is our primary goal. >> how does a robust science program compete in the current media and litigation and firemen, were widely publicized anecdotes can erode confidence? >> i think that a stronger and

more robust field of regulatory science will enable us to have the best possible decision making as we struggle with difficult, challenging questions where we do have to balance risks and benefits. i see regulatory science as a huge asset as we try to strengthen our programs and try to really stick to our mission of being a science-based agency to protect the public. >> during your time as commissioner, the fda has made transparency parity. however, fda recently published a final rule on state reporting requirements on investigations of new drugs nearly seven years after the closure of public ruled comment period.

how do you reconcile this? >> first, i would have to admit that transparency does not necessarily mean speed. i have been amazed how long it can take to move things through the system and the complexity of those pathways. i am not familiar with the specifics in that instance, bought all of the rulemaking that we do and the regulations that we develop and ultimately to implement have quite an elaborate notice and comment period and public meetings and open dockets and other

mechanisms to get input. we take that input very seriously i cannot speak to the specifics of that incident. >> how did europe approved new medical devices so much more quickly than the u.s.a.? >> it is true that there is a substantially different regulatory framework for device approval in europe. it is one that actually it is at variable in different countries in europe, and it is one that it does enable a product to move through more quickly in many instances with your requirements to actually present the data for evaluation. i think there is real value in working with other regulatory

authorities in europe and around the world to try to look at how we do our regulatory decision making to try to harmonize standard approaches, approach is based on the best regulatory science. we have been engaged with our colleagues in that you. they have been looking at our framework of the oversight of devices, and i think they are thinking about whether they need to make some of their oversight more stringent. we are looking at our own device review system. one of the things that can happen in regulatory agencies is that laws are put in place during one time and then the world can change dramatically. the world of medical devices has

changed drastically. so i think it is appropriate that periodically we are reassessed and work with our sister regulatory authorities as we defined our thinking and approaches. >> going more deeply into the process, there have been reports that medical cocktails may be the future of cancer treatment, but doing so would allow multiple companies and researchers. can this be done without developing restrictive trade charges? >> i am more focused on the complexity of the science of how to you evaluate combination products in a way that is accurate and efficient. it is a complex scientific challenge, but it is one that we are grappling with an number of areas. one aspect of the tuberculosis

passed to deal with how do we combine different tuberculosis drugs to be evaluated as a combination product. if you were evaluating each new drug individually, that would take quite a long time. when you combine them together and try to evaluate them together, it is obviously much more scientifically complex and challenging. i think the public health -- i think public health demands that we look and see how swiftly -- how swiftly we can meaningfully assess these new products. we are looking at companies and products in the cancer arena as well. i think there are ways for these different companies to come together to work on these

products together. it is somewhat new territory, and we are learning as we go. >> what can the fda do to encourage or require publication of-studies, that is, research showing that it does not have a beneficial effect? >> it is a topic of considerable discussion with the fda and outside. the rationale of publishing- would enablestudies people pursuing similar pathways to understand why a given product fails so they wouldn't then invest considerable time and money to develop a product that would likely hit a brick wall. for any individual company, there is understandable reluctance after having investing a lot in a product to

have everything opened up for others to see. on the other hand, if you look at it in terms of the big picture, over time, one company might be making themselves a little bit vulnerable in one case but it would have the opportunity to learn from the experiences of others. it is something we are looking at. >> what is the fda doing to attract and retain young scientists who received more lucrative research-based opportunities? >> it is very important to us to both recruit and retain these promising young scientists. we, of course, want to be sure

that we retain our tried and true scientist at the fda as well, but we are trying to reach out and recruit. we'd like to create more opportunities for professional scientific exchange with their professional colleagues outside of the agency, including even potentially some sabbatical leaves and other things. have created a fellowship program -- we have created a fellowship program to bring those in the fda and expose them to what we are doing. they make a contribution to the fda while they are there. it is an exciting place to work. there is a real sense of mission. >> the answer to that question

would seem to tie into a broader perception, which is the government worker in general being last paid the than counterparts in private industry. not as good as working conditions and possibly leaving as soon as the chance that they get credit when people say that the fda has its hands tied, conflict with the pocketbooks of the pharmaceutical and food agencies. this person is asking if you could share your thinking on that topic today. >> the fda, as i said before, is a science-based, science-driven agency. we need to look at the data to make our decisions. i think we are really committed to that, and we really make

science be our guide. >> we are getting near the end, but there will be two more questions. this person asks, could the fda please order drug manufacturers to write warning labels and english? how could the average user no what day [unintelligible] i don't even know if i am announcing this correctly. the warning states that they use of these drugs can lead to an irregular heartbeat. could you explain? [laughter] >> well, i cannot argue with

white you just read it. we do have an initiative called, "plain language." it is an effort to try to really be mindful of the fact that we need to communicate in plain english or in other languages that consumers may need to access so that they can understand the medical issues at hand. it is hard sometimes to find other ways of describing certain conditions, but we really need to pay attention. this feedback is always helpful. one can get a bit lost, so it is something that we need to continue to work on. >> i cannot challenge that question either because i have no idea what i just read.

we are almost out of time. we have a couple more matters of importance to take care of. this friday, october 8, we are going to have the president and ceo of bank of america. on october 12, general norman schwartz will be speaking. he will discuss the services ongoing efforts to organize, train, and equip itself. a week from friday, october 15, condoleezza rice will be discussing her new book and her time in the bush administration. i would like to present our guest with the traditional national press club mug. [applause] lead-'t know if it is free, but we will ask.

thank you all for coming here today. we have one more question, and this one came out of a conversation with your father. he is very pleased with the recent move from new york to washington. he says you are doing a wonderful job caring for the whole family. what is the best health advice you can give your own family each generation? >> early on in this job, i was warned never to answer personal questions. my best health advice is to do what your mother always told you. [laughter] can i stop at that? [applause] >> thank you, dr. margaret hamburg. and thank you all, again, for coming today. i would like to thank the national press club staff for organizing today's event.

for more information about joining the national press club and how to acquire a copy of today's program, please go to our website. thank you so much for coming out here today and all of your wonderful if questions. this meeting is adjourned. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

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online on the spent video library. you can watch it all free, washington your way. >> next, the head of the information sharing environment gave the keynote address on sharing terrorist-related information with federal, state, and local governments to stay in washington, d.c. these are on the challenges and opportunities in information sharing and working with federal agencies and the future of sharing terrorism-related information. this is one hour.

>> i am sure there is a long line -- there was a long line to get this job. is a challenging task. i have seen some significant progress in the last few months at least a more open and robust a dialogue. that is absolutely critical to making this work. prior to this job, he was -- he served as the federal chief architect in omb were refocused on in upper ability across data networks and has extensive experience in the private sector. he is trained as an engineer. i am trained to fly helicopters. he understands the technology behind this. that engineering background is something that is critically important to developing this ise architecture. what everyone join me in kschmendra paul.

>> good morning. thank you for the kind introduction. i'm grateful to csis for hosting the event today. this is a wonderful forum which will allow us to explore the opportunities and challenges around building beyond the foundation, accelerating the delivery of the information-sharing environment. including clarifying its scope and mission, the target vision towards which we are building together and how we measure the creative value. our high calling is to support our mission partners. the federal, state and local tribal and territorial agencies and our partners internationally and in the private sector. to protect the american people and enhance our national security through the use of information. thank you to our sponsors today. we're grateful that you're

supporting csis and continuing to shine a light on information-sharing. there's a great lineup of speakers and moderators today, i'm very excited about this, ozzy. and i appreciate all of them taking the time and all of you taking the time to participate in this dialogue. now, my communications team asked me to shamelessly promote the web site, so get out your pens. it's www.ise.gov. it's a great resource for folks who want to dig deeper and participate in the dialogue while they're not here physically and for you all to get more information and stay connected to the dialogue. while you're at the site, www.ise.gov, be sure to sign up for e-mail alerts. let me walk you through the structure of my presentation. i'm an engineer by training. i was an enterprise architect at the department of justice and the office of management and budget. my old colleague, jeff cook,

sitting here on the front line. at times like this, i feel a need to stay current in my functional domain, so, please, bear with me. i'm going to use a little ea parlance to describe my remarks. first, i'll spend time looking back at how we got here. in ea speak we call that the as is. next, i'm going to walk you through what we're hearing from thought leaders like yourselves. we call that the 2b, and we're going to sketch out a straw mat that we hope to define today eventually to be reflected in the national strategy. then i'm going to outline some really hard questions i need help answering, the questions that gao gave us just a little while ago. [laughter] just kidding. i think there are some colleagues from the gao. hey, there you are back there. [laughter] now, they are hard questions, but -- but they're not the ones i'm going to present today. there's a different set of hard questions. so in the remaining time, we'll

move to questions and answers. you don't often find engineers behind podiums addressing large crowds on c-span2. you'll find us in dark offices at odd hours noodling over whiteboards on hard technical problems or out in the field working to understand customer requirements and delivering solutions. as an engineer, my approach to solving hard problems is rooted in an appreciation of first principles, diving head first into the details of the challenge and then lifting up to solve the problem. this is the approach i'm bringing to building beyond the foundation, accelerating the delivery of the information-sharing environment. one more sidebar. the ise is a somewhat abstract topic. people have a hard time getting their heads around what exactly is that ise. it's useful to set a mental model. i like to think about concrete examples, so i'm going to give you four to help process what you are going to hear today. number one, a law enforcement officer is part of a routine

traffic stop queries a national crime information center, ncic, and is notified to contact the terror screening center to evaluate a potential match against the terrorist watch list. number two, an intelligent analyst using the national library of intelligence or the a-space platform to collaboratively develop new counterterrorism intelligence products with fellow analysts across the ise. three, coast guard personnel working on the recent gulf oil spill using department of homeland security's homeland security network and fema's web emergency operating center, the same assets to be leveraged in both manmade and natural disasters. finally, a local law enforcement analyst and an fbi intelligence analyst co-located at the state fusion center working prison radicalization issues. both developing finished intelligence products as well as supporting specific fbi joint terrorism task force investigations. back to the main part of my remarks. first up is to outline how we

got here. as an engineer, i make a concerted effort to stay away from authorities' discussions, but after five years in washingtons and three months as pm, i've learned to start with authorities and mandate. in 2004 the 9/11 commission delivered their report. the commission prescribed the need to transform government and brought to light multiple challenges around connecting the dots. as an aside, i'm not a big fan of that term because it oversimplifies the challenges that face us as a community. it does not provide a good frame for working through many of the legitimate policy concerns we're facing and is not so helpful with the so-called information overlook problem. the 9/11 proposed that information be shared horizontally across networks that transcend agencies. the commission called for a decentralized network model which would allow agencies to own their own databases but

enable them to be searchable across agency lines. it recognized by moving to a data-centric model, the new framework would have to be established to control access to the data, not the individual systems or databases. the commission called for a government-wide effort to address the legal policy and technical issues that would arise from this type of system. the idea was to have someone looking across all the agencies creating a trusted information network to facilitate the sharing of terrorism-related information. excuse me. this recommendation was adopted from the 2003 marco report creating a trusted information network for homeland security. i know, because i reread the report for the third time this summer at the beach. now, we have some folks in the audience who participated in the markel task force. it's a very good piece of work. this concept as well as fed

rated management, extense about to state local and tribal territorial partners and a focus on prevention, a focus on prevention were incorporated into the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act of 2004. or irtpa. they called it, can you give can me a drum roll, please? [laughter] the information-sharing environment. yeah. the congress agreed with the 9/11 commission that horizontal integration required government-wide authority, so they created the role of program manager to plan for, oversee the agency-based buildout and manage the information-sharing environment. and granted that rule government-wide authority. the pmic was told to walk across five core communities; intelligence, defense, foreign affairs, law enforcement and homeland security. to enable the effective sharing of terrorism-related information. the recognition that this effort

had to have horizontal capabilities lay as much in the understanding and implications of the technical challenges which are substantial, but not the main event. it's the other hurdles which need to be overcome for progress. subsequently, the implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission act of 2007, amended irtpa to expand the scope to include homeland security and wmd information. the 9/11 act also enhanced the authorities of the pmiac in two important ways. first, to enhance the ability to have goth wide standards, procedures, instructions and functional standards. and second, it mandated that we identify and resolve with our mission partners information-sharing disputes. many refer to this as the honest broker function. okay. i'm done channeling my inner policy wonk. let's pause for a second.

now for the second part of the as is, what's been done to date. a strong foundation has been built, and i'm going to describe a number of steps we've taken together as a government. in 2005 the presidential guidelines directed the ise to leverage existing systems to the maximum extent possible and directed that common information-sharing standards be developed. i need to pause here and emphasize the implications of these requirements. it's essential to understand that the ise is owned and operated by mission partners. federal, state, local, tribal and territorial agencies are partners in the private sector and internationally. we at the pmiac, we don't build anything. we're not operational. our role is to help agencies find common mission equities to help them implement standards and drive resolution of policy issues. the actual point of implementation, the heavy lift,

is with the agencies. they're the engines that deliver the ise. they're the stars of the show. the guidelines also directed us to address the proliferation of sensitive but unclassified earmarkings, develop a framework for privacy and civil right protections and develop an approach to share with state and local tribal and territorial partners. much of this work was captured in the 2007 national strategy for information sharing, and in subsequent ise annual reports. you can find those on our web site, www.ise dot golf. [laughter] i want to highlight four areas, first up, privacy and civil liberties. it's a trust partnership between all levels of government and the private sector. in order to participate in the ise, the law requires that federal departments and agencies and our nonfederal partners have privacy protections at least as

comprehensive as the ise guidelines. next, cui or controlled unclassified information, the new cui framework will standardize more than 100 unique markings currently used for sensitive unclassified information. these are the markings you see around town, fou, for official use only, les, law enforcement sensitive and others. of course you'd only see those markings if you're a government employee. the standardization will be a critical step towards removing barriers to information sharing. that wasn't a joke, ozzie. laugh half -- [laughter] next, we developed the ise architecture and methodology to connect the diverse systems and distributed systems across the ise. now, i'm not going to get into that here in detail, but i am available for command performances on the architecture. finally, common information-sharing standards that document the rules, conditions, guidelines and characteristics of business

processes, production methods and products supporting information sharing. the program was successfully used to standardize suspicious activity recording. more on that later. there are so many other critical foundation blocks to the ise. some examples are performance measures, identity management, access controls, information assurance, performance measures, culture training, you can find the rest of the story at the ise community web site. beyond the ise's foundation enablers, much work has been done to enable ise core capabilities in the areas of sharing with state, local, tribal, territorial partners. to develop the common framework, we work closely with our stakeholders. in particular, i'd like to acknowledge a lot of our stakeholders, you know, in the nonfederal arena. we work with a lot of individuals and organizations. i'm going to miss someone, but i want to try to highlight our partners. we work with the criminal intelligence coordinating

council, the cicc. great organization, was foundational to our work with suspicious activity reporting. the global justice information-sharing initiative. when i came into justice five years ago, the way i made myself relevant was partnering with the state and locals through global. great organization. national governors' association. international association chiefs of police. major city chiefs association. national sheriffs' association. national association of state cios, chief information officers. national association of counties. owners and operators of critical infrastructure. and many, many, many, others. open government in action. the result was a series of recommendations to enhance the sharing of terrorism information across all levels of government in the private sector. one highlight of the work was the establishment of a robust network of state and urban area fusion centers. dhs, department of homeland

security, is the executive agent with the lead on this part of the framework. fusion centers are the critical nodes that connect state, local, tribal and territorial partners with the information-sharing environment. through these fusion centers, state and major urban areas will be able to, one, receive classified/nonclassified federal information including sensitive time-urgent alerts and notifications, two, conduct risk assessments understanding consequences based on their specific areas of operation, three, further disseminate critical information to state, local, tribal and territorial partners and private sector entities within their jurisdiction, and fourth, gather, disseminate information to other localities, states and the federal government. more about this later. it's best manifested through -- or understood through the suspicious activity reporting initiative. the fusion centers will operate these capabilities within the scope of privacy policies. currently 26 fusion centers have

approved privacy policy solutions in operation. these policies are at least as comprehensive as the ise guidelines. we have solid momentum across the states to get the rest done in the coming year. the framework just described is laid out in great and useful detail in the 2007 national strategy for information sharing. the appendix to the strategy defines these roles and responsibilities. and it's in the process of being implemented. mark johnson -- bart johnson, dhs principle undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, is leading these efforts on behalf of secretary napolitano and undersecretary wagner. bart has an incredible perspective on these matters having spent most of his career with the new york state police culminating in the state fusion center.

and just as he was getting it humming, the feds hired him away. so bart's a friend. he's participating in the panel immediately following my talk. we have also seen significant information-sharing improvements within individual agencies. many of these are documented in the annual report, many more are out there waiting to be celebrated. two examples from the intelligence community that, incidentally, my office had direct involvement in accomplishing. that's the nice thing about being government-wide, you know? seriously, a core part of my responsibility is identifying and extending best practices across the ise. this is kind of a soft power, there's no authority that's specific to this, but actually it's very, very powerful. i learned that lesson when i was at the department of justice working the exchange model and then at omb as the federal chief architect. the most significant and visible change in terrorism-related information sharing was the establishment of the national

counterterrorism center. russ travers is also going to speak on the opening panel. he's nctc's equivalent of a chief knowledge officer. russ is a respected leader in our community. he was recognized as a galileo award finalist this career for his thoughts on information sharing. further, the intelligence community has led information integration by implementing icd501. discovery and dissemination of information. this policy promotes responsible information sharing by distinguishing between discovery and dissemination and retrieval. it's based on -- i'm going to get a little technical -- metatagging. conclude be used more -- it can be used more broadly. there's one last element of the ise strategy to round out the as is. and it's important to highlight because it helps make the ise that much more real and

meaningful. in response to the 2007 national strategy, we convened several federal agencies, law enforcement organizations, local police departments and others to develop a unified activity around unified process around suspicious activity. this unified process builds on what law enforcement has been doing for years, gathering information regarding behaviors and incidents associated with criminal activity. and establishes a standardized process whereby that information can be shared among agencies to help detect and prevent terrorism-related activity. tom o'reilly, who presented here at csis a couple weeks back, spoke at length about what is now the nationwide suspicious activity initiative or nsi. tom is a friend and someone i'm privileged to call a mentor. in march of this year, the attorney general announced the establishment of a program office at the department of

justice bureau of justice assistance to facilitate the implementation of nsi across all levels of government and named tom o'reilly the directer. tom's charge is to roll out the nsi nationwide while insuring that civil liberties and privacy are strengthened. you may be familiar with nsi due to secretary napolitano's see something, say something campaign. this is the public awareness component. the nsi is one of our most significant accomplishments to date and an example of the ise in action. policies, mission processes and systems which leverage ise core capabilities and enablers to empower the men and women on the front line, to share and access the information they need to keep our country safe. and i have late-breaking news, so i'm going to make a little nudes today. a little news, but it's important and it's good. the fbi is already well

integrated into the nsi solution. last week the fbi extended their integration to improve sharing of suspicious activity reports generated from their field work. what's noteworthy is that these sars, while unclassified, are being worked and contained in fbi's classified systems and databases. it's a great example of being data-centric in our sharing and sharing federal data with other levels of government. these sars are being shared with the fusion centers, state and local fusion centers through the nsi. which brings us to the 2b part of my presentation today and the purpose of this forum. my office is leading the process, with mission partners, of developing the national information-sharing environment strategy. this includes subsuming the 2007 national strategy for information sharing and bringing forward the foundational pieces

of that document as it relates to information sharing with state, local, tribal and territorial partners. we are working with our mission partners to conduct deep dive conversations. we also want to include thought leaders outside of government. that's why we're here today engaging in a process to do this. this will assist us in developing a target vision and supporting strategies to build beyond the foundation and accelerate the delivery of the information-sharing environment. to set the stage for the speakers and dialogue we'll be having for the rest of the day, i'd like to briefly describe three ideas. the first idea, the president's national security strategy calls for a whole of government approach to build national capacity based on applying and integrating the efforts of all agencyies with the national security mission. to effectively support whole of government, our working hypothesis is that the ise must,

one, empower the front line with the information they need to do their jobs. two, deliver data-centric capabilities that support reuse. third, strengthen privacies, civil liberties and civil rights protections. fourth, align with technology and information management trend. and finally, leverage standards-based innovation. to make the ise work, we need to focus on data. sharing it, discovering it, protecting it, fusing it and reusing it. we need a data-centric approach in alignment with the original mandate for the ise. i also highlighted standards-based innovation. we can dramatically improve price performance, increase agility, decrease risk and accelerate deployment of the ise by effectively working with our partners in industry. such a critical aspect of what we need to do to deliver, and

i'm anxious to have that information, and we have a technology panel later today, i'm looking forward to that. okay. the second idea, the opening panel has focused on opening the aperture to the totality of terrorism-related information sharing as directed by law. there are several aspects of the expanding aperture idea. in the past we've advanced initiatives in the federal to state and local information sharing space. the 2007 strategy does an competent job -- excellent job laying out roles and responsibilities. we want to enhance and extend partnerships across all five communities; defense, intelligence, law enforcement, homeland security, foreign affairs. looking forward to hearing from today's speakers as well as members of the audience on this topic. also the ise mission partners rarely have the ability to selling ri gate their terrorism-related activities or their terrorist-related information. mission partners ask us for

complete solutions. it's a reasonable and right request. such needs need to be factored into our strategy going forward. finally, the third idea is the role of sourcing, integrating and sharing best practices on the road to transformation. for example, our core standards framework, the national information exchange model, is used well beyond the national security space. another example is the potential to scale icd501-type schemes more broad ri. we're looking for feedback and discussion. are these the right ideas? what refinements are necessary? and what's the west way to -- best way to clarify the target vision and enable incremental progress? this last point is so critical. we need to be working in an incremental way while we're working towards the future. we need to deliver value every day. this brings us to the last part of my remarks today.

we're in the home stretch, stay with me. we need your help to better understand the landscape. so that the ise assists our mission partners in delivering the comprehensive and inclusive solutions to the issues they face daily. in addition to reacting to the ideas i just highlighted, here are a few questions for the speakers and participants in the today's conference to consider. so this is a good point to get out your pens. there'll be a test, we'll collect the papers at the end, right, ozzie? [laughter] what are the best practices to be replicated across mission partners? what best practices should we be looking at? what's the best way to enable discovery? how do we balance data aggregation with decentralized nsi architectures? is there possible to be a single architecture, or do we need to take a heterogeneous approach? a core issue in my mind with

authorized use is not the technology, it's the very ability and the policies and the lack of consistent, precise semantics for expressing those policies. how do we get past that issue? are there successful examples that we can model on and build from? around embedding legal restrictions and policies at scale and across domains? ..

i hope i kept my inner geek in check. i set the scene do allow us to talk about the future. what the ise needs to be to support the counterterrorism mission and bin ladening beyond the foundation. how do we accelerate delivery of the information sharing environment. i welcome your questions, remarks an commentary. thank you very much. [applause] >> mr. kshemendra, we appreciate the premarks. it's been a change of pace having been in the policy world for a little too long than i should have been in my naval career. but getting remarks from an engineer, there was actually substance in there and i'm not used to that. it was great. i was like wow, we're actually getting facts and details and a plan and how refreshing and then you also gave us homework, which is good, so for those of you who

thought you were going to just get a free lunch and listen -- >> that's open government in action. >> so we are going to take those questions and we are going to try to address those for you. another reminder to everyone here before we go into the questions, in addition to c-span here, we also are live web casting this on our web site, there's a link at www.ise.gov, and this will be available for down load on itunes in the future, if you want to go back over kshemendra's very substantive remarks. it's very refreshing that we actually -- i think people like to roll up their sleeves and actually tackle problems as opposed to just talking in the theory of things, so we appreciate that. we're going to go ahead and go into questions and answers. because in is web cast, we have microphones coming around, please state your name and your affiliation if you have one, so we can understand the context of the question and kshemendra is

going to answer them, but i get to ask the first one, that's what i get out of this is the first question. just reading your speech and reading some of the information you sent in advance and some of the stuff that we've done with ise in the recent months, i'm struck by your charter. in many ways, it's very similar and russ, my former colleague is here, similar to the charity that ncic had, you're responsible for coordination and sometimes limited ability to compel. so i guess i would ask you, what do you see as maybe your one or two, just limit you, to greatest challenges facing you in this new challenge that you have as psmic. >> you're right about the nature of the challenge of the information sharing environment. it's a horcental problem. it remind me when i was in the

office of e government and i.t. there. internal terribly we call it the office of horizontal government. it's working horizontal in a vertical world. that's the challenge of it. it's frankly where there's the greatest opportunity for innovation an how we think about government services and, you know, a lot of our challenges in counterterrorism is a core example. counterterrorism is a cross-boundary, cross-domain problem. it's national in scope, lots of different folks have to come together out of different disciplines, organizations. how do you work cross-boundaries. you know, that's really the cutting edge, i think of public service and you know, it's just an honor and pleased to work on that problem. >> and i found my time extraordinarily rewarding at nctc because of what you described, so that's great and i look forward to it. okay. we would like to go to questions. who wants to go with the second

question? the gentleman in the blue shirt. >> i'm chair of the american bar association. my question is very simple. do you see any particular laws that have to be changed in order for you to be successful? >> well, that's a great question. do i see any laws that need to be changed. i can answer that a couple of ways. one is in terms of the authorities of my office, and the mandate that the law gives to the pmisc and the authorities, i think we're all set that way. it's a matter of bringing together execution partners, finding mission equity and execution is the core challenges i face. there are aiding policy issues that are out there. this is -- this is almost like the old analogy, you're draining

the swamp and you see some system ups, you see rocks, you drain the water a little bit more and you see some more, so you have to work those issues, so i think in terms of that side of the equation, there's always opportunities perhaps to look at the legal and policy frameworks, but that's not where i'm at right now. i'm, you know, in terms of the authorities of the office, we're all fine. >> and for those of you that are going to stay for just a couple of panels and leave, i would encourage you to stay for the last panel, because that's the one on civil liberties and civil rights, that's going to be an exciting discussion and that's one of the reasons why we stuck it at the end. next question? gentleman up here in the blue suit. i can't say that in d.c., blue suit, right? >> steve cantrell, office of global maritime and air intelligence administration.

we're a partner with you, but one of the more interesting things i found is recently out on a trip, other than why i followed you to the same location, was another location where the comment was made that as we tackle this problem set, we look at all of our inner agencies, state, tribal, local and other partners, one of the individuals i was discussing this with compared it to the nato of america. he said, because we all speak different languages, we come from different cultures, for example, you made reference to the significant activity report, and of course, we take that acronym of sar, helicopter pilot, search and rescues, radar, special access required, again, using the same term. i was wondering if you could reflect on what you've seen in the short time you were there. >> yes, thanks steve. steve is a partner, and working on airspace awareness and other demand awareness type

initiatives. this issue and the term we use when i'm with my architecture buddies is semantic capability. it's where we started frankly, when going back rewinding the clock, five years ago, the ise was standing up, i was over at the department of justice, leading something called the national information exchange model, the heart of which was creating this sort of rosetta stone between different functional domains. somebody is working in the coast guard, homeland security and has a certain definition for sar, whether you're in the military and have a different definition for sar and you're in the financial domain, using a different definition for sar and that there's a way to, you know, map those terms, so that you could translate it and you wouldn't use the same thing, so that two people communicating, if they're in different domains in different organizes, the message meant the same thing on both sides of that communication, so we've actually

come a far away on the theory of how to do that and the practice of how to do that. you know, and by using more formal methods, as we've done with the name and reflecting those in functional standards, business function standards and might go a step further working with our partners in the industry. one of them is suspicious activity reporting, so it has the standards based on the rosetta stone type concept in the national international exchange. we're getting the been fits of standardization in terms of the acquisition, really, that's so critical. think about the front line, you know, first responder has a radio, they just want to be able to press a button. they don't want to worry about the complexities, right, and that's kind of our challenge. one reason the space is so complex, we have to deliver it in a compelling way to the front line, where we mask that complexity, so yeah, it is a core challenge, one we've been

working on for some time. >> next question, the gentleman in the blue shirt, in the middle there. please. >> yeah. scott good for the senate judiciary committee. i want to follow up on harvey 's question. have you or anyone else in the government asked every agency to compile a list or identify the specific privacy laws that are impacted on the information sharing environment? in other words, do we have a baseline in which we can assess whether or not there are any laws that need to be changed, do we have that compiled across the federal interagency? >> i have some colleagues in the office, and the audience here that are a little bit more conversant on the specifics there, so if one of you want to help out, that's great. let me answer the question this way. we have been working on privacy guidelines for quite some time, the information sharing environment privacy guidelines. through that process, we've been working with chief privacy

officers across the ise participating agencies, so through that process, you know, we've developed the privacy guidelines and then agencies now are implementing privacy to cies and have been implementing privacy policies that are as comprehensive as our privacy gived lines. -- guidelines. i can maybe follow up with you. okay, alex. do you want to -- >> i'm the civil liberties protection officer for the director of national intelligence and i worked very closely with kshemendra implementing the policy guidelines throughout the government. i share a privacy committee that oversees the implementation. one of the provisions in the privacy guidelines is for those privacy officers, if they identify particularly laws or policies, that might need to be changed to load those up, so we do have a process in place to identify them. we have not yet though gathered

all those, but we have a process in place to do so. >> it's very difficult at times to get the government to talk about crcl, it's challenging to do, but a good points on the panel as well. we'll take that for future reference. next question. any more questions? well, i have another question, you know, kshemendra again, in your speech, you talked about some things in the future and you asked us some questions and gave us homework to do today, but i guess i would ask back to you, what, in your vision, what does ise look like a year from now, what does it look like five years from now, what does it look like 20 years from now? what do you want to accomplish and what do you see? >> so that's a good question, and we have several initiatives underway that are bearing fruit, so let me describe those. you know, i see bart johnson in

the back, he's on the panel. immediately following, he's leading a process where we're doing the baseline capability assessment across the 72 fusion centers. and that report should be coming out shortly. we've identified certain critical operating capabilities, and we expect that those operating capabilities will get mitigated, so we have a robust, measured infrastructure of these state and local fusion centers, looking across things like privacy protections or the ability to receive classified information or, you know, some of the other critical operating capabilities that i described earlier, so that's one thing in the next year is substantial progress on the network of state and major urban area fusion centers. the nationwide sars initiative. earlier this summer, secretary napolitano kicked off the see something, say something campaign, by all accounts, it's been well received and we're ramping up the nationwide sar initiative across the country. we'll have, i believe, the

majority of states actually integrated into the initiative, and there's lots of anecdotal evidence and measured information that tells us that it's making a difference. a big initiative in our office has been interconnection of the so-called sbu sensitive and classified networks. this has been a core refrain from law enforcement, homeland security, first responder type, state and local types, that the different federal networks don't interoperate as well as they should, so we're seeing that interoperability and we've delivered a lot of capabilities over the last little while, documented in the annual report and over the next year, we'll see simplified sign-on, so you don't have all the passwords, it'sees easier to get access, so those are just some examples of the incremental progress we're dereaching. longer term, i think -- deriving. longer term, i'm going to defer

that, i'll come back and answer that question if you'll have me, but i want to defer that because i'm really hoping to hear from the audience about where we think we want to go. i would say, that i -- i think within five years, the idea that we're data centric is i think a reality more than it's kind of a future. >> speaking of a data centric, i would love to hear some of the experts in the room talk about and address some of the terms, mega magazining and other things that -- tagging and other things that me as an engineer don't understand, so that's a good dialogue we could have as well. i think we had a question here as well though. >> good morning. i'm from the homeland security and defense council. i admire your job, i think you have a tremendous a. work to do, to figure out how we can share information currently, but to follow on to your question about the future, how is social mapping or almost offensive data

collection playing into the future of the ise? i think right now, we're collecting information, we collected tremendous amount of information and sorting that and sharing that is certainly our first priority, but going forward to kind of face tomorrow's battle, how are we using kind of the social networking and mapping tools that are being developed? >> so a great example of using the web technology is the ace based application inside the intelligence community. it's a wicky collaboration platform, that's very useful, for different tell against analysts to be -- intelligence analysts to collaborate and share the information. yes, this information sharing, there's also collaboration around information sharing. so there's its unstructured information and the social sort of thing, so that's a critical part of the information sharing effective social media integration, and you know, the

ace base is a great example of that. >> great. any additional questions? anyone else? sir, in the front right here. >> >> peter sharp. one perception of the problem faced by the national security generally is that there is a very high ratio of noise to signal. in hall this data we're collecting. could you address a little bit how the various initiatives that will promote interoperability both at the business level and semantic level would also help the problem of extracting the necessary signals from the abundant noise? >> that's a great question. the question is how do we raise the signal and decrease the

noise. this is part of the reason why the connecting the dots metaphor is not so useful, because it doesn't get to the quality of the dots, right, and you know, to establish best practice around the information management is working upstream, trying to, you know, the point of collection, getting the data in as clean a possible format and then also the different tagging, how you describe the data, so to the extent that tagging is well designed, right, so it supports downstream comparison, and so a great example is with the suspicious activity reporting initiative that i talked about earlier, a key part of the work was getting all the different communities to agree on standard code lists for describing behavior base activity, or you call it a car, you call it a vehicle, right, so no, no, we're going to call it a car, right, and things like that. so those are some of the examples for how we think about

how that issue, but it's a core issue. you know, it's about sharing and discovery of information, but discovery only works if the information is described inconsistent ways from the point of view of the person that's trying to discover, right, the he information comes from the domains, so there's the standardization issues. fusion only works if you're able to correlate data, but then that applies to certain high level of quality, so you're exactly right, that the data quality issue is a core issue and needs to be engineered into the solution. it can't be dealt with as an after-thought. >> yes, ma'am, right in front. >> i have a question that relates to the discovery issue. at one point in 2007, when i was most familiar with what your office was doing, attribute based access was the mechanism

that was used to determine who would be able to discovery versus access the information. is that still used, if not, what approach are you taking? >> the question is as tribute-based access controls and how do we, you know, make sure that somebody that's accessing the data has the proper authorization to access that data. some refer to that as authorized use. it's the right idea. you know, attribute enrolled access control, the challenge comes in that the, you know, the policies to describe, do you have access, the right to access this information, some of those policies are information assurance policies, some might be a u.s. persons rule, some might be, you know, a variety of other rules that are coming out of different domains, different agencies that are described potentially in different ways that would make it difficult to automate the evaluation of those rules to make a judgment, you know, in realtime, right? so this goes to the issue of,

you know, looking across the different policies, there's a degree of harmonization that may need to occur so that the policies are described if consistent ways, so those policies can be automated in a consistent way across the ise, so that's the -- the technology, it works. it's established, but doing it at scale, and across these different dough mapes, right, that becomes a hard issue. we actually did a pilot, with nist, over the last year, and i think we described them in our annual report. and the hard part of the pilot wasn't the technology, that's all -- that all works pretty well. it was the effort taken to take, you know, text based policies that weren't written with an eye towards automation and then turning them into rules and then is that actually a valid expression of that policy that will satisfy, you know, legal and decision makers, right. and in some ways, this is similar to the journey that we went through as a country with digital signatures. now we accept digital

signatures, but it took a long time for the legal and cull rally to catch up with the technology. the technology was ready for digital signature well in advanced of the wide based market support, so i see it as an analogy. our challenge is to try to accelerate that by working with our partners in the policy community and elsewhere. jure. >> yes. >> hi, i'm went difficult walsh from the naval postgraduate school. you mentioned the word cultural and you mentioned it in your talk as well. what are you finding as far as looking at the issues of trust and culture and how can we build that in our information exchange environment? >> thank you so much for asking about culture and trust. these are core issues. it's -- you know, one of the things that i found so refreshing in my time in public service is that there is a

commitment to sharing and i've seen that commitment grow in the last five years that i've been working in the federal government. and looking across, you know, mission partners, there is a commitment to sharing. it becomes difficult with the legitimate policy issues that sort of get in the way sometimes, or, you know, the need to express these policy issues and negotiate them because we're coming at the policy issue from different domains, and things like that. so i see the -- a lot of sharing. i think that from a cultural perspective, we're ready to take that next step to go from, you know, need to share to need to share well, right, and this comes with the ideas like establishing a learning culture, having metrics around how we share, to help inform operational and management activity. so one of the ideas that we're trying to pursue, interested in pursuing as part of the national strategy here is what does it mean to have a learning culture around sharing, how do we make

sure that we have more cross-cutting metrics that are shared, cross-agencies, on similar capabilities, technical mission policies. i talked about the sbu networks, intraoperability anybody testifies, so we want to make sure that we can count the number of users in an sbu network, whether it's dho, dni, or doj's grant funded risk net in a consistent way, so we can see how many users do you have. it sounds simple but it gets complex to make sure that you're counting in the same way. counting, bass yo because you we predescribes about it. then you want to say, okay, i want to measure how often the networks are used and how many of those uses does somebody access a data base in another network. these are simple metrics, but it gets slightly complicated when you want to have the same precise measure coming from

different organizations and entities so you can roll it up. collecting those kinds of measures gives feedback. feedback that can drive changes in a data-driven way, right, so that helps you with this idea of a learning culture and so we're looking at other opportunities to explore that learning culture idea. >> it occurs to me in the conversation that we've talked about discovery, we've talked about trust and sharing environments, but there's another use for the word discovery in the legal community. and i just -- i wonder whether this horizontal integration that you talk about is potentially subject to a court order or some other change in our legal system, that pierces the veil, so to speak, and opens this all up to examination for discovery and support of somebody's

defense, and i don't know if y'all have thought through the unintended consequences of the application of the technology at that level, but it seems to me that we may be exposed here in a way that will be very hard to fix, once the door is open. >> so the question is about discovery. that's a really good question. people are aware of that issue. so there is an awareness of the issue and, you know, it manifests itself in a lot of different ways, but there is an awareness of that issue. you know, one of the -- one of the aspects of the information sharing environment that was called for in law and is important to providing confidence to people that policies, whether they're policies are on strengthening privacy, civil liberties and civil rights or policies around information assurance, or other information sharing policies, are effectively implemented are capabilities, so making sure

that different activity across the information sharing environment is logged in a high integrity way that is consistent across different participants in the ise, so you can look across and understand what's going on and understand that the policies and stuff are being followed. >> so now we're starting to get to the good questions. any other questions from the audience? any other questions. kshemendra, again, the reason why we're doing this again and these are great questions and i think these are the questions that ise wants us to address, instead of building the strategy in a vacuum in their government offices, they're coming to the -- to us, the public, you know, the industry, the government people that have to work this in different department agencies, the pressure organizations, state and local governments and saying, give us -- what are the questions we need to answer in this strategy and what are some of the concerns that we need to take into account. and i think it's critical.

i think it's very important, so again, we need to keep that in mind. we are doing a job here today for the ise team and trying to help them out and to get these critical issues addressed there. any additional questions? >> the p michigan, you talked about an enabler, and you talked about get to go the point in the future where you have best practices. can you envision the point where the pmi does get to that place, where it doesn't just give broad guidance, to protect civil liberties, for example, but it actually gets to the how, it starts recommending best practices, for example, for encryption, or for data retention across what are very disparate organizations. when does it get to the point, if ever, of actually doing a little more of the how in terms of how far it tells other groups to do things?

>> so the question is when do we get to the how and the answer is we're doing that today actually. you know, we do that at the, you know, the business process level, when we use the word functional standard, functional standards, the business process standard and the exchange, so with the suspicious activity reporting, there's a certain business process that's mandated in terms of what the sar looks like to generate a sar and to share it. we're doing it in terms of the technical standards, we call them segment architectures, but they're a set of standards around intraoperability for the sbu networks and for our other initiatives and similar kinds of things. so i think we're doing it now, and i see us being more prescriptive in the future. that's the power of standards based innovation. one of the core challenges we have is when you look across the ise, it's a huge space. lots of different participants, federal agencies, state, local, tribal and territorial governments, the private sector,

it's a huge space. to the extent that we can help standardize some -- at the exchange, right, not the internal processes, but the exchange, so that people can mesh what they're doing and then we can work with our partners in industry, right, to say here's a standard, an interface standard, the technical level, it allows our industry partners to start to bake those capabilities into their products and services and make them more accessible. a great example, when you think about state and local governments, there's 18,000 police departments in this country. we're inherently a very federated decentralized from a law enforcement perspective. you get past the major cities, you know, the very big forces, and it gets to be very challenging for small, mid-sized police departments to effectively integrate into the ise, because they can't invest in customized solutions. they need to have solutions that are basically standards based.

so that's, you know, part of what we want to do is to become increasingly prescriptive. not in a vacuum, but with our mission partners. it's really critical. we're not out in front, we're bringing them together, common mission equitying, but come -- equities, but coming to an agreement and leveraging industries and working with industries, so we can bring those kinds of solutions to bear. >> great. any other questions? okay. before we thank kshemendra, we'll take a short break and we'll reconvene here at 945 al. buff i would like to know that this is kshemendra's first major speech as a psmie, but i think he set a high bar with so much substance in his speech and it's very useful for those of us trying to get our arms around this, so let's give kshemendra a warm round of applause, please. [applause]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> and the acting homeland security undersecretary for intelligence and analysis commented on sharing terrorism- related information with federal, state, and local officials. this is just over an hour. tile. get your last bagel and cream cheese, danish, coffee, orange juice. while you're headed back to your seats, we get into the substantive remarks, i'll just

highlight a couple points. one of the things that kshemendra asked me to point out is that he currently has -- he has a massive charter, and he has -- anyone want to guess how many people work in ise? less than or greater than 50? less than or greater than 20? less than or gater than 10. less. nine people and they're hiring. so if you need -- if you're looking for a government job or a contracting job or whatever, kshemendra said only qualified applicants, please, but somebody -- so that leaves me out, but please contact the ise folks. second, we also -- great irony of life. we learned that the live streaming of the ise web site is not accessible by the intelligence community.

so we would encourage you to use your home computers later to down load the pod cast and lastly, i want toeport a couple individuals we have here, some folks have been working this information sharing for a long, long timend one has been instrumental and has been working overtime since 12/25, mike resnick and monty over here from the national security staff, and they're not speaking but it's important that they're here and recognize the efforts that they've done at their level to bring this dialogue to where it is today. the fact that we have this many people in a room and this kind of a star studded panel here to talk about this issue, so thank you both for your efforts. [applause] this is a phenomenal panel, some of these individuals have be here above. they're each keynote panelists,

speakers themselves and the fact that we have four of them together is quite a testament to their commitment to this issue, an we're very fortunate to have them here. we kind of organized this international to domestic, that was my logic, and if it doesn't make sense, i'm sorry, tallahassee the only thing i could come up with. you should have received a packet, has everyone's detailed bio, in there and we'll start off with russ's remarks. first up will be rust traverse, a deputy director for information sharing and knowledge development at national counterterrorism center and he manages information sharing initiatives and has been thersince the giing. to the right of him is the chief information officer, in the bureau of counselor affairs and director not the consular affairs of he can nothing and he manages all of consular affairs technology systems. no that's task. next up is gil kurkowski,

director of the national drug czar policy and also for a repeat performance, we had with the secretary a couple of months back is bart johnson, principal deputy undersecretary for analysis at the department of homeland security, mr. johnson serves as a second ranking official in the office and provides secretaryapolitano and her staff, and i love this one, along with state, local and tribal partner sectors with timely information on terrorism threats. that's what's so key about that, that's state and local and private sector. without further ado, each of them will have five to seven minutes and questions and answers again. so rust, if you would like to kick it off, that would be grt. >> thanks very much. it's a pleasure to be here with my colleagues to talk about what is a very important and i think extremely complicated question. if you ask 10 different people what the information sharing environment isi think you're likely to get 10 different

opinions. i think for the purpose of my talk this morning, i'm going to try to be a little bit horicon create and focus on nctc's role specifically and address what i believe to be the current state of information sharing across the community. i think it's an important question, because if we go back to the attempted bombing of northwest flight 253 on christmas day, there was a good bit of discussion afterwards about informatn sharing, and i think frankly, some of it was pretty muddled. there was suggestion tt information sharing was worse now than it was before 9-11 and i disagree with that. what i'm going to do is give you a practitioner's perspective, i'll give you three facts or what i believe to be facts and address two follow-on questions that i think flow from those

facts. facts nuer one. 12/25 was not a 9-11-like information sharing problem at all. there were two key pieces of information regarding farouk and these 2 pieces of information were broadly shared across the entire counterterrorism community. they could have been found with a google-like search but they weren't, because the community didn't address either one of those of particular dots. they didn't find them important in the overall mass of information. that's a big problem, but it's not an infortion sharing problem. fact number two. by any objective standard, tre is more information being shared with more people in a timely manner than at any point in hour history. and that's just -- that's an unassailable fact. if you look at every major plot that's been disrupted over the last six, seven, eight years,

effective information sharing played a critical role. in some cases, it was federal to federal. in some cases, it was federal to non-federal. and in some cases, it would have been u.s. government to allied. we are getting pretty good at this. fact number three, despite relatively positive trends, there is still clearly work to be done, and you're going to hear from my colleagues, i'm sure, on a number of the different aspects of what we need to improve on and there will always be need for improvement. i would say however, i think as a result of the good work that has been done over the last seven, eight years across the united states government and with our non-federal partners, the low hanging fruit is largely gone. and what i thk we have are some very difficult issues to address. so what i want to do is bill on those three facts and attempt to address two follow-on questions. first, why is this so hard? you will often hear why can't we just give analysts all the information.

why is that a problem? and i think actually, the answer to that question is really pretty easy. is there anyone in this room that would advocate colete unfettered sharing of u.s. persons information. kind of doubt it. secoly, do we believe that we should abide by the law? question came up earlier. find the court restrictions on information. or privacy act. or bank secrecy act, or systems of record notes. there are many legitimate restrictions on information flow and that will always be the case. thirdly, our foreign partners, our crital foreign partners give us information. they may well put restrictions on how that information is shared withi the united states government. if we want their information, we abide by their restrictions. and lastly, as was suggested by the discovery question to kshemendra's talk, what if

information sharing would prejudice judicial proceedings, or what if information proceedings would prejudice ongoing pragues? you may have a -- operations. you may have a good cause to share some of that information with some people, but there are going to be distinct limitations on how broadly it goes, so it seems me self-evident that there are always going to be legitimate impediments on the sharing of information. if that's the case, that takes me to the second question. how do we best proceed on the implementation of the ise given those constraints and i think it's pretty safe to say the answer isn't to simply flood the system with more information and i think frankly, we've got a little bit of the cart before the horse. i believe that we need to focus first on mission. ros and responsibilities. who does what. should guide who gets what. in general, i think that means that we need to focus on a more sophisticated definition of what analysis is. it covers a range of

responsibilities within the government, not all analysis is the same. for instance, it would seem to me that those who are charged with finding non-obvious relationships between and amongst data setneed the broadest forof access to promote what was discussed earlier, discovery. on the other hand, some analysts are responsible for largely a situation or awareness function. they don't need raw data. what they need is the all sourced finished judgment so they c inform their own risk equation and decide what actions need to be taken. in general, it seems to me if you art delineating between and among the different kinds of analysis, you come up with a reason basis for who suld get what information. and in closing, i think what i'll do is take a page from kshemendra's play book and pose a few additional questions that we all need to address. given the nature of the threat, how do we think about the

privacy when the foreign and domestic divide doesn't mean much anymore? extraordinarily difficult question. secondly, what do we mean by domestic intelligence and how do we share it? it's going to be the subject for a major conference tomorrow, as i think you probably know. and thirdly, my own personal bugaboo, how do we go about discovery and funding those non-obvious relationships when you have the sea of data and it seems to me that those are the kinds of questions that are going to bedevil all of us as we go about looking for our shared goal of an improved information sharing environment. thanks very much. :

>> it is a very unique bureau in the department. " we do is a three-fold mission. we provide under cities and services, we have a twofold mission. wheat issue passports domestically. second, which is an awesome responsibility, is it serving the americans overseas. we never know what is coming at us on a given day as far as what happens overseas. mugging, and they've lost all documents and they show up at the embassy saying i'm an american.

two, disaster like 80 or mumbai two years ago. and we come into action. lebanon evacuation. that's our responsibility. having said that, that's an awesome responsibility. from the issue of, issuing what we call the travel documents whether they be passports or visas. we are the first line of defense when it comes to border security. if we screw up, they are illegally coming in. okay? which to us is really daunting every single day. when we are issuing close to 2 million travel documents between thpassports and visas every single day officers all over the world, 270 locations

worldwide, internationally, and domestic. that's close to 300 locations worldwide that we serve on a given day. were a 24/7/365 operati. today, we use biometrics, the multi-modality of it. we cannot issue a single visa today without coming to ise and back. same thing with recognition. we have piloting right now high rates out of baghdad for special immigrant visas. in collaboration talk about information with the department of defense. we cannot do our jobs if it wasn't for information sharing. both ways. we share information and we need information from other agencies. today, if i talk about our data, so the largest in federal

government, our consolidated database today is over 100 terabytes. okay, going out the rate of five to six terabytes a month. to keep ahead of that is also challenging. today, from an informational sharing standpoint, we have 11,000 plus state department users. however, we also have 0,000 non-state department users. mostly dhs. one might say you have users, so what? that we get 120 million hits on the database a month. having said that, it's an awesome task that we are as good as the information we have in terms of our officers who are due process.

go to like shanghai today or mumbai when they are processing 15 and 1600 people a day. interviewing and processing them. it's a very, very challenging and difficult task, and was information sharing is the ultimate way we can do this. we have built our systems today to be able to share the information easily to those 20 plus thousand non-state department users. and the way we have done this is where built a very central system where we can have a book on any person that we know about, whether it's citizen or unknown citizen. what are the difficulties, right? you lk about privacy information for americans with the passport data. you all know what happened to an half years ago when the presidential candidate, passport

information. that's from within. how do we protect that? so there's a legl and policy issue that we face every single day. the other difficulty we face is every time we go and say we need some data to be shared, we are told yet, but you're not law enforcement. technically, that is correct. we are not a law enforcement agency. right? we are trying to now, have the hill designate us as law-enforcement only for data sharing standpoint. we are not going to go armed, officers overseas. it's not going to happen. so these again are the legal and other aspects of that. the other thing we have done is we have built, a sickly so our architectures is compliant. why? again, to make it easier and

follow the omb standards to be able to share data, easier, faster. to protect really our borders we are the first line of defense. that's all i have. >> thanks, kirit. >> thanks and good morning to everyone. i was intrigued and i will do off course or just ainute by both the questions to kshemendra it also when russert brought up the issues around privacy and civil liberties, because i don't think it gets talked about are focused on enough at times, and having come from the local level for a long, really long career. i think it's important. i served on the national academies panel for about a year and a half, and i would efer you to the book that came out last year from them on data mining and privacy. i think that was an incredibly powerful piece that secretary perry and the president emeritus

of mit, chuck, share. and i think it's very helpful. came away, by the way, wit the conclusion that citizens had really nothing to fear from government, but the private sector with so much more sophisticated, based on your safeway card or your visa transactions, et ctera, about information. the other part that i think that has been lost but is now reemerging is that right after 9/11, everything wa fed centric all the time. it was all fed all the time. and i think that there was an incredible amount that i imagine bart could share some of this also, an incredible amount of expertise, experience, knowledge, et cetera, et cetera, at the state and local level. that unfortunately i think was overlooked. not out of bad reasons, but out of reasons of people just overly pushing the issue of what is this country going to do to

protect itself in the future. and i really feel that particularly in the last couple of years that we are looking back at an area of expertise and an area of sophistication at the state and local level that can be actually quite helpful. the other part that has been none of the state and local level with a lot of, i think, success is balancing the privacy and civil liberties area, and the hand shoe agreement in new york, even though changes were made, the intelligence ordinance oversight and audit of the intelligence function of the seattle police department where i served for nine years as chief. we were able to certainly work within those existing laws and still feel cmfortable in gathering information, sharing information, and actually otecting he people of seattle. the other part that a want to stress now, because of the new

role that i have that is not so new, about a year have come is that only dcp, we have the high intensity drug trafficking areas. they he been around for a ng time. and i truly believe they are an incredible and very successful model for information sharing at the federal, state and local level. formation sharing that has gone on for quite a while. that is some of the most sensitive information. truly life-threatening information with ongoing narcotic cases, major cases, conspiracies, et cetera, that if the information was inappropriately released or not properly used it could not just result i would not just result probably in the loss of the case, or the loss of he loaded, but it could result in the loss of an undercover officer or detective or troopers life.

and these have been around sharing in the most sensitive information in a really timely and in a really timely way. the 28 regional are in 50% of all counties of united states. they cover 58% of the united states population. they are in 45 states. puerto rico, u.s. virgin islands and the district of columbia. and have an intelligence and investigative support center so it results not only in information sharing, but also analysis. they have a long history of working with the national guard and others, as you can tell, the focus has been up until the last few years in particular, but the focus has been on drug trafficking organizations. now i would do that particularly at the state and local level, the issue is about all crimes and at all crimes approach. the other part is, it's not just

the issues that are brought forward as far as the cost of the development of the architecture, the computers, the hardware and the software and on and on. i think everyone who manages budget knows where the real money always comes from and always goes to, and that's in your personnel costs. and so when you look at these organizations, ater you've purchased this equipment and after you've lease these buildings, et cetera, the real cost is in the body. who's going to staff them, we're going to be the analyst will follow up on the leads, and on and on. oftentimes again that comes from the state and local level. that's why the focus has been on it all crimes approach. the other smart part about i think the changes that have been made and using dtas is what i think would be a good helpful information sharing that has occurred for a very long time is

that trying to have artificial distinctions between or among transnational organized crime groups, counterterrorism issues and drug trafficking organizations. it becomes very murky, and as you try to put these into silos you find that the site they don't fit into silos very easily. and so looking at the all crimes approach, whether it was cigarette smuggling in charlotte, north carolina, that was funding hamas, weather was a case of health care fraud in st. louis that was funding another or partially funding another terrorist organization, it doesn't make a lot of sense tory to have these things in different venues. it makes an awful lot of sense to consider them in other ways. i think that working closely with federal agencies and now being a fed for the last year

and a half, and having a number of people that have been brought into this administration from, with a lot of experience at the state and local level, has matched very well to help move us forward in a way that makes a lot of sense. not only from the technical difficulty, but also the importance of privacy, the importance of civil liberties, but also the importance of relationships. and it really is, after all is said and done, it rlly is about relationships and it is about co-location among the questions that was asked kshemendra about culture and trust. and there's nothing that reach the improvement of culture and trust than the collocation of these individuals. so i've been come icouldn't agree more with also what russ has said in my career to see the amount of information that he shared, but we have to be careful about the information overload issue also.

>> thank you, gil. bart? >> good morning, everybody. ozzie, thank you for this opportunity and this conversation that we're having today. you know, couldn't be more relevant and more timely, considering the threat environment that we are living in, the travel advisory that just went out over the weekend. so thank you for that. and not by that, in my position as principal deputy within the office of intelligence analysis, i really believe that we have a true role and responsibility to work with the state and local antribal components inserted intelligee community to advocate for the information and get that information into the hands of the people that really need it, need it the most. i think it should be pretty clear that we are doing that and very much in partnership with those entities, you know, to include the fbi, only dcp, dod and nctc and many others. it was interesting to hear kshemendra dr. king strategy.

i reminisce as he was talking, and i was in the room when that was released back in october of 2007. and a lot of time and effort and hard work went into that by many of you in this room. and also the criminal intelligence coordinating council that kshemendra spoke about before, tat they've been pushing and leading a lot of thesinitiatives that have led the federal government to rally around the effort. and that's something that we certainly need to continue. in fact the global advisory committee also exchanged well, i see don roy here, and if of the things that are currently underway so as we build that refresh, i'm sure, i'm confident, given, kshemendra, you've already spoken to the cic see, you write out that many of the and it's good to see that that integration is continuing. i think it should also be recognizable that the secretary's been very forward

leaning as it relates to information sharing. in fact, she spoke about it within one week after taking office. and she's been pushing, very focused every step of the way. she's bringing the department to the next level as it relates to one, dhs, and when you bring the assets of the components together, it is a very formidable whether it's at the nctc or in the field, spoke about that line of defense, they're also the line of defense as trying to identify, interconnected nodes and also try to identify the unknown set may be operating within the country. so we've done a lot,and we need to do much more, and we're so they going to work with all of you to do that. i just really want to touch upon this threat very briefly. i've been with the department for about 16 months now. it's been extremely busy. i got there on may 16, and this activity started may 18, 2000. had two successful attacks are

domestically with us on and carlos bledsoe. we had two near misses, abdulmutallab, the shot, and a number of other incidents that have occurred over the past 16 months which really show and illustrate that we need to operate under the premise that they are here within our borders and they could attack with little or no warning. so really what does that mean? it means that we cant always ly on the fine work of the intelligence community that we really need to focus on the components, fbi and some of the first responder in the form of state, local, tribal deputies, shares, troopers in the field and really give them the information that they need to do their job. and like the director, i spent 32 years in law enforcement, and they are interacting with the public every day, vehicle and traffic stops. lawful intercept, sources, indicators and worries and have the best opportunity to possibly identify something that could be

a mess. so the jt ts do a wonderful job as it relates to investigating something along, but what about the unknowns and who's going to be in the best position to identify, the story, the mixing, traveling traveling, the interaction with others coconspirators to possibly carry out a terrorist attack within the country. so what we're striving to do with our partners is to survey get a better understanding of the threat, the environment, assess it, analyze, and share so they can be better informed to do and protect and support the homeland. so getting back to the national strategy for information sharing, i've read numerous times that i have it all bookmarked and it resonates with me jst as it did back in 2007. but having said that, you know, we have matured, we have grown. there are other things we need to address and look at as we move out. but it is a very strong

foundational document, especially as it relates to the homeland security czar make and could come from a nmber of sources, and it needs to be integrated and analyze, shared with the appropriate individuals that we need to share. so what are we doing about within the department in partnership with the fbi and the nctc and our other federal counterparts who include the cia -- cicc also. we have established dhs threat task force that brings to bear the assets of the components and all the information sharing they hold to really support the fbi and the ntc t. and the pursuit of these individuals. as it relates to the national network of fusion centers of which there are 72 now, it's involving, maturing. we are so many deploying more personnel to the field. we are providing them unclassified connectivity, secret connectivy. secret is very important because that allows for the conceptualization of the information that they're looking at in unclassified world and

they are trusted individuals with our state and local tribal environment that actually know how to handle the information, how to treat it. another thing we're doing and kshemendra made reference with this is the baseline capabilities in partnership with fbi. we look at the baseline capabilitieshat came out in the fall 2008, we've already completed a short two years later and overdue, an assessment as to where those gaps are. and identify gaps, filling the gaps and really laying against the ability toreceive, analyze, disseminate and the return flow for the suspicious activity reporting. working with the fbi we provided to the field. we have new products, product lines that we're doing a much better job in getting that information out. the secretary has been very forward looking, without see something, say something. and the need not only to inform

our law-enforcement home security partners, but also the public. and once again you have to look at the vendor, on may 1, times square, who actually saw something and said something about a smoking vehicle that could have contributed to t mitigation, the impact, of that attempted attacks. we're working very closely with private sectors. icy linda is here in rome, interacting with private sector, giving them the information. the majority of the private sector out there and had we better share withthem, what do we need to deal. so where do we go from here? i think we need to build that trust and collaboration that everybody has spen about. i believe everybody does want to work together and share the inrmation. but i do still think that we need to better inform and make the intelligence community aware of the information needs and requirements of the trooper out on patrol, and why something that occurred over in afghanistan or pakistan

regarding an ied, how that could help them do their better job at not only a tactical level but also at a strategic level. i believe fully within a fusion centers that national network of fusion centers that is plan a. that's something we've been building. there is no plan b, nor should there be a plan b. because i believe that's a solution given the proper support. and i believe there are people doing it. and they also work very closely, they, the fusion centers, with the joint terrorism task forces in the role to investigate and pursue the individuals orating within the country. so in conclusion, i appreciate the opportunity to be here today. and lott has occurred. we have a lot more to do. and i look forward to all of your questions. thank u very much, ozzie. >> thank you. well, thank you all for those marks. again, any ofyou can serve as a keynote of your.

i love this panel. i really do. this is an amazing panel here. you know, tweens gil and bar at the end, 70 years long -- law enforcement experts. as a chief of police with a major u.s. city, kshemendra from the state department, state department really was a part of the public dialogue information sharing and tll 12-25. i had no idea the number, amount out of your processing on a daily basis on a monthly basis. of course, russ having showed up at nctc in 2005, your comments are very appropriate and we cannot forgehow much partners. i know we were in 2005. i hear we are now, and allow that was because of rust and the team at their and their initiative. we have made progress i think it's important not to forget how far we have come. so with that act up talk, i would likeo turn it over to questions for the audience. who wants to go first? i can't believe they would not

be one question. thank you for bailing me out. >> hi. my name is mike german. i'm with the aclu. one of the sort of it seems to be almost accepted, information sharing is a good no matter what, where i think all of us would agree that it's only good if the information is being shared is actually relevant and accurate. and you know what we have seen so ofn with these information collection and sharing programs is that the information isn't. hidta was the recipient of information from maryland state police spying scandal where 53 political activists with no connection to terrorism were put into the hidta database and labeled a terrorist. we have a number of fusion center reports that target political groups in the intelligence analysis, and most

recently we had a case in pennsylvania were a private company hired by a state homeland security and funded by the homeland security was involv in any appropriate spying opolitical protest. so my question is, who isn't within this information sharing network that has a responsibility to make sure that the information collected is collected appropriately, that is being analyzed correctly and thats being distributed only to the people who deserve and need to have itcome and have a legitimate right to have it spent starting off with an easy question. bart, you want to go first, and then gil? >> thanks, mike, for that question. fit and foremost, you know, i really believe that those are the exceptions, not the rule. having spent 32 years in law enforcent, you're very much traid about reasonable suspicion, probable cause, that i just can't walk up to an individual and start asking

questions. i need to reasonable suspicion that criminal activity could be a foot. if i don't have that level of intervention, i record it, document it, and forward it is where it gets accountable by supervisor and finds its way into the system. so those checks and balances are there. as it relates to who'sto lead, i was a dhs has a lead as a result of directive of the white house, but having said that, we are doing it in partnership with the fbi, alastair from odni, and i'm very happy to say that working with riley, that finally all of those activits are being trained, campbell two, documented too, so as it gets into the shared space, that is more likely to be accurate to prevent what you describe has occurred. and additionally, fusion center

policies. we are well on our way, in fact, i think we just cracked a third, so it's greatly accelerated, to have that privacy policies in place to training, candidly, privacy, officers in pace. so although there is a risk, and i hope it's a very small risk, we are defaulting on the side, you know, that hey, we have the systems in place and working towards mitigating any activity, innocent, or nefarious which would be accountable as we move forward. >> the question really is, it's a great question, and it's important, couple things that i think are important about hidta, what i there locally control. you look at the most recent gallup poll on who is trusted in the country by the american public. the united states military, locally owned small business and local law enforcement. the train to our locally

managed, locally run. in fact, when i was in seattle i got to assist on that hidta board. and so i don't think there's any better accountability that at that level then perhaps when you're inside the beltway, the accountability issue is a bit more diffuse. the other part is, i think, anyone who's that this length of time in law enforcement knows, and i think e've seen a lot of success, particularly in the last decade on crime in the country, even though a lot of people, the economy isn't doing so well, crime is going to go up. crime, not in every city, not every year, but crime has continued to decrease. i'd love to tell it's because of great police chiefs, but probably a bit self-serving. it's actually because, i think, of the trust of the information and the work tha's been done to gain the trust of the people who give you the information. and who are willing to come forward, people from all walks of life and all languages, all

ethnic and racial background. i think it's improved. so damaged that trust is incredibly hurtful in many ways. so i think we have made mistakes. i think we need to b accountable for those mistakes, but i think, i think we've made a lot of improvements. and i welcome the partnership with the aclu in seattle. >> one final point. on the issue of who is responsible, frankly, all of us are. in my case, at nctc i've got responsibly for terrorist identities work, support watchlisting and large-scale data aggregation. alex job is a constant partner with us to ensure that what we're doing is correct, that any of the datasets that we bring in from any department and agency, we spend extensive amount of time working with the other department and agencies, civil righ, civil liberties, individuals. alex, our attorneys, and so i

think it's fair to say that everyone takes exceptionally important we -- importantly. i think we are all on. suspected you ant to add anything? >> yet. we take this very juicy. as far as the privacy information is concerned. we deal with lots of information from the americans. 19 million americans own passports today. as i said earlier in my opening remarks, that if you remember two years ago there was the threats from within about the presidential candidates. today we do have a stringent checks and balances in place to avoid that. need to know, and we track your footprints ever were you have, right to the last keystroke.

so if something does go in some it does compromise, there's penalties to be paid. so protecting the privacy, as i say, we have lots of data. and now it's become a bigger issue for us because they know an immigrant or an immigrant coming in, some get naturalize along the way and becomes a u.s. citizen. okay, could very well, the previous visa data was compromised, now he or she is an american. so we take that very seriously. also, the outside users that are non-state department, we control that to the in degree. if things go wrong, just. we have an issue right now that came up and i'll be very frank about how is the program, employers are supposed to online check against their data. they are going to our data.

somebody had somehow gotten into some data that they shouldn't have. but we caught them before it we out, before we were able to have to reinvent -- apprehended and stop them from doing a. we do take privacy very safety, and we ought to come all this, want to be protected ourselves, right? >> great, thank you for the. the next question all the way in the back. along the wall, please. >> my name is james murray of them president of a software cover. you cdfi, they got into that information. was in the information encrypted? >> right, but it was encrypted. the reason say this is that, at going to put our company a little bit here. >> statement, only question. it's a question at the end. what we do is we take, we take

encrypted data and this is used for investigation. and we do no need to decrypt the information for investors to find relevant data. it actually matches data shared and data matches information. we've taken is that dhs, and it's a curiosity that you gentlemen don't know about t. i don't understand where the information goes. because if you could use this information every day in your world, i think it would be very useful. again, it's www.software. and let me just say as a question, if you had that kind of tool, and by the way, that took issue a report, and that report picks out the person that actually access the investigation in encrypted format. so a kid you all the information as a manager the point of view, gives you that information. why wouldn't you want to use that? >> that's the question. i don't think there's a palace after who would not want the

data. >> i approach it with the point is coming from. i don't think that they would turn away any useful -- >> but my question is, why don't they know it? someone should be telling these gentlemen about this technology that exists, that they could use. that it would help them i think, right? >> but we do. we placed thprivate public partnerships. >> how come you're not using my software? >> okay, somebody help me out here and ask a question. in the orange dye, thank you, sir. >> give that guy and extra danish. >> hi, it's can with the "l.a. times." russ, you talk about this yesterday but you mentioned legal impediments information sharing. is it any thought th some of these laws need to be changed or tweak the way to avoid a provision was placed in the intelligence authorization? is anything that needs to be done in the privacy act that

would make your life and your mission easier? >> there are any number of issues to look at, nctc has restrictions now on what size information we can get. and we are approaching our ability to get that kind of information. so as the amphetamines are recognized and there's an established need to have a particular kind of information, then we work it to the system. i would asciate myself with whoever asked the question on the first panel kshemendra, has it been in a tizzy accounting of all of the different legal limitations on data, i doubt it. we tend to focus on the dataset that we believe would be a most assistance to the animals and then we go to the range of legal and policy and technical security and privacy issues that impede our ability to get that day and that we through them.

>> if i may, i think i mentioned to you earlier, we are not a designated law enforcement. we have a lot of difficulty as a result because it's a legal impediment to us in terms of that. as i said, we are working with the hill hopefully to change that. >> great. next question. behind the camera their >> actually, migration policy institute. my question is primarily, i'm wondering about the relationship between information sharing and creating greater efficiencies in the system, specifically wh it comes to processing of visas. obviousl we want to create a more efficient system for law enforcement, but what about the consumer, the services that the government is providing, specifically those who into the u.s. have to go to greater

security clearances that may take months, if not longer. and i'm wondering what the potential is for creating an information system, sartre sorry, information sharing system that makes it easier to differentiate between the troublemakers and those who would like to enter the u.s. under more honestly. thank you. >> ask a question. we have embarked on several fronts to address that issue. it's an economic reason. we get beat up by mr. marrit who shows up in his office every two, three months from the hospitality and the tourism industry, okay? it's about studies, that every chese in the united states spends about 300 plus dollars in duty free shops. okay? and in every $7000 for the chinese visitor in the united ates. okay? brazil right now is soaring, and

it's amazing that we were working with disney, also the brazilians were growing middle class wants to visit disney world. what have we done? today, all over these is our applications online. you can apply from anywhere in the world on a web-based system, okay, for a number of reasons now. it easier for the people who apply, but bigger than that, you're right. if i look at china, which is soaring now about 27% increase over last year, our physical facilities, the embassies and consulates have so much capacity, okay? so what are we doing? by going online is not the reduction of the paper, it is automatically prescreening we can do, so that the officers can faster process those people. that goes back to the same information, same statement i

made earlier. we are as good as the frontline of defense of the information we have. to clear those people who are the trusted travelers and don't mean a harm to us, the more information we have, the faster we can online clear them in the system so that our officers or processing 15, 1600 people a day, more information to process them faster and better, and get secure information. so we're doing lots of things right now. we are totally online. i don't know if you we members several years ago, people used to just line up and camp out around our embassy walls, overnight. those days are gone. you sit at our home, own webpage and you make your application. he make an appointment and you show up strictly for your appointment. and we process you. so we've secured another information that is available, we can process that fast. that's exactly what we're working towards, because there is no way that is going to cut

it into the forbid was we got in the, china, brazil and mexico which are so in big time on his. and you're right, the global economy as well. it's not just about people wanting to come here for whatever reasons, but they're coming here in real terms, in terms of the economics as well. >> thank you for the question. >> peter sharf min. as i understood mr. travers was suggesting that if we distinguish among different roles intelligence analysts may have, me roles call for more information than other roles for different kinds of information and other roles. this might help solve the

problem that there is some information that really shouldn't be made available to everybody, but nevertheless has to get to somebody. i'd really appreciate hearing from bart how he thinks that concept might work in an actual fusion center. >> thanks, peter. you know, come from the state and local background, oftentimes the analysts are overwhelmed with information, information overload. let alone the number of systems out there, whether it's legal, risk and every other thing you need a password for. i agree wholeheartedly with role-based access to informati information. i don't know if we're there yet. i know we're working towards that, but i would ay that an analyst would need information, you know, pass some dhs or fbi or whomever that is relevant to their area of responsibility that will impact on them. so to be able to receive information, look at the

information, it really overlaid it against what that information is telling it as relates to a risk associated with a ci kr or potential threat that may be resident within your responsibly. and then really protection allies in it and making sure that it renates with your community for which you are serving law enforcement private sector or whomever to really see that cycle for suspicious activity so you have a better informed law enforcement officer to respond to that an internet and get it back into the system. i think we have a ways to go, but working with our partners here, many of who are in the room. i think we recognize what the issues are and we really need to focus on it and try to solve that aspect of it. so thanks, peter. >> if i could add a couple of comments. for instance, if before 9/11 the federal government ad issued reports on jihadists interest in new york city, and that could have been put out at a number of local clasifications, and if

such information had made it to phoenix or minneapolis, then the fbi and local law-enforcement would've had some context for a dot that they uncovered. and the sort of current analog would be things like putting out a report from fbi or dhs, or my own, that there are individuals interested in hydrogen peroxide that men could be used by local law enforcement. and the eyes it is were out there to say hey, we saw something like this. that seems to me to be a far better answer than just letting the system with information. >> suzanne, did you have a question? >> you talk about the diet on the other state and local folks as tactical collectors and the importance of making sure that analyst at the level get what they need. i'm also concerned about governance at that level.

you talk about one of the guys of state and local involvement is that local accountability also, but if you're operating a context in which only a couple of folks come up couple police office are couple of folks on the shares office have clearances and/or eat at the jt ds or the fusion center, how does that affect the ability of the mayors and chief of police, the sheriff, the city council to conduct that important oversight and ensure accountability at the local level that we are so dependent on? and this is perhaps this notion of role-based access to information which we apply to governors, for example, as opposed to getting clearances to everybody. is that a potential solution? and how does that work out in seattle? >> i think the thing that was most helpful was that, for instance, the link system as a series of checks and balances as to who can access that system

and when it's been access to and actually, there are several disciplinary cases within that seattle region. for inappropriate access for inappropriate use of information. we had lived with an intelligence auditor, an outside independent be appointed individual who would review all of the intelligence gathering within the seattle police department. right after 9/11, we look very carefully at whether we should actually move forward in an attempt to change that. and after some pretty careful analysis, we came to the realization that we could both do our job in protecting the people in seattle and also protect privacy and civil liberties where the law as it existed. this was a law by the way britain, an ordinance written fore the internet, which in seattle was kind of pretty interesting. i think it's kind of a wired area. i think the other part is though

that you have to come and i think there's something like well over 300,000 clearances that have now been granted. the federal government has moved much more swiftly to grant clearances to people that needed, because what it was the mayor of seattle or myself, you actually need those clearances, not only for information, but you need it for the city, but you need it so you could install the systems for the checks and balances. and i think it worked pretty well. >> and also as relates to the fusion centers, if you have a look the baseline capabilities, i would encourage you to do that. within the baseline capabilities it speaks to that as it relates to the governance, the process, the memorandums understanding, expectations of the fusion center from dhs, what am i going to support. what is the fbi gng to support and what to expect. and you look also at the 2010

grant guidance where, for the first me, information sharing is being highlighted as a priority, and coued with that is the mandate that within six months of the execution of that grant award, the fusion center will have to have a privacy policy in place. and if not, you could only use that grant guidance to build a privacy policy there and anything this day forward as relates to mitigating capabilities will be lined up against supporting their gas mitigation sustainment to feel those things like privacy and security and mous and governments to make sure that the governor or the hsa and the cheesend the troopers have a full view of that. so we are here. we've come a long way. we need to get here and we have a path and they plan to do exactly that. >> the gentleman right here. >> brian with the digital

sandbox. there's a lot of experienceon the panels i just want to kind of ask you, where do you see all this going? if we took the implementation of information sharing, all the way to its ultimate extension and that means having access to all the information that's available, and i'm just reading the secretary's testimony before congress recent. she was talking about the increase of u.s. citizens who are coming radicalized. and i think it would be so convenient if ose were living on a compound in waco, but just recently this guy in ottawa, you know, on canadian idol, with so much a part of the fabric of society, not a part from the fabric of society. how do you see, we're d.c. office going over the next five years, both a threat and the role of information sharing, the limitation of information sharing? if we had all the information, how are we going to find these

guys? >> great question to end on. will take an answer from each of the panelists. bard, we will end with you since it's a homeland issue. ross, we will start with you. you can to either want to answer, too, russ. >> i think we don't know what it's going to end. i'm hoping that started on a far more sophisticated debate about domestic intelligence and privacy and so forth. on issues that are entirely complex. i give all the credit in the issue to the marco foundation who foresaw this six years ago, i think. and try to engineer a debate, didn get traction. and to some degree, does okay. people who are radicalized overseas. and the activity was overseas. now, as i mentioned, the foreign domestic divide does not mean very much anymore.

and now u.s. citizens, u.s. persons being directly involved, how much of the information do you want people le me, 30 years in intelligence community to have access to. and i don't think there's any, there's not an obvious answer. there does need to be a specific debate in the country that involves the congress, executive branch and body of politics. and i think we're not there yet. >> i would put it two ways. do we have enough information leading to information? it goes both ways. too much information is not going to give you, but in our terms of quality information. so you have to find a balance somewhere. and also protecting the privacy issue. one of the ways we do that is we go on the red light green light issue. you cannot have access. we're not going to tell you. this is red light or a green

light. if you need further information, and i have to go higher up or go to your personnel, however you do that so you avoid at information 50 fatigue, so to speak with the you can say okay, as far as we know it's a green light, not an issue here. or it's a red light, watch out. pass it onto some other authority, if you will. just because of the sheer numbers that we deal with, how do you go about doing that? and also protect privacy and others. so where does this lead to is, you know, sometimes too much information mighnot be doing you ay good. okay? so focusing on the right information and how you go about balancing. >> so here's what i think i would think two things will occur. one is reconciling in my mind from this career in law enforcent. we have some pretty horrible crimes, an attack on a jewish federation, just awful crimes. a mass murderer of young people

after a party. and so oftentimes as a police chief i go to the community meetings. people in this community meetings didn't blame me for the attack on the jewish federation. they didn't blame you for a person taking a weapon and killing a number of people. they wanted to know what we did, how we responded, what we're going to do to move forward and protect the community. and here, on the issue, we seem to have led this cash -- country to believe that we're going to government, is going to prevent all bad things from happening, and it's not going to happen. it didn't happen in the u.k. over 30 years of the terrorist issue. i think that one theme that has been central is that we've all talked about the complexity of the problem, the difficulty of the problem, and the fact that a bumper sticker like connect the dots doesn't work. connect the dots should probably

be passed along with war on drugs, and, frankly, secure the border because i'm not sure exactly what it means and how it works. and i actually truly believe that the american public is ready to understand that you have really smar dedicated, honest people working very hard every single day, oftentimes many hours, to try to protect them. but, you know, what? it is a big country with a lot of borders, and there are people who nt to hurt us. and friendly try as we might, some bad things are going to happen in the future. >> brian, just did a nuts and bolts answer to that one. i've been doing this since september 11 of 2001 as a new york state trooper. and i seen the maturation, the ebbs and flows and supported fully the dhs enterprise and the people that preceded them. and what has evolved is a much better situation. so to be a new york state trooper, what you need to know

is, number one, people who are operating in your responsibresponsibly of area that you need to be concerned about. and support the bureau in those investigations. you need the tools and training and the situational awareness about tactics, techniques and procedures to identify the unknowns that may be operating within your area of responsibility, like shahzad, if he was already protected by the fbi here and then lastly, working with intelligence led policing, you know, community policing. everything that law enforcement has been doing for centuries as it relates to working in a community, knowing the community, in understanding and recognizing a person that may e going down the wrong road and encouraging that person through vic, church or school or sports or family to get on the prer mode. and that's what the secretary spoke aout through homeland violent extremism, by trying to

identify the bad guys who are probably already dead, and also countering violent extremism by the good people who may be going down the wrong road and making sure they stay that way. but suffice it to say, the relationship with the nctc and irrelevant the relevant information within the intelligence committee, and how do you should do it all get that information into that young trooper, you know, out on the road, that's the thing that we need to account as. and i think we are well on the road in that construct. so thank you. >> great. let's give this wonderful panel a round of applause. [applause] >> thank you very much. we're going to move to our off the record portion and reconvene at about 11:05. so thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

>> our coverage of campaign 2010 continues later today at 7:30 eastern with live coverage of the debate between the candidates in delaware for the house seat. other debates tonight, the new hampshire governor race, the florida senate race, and the pennsylvania 7 that -- seventh district house race. president obama will speak at a small dinner tonight, raising money for democrats before the election. tickets for the dinner costs $30,400. the president had lined four fund raisers last month. to see our political programming, including the dates, campaign ads, and events with the candidates, go to c- span.org/politics. >> the c-span network,

providing coverage of politics, public affairs, and american history. it is all available for you on television, radio, online, and social networking. find content online through our video library. we are taking c-span on the road with our digital content vehicle. washington, your way. the c-span network, now available in 1 million homes. provided as a public service. >> david axelrod and josh global. yesterday they were joined by susan collins to talk about why politics have become so divisive and house civility and cooperation can return to government. this is about one hour and 45 minutes.

>> we would not be here without the generosity and thoughtfulness of the ignatius family, who came together to celebrate their parents, nancy and fall, with this program offered each year. behind me they will be a part of helping to host this evening. ignatius has called the cathedral a learning center for the soul. a beautiful phrase that captures something of what the cathedral seeks to be and has tried to be for the last 100 years, to offer reflection from a faith perspective about the public issues of the day. tonight's event is a kickoff of the year of reflection on this matter of civility and

ultimately reconciliation, something that everyone seems to agree is at the heart of what we need is a country. we will be continuing this reflection in different ways going forward. tonight we have a distinguished group of guests to help us think about this matter. people who have had significant experience either living in or acting as a part of public conversation or political discourse, were observing it closely. we are very grateful to david axelrod, who is coming to be with us, senior adviser to president obama. he stepped into the breach when his friend and colleague, rohm emmanuel, absconded to chicago. [laughter] we miss him and we wish he could be with us, but we are very grateful to david axelrod for being with us. we are also grateful to have

joshua bolten with us, former chief of staff to president bush, a leader of our country in many ways. we are very grateful for his coming down from princeton to be with us. we know that both david axelrod and josh bolten will provide a lively discussion that will be monitored and led by our civility manager for the evening. none other than bob schaffer of cbs news. you know that he can moderate just about anything if you watched the debates in 2004 and 2008. we are also delighted to have rev. dr. gary black, who will open this discussion, having watched so much of our political life in the u.s. senate. we are very grateful to the hon. susan collins of maine, who offers some concluding reflections, joined by

presidential historian, michael beck loss, who will put this in the context of someone who will give us hope. i hope. [laughter] in the spirit of the cathedral, we do not intend to widen the gulf that seems to be fixed between the parties. one person i spoke to this evening said -- i bet they will be nicer tonight than they really are. [laughter] we will see how it goes. thank you for being with us, it will be quite an exploration this evening and i look forward to being a part of it. [applause] >> thank you. let me express, on behalf of my sisters, brothers, my parents, and all of their friends who made this program possible, our

great thanks to all of you. to have so many people joining us tonight is gratifying. to have this beautiful, powerful place with discussions that are serious, contemplate of, thoughtful and challenging. it occurs to me that there are over 800 people here tonight, which is so exciting. that is what we hoped the ignatius' program would be, exploring issues of government and faith that affect all of us at the most profound level. not necessarily to answer questions, but to ask them. tonight's program resonates with me in a personal way. i spent nearly 30 years in and around state government. it has been the exhilarating. i think that if i were a college student today, i would probably stay away from a government career. not to avoid the challenges of a

troubled world, but to avoid the bickering and misinformation that seems to increasingly dominate public policy debates. it would be a shame if we lose a generation of thoughtful men and women, leaving the halls of government to those who have no interest in reflection or nuanced solutions, who want to drive each debate to a polarized extremes. a big challenge to take on. let's get started with our program. we will set the stage with the reflection of the senate chaplain, very black. he sees what happens when the cameras are on and when the cameras are off. he is a doctor of psychology, as well as the ministry, which no doubt comes in handy. previously has served as the chief of the u.s. navy

chaplains. he is highly distinguished and his reflections will be a wonderful way to begin evening. reverend? >[applause] >> friends, in the mid-1800's, a young candidate for congress was told by members of his staff -- we have a problem that may threaten your ability to be elected. rumors, ugly rumors are circulating about you. it is rumored that you are contemptuous of religion. it is rumored that you rarely actually attend church. it is rumored that you are not a

proper question. this young candidate issued a statement saying, simply, i have never been disrespectful to any religion. this young candidate for congress was abraham lincoln. so, the idea of civility as something that always happened in american history and now is not taking place, it is not accurate when you read our history. after all, in the seven years i have had the privilege of pasturing senators, there has not been a single caning in the senate the entire time i have been there. [laughter]

so, a careful study of history reveals that there have been some rather turbulent times. i think it is apropos that we take a fresh look at restoring stability in public discourse. i think we need to do so, first of all, because there may be more civility in the political arena than we realize. each week that the senate is in session, i have the opportunity of being involved in a prayer breakfast, where 20 to 25 senators from both sides of the aisle come together, they pray, they sing, and they listen to one of their compatriots talked about his or her faith pilgrimage. there may be more civility on

capitol hill than some people realize. each week, when the senate is in session, there is a bible study that i teach. 9 to 10 senators from both sides of the aisle come together to study the word of god. a few weeks ago, i flew to alaska for the funeral of former senator ted stevens. on that airplane were senators from both sides of the aisle. and those who participated in the funeral were from both sides of the aisle. when senator robert byrd's casket was lying in honor in the chamber, again, his colleagues from both sides of the aisle filed respectfully by. i contend that there is a level of civility in the senate that you may not see that often on c-

span, but it is there. as paul said, there are saints in caesar's household. he was probably talking about the emperor, nero. if he had some saints in his household, it is not improbable that there will be spiritually fit lawmakers on capitol hill. second, we need to take a fresh look at civility in public discourse. because the faith of our forbearers requires input. this nation was founded on the judeo-christian tradition. when you look at how lawmakers professed to belong to either

judea's them or christianity, well, islam, judaism, christianity, they all have a statement of a golden rule. treat others like you want to be treated. in judy is on we have the core of -- in judaism, we have the torah. remember that you were once slaves in egypt. in christianity we have ephesians, be kind one to another. tender hearted and for giving, as god has forgiven you. so, the fate some of our forebears' require it. finally, i believe that we need to take a fresh look at civility in public discourse. because the american public has

a role to play in civility in public discourse. the etymology of the word, stability, comes from the latin, meaning pertaining to citizenship. it was expected that there be a knowledgeable public that could engage in a reasoned debate about the issues and appreciate what was going on. i have found that in my time on capitol hill, very often our lawmakers reflect what is going on off of the hill. when there is discourtesy outside capitol hill, sometimes it gives license to lawmakers to have the same kind of attitude and polarization. in 1862, before it was certain

as to how the civil war would play out, the congressional candidate who was now president of the united states said something that was, in my opinion, amazingly civil. he said that in this present civil war, it is possible that god's purpose is different from the purpose of either party. i think that that was an amazingly civil thing to say given the historical context. this was a man who had been the recipient of so much instability. he was caricatured, made a cartoon. and yet he had enough civility to bring many of his enemies

into his cabinet. he knew that we, as a nation, need civility to continue to ensure that this government, of the people, for the people, and by the people, will not perish from the arabs. -- from the earth. god love you. [applause] >> what an extraordinary beginning for the evening. now we move to our moderated discussion. i know that in your programs you have information about the three participants, but let me briefly give you the highlights. jostle bold move is a visiting

professor from the school of public and international affairs after serving under george w. bush as chief of staff. he worked tirelessly but privately. he never wanted to become a distraction from the brisk -- from the business of the presidency. he said that he understood firsthand the pressure is brought to bear on the administration. david axelrod, a senior adviser to president barack obama, following in his role as a senior strategist, on the faculty at northwestern university in chicago as a political reporter, experiencing day to day the discourse that had taken hold in washington and dominated much of the obama presidency. moderating the discussion, bob schieffer. if you are a news junkie, and

you probably would not be here if you were not, you know his skill at hitting talking points and drying out of all responses from his guests. he has received almost every move toward possible from his broadcasters. let me announced a three of you to come forward, please take your seats, handing it over to bob for a lively panel debate. [applause] >> thank you all very much for coming. the national cathedral holds a special place for me, both of my daughters graduated from here. two of my daughters are graduates. this is not the first time i had been in the cathedral. i am always in all to be here. both of these men are men that i

know, straight shooters, both easy to deal with. one is a republican, one is a bit -- democrat. proudly so in both cases. it is fair to say that if everyone in government whicwas e these two, we would like -- we would have civility. but as it has been said, if there were angels there would be no need for [laughter] i agree with everything that the chaplain said, but i would observe that some of the harshest rhetoric in american politics was as the country was being founded, the riding of the constitution, attacks in those days were much more personal than even today, if that is possible. i would also say this, i have been in washington for 41 years.

presently i believe that we have a mean this that has settled over politics today that is worse and runs deeper than i can recall in my time here in washington. perhaps there were other times that i could not speak to and that i do not know about. i just want to start with a basic question. josh, do you think that civility is even possible in today's politics? >> first, thank you for the introductory stuff, to the reverend and the families here that do so much for our community. kenai began with an apology, bob? too much of the audience? much of what we discussed early on was that i suspect, as strong

as the ignatius family is, that david axelrod and joshua bolten might not draw as big a crowd. i fear that half of you were expecting a smack down between rohm emmanuel and john bolton. [laughter] i regret to inform you that it is axelrod and myself and we will have a discussion of civility, whether you damn well like it or not. is civility possible? it is, but only if the incentives in our political discourse change.

the discourse has become course, as you have said, bob. the administration that i came in with, with president bush, he governed in texas as a genuine uniter. his closest political ally was probably the democratic lieutenant governor of texas, bob bullock. they formed a strong alliance and friendship. president bush came to washington with aspirations for a summit -- similar tenure, which he did not achieved, despite his best efforts. the environment has become so course that civility is very difficult to achieve alongside political success. in my judgment, the answer is

yes, civility is possible in washington, it should be possible, it has been possible in our history, but it will only become possible within the incentives of the political system changing. my own instinct is that programs like this are part of changing the culture so that the incentives of four politicians change. >> let me ask you, do you think that either side wants stability? or is it better from based political standpoint to have the kind of discourse we are having right now? >> that is a very interesting question. i also want to thank the ignatius family for hosting this event. never in my wildest dreams -- two weeks ago i did not think i would be filling in for rohm emmanuel at a forum brought on civility.

[laughter] >> i think the idea of rohm emmanuel being here for a forum on civility -- [laughter] >> i would like to take a moment to say, in the presence of josh, that one of the things that impressed me so much was when we came to washington after the election, the graciousness and courtesy that the bush administration extended to us. each of our counterparts reached out to us. president bush himself could not have been more helpful. i thought that that was a great demonstration of patriotism. i want to tell you that as well. the question that you ask is interesting. but is it better politically to the issue political stability -- theschew political civility

if you are the party in power? if power is the goal, given today's modern world of politics, you know, there is an incentive to be strident. in part because of the way that our parties work now. if you have a redistricting congress where most of the primary action takes place and people are playing not to the broader electorate, but to their party's, we have a media that is now dividing into ideological camps. more and more people are watching media that affirms their own point of view rather than media that expands thinking to others.

everyone who has mentioned this, in civility as part of the american political tradition. when i talk about political media i used to talk about a pamphlet that was distributed during the presidential campaign of 1824, called "a catalog of the youthful indiscretion of ann jackson from age 13 through 57." -- andrew jackson from age 13 37through 57. [laughter] unfortunately that is how much of this is covered it these days. are you doing something to promote your own interests rather than the country's interests? we need to think more about what we are doing here and if it is a perpetuation of a party, yourself in office, the

president came when i hope that we could overcome this. it has been a difficult couple of years. i think that if we can get over the hump in view this as an exercise in moving the country for challenging times, where we could do better and cite the media environment and technological environment that rewards. >> i want to get back and talk about the making, because i do agree with you, that is a very good statement. you said that george bush came here with a hope of getting something done, so what happened? of the why is that this idea? i am familiar with george bush, growing up in texas he did govern pretty much from the

center. i think that most political and with would say that. but i also remember in the campaign, the new hampshire primary you thought that you were going to win and win big. the campaign had been a centrist candidacy. he got beat. he lost and surprise everyone in the campaign. from that moment forward the campaign adopted a new strategy. it was no longer a campaign down the middle, but a campaign that ran from the right, it seemed to me. and it proved successful. do you think that had anything to do with the attitude of the administration? you were not the chief of staff at that point, but this approach to governing became much different. >> no.

but i say that with all civility. you were talking about the primary. we were locked in mortal combat with john mccain, who is a great character. the campaign shifted somewhat, but i do not think that was a momentous of shifting philosophy on the part of george w. bush, or a shifting of the politics of campaigning. i think that the shift for president bush came at the moment of the election itself, when so many people in this country felt he had won the presidency legitimately. that was a hard way to enter the office, when a large portion of the country thinks you are not legitimately the president.

so, it started off on a very tough note. add the ground been more fertile for actual civility, i do not think it would have persisted that way. >> it does not work the other way. >> david is making my point, difficult as that was to start the presidency, you cannot blame individual events like a shift to the right after new hampshire, or even something as dramatic as an election where almost half the country thinks you did not actually win. >> the point that i was making, i guess, going into new hampshire george bush seemed to be going for the middle, but from that point on they decided that to win the nomination they have to get the base.

i think you make a very good point about florida, that it would have been a very different presidency. i think it would have brought a different atmosphere. david, it seems to me that the chain -- the chance for you wall was being in office when you took on health care. it seems to me that you are still feeling that fallout. do you think that it would have been better to break health care into two parts? putting all of your focus on jobs? i think that there are a certain number of people in this country who feel that advanced health care was a parliamentary trick and i wonder, can you ever have civil discourse if you have

a large part of the population believing that? whether or not the people in general what health care reform of some sort. >> there is an awful lot of money and effort spent depicting it in certain ways that were inconsistent with what it was. first of all, i would challenge this press, not surprisingly in a place like this i would not suggest ending a 100 year quest, meaning that i came to office at an unbelievable challenge. through the end of it became through the beginning of it, and

we faced it. what we were told is that if we did not act decisively and quickly, economists were united in the sense that the financial system stood up, making the program work effectively. the second piece was replacing a huge hole in our economy. and we took the steps to do that. what was surprising was that it was so clearly a time of national will emergency. i have such a strong recollection, and i do not want to turn this into a partisan discussion, but the president went to capitol hill to speak to the republican members of the house about the recovery act and on his way up there they released a letter anonymously

before he got in the room to talk. since then they felt the feeling was that they not -- were not going to go with the president on initiatives. singling out the senator who had the courage to stand with us. she deserves enormous credit because at the time of maximum payroll for the country, she said with us and it was the reason we were able to get this done. [applause] >> if we could just keep that between the 800 of us here, it would be better for senator collins.

[laughter] >> we did spend much of the time talking to republican senators, spending so much time trying to form a consensus and it might be another generation before someone would try. we wanted to do it in a bipartisan fashion, senators sitting on the couch with the president, running through the program. on a plan that the senator had abdicated, a middle-of-the-road approach. we had the president and republican senators on the couch, agreeing with each other.

it has been a difficult environment and i am not suggesting that we cannot do anything better, but it has been like a rock from the beginning. >> it was not that different in the bush of ministration. we faced a similar situation. the infamous bailout that they were talking about, not just the u.s. economy but the global economy was in desperate straits. the bailout was anathema to this republican president, but that

is how it was done. there have been examples in the midst of crisis of the legislature coming the other to deal with crisis, which is very difficult to do in the current environment. >> senator collins stood up on that day and called it one of the finest day as in the history of the senate. >> it does bring up an interesting point. it reminds me of this, when i came to washington 41 years ago , we used to have republicans over for dinner, democrats over for dinner at the same party. i am finding out that republicans and democrats do not like to be around each other anymore.

if a democrat complement's a republican, look at what happens to charlie crist -- happened it to charlie crist. barack obama put his arm around him, the next thing you know he has to leave the republican party and run for the senate. this happened to this year, we were having a republican leader in the democratic leader on face the nation. an aide to one of them called one of our folks and said -- would it be alright if you have a private waiting room for the boss. he does not like to sit in the same room as his top -- counterpart. i said -- you know, he is just going to have to suck it up. [laughter]

we cannot take tent in the parking lot, like arnold schwarzenegger, we do not have that much room. but it has come to the point where republicans and democrats do not like to sit in the same room. where a republican to be complemented by someone in the other party, or a democrat as far as that goes. this is a new and different place for the politics of this country. >> seeing people like senator bennett losing nomination in the state simply because they voted for that bill, there are examples of both sides, i am sure. yes, we have a very polarized situation and one hopes -- there are two things that can happen. it is clear that the dynamics will be somewhat different.

i believe that democrats will maintain control. one interpretation is that with relatively equal numbers, responsibility will be shared. that is the one that i hope for. the other interpretation -- gridlock. i do not think that that is a promising prospect. i hope that the voices of stability will resist that. and we will work for that as well. we will make every effort to work with the things challenging this country right now. only if we can set something for the side. >> do you think that the goal.

and i do not think that there is -- the goal? >> no. and there is nothing wrong with what it was actually a product of a deep-seated disagreements about where the country should go. that is what the founding fathers wanted, for us to be the saucer to prevent the majority. much of the tone was completely

unacceptable, but is deep disagreement is actually part of the system. it is when there is agreement between the parties because they are participating in a zero sum been wary of that side means, i must be losing. a better place to be president bush championed this with a reelection in 2004. do the democrats agree with the attention?

we love to come back >> the not so much that they would able to be able to agree roughly of moneys to be done the leadership of both parties as the whole man and the only way we will make progress on the goals that we agree on >> give me some examples -- i asked if he was

still talking, he said yes. i said -- why do you have president obama propose that you will stop smoking. i got a lot of heat because i was told you never ask the president that. would that not be a good bipartisan thing to do? he has got a long, head start on this. i agree with you, we actually

brought something about that. i can tell that this is a big issue for you. >> is a worthy question. [laughter] some weeks ago we propose some things that republicans have traditionally supported and there are things that we ought to be able to agree on. but this is the environment you do not deal with each day anymore. we have a situation right now where there is a historic number of vacancies on the federal court. we have dozens of judges confirmed by committee often unanimously that cannot get a vote on the floor of the u.s.

senate. demanding that this is where we are today. the resolution when the black hawks won the national hockey league championship, jim demand sent it to committee. [laughter] >> what would be the best target of something? >> social security is a great one. but it will be hard. i predict that president obama will head that way. i know that he cares deeply about securing a long-term fiscal future. i think that he will head that way and i hope that he is able, i hope that republican leadership will come together with him to agree on that. immigration reform is a place

where it is hard to get bipartisan agreement. there is a place in the middle where it should be possible for other countries to arrive. we feel close to it in the bush administration, very close to working out a deal on immigration reform that came within a couple of votes of passing in the senate. a deal that we should have been able to reach and i am hoping that the obama administration can get there as well, as it is a question that urgently needs to be address. >> we are eager and the president has said that. president has said that.