classic definitions of corruption, biblical, islamic and so on. you see that they're often about violating the public trust. and a lot of this flexion activity really does that is what we should be concerned about. thank you for joining us. >> tomorrow we will be talking guests withs with ye newsweek daily use. yl kimball on russia's proposal on syria tummy tuck. we'll also be joined by the internationals that these. .ll that we will take calls of the papers as well.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> here's a look of some of what is ahead on sees him. janeidge along with harman testify on the threats the u.s. is facing 12 years after 9/11. the remarks from another homeland security person. a little bit later, a dc circuit of appeals argument in the case of verizon versus the sec.

we will look at whether they should treat all traffic equally. , leadershis week awarded the congressional gold medal to the four girls who died in the earning of church bombing in 1953. see the ceremony tonight starting at 835 eastern here on c-span. thisg up tomorrow, continues. this video competition is underway. it is open to all and high school students. we are doubling the prize money. most important issue you think congress should consider in

2014. you should show varying points of view. need more information? visit studentcam.org. testifies onridge the type of threats the u.s. is facing 12 years after 9/11. they spoke earlier for about 2.5 hours. >> welcome for this important hearing. i was reminded 12 years ago what was going on.

but a datay sad day is not without hope. a day for reflection. that brought a sense of unity that we do not in this country. there will be a moment of silence a bit later. withl asked to start this our witnesses. first, a moment of silence. thank you. things our chaplain,

he always encourages to pay -- pray for wisdom. that is probably a good thing for us remember. on this anniversary, it provides us with important opportunities all the efforts undertaken to secure our country since that beautiful day as well as the challenges that lie ahead. we have a remarkable group of witnesses. we will share their thoughts and counsel. we are honored that you are here. inc. you so much or joining us. the department of homeland security turned the end result. we can all agree the department can do this,

do a better job in certain areas, we should not forget about the remarkable progress that's been made in keeping america safer since tom ridge helped to open that new department lo those many years ago. there's no doubt that we are safer today than we were then despite the greater threats to our nation and well being. i'd like to take a moment to recognize some accomplishments. we have a more risk-based, intelligence driven airline safety, screening passengers roughly four days before they board an aircraft. we improved our preparedness for and ability to respond to disaster while cutting red tape at the federal level. we saw the fruits of these efforts following the boston marathon bombings and also the

natural disasters that struck my part of the country, including hurricane sandy. we've increased security of our nation's borders to historic levels through manpower and resources and built up cybersecurity capabilities to work with the private sector and federal government agencies in preparing for and responding to and mitigating against the ever-growing number of sign attacks. is there still room for more improvement? i would say, you bet there is. one of my favorite saying is the road for improvement is always under construction. that's true in this venue as well. one way the department can improve is ding a better job of preparing for tomorrow's threats today. we do a pretty good job in this country of fighting the last war and preparing for the last type of attack but we must do a better job of preparing for the next type of attack we'll face. today we can hardly go a day

without reading about a cyberattack or hearing about a cyberattack in the news, often many attacks. to respond to the challenge of ever-changing threats, we need a department of homeland security that's flexible and ready to adapt when necessary. sometimes we just need to use some commonsense. if a program is not work, we shouldn't just keep throwing good money after bad. rather we must work smarter with our limited resources and find ways to get ever better results for less money or the same amount of money. that's why dr. coble and i are holding this hearing and a series of others today. at the beginning of the year he suggest wed focus on re-authorization, we've never done a re-authorization of the department of homeland security and he suggested a way to do that would be to do a year-long series of hearings that are relevant to the department and its if you thinks and this is one of those hearings, a really important one. we're doing this top to bottom review of the department to learn where it succeeded and where it comes up short.

this information will help taos better focus our scare resources on what works. as the committee conducts its review process, we'll be looking to ensure that the department is making smarter acquisition decisions, developing even more agile and capable work force and improving its financial management systems. this review will also look at how we can strengthen the defenses of our homeland against very sophisticated and highly agile threats. one of the most important things we can do to improve homeland security is to come together to pass cybersecurity legislation either in pieces or together as a comprehensive approach for our country. the threat is too great and the consequences of inaction are too severe to do nothing. enacting a thoughtful, comprehensive cybersecurity policy has not been easy, as we know.

but we have a shared responsibility, both democrats an republicans, house and senate, government and industry, to get this legislation across the goal line and into the end zone, hopefully this year. we already saw many of the different parties come together to pass comprehensive immigration reform in the senate a few months ago. i don't agree with everything in that bill. i know my colleague here don't agree with everything either. but i believe it's vastly prefer to believe our current immigration system, the failings of which undermine both national and economic security. it's my hope that the house will pass its own version of immigration reform so we can go to conference and make it even better and pass the kind of historic piece of legislation

our country needs. as we remember 9/11 and we discuss the challenges that lie ahead, we must seek to recapture that spirit of unity that prevailed 12 years ago today. and we need that if we're going to succeed in making not just the department of homeland security stronger over the next 10 years but -- but our nation stronger going forward into the future. i lock forward to working with dr. coburn, with our colleagues, even senator johnson who is so good about coming to these hearings and asking questions. we look forward to working with the administration and the witnesses and a whole lot of other folks who will help us to do this job. with that said, i'll turn it over to dr. coburn for nizz comments. >> thank you, senator. i have a statement i'll place in the record. i have a lot of concerns with homeland security, one of the editorials in the "new york times" today talked about the lack of focus on multiple committees, the focus on multiple committees instead of single committees of jurisdiction and i know it's difficult for homeland security to answer all the questions from the 88 different committees and subcommittees that they have to answer to and that's one of the things we ought to be about changing because our frustrations are we can't ever get answers and i'm sure it's not always intentional that we don't get answers.

sometimes it is. but it's because we're asking so much information all the time where the people who have responsibility to homeland security can't do their job. because they're busy answering questions of members of congress. the disorganization. the other concern i have with homeland security is it's turned into an all-hazards agency which was never its intent. it's abandoned risk-based policies putting money where risk is rather than money where risk isn't. the politicians in washington have very much accounted for that. in my opening statement that i'll put in the record, there are large number of areas where we are in -- where we are incompetent. whether it is in materials of either metrics or effectiveness and we have not held the hearings that are necessary to straighten that out.

i would welcome all of our panelists, thank you for your service in multiple areas for our country and hope that you can give us some wisdom. i've been through your testimony, hope that you can give us some wisdom, thousand streamline and not undermine the goal and the long-term changes that need to be made in homeland security to get us back to a risk-based agency instead of a grab bag of political benefits agency. the final point i would make is the transparency is important. and the difficult job you had, governor ridge, in terms of bringing these agencies together, we've had good homeland security directors but -- and secretaries. but the idea that you can effectively manage thising and

we have all the data to say we're not effectively managing it system of my hope today out of this hearing is that we'll hear some great ideas on how you change the structure and the final point i'd make is we have 15 open, 15 of the top 17 positions at homeland security open and to my knowledge we only have two nominees pending in that area. and i may be wrong on that, that's my guess. enge we have two. so leadership matters. and having people in positions instead of acting people in positions is very different in terms of accomplishing the goals that need to be fleshed in homeland security. i welcome you, thank you, and look forward to your testimony. >> thank you. thanks, dr. coburn. at 11:00, there's going to be a gathering of members of congress, for member of congress, i think on the east steps of capitol, for an

observance. my hope is to work right up to just before that time and hopefully we'll be in position to adjourn, if we're not, i may ask you to adjoush briefly and come back within an hour. i know at least one of you has a tight schedule. all right. i want to briefly introduce our first -- not so briefly the first witness. tom ridge and i came to the house together in 1982. 30 years ago today we were both in our mid 20's. maybe early 20's. but we ended up serving on the we served in the vietnam war together. he had a real distinction. just a hero. and very modest about it. we ended up on the banking committee together.

i think in the 102nd congress we ended up leading the banking committee, we had a subcommittee on economic stabilization and people said to me, tom, in the past years, what did you accomplish in those two years that you and top ridge led that committee? we lead the foundation for the longest running economic expansion in the history of the country. we stepped down from our responsibilities. in 1993 we were on our way to eight glorious years. he went on to become after that become governor of pennsylvania. our neighbor to the north. and first secretary of the department of homeland security. since stepping down as governor, he's not only led the department, but he's also served as chairman of the national security task force at the chamber of commerce and on boards of the institute of defense analysis, the center for studies of the presidency and congress and chairman of the

national organization on disability. meanwhile, he travels the world as head of his firm, ridge global, and any other number of entities. somewhere along the line he convinced a woman named michelle marry him. they have two wonderful kids that we've been privileged to know, leslie and tommy. delighted to see you and thank you for your friendship and extraordinary serve service to our country. next, jane harman, former congresswoman from california, 36th district. during her tenure in the house of representatives, congresswoman harman distinguished herself as one of the top national security voices in the house servicing on the house armed services committee, intelligence, and homeland security committees. she's also one of the principal authors of the intelligence

reform and terrorism prevention act of 2004. congresswoman harman serves as director of the woodrow wilson center. also member of the external advisory board for the department of defense, c.i.a. and does a million other things. so it's great to see you. we welcome you warmly. our next witness is one with facial hair. i wouldn't have recognized you had i not known it was you and you were coming today but it's great to see you. and you are a hero in this country, the hero in the coast guard and department of homeland security. enormous respect and affection to you as you know. thank you. i wish you as well as i understand executive at booz allen hamilton. and the admiral recovered from hurricane katrina. after the first couple of weeks, the initial response was the deepwater horizon oil spill and for that service and a million other things that you've done and continue to do, we welcome you. i want to thank your family for allowing you to serve our country. and last witness, -- are you partner -- i understand you have a book out. author of a book.

i love the title "skating on stilts: why we aren't stopping tomorrow's terrorism.? in his position, mr. baker established the department's policy office. he led successful negotiations with foreign governments over data sharing, privacy and visas. established a secure visa-free travel plan. what years did you serve in the bush administration? thank you for that. and i want to thank, again, all of you for being here. your entire statements will be made part of the record. feel free to testify. we'll lead off with governor ridge. i want to say to senator, nice to see you. welcome. it's a pleasure. our senator from new jersey, great addition to this committee and to this body. governor. congressman. >> thank you to my former colleague and my friend, it's a great pleasure to appear before you. senator coburn, as you say, let me associate myself with the

gentleman's remarks with regard to a risk-based approach, with regard to consolidating the incredible labyrinth of jurisdictional maze that the secretary and his or her department have to continually respond to up here on the hill. i mean, one of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission and 10 years later that one and the other recommendation they made with regard to a broadband public safety network, that's 10 years in the making. there's some legislation a long way from execution, so i really appreciate your words in those regards and other members of the committee, it's a pleasure to spend this morning with you on this historic day and important day. i appear before you in a wonderful personal capacity as a private citizen as well as the chairman of the u.s. chamber of

commerce's national security task force. the task force is responsible for the development and implementation of the chamber's homeland and international security policies. frankly, it's a voice for businesses across america. it certainly informs my perspective on many issues, but it doesn't dictate it because my work is strictly voluntary. i'm happy to advocate when we share them. i welcome the opportunity to appear here to examine the ways which we can secure america's future. since we have limited tied, i'd ask permission to revise and extend my remarks. before i begin, i want to on this anniversary acknowledge the families that lost loved ones on september 11. we all know where we were. i had the opportunity to visit shanksville a couple hours after that plane went down. so the reason we're here is to work together and to do our best to ensure that such events do not happen again and that other families don't have to suffer like the families of our 9/11 heroes.

with your indulgence, i'd like to make a few general observations first and what i believe is a cross-cutting issue that both d.h.s. and the broader federal government has faced in the past and has the potential to complicate our security forevermore. first of all, briefly, it's becoming clears that members of this body is attempting to pass some immigration reform. i think it's relevant. d.h.s. components can be expected to play a significant role in implementing these reforms. my position is that the time has come, the time has come to grant status to those who wish to enter our country legally, to work lawfully, to pay taxes and deal with the issue that we talked about for 10 years and that is the undocumented

individuals who are here. i think we can be done. i hope this congress does it. but i also think congress has to balance this responsibility with providing adequate resources to the department of homeland security in order to affect the outcomes that the broader american public want to achieve. we can talk about reaching consensus in washington, but unless any reforms are resourced appropriately, d.h.s. components will be saddled with an impossible mission in the critical area of border security. i'm not going to discuss my deep and abiding concern about the number of critical senior level vacancies at d.h.s. it's been addressed. it's disconcerting that an agency that's perceived by our government, united states government, to be as important as i believe it is, to have 15 vacancies or whatever the number it is at any time. and these have lasted for quite sometime.

you are aware of it. i just urge the administration to fill the vacancies quickly and the senate in a judicious manner and timely manner to exercise the responsibilities and fill these vacancies. let me discuss the challenge of information sharing which i think goes to the heart of the homeland security's responsibility. we don't generate intelligence. we are assigned from the enabling legislation to share it in a defensive -- provide whatever defensive measures we need to protect america. information sharing is an issue that's been with us since 9/11 and cuts across a range of challenges that have and will continue to confront the dedicated men and women of d.h.s. we all know the nature of the terrorist threat has changed as we've seen in iraq, afghanistan and today in syria. our enemy is no longer just al qaeda but like-minded organizations and nation states that are willing to ally themselves in order to harm their common enemy, the united states. in my opinion, this will require

the intelligence community to work with one another than ever before. congress in its oversight role should ensure that d.h.s. specifically remain plugged in to the federal intelligence communities horizontal, across the board. for if intelligence indicates a physical or cybersecurity threat against the homeland, d.h.s., by enabling legislation, is the agencies required to work with our partners along the vertical, required to work with the state and locals, required to work with the private sector. that's embedded in the enabling legislation. further, we should ensure that the great progress that's been made for information sharing with our state and local partners such as the establishment of fusion centers, continues to be nurtured. no discussion of the d.h.s. threat environment or about information sharing can be complete without discussing cybersecurity in greater detail. there's no part of our national economy, infrastructure or social fabric that is not in some way connected to the

internet backbone. our critical power and communications, transportation, product supply chains and financial systems. and d.h.s. owns many of these sector-specific relationships. let's face it, the cyberthreat is not new emerging. in fact, when i was secretary, in 2003 a full decade ago, the first u.s. national strategy to secure cyberspace was released. greater awareness of this threat may be emerging, but the threat itself has been with us and will be with us for the rest of our lives. as first secretary of homeland security, i have a particular perspective on this issue. we learned after 9/11 and we learned after katrina and keep learning after all these incidents that information and coordination sharing could have been better, and some people refer to a digital cyber pearl harbor. at least in that instance, historians will say, we had no notice of the emerging threat. i don't think this is a cyber pearl harbor. we have noticed and it's not an emerging threat. it's a constant and ever- changing dynamic threat.

and so i'm more inclined to say it may end up being a cyber katrina where we had notice but we weren't as prepared as we should have been until thad allen and began to address the situation that he confronted on the ground. i've got several more pages of testimony. i see my time is running out. i hope we get to this area in the q&a. at the end of the day, the sharing of information between the u.s. government and the private sector, specifically, and i can refer to the enabling legislation that says that d.h.s. has a very significant legislative role, it's absolutely critical. and not in a prescriptive form. it cannot be in a prescriptive form.

there are many regulations. in fact, the president's executive order asking this to set the standards is something that we all welcome and we engage but we hopefully give it a chance to work and assure that the private sector is involved and engaged because it's that kind of collaboration that's absolutely essential. and you're never going to defeat the cyberenemy, whether it's a nation state, organized crime, any organization by having the private sector check the compliance box. we did all that congress wanted us to do. that's inadequate. it's grossly ineffective. it has to be timely and continual information sharing horizontally with the federal government with the d.h.s. and down to the state and locals and particularly down to the private sector. the federal government relies on the private sector in order to function. as i said before, we have some lessons to be learned about the inadequacy of what of the

federal government is doing to protect its own information. i think it would be helpful not only when we repair that but make sure we facilitate the day- to-day engagement in information sharing with the private sector. i thank my colleagues who are on the panel, distinguished patriots as well for the opportunity to peer with them. i thank the chairman and the committee for the opportunity to share these remarks this morning. >> thank you for those remarks very, very much. congresswoman harman, please proceed. >> thank you, mr. chairman. as i think every member of this committee knows, i have great affection for this committee. i work very closely with your prior management during eight years on the house homeland committee and another eight years, some of them overlapping, on the house intelligence committee. later today at the invitation of colorado governor, i'm flying to denver where senator lieberman and i are appearing on a 9/11 panel in denver this evening. >> i hope you'll give him my best. >> i shall. as my youngest daughter would say, your former ranking member, susan collins, is one of my

besties. we stayed good close friends and we work together on the intelligence reform law of 2004. i also have great affection for all of us testifying before you today. worked very closely with everyone on this panel on homeland topics. and we continue to stick together, which i think is a good thing. 12 years ago today as the towers were falling and the pentagon fire was burning, i was walking toward the u.s. capitol. my destination was the intelligence committee rooms in the capitol dome, the place most consider was the intended target of the plane that went down in shanksville. my staff called to alert me that the capitol had just been closed as were the house and senate office buildings. so most of congress, including me, milled around the lawn in front of the capitol. there was no evacuation plan. we had no road map for response. part of the solution which some of us recommended was to create

a dedicated homeland security function. and that function we thought should be in the white house and tom ridge became its first coordinator. along the way the white house proposed a much more ambitious concept, and in order to get this function as part of law, we embraced that concept. then there became the department of homeland security. now, in its 10th year, i'm proud of my role as one of the department's founding mothers, and i think we should acknowledge today the thousands of d.h.s. employees who serve us daily, around the country and the world. as we speak, customs and border patrol agents are in megaports like the port of due pie and they're screening u.s.-bound cargo for dangerous weapons and material. investigation agents are in diplomatic posts everywhere in the world and they're reviewing suspicious visas. and t.s.a. screeners are depriving al qaeda and other terror groups of the ability to turn more aircraft into weapons, a tactic we know they are continuing to attempt.

today, as tom ridge said, d.h.s. remains a work in progress, but the efforts of its people are its backbone and our backbone. we have a safer country because of them. a year ago i testified here, and i noted some of the things that were going well at d.h.s., but i also noted challenges. and they include an anemic intelligence function, something tom ridge just touched on, the need for d.h.s. to focus more on its relationships with critical infrastructure owners and operators, something that's now happening because the cyberthreat is increasing. and, as mentioned by you, mr. chairman, the failure of congress to reorganize its committee structure. today, as you mentioned, there is a very good op-ed in "the new york times" -- i buy the print edition, i want you to know, by

tom kean and lee hamilton. lee preceded me as president and c.e.o. of the wilson center and we served as colleagues many decades ago in the house. i don't want to touch on all of this, but het me just briefly scope the good news and bad news since last year. bad news, we failed to thwart the boston marathon bombing. an exponential increase in cyberattacks, edward snowden and one part of al qaeda is in the boonies in yemen. there is good news. one, information sharing is improving. i know there's much to continue. second, resilience. we showed resilience after boston, in particular, after the boston marathon bombing. and common sense is emerging in the way we approach homeland security, and to senator coburn's point, i think there's more support and there should be

for a risk-based approach. collaboration with the private sector on cyber, that is happening, and credit should go to the -- i guess she's just retired -- to the secretary of homeland security, janet napolitano, for personally working on this issue. and we are getting ahead of privacy concerns. let me just touch on these very briefly, because my time's running out too. information sharing, tom ridge talked about it. but the committee should take credit for the fact and the department should that homeland security grant money was critical. according to the boston p.d., it helped make sure that the city was trained to share information rapidly during the emergency.

d.h.s. also participated in something called the multiagency coordination center, the macc, that was operational before and during the bombing and it was critical once the bombs exploded. resilience. a very important factor in our country's ability not to be terrorized. it's not that we won't -- if we fail to be terrorized, then the terrorists lose. the agency distributed almost $11 million to boston, just to pick boston, through its uasi mission. it upgraded 5,000 portable radios for first responders, install a communication center inside the boston tea and conduct two city-wide simulator disasters. this is a very good news story. similarly, in hurricane sandy, which went fairly well, fema activated in advance a national response coordination center which was critical in terms of preventing more damage and speeding the recovery. collaboration with the private sector on cyber. d.h.s. will never own the cyber mission but it is responsible for a central piece, which is critical infrastructure

protection, and in the past year d.h.s. has tracked and responded to nearly -- get this number -- 200,000 cyber inns dents, a 68% increase from a year before. we will never get a handle on this. as janet napolitano said about six weeks ago, she said that's happening. kudos to the department. finally, getting ahead of privacy concerns. the department itself has a privacy and civil liberties office. that office has trained many in the fusion centers, 68 out of 78 fusion centers have received some training. there's enormous complaint out in the boonies about the invasion of privacy and it's important we do two things.

one is protect the american people and two is to protect the american people's privacy. it's not a zero sum game. it can be handled with proper training and finally, the administration has fully populated the privacy and civil liberties oversight board which was created by the 2004 law and which was never functioning until may and that should be helpful too. let me just conclude by saying d.h.s. will continue to face difficult challenges, including al qaeda's enormous ability to evolve, the rise of lone wolf terrorists, the constant increase in the type and sophistication of cyberattacks, especially the risk of exploits in software and privacy issues. but most attempts to attack understand since 9/11 have been thwarted for which thousands of selfless d.h.s. people deserve

our thanks and so do our former secretaries of homeland security, starting with governor ridge over here. and so do members of this committee. thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> congresswoman, thank you so much. admiral allen, your whole statement will again be made part of the statement. please summarize as you see fit. >> thank you, mr. chairman, senator coburn, members of the committee. thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning. like secretary ridge, for the record, i'm not representing any particular entity. i'd note, however, that the op- ed piece that was published by lee hamilton and tom keane was part of an aspen sponsored part of the department of homeland security and i'm part of that task force, as part of the disclosure. i'm here to be comrades jane harman and stu baker. these are people i've worked with over the years and consider them friend and role models. glad to be here with them. it's hard not to sit here this

morning and not recall the events of 12 years ago. and what's transpired since the interim. i was the coast guard on 9/11, and what happened that day was something i never thought i'd see and that is a coast guard cutter off manhattan with the guns uncovered. it was a chilling sight. we closed the port of new york. we closed the potomac river north of the woodrow wilson bridge and resupplied ground zero because there was problem getting vehicles in and out. this was a consequence event for the coast guard as well. and i, like the members of the panel here, passed on our best regards to the families who were impacted by that terrible event. i have testified before this committee on several occasions since my retirement, and in each of the testimonies, including today, i've done a retrospect of where the department is at. i will say i was the chief of staff at the coast guard when the department was established and led the transition out of d.t.o. into the department of homeland security.

i've spoken over the years on many occasions on the conditions which the department was formed which was bureaucratic light speed in a little over three months. in association of trying to bring that all together, including it was in the middle of an appropriations year, it was between sessions of congress. i think secretary ridge was confirmed the day before he became secretary if i remember correctly. that's a lot of stuff going on at the same time but i think we have to move beyond the aggregation of entities that came within the department and try to get beyond that. you can talk about that as a means for why the department

kind of is the way it is. but i think 10 years later we have to actually sit down and say what is going on here and where do we need to go? i need to associate myself with the remarks made by secretary ridge and jane harman. harman. they talked about the what. i'd like to talk about the how, because ultimately we need to, moving into the future, how to tackle these problems and the best way to do this. the occurring theme you're hearing is information sharing. i'd like to talk in general about the border, resiliency, counterterrorism, law enforcement and cybersecurity. as been previously referred to. regarding the border, there's a lot of talk right now about the southwest border in relation to comprehensive immigration reform. while we move forward and define what the policy is going to be and what's going on with the number of illegal immigrants in

the country right now, i think we need to remember we have a border that's very complex and goes well beyond what i would call a geographically and described borer. it's a functional border which includes the analysis of data and the movement of cargo that are never touched by human hands but are virtually carried out and we have to carry out our functions as a sovereign government in a global common in a variety of ways including air, land, cyber, sea. as we look at border security, i'd urge the committee to understand it's a combination of

functions and it's a system of systems and it can't be reduced to oversimplistic fixes like fences or more border patrol agents. we have to figure out what is the nature of the problem and what is the best way to deal with with all the tools we have available. including the aggregation of data on all border functions into a fused picture that senior leaders can take a look at. i'm talking about all the different license plate reader programs, passenger information, information on private arrivals of aircraft and vessels and so forth, bringing that together and putting that where there can be coherent analysis. and i think sensory information is incredibly important. we need to build an architecture that allows us to do it so we can understand how to react to them on the border. we need to visualize that for our leaders so they can understand what we'll call a common operating picture and that in turn can be discussed with folks here in the congress regarding oversight. and i think we need to look at along the southwest border, not every part of the border is the same, and boots on the ground and fences are not the way to control the border. we need to look at areas where say there was no traffic and

conversations i've had with some folks in the department using satellite imagery and going back and taking several runs at a time and if there are no movements, you can pretty much say that's a low-risk area and start concentrating on where there is a risk involved there. i think in that way we can probably do a better job of how we're managing the border. congresswoman harman talked about national resiliency. i think it's extremely important and important because we need to look at it way beyond natural disasters and what fema does for a living inside the department. risk assessments, focused on the most likely and consequence events that occur, easterly natural or man built. and that is population densities and risk they present and we need to figure out how to look at building codes, land use, going beyond current floodplain legislation and regulations associated with that and try and look at the behaviors that need to be influenced to change how we think and act at a local level. i think we need to improve our incident management doctrine. hspd-5 is a general framework for the secretary to manage incidents.t frankly when you hae large complex incidents it's very hard to subordinate one cabinet to another in a very overarching way, especially in

complex events. i think it's extremely important. ombinationk at the possibity of events that starts with a cyberattack that gets into industrial control systems that produces a consequence kinetic effect, all of a sudden you have fema, mppd, the f.b.i. to the ncgi, a.t.f., and you have the overall management, we don't have a clear doctrine on how to move forward on that. and finally we need integrated national operation center for homeland security. the national response coordination center at fema is an excellent operation for what they do. the coast guard has an operation center. one of the big challenges in the absence of being able to consolidate on a campus of st. elizabeth is the inability to coordinate an operation center there to be able to coordinate and direct operations. i have some other points but i see my time is up. i'll submit that to the record. i'll be glad to answer questions. >> thank you. mr. baker, please proceed. welcome. >> thank you, chairman carper, ranking member coburn, members of the committee. it's really an honor to be here with members of the committee and members of a panel, all of us made promises to ourselves and to the country 12 years ago

that it's a pleasure to be here to have an opportunity to continue and rededicate myself and the rest of the panel to those promises. there have been a lot of achievements in those 12 years, and d.h.s. has contributed to many of them. it has many successes that we've heard about from other panel members that couldn't have been possible without the department. it also has some failings that i think you are talking about addressing quite directly. re-authorizing legislation is an excellent idea. the idea of reducing the number of committees that provide disjointed oversight to portions of the department would be an excellent approach as would be building the equivalent of the defense department's office of the secretary of defense. we've had three great leaders of the department who, when they are focused on a problem, have made the entire department sit sing like a chorus.

but when they've had problems that they can't spend one day a week on or one meeting a week on, the components tend to drift off. there's no institutional mechanism for keeping the department in tune and on the same tune when the secretary is pulled off or the deputy secretary is pulled off in another direction. so finding ways to build the office of policy, the office of management into effective managers of many of those second tier issues would be very valuable. i want to talk mainly about an issue where i think most opportunity for progress is

offered, and that is in cyber. this is a terrible crisis. we are not solving it. we are falling behind. many of the ideas that have been proposed are rather divisive. but it seems to me there are at least three issues that the department of homeland security could contribute to that may form a basis for less divisive solutions. what seems to be clear is that while we are falling farther behind we have also learned that we have more information about the people who are attacking us than we actually expected to have five years ago. we know what their girlfriends look like. we know what blogs they write. they are no more able to secure their communications than we have been able to secure our networks. and in that offers some

opportunity for actually bringing deterrence to bear, not simply defense. we cannot defend ourselves out of this cyber crisis. that's like telling people that we're going to solve the street crime problem by making pedestrians by better body armor. that's not the solution. we have to find a way to actually capture or deter or punish the people who are attacking us. how do we do that? it seems to me that one of the ways that we do that, law enforcement's very familiar with the idea of deterring and punishing attackers, but prosecuting the people who are attacking us, many of them overseas, many of them associated with governments, is probably not the most effective measure. what we need is new ways of bringing sanctions to bear on the people that we can actually identify, and d.h.s. can lead that. if we use the law enforcement capabilities that the department has at i.c.e., at the secret

service, integrate them into a smaller group, maybe on an experimental basis, with mppd and the defense capabilities and the understanding of the attacks, we could gather much more intelligence about these people and then bring to bear new forms of sanctions. again, something that d.h.s. can take a lead in developing. many of the companies that support these hackers, that hire them after they finish their service for government, the universities that train them need and want visas to come to the united states. i don't know why we are giving them visas if we know who they are. we should find a way to come up with sanctions of that sort, or frankly sanctions of the sort that treasury uses today to deal with conflict diamond merchants or the russian officials who oppress the human rights of one. we have attacks on human rights right here in the united states.

cyberattacks on tibetan activists and the like, we should be treating those attacks on human rights that occur in the united states every bit as seriously as we treat the russian government's abuses inside russia. and again, d.h.s. could be authorized to go looking for ways to bring those sanctions to bear. and then finally, with the private sector, it seems to me the private sector knows more about the attackers inside their networks than we will ever know. they are more motivated to find the attackers and to pursue the

attackers who end up as their competitors, which is often the case. what's being stolen is competitive information. it must be fed to the competitors, and those competitors are operating in our markets. and if we can gather that intelligence and close that loop, we can bring to bear criminal and other penalties on the beneficiaries of these attacks. that is not something we're doing now because there is not enough integration between the people who have the resources and the incentive to do that, individual companies who are under attack, and the law enforcement agencies that are totally swamped by the nature of the task. if we gave, if we experimented with giving the companies that are under attack more authority to investigate their attackers under the guidance and supervision of the government, we could make more cases and impose more sanctions on people who are attacking us.

so those are three pretty concrete ideas, plenty more in our testimony which i will ask that you read into the record. thank you. >> your full testimony will be made part of the record. thank you very, very much for your testimony today. i want to return to a comment, dr. coburn, several of you, governor ridge, and the issue -- i call it -- it's not just d.h.s., it's not just the department of homeland security. we have too many vacancies throughout the federal government. the administration released an extensive list of nominees. we welcome that. one or two are in this department. we are looking for -- senator johnson knows we are looking for an i.g. we need someone to fill that position in this department and a bunch of other i.g. positions that are vacant. this is a shared responsibility. the administration has the responsibility and give us names of excellent people, honorable people, hardworking people. we have an obligation to hold hearings, vet those nominees and

with the extent they do a good job, move them promptly. the administration needs to do their job. we need to do our job. we'll keep focused on that. governor ridge and i wore different uniforms, he in the army, me in the navy. there was a popular movie called "five easy pieces.? if those of you remember, jake nicholson. great movie. i think a comprehensive -- a comprehensive cybersecurity policy is not five easy pieces but maybe six. i want to mention them and then i want to ask a question each of you about one of those. one of the pieces -- critical infrastructure. are we -- best protect our critical infrastructure, that's a shared responsibility as we know. another piece, information sharing. i think every one of you touched on that in your testimony. third is we call it protecting

the -- federal government's networks. fourth piece is work force. governor ridge and i talked about this recently. how do we make sure that d.h.s. is able to attract and retain the kind of people they need to do their job in this arena? research and development would be a fifth piece. another one falls outside our jurisdiction but important one is data breach. how do we reach to those who breach data, it affects a lot of people's lives? that would be the six not so easy pieces that we're dealing with. i over the past couple years, the department of homeland security has been playing an important role in protecting our federal networks and working to try to secure our crippled infrastructure. unlike the specific statutory authority that defines the f.b.i.'s, our n.s.a.'s work in this arena, the department of homeland security's authority comes really from the patchwork of presidential directives. it comes from policy memos. it comes from vaguely written laws.

in fact, one way i heard it described, as far as cybercapabilities go, if the n.s.a. has a doberman, the f.b.i. has a german shepherd, then d.h.s. has a chihuahua. nothing against chihuahuas, but they need a bigger dog because this is a big fight. we need to figure out what to do. while i say d.h.s. is much further along in developing cybercapabilities, some people give the department credit for, i think we need to provide the department with clear, statutory authority to carry on their current activities so it can be compared to something a lot stronger, a lot more formedible than a chihuahua. let me just ask each of you -- do you believe that it's important for the congress to empower the department, this department with clear and explicit statutory authority to carry out its current

cyberactivities, these activities include working voluntarily with the private sector to protect against, to prepare for and recover from cyberattacks? and would a better defined statutory mission of the current cyberactivities, current cyberactivities, help to strengthen the department's cybercapabilities? governor ridge, lead it off, please. >> senator, i think the enabling legislation that created the department of homeland security and embraced in a strong

bipartisan way with the house and the senate basically set up conceptually the very idea that d.h.s. would really be at the ep center of engagement down to the epicenter of engagement down to the private and local sector. with the original intent of congress in terms of the role that d.h.s. plays. secondly, i think any gray that exists in the alignment of d.h.s.'s relationship with the private sector, particularly, probably creates a great deal of confusion. right now i think the private sector is reluctant to cooperate from any reasons even to share information because of the absence of liability protection of those sorts. i realize you aren't asking that. i think if there is a gray area that can be cleaned up and there is a direct line of responsibility -- by the way, you have the opportunity to hold them accountable that are not doing their job. you have been assigned some tasks. we don't think you're providing these very well, you can hold them accountable. thirdly, i'd say, by the way, it would be important to do two things. one, it would be important to resource the department appropriately. look, the men and women in d.h.s. right now that are working on cyber, government generally, let's face it, probably a lot more potential lucrative opportunities out there in the private sector.

we have some real patriots. they're working hard on cybersecurity matters because they believe it's their contribution to their family's security and their country's security as well. we probably going to need to look at some kind of compensation adjustment to keep some of the best and brightest with us for some time. one is enabling legislation. two i think clarity would enhance the kind of voluntary collaboration that i think is absolutely critical between the private sector and the federal government, vis-a-vis d.h.s. and if it will be a mandate they need to be properly sourced. >> congresswoman harman, the current cyberactivities help strengthen the department's

cybercapabilities? >> my answer is absolutely yes. the administration did issue an >> my answer is absolutely yes. the administration did issue an executive order last year which is somewhat helpful but it would take legislation and secretary ridge outlined a lot of the issues. there's been a difference of opinion among people up here about how robust d.h.s.'s authority has to be, but the bottom line problem is that the private sector doesn't trust d.h.s. that has been overcome to some extent by the really impressive efforts that secretary napolitano has made in the recent months to reach out for industry and there literally is a floor at the d.h.s. headquarters where the secretary and others are working together on cyberthreats. that's a good start. i just want to add a robust endorsement to your point about swiss cheese. there are a couple of nominations that have been made by this administration, and one of the nominees i know very well much she's been nominated for undersecretary for nppd which is in charge of the cyberfunction, and i just mention her to all of you. her name is suzanne spalding. i hired her to be the staff

director of the minority on the house intelligence committee, worked with her for years. before that she was executive director of the national commission on terrorism on which i served which was then chaired by jerry brimmer, as many of you know, a commission that predicted the attack on u.s. soil. not paid a lot of attention to. i would recommend the guy to my left as new secretary of homeland security. thank you. >> i would ask if anyone wants the nominations closed. there is no shortage. we need the administration to pick one and send us a great name. suzanne spalding, i think we have a hearing for her next week and my hope is we'll move that nomination quickly.

she's an impressive nominee. admiral allen. >> it's a tough statement to follow but i'll try. i think there are three things we need to look at. i don't think you need to look at d.h.s. authority and isolation. the first one is the current status of fizz ma which is basically a regulatory compliance tool to try to ensure that proper information security is being dare carried out in the federal government. they are trying to move away from a checklist mentality to include mitigation and measurement at the gateways so we actually know what's going on. that will be enhanced shortly by a dash board which will pull that information up, allowed it to be shared across the agencies. that's a phenomenal step forward but been largely done through the congressional and appropriations process where money was provided to actually go out and solicit for that work to be done. i think we need to move forward and figure out how we'll transition from fisma to continuous monitoring of our circuits and how to move that information around.

secondly, as jane mentioned, the executive order on the cybersecurity and infrastructure protection has lay out a number of very important steps, vug a framework for the private sector that's been formed by nist right now. we need to go beyond the e.o. regarding liability and what are the prohibitions that keep the private sector from being involved. you have the fisma revision. you got the e.o. on cyber, which is going to take legislation to completely solve that. i think both other panelists have said that. finally, what are the authorities and the jurisdictions that d.h.s. would need to do? if you put all three of those together i think you have the complete package and i think legislation is needed but it should not be separate from legislation that addresses the issues with the private sector as well. >> thank you for those comments. lastly, mr. baker, better define statutory mission of the current cyberactivities that d.h.s.

helped strengthen that department's cybercapabilities? >> yes, i think in a couple of ways. first, the technology is always evolving and yet the law that we're operating under is 10 years old, at least, in many cases. authority was simply transferred. and fisma is a great example. doing security checks that would take -- occur on paper and take months to accomplish. yet, the department is now actually rolling out technology that will perform much of the fisma checks in three days. and it's important to revise the law so it takes accounts of those capabilities and all of the security measures that are being developed in this area. i would certainly support the idea that working with the appropriators is the best way to do this. having a single unified appropriations process by the department is the saving grace for department. and the more of that that can be done the better. similarly, the second point that

i'll close on is that in many cases, the authorizing legislation needs to make clear that while the national security agency has a big dog, it's an important participant. i used to work there. very supportive of it. but everyone in the country needs to be reassured that when we're talking about cybersecurity, it's d.h.s. that's setting the policy and dealing with the data, not the national security agency. so what i would say is maybe d.h.s. doesn't need so much a bigger dog as a leash. and authorizing legislation can provide that kind of reassurance to the american people. >> thank you for those comments. how do we better honor the loss of all those lives 2 years ago this morning? do -- 12 years ago this morning?

do we join some of our colleagues on the steps of the capitol for an observance or do we better honor their lives and their loss by continuing to do our work here today? we believe the best way is for us to continue doing that. we'll continue going through the 11:00 hour and give us a chance to really drill down on some of these important issues. with that having been said, let me yield to dr. coburn. >> well, thank you, mr. chairman. couple points on what i heard here today. the homeland security budget is twice what it was when you had it. everybody knows we're resource poor right now. and the question is how do you put metrics on what homeland is doing? number one, there's 45 opened areas from o.i.g. that have not been addressed by the department

of homeland security on recommendations that they essentially agree with but they've not acted on. i don't know if that's a priority problem or a resource problem. but that list is growing. second thing on fisma, bobby is a great leader at homeland security. if we had 100 bobbys, we could all sleep great at night. but the fact is fisma is going backwards according to the last o.m.b. report, not forward. so i'm hopeful, based on what you said, admiral, what you said and you, mr. baker, in terms of improving that. the other point i'd make, i asked c.r.s. to give us what statutory authorities homeland security has. they had most of the authorities they needed for everything. as a matter of fact, when secretary ridge was secretary, he had them start all these things under these authorities. so we need to fair it out what we need to do to give increased authority. the things that i'm concerned

about, first of all, we can't afford to duplicate things we're doing at n.s.a. we heard from all of you, we do need -- every time we've seen a problem since 9/11 is because of either a stovepipe or an individual judgment that was made in the wrong direction. even with boston. i mean, if you go to the intel on all that, what we know was we had some errors made by individuals and/or by process, rather than have flat, good horizontal communication that was real time. and so tom and i -- tom carper and i don't disagree what the goals are. the question is -- the disagreement is how do you get there and how do you hold people accountable? so information sharing is the key for us to be flexible and

highly responsive when it comes to threats for our country -- to our country and how we respond to that is important. jane, you said something that i think is really important. the confidence level by the public and the private sector in terms of d.h.s.'s capability to handle this is a key hurdle we have to get over. and what we have to do is we have to walk before we run. and we've been crawling, and now i think we're walking, and i would attribute some of that to the most recent secretary, but also to bobbie and her crew and what is going on there. we've seen that. but we had a lot of problems at fusion centers with privacy. we put out a report that showed that. and they responded. they were starting to respond before that. but there's no privacy policy associated with the drones, with d.h.s. right now. we have an open letter that hadn't been answered.

what are you doing about it? and yet there was no consideration of privacy as they made the policy moving forward use of drones. there are big problems for us to address. i guess what i would ask is -- and by the way, i need to make a correction. the president has nominated four positions out of the 15, not two. so i stand corrected on that. office of general council, nppd. so the question i'd ask, how do we make -- what do we do -- how do we incentivize to make sure we have real-time sharing across all the branches, one? number two is, how do we reform congress' oversight of d.h.s. to where we limit the committees? tell me how we do that so that we can make them reactive in a positive way and not spend so much time up here on the hill but have good, clear communication and single authority coming out. we have most of the authority

for homeland security, but that's not true in terms of a lot of other subcommittees. so your comments on those. i'd like each of you to address that if you could. >> i'll be happy to volunteer to begin the conversation. i must tell you, senator, that i think your frustration with the growth of the department in terms of personnel and dollars is something that i share a little bit. more is not necessarily better. i remember my first year as secretary, well-intentioned congress on both sides of the aisle wanted to give me more money. i said before you give me more money, better take a look at it and say if we're doing an effective job with the money we already have. i think you and senator carper bring that mindset. some would be from 180,000 to 240,000. i have no idea where the

additional bodies needed. notwithstanding the increased personnel down at the border, c.b.p. and i.c.e. the failure of this institution of congress and the united states to consolidate jurisdictions so there are no end runs to protect vested interests that have been -- that have been existing in silos for a long time. i think the only answer to that is the will of this body to effect a change. so a small group of republicans and democrats in both chambers with nearly exclusive jurisdiction, you're going to see through the process, it's a little busyin teen, everybody has allies in every committee, both in authorization and appropriation levels, we really

need to do that. i think if you can consolidate that responsibility, i think you can effect the kind of change you're talking about. it's amazing to me that the congress would ask two of america's great public servants lee hamilton and tom kean, to spend a year and a half, two years, take all that testimony and say we as a congress want to know how we can help the new department mature and how we can make our country safer, and two of the most obvious and needed recommendations made 10 years ago, consolidate jurisdiction and provide a public safety broadband network so police and fire and emergency responders can handle future crisis, and we're not there. >> risk-based rather than all- hazard. >> third is risk-based. they're starting to do it at t.s.a. i mean, i'd like the preclear program. i know john has done a great job. moving in the great direction. quit arguing about a fail-safe border, security platform. you'll never make an absolutely secure border. what we want to do is reduce the risk.

we have to risk manage the border. we have to risk manage commercial aviation. we have to risk manage everything across the board. i think at the end of the day, senator, if you're looking to achieve the outcomes that i think generally shared on both sides of the aisle, the commitment's that strong, i think the republican and democrat leaders in both chambers have to sit down and him him himis enough. himone final antidote. and i say with respect. i can't tell you how many times we've been working for a vote and leaving a subcommittee hearing and there would be lament among the members, geez, we have five or six hearings today and we have to run from here to there and everybody decries the pressure on legislators to do their job effectively in all these committees and subcommittees but nobody wants to relinquish the

seat on the committee or subcommittee. may not be voluntarily relinquished. if the leaders in both chambers say, it's done. homeland security doesn't report to 100. it will be reported to five or 10. it's done. you have to get leaders in both chambers and both parties to agree. it's at the epicenter of solving the problems you addressed. >> strong letter to follow. >> mr. chairman, let me apologize in advance. i have to leave at 11:00 because i serve on foreign policy board to the state department which has been rescheduled three times but it is today and the meeting with -- >> we understand. >> 11:30. all right. so i apologize. let me just address reorganizing congress, which i think is absolutely essential and will be very difficult to do.

i was in the painful discussions, maybe senator baldwin remembers back in the day about the need for more jurisdiction for the house homeland security committee and the pitch was made and people nodded and then someone from the house commerce committee stood up and said oh, no, this option of interoperable broadband network is central to our jurisdiction. so, no change. and people in this institution on both sides earn their power through their committee positions. and giving up power in this institution is not something people will do voluntarily. so i agree with tom ridge that the leadership will have to basically require it, however. the leaders earn their powers through the loyalty of their members and making members

shrink their own power is not really helpful to leaders holding power. so i don't know how the thing changes but until it changes, we won't have the robust homeland function that we should have. just one other comment as i kind of implied 10 years ago. the concept for the homeland department is more ambitious than some of us would have wished. it was the white house to put agencies and departments together. some of us thought of a more modest function between the coordinator and the white house. but we took it because the administration was behind it. so it's a daunting task to make this thing work. at this point, i don't think we should rearrange the deck chairs in the administration. but if there is a way and maybe the members here have more power than members i have observed back in the day, if there is a way to reorganize congress to

give the committee more power, i think this country will be more safer for it. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> as i stated earlier, i spent several days out at the annenberg foundation with lee hamilton and tom to produce the report that was set out today. my proposal would be attached to the record because there is a detailed discussion rather than take the committee's time here. i wouldn't have served on that task force if i didn't subscribe to that. there is a subcommittee for the coast guard there. i spent four years as commandant of the coast guard without an authorization bill. fishing vessel safety to unregulated small boats and never were able to be addressed and if they were, committees

would assert jurisdiction. very, very time consuming. if you look at some of the issues we haven't been able to address and some of those are in the aspen report, there is a lot of issues on the record that have been raised, the issue of security for general aviation aircraft. only other point i add to senator coburn's comments, what we are trying to do with flood insurance, it's very instructtive. those that bear for the risk don't pay for the risk. we have an extraordinary amount of liabilities trying to pay off the claims from hurricane katrina. on the other hand, you start to let the flood insurance fees rise, you have issues with local communities. and what you have to do in the long run is get ahead of all of this and change behaviors on land code and zoning use which is a more strategic way to deal

with this but you can't do this with four, five committees asserting jurisdiction over the problem. >> i fully support the idea of reducing the number of authorizing and oversight committees. let me talk about two ways we can address senator coburn's concerns about the budget and some of the other issues. it seems to me that proper authorizing legislation can set the framework for actually saving money in the budget. and i'll give you two examples and you raised one. the question of duplicating n.s.a.'s capabilities makes no sense for d.h.s. to try to do that. n.s.a. has built up capabilities for over 50 years that d.h.s.'s mission will never be funded.

they have enormous capabilities. at the same time, both the american people and the department of homeland security wants some reassurance that if they lean on d.h.s. to use those capabilities that they won't discover that policies being made defacto, privacy policy in particular by the people that they are leaning on. so language that could create an authorizing legislation that sets aside d.h.s.'s authorities and leaves it in control of this area, drawing on n.s.a. for talent and for tools and technologies that it already uses, you will end up saving money by relying on existing capabilities. and creating at the same time, reassurances for people about how that reliance will work sm the same thing, it seems to me is true if you can build a planning process, a budgeting process that uses integration,

office of secretary of defense- type capabilities to say how can we reduce the budget effectively, how can we eliminate redundancies by looking at the authorizing language and if we do that, we will be building the capabilities of what i described as the second tier so that the secretary doesn't have to sit down and get out and start ag asking about the 14th line about individual components. but that is being done by a staff that is trying to eliminate redundancies. by creating the right kind of authorizations for those central staffs, you set the framework for reducing the budget. and last tied to that, it seems to me that until it comes when we have eliminated many of the

authorizing issues, one of the things that this committee can do is build a relationship with the appropriators so when the appropriators are asked about legislation that arguably is authorizing on appropriations, they know that this committee has looked at those ideas, have thought about them, has vetted language, creating authorization language that may in a pinch end up in an appropriations bill, is worth considering at least the short run until we get to the promised land. >> i realize we have senator baldwin. we have gone well beyond the five minutes as you know and i thank you for your patience. i thought it was important for us to allow this panel to answer these questions in the thoughtful way we have done. we have spent going from one

place to another, in and out as you know. and this was a very helpful series of questions and responses. senator johnson is next. this is an excellent hearing and i'm pleased the way it's going. jane, we'll give you the first rights and then you can leave. >> thanks to this panel for being here today. mr. chairman, i join everybody in remembering the families many from my state that were tragically impacted from the events of 9/11. certainly watching this in new jersey. the most recent events that we have seen that really get to the issue we are talking about today, the bombing at the boston marathon.

and at the time -- and i have read this issue before when we had commercial davis and others to talk about those events. and i was serving as attorney general. i remember being in my office and learning that there were contacts as to what was going on there in my state. and i remember -- and our state police and everybody did an unbelievable job that turned that around to make everybody proud and we want to make sure that event doesn't occur. and i would like you to answer first because you have a time constraint, do you think we have the appropriate -- currently have the appropriate client among the people that are responsible for having developing and sharing the information necessary so that that information is flowing

appropriately to get secretary ridge's point, we aren't overly siloed. be it from a cyber perspective, a terrorism perspective, whatever these perspectives, it is making sure the information gets to where it needs to get. and i ask you to talk about your thoughts on the current climate of the way that information is shared among the people that are responsible for sharing it. >> thank you, senator. i would give us, as i just said, an f for re-organizing congress. it is sad that congress has a 19th century structure to deal with 21st century evolving- threats against our country. but on information sharing, it is a b.

it's not an a. b. not an a. but the challenge was to break down silos and to create opportunities for people to actually know each other, which is one of the ways you build trust and enable information sharing. yes, there were mistakes in the boston marathon case. the tide list didn't get to the right folks and the f.b.i. didn't follow up and a little of this and a little of that. however, once the event occurred, boston -- the surrounding p.d.'s, the state of massachusetts and all of our federal law enforcement agencies and homeland came together in

almost a seamless way in using video, including people's hand- held phones, they were able to focus on them quickly. that's why i say it's a a. after action, it was an a. before action, it was probably a c. this is improving. i want to mention that we haven't talked about and something i know a lot about based on my role on the advisory committee to the d.n.i. and some of these other intelligence places that i stay connected to, and that is the dark side of information sharing is that it enables snowden or others to get too much information and to use it for evil purposes. our goal is to build the trust and horizontal arrangements and put in safeguards so people with bad not iffs inside or outside our system can't abuse it and i don't think we mentioned that and that is part of the challenge going forward. >> thank you.

secretary ridge. >> well, i would have the great pleasure of working with congresswoman harman and grading on a higher curve than i would giving everybody a b. i'm not going to give them a grade but i'm going to address something i find troubling. going to the perception that d.h.s. didn't do its job. i remember after the detroit bomber and d.h.s. was criticized after letting the individual on the plane and secretary napolitano was taking some heat. d.h.s. doesn't rely to provide information. and if the state department didn't give it to d.h.s. and customs and border protection, d.h.s. should not be held accountable but it seems from time to time they were. fort hood, the f.b.i. in two different venues that hasan was e mailing the radical cleric in yemen and d.h.s. takes the hit. why didn't they do more? that wasn't in their spot. they have to ask why they didn't do more. with regard to boston, i don't think that the f.b.i. is on a speed dial arrangement with the kremlin and i would like to know how often the kremlin picks up

the phone and says you have a couple of terrorists in your midst. i don't know how thorough that revelation was many within the f.b.i. i'm not faulting the f.b.i. i don't know whether or not the federal government germly including the f.b.i. took russia, the russian intelligence communication as seriously as it should have. there may have been other agencies that should have been involved. i think the response as congresswoman harman said was phenomenal. there were grants that wept out and program training that went out and done under d.h.s. but that is after the incident. and that's why information sharing is critically important. and to take this little step

further. let's assume you break down the silos and there is better information sharing, someone has to look at classification. the easiest way for the agency to deny access to -- and i'm concerned about state, locals and private sector to say it's top secret. no one want to look at it. i have seen a lot of things that were classified, top secret that i know you could have shared with folks that wouldn't do harm to sources and methods and i think classification is very important particularly if we are serious about information sharing down to the state, locals and private sector. attorney generals have to know more information. i'm one of those folks you can't secure the country from inside the beltway and the alphabet agencies have to trust high- level law enforcement members in all 50 states and territories

with information about what's going on in their respective states. i venture a guess that you have no idea that all the investigation when you were attorney general of the potential terrorism activity in your state. it is a huge mistake. people say somebody may reveal that information that was shared. we need to expand the network with fell o'-- fellow americans. can't keep all that information. that's my response to that inquiry and we need to look at classification because it's overly classified which is reason not to share. you have to trust fellow americans to help keep the country safe and secure. >> i know that my experience was that -- thank you very much.

>> mr. chairman, i know we are out of time. we had the opportunity to be briefed and attorney general's jurisdiction is different. mine was different. and i think to get to your point, others have made these relationships -- first time you are talking can't be after an event and talking before and having some trust and having seen somebody is invaluable once the event starts so there is no hesitation because that stuff has to get to the decision makers and to the rescuers and whomever else is involved. i appreciate your thoults. i'm over my time and i don't want to hold up senator baldwin, but i would like to hear from the other panelists, too. >> are you ok if the other panelists respond? are you ok with that? let's do that. we have a good flow. >> rather repeat some of the

points that are valid that jane and the secretary made, let me take a different spin on this. when you look at counterterrorism and organized crime and illicit trafficking, there are growing linkages there. whether you are a terrorist or a criminal, you have to do a couple of things that are advice i believe. you have to talk, move and spend money. and every agency operates on a case doctrine on how you manage that and that case is usually confidential informants, sources and methods. they are trying to protect that. the problem is that our law enforcement structure in this country has evolved in this country against business lines of the bad guys, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, firearms, counterfeiting, intellectual property, all managed by a law enforcement agency.

we are dealing with illicit networks that generate cash to perpetrate their regime and you have to attack the network with a network. the greatest case for information sharing and greatest case for a more and better integration not only in the d.h.s. but domestically and internationally is to look at these challenges as network challenges and how do we move across dealing with their business lines which means you are taking down one franchise and not the root of the problem which is how the network sells threat financing, how the money moves and how they communicate. that is the number one cause for action on information sharing in my view. >> three thoughts on this. one that i offer only tentatively because i don't know

the details, but i do remember when the older tsarnaev brother came back from russia, he came back from the russia and we had a chance to look at his electronics and we didn't do it. my impression is we didn't do it because the f.b.i. had closed its case. and one of the questions i wonder about if d.h.s. deferred too much to the f.b.i. we have an independent responsibility to protect the united states and the fact that the f.b.i. closed its case is not necessarily a reason not to ask questions of somebody who has gotten the kinds of intelligence reports that tsarnaev earned. second, one of the things -- >> elect me correct the facts on that. your statement is in error. it was sent to the joint terrorism task force in boston

but was not related to customs and border control at kennedy. >> there were failures of information sharing that cost us something and something significant. second, we learned after boston how valuable cameras can be. they aren't valuable in stopping crime, but valuable in catching the people who carried them out. we learned that from the two bombings in london. and yet for a variety of reasons including privacy campaigns, a lot of cameras have not yet been installed in city centers. we don't need them hooked up or don't need to be watching them but need to be recording so if something bad happens we can go back and find out what events led up to that. we should be encouraging the installation of those cameras and if people have privacy worries, we should have them continually rewrite over their hard drives as opposed to send

the data anywhere. and third, on the information sharing point, i thought jane harman was exactly right. information sharing creates risks, creates snowdens and mannings, but they look a lot like the chinese hackers who have compromised computers. and same tools that help us to provide better cybersecurity and will provide us better audits and will protect as well because we will be able to tell whose accesses information improperly. one of the things that this committee could do, that d.h.s. could do is make it clearer to the state and local entities that get grants that they can use that money for cybersecurity, audit technology

that will allow them to meet all of those requirements. >> thank you. >> senator baldwin, thank you for your patience. take as much time as you want. >> thank you, mr. chairman, ranking member for holding this hearing. i thank our panelists and congresswoman harman for your service to our country. and i appreciate each of your sharing your analysis and appraisal of where we have come in the last 10 years and where we still have to go. i want to focus my questions in on the larger issue of cybersecurity and incredible increase in cyberattacks that we are experiencing. and i would like if you could and start with you, mr. baker, to talk about any distinctions that we should appropriately

make with regard to economic cyberattacks versus the threat of cyberterrorism where the goal might be to take out part of the power grid, for example. and i would like to focus in -- you ended your testimony a little bit with the private sector being in a position where they have more intelligence on their potential competitors, but i think you were talking about economic cyber attacks in that arena. so the question i have is, what can we do better with existing authorities? and then the second question that i would like to hear from all of you about is, i don't know how long the journey will be until congress actually passes legislation on this topic to supplement the executive order and to respond to many of

the issues that have been raised, but there has been lots of comment and secretary ridge, you talked about don't make this prescriptive or regulatory. i wonder if there is a distinction we need to make when we talk about critical infrastructure because people depend upon that and it may be private, but it is to the public benefit without question. and should there not be some additional obligation, some prescription, if you will, because of the level of importance of that critical infrastructure? if you don't mind, mr. baker, i would like to start with your reflection on those questions. >> there are two big worries in cyber. one is what you might call economic espionage in which all of the attacks are aimed at stealing information.

and we have seen enormous amounts of that aimed at practically at everybody who might be of interest to any foreign government with any capabilities in this area and probably everybody on this panel and certainly everybody on this committee has been attacked in an effort to gather that information. that is a serious pandemic problem right now. sabotage or cyberwar, designed to break systems so they don't serve us is a very serious possibility. i'm not so sure about terrorism. i'm not sure it has been healthy for al qaeda leaders to use the internet in the past. but state-aided terrorism, if we actually did attack syria, i think you would have to worry that iran or hezbollah or some organization assisted by them would age in cyberattacks in the

united states designed to cause failures in financial or industrial control systems and those could be very serious. all of those attacks tend to use the same basic techniques. you break into a standard commercial network and try to hop to the industrial control network that you can break and cause serious damage. and so stopping the espionage attacks, making it much more expensive to steal secrets is our first and highest priority. under existing authorities, we do have authorities to investigate -- first, companies know a lot about who is in their network. i represent a lot of them and experts that they hire will say, oh, yeah, this is this unit of the peoples liberation army or some other criminal gang. we know by the things they're doing, and the code they are

leaving behind who it is and will tell you what their tactics are going to be for the next 24 hours and what they are trying to steal and why. they know a lot just looking at the activity on their network, something that may not be available to law enforcement. what they can't do is go to the command and control septemberers being used to steal the information. you need law enforcement authorities. law enforcement doesn't have all of the background information. we need to find a way to use existing law enforcement authorities and the existing resources and information that individual companies have to actually track those guys back home and then begin looking for reasonably creative penalties that can be applied again, using existing authorities we can deny visas for any good reason. the president and congress can

impose financial sanctions on individuals who have committed this kind of crime. we have lots of authorities we have not yet used. >> i think the progress that has been made with the executive order that was timed by the president regarding cybersecurity and protection has taken a step forward. until you start dealing with the issues about proprietary data there is a hesitancy of the private sector to get on board. the conversation has been started in the last two weeks with the release of the draft, voluntary framework by nist is going to advance that discussion further. there are some critics that have said that is too general and not detailed enough to be effective. my position is you start with a 1.0 version and go to 2.0 version and having that conversation and involving the private sector is what is needed.

if you look at this problem, this is a classic case of macroeconomics and what's the inherent government role and what should the private sector be doing. and there is not a consistency in the country about where those roles are. whether the government will control that is a command and control system. i think to figure out a way to share the information that is held classified within the government and get it out to the people that need it if they are attacked and get the information out of them and potential civil or criminal penalties associated with that. i will say this and there are a lot of people out there trying to work this problem. i have had the opportunity over the last couple of years to work with an organization in pittsburgh.

it's a 501-3-c organization. and local f.b.i. office have developed a way to create a metaphorical switzerland and capable of walking across the hall and under the protocols and building trust and so forth. we have to figure out a way for the parties to come into an area where they are free of risk, organizational risk, to provide that information and exchange it. it's not going to work. and of all the conversations i have had regarding this complex problem. the organization has come closer to figure out how that works. and i would suggest the committee may want to reach out and talk to them. >> quite a bit of progress has been made since the establishment of the department with regard to addressing cybersecurity, although we have to admit in 2003 when the enabling legislation was

created, there was no one, i don't think, that was as totally as concerned about -- some may have been -- the emerging threat about cybersecurity. we commercialize the internet in 1992 or 1993 and it's the backbone of everything we do. so the sensitivity and concern with regard to distinguishing between what is and economic inet and what is a defense or offense-oriented is a legitimate one. you have nation states, you have terrorists, hackers employed by nation states, organized crime. there are multiple challenges in dealing with this. even if we can attribute, if we actually attribute who the attacker was and maybe the determination of the consequences, what do we do about it?

what do we do about it? that speaks to the kind of collaboration that focuses on information sharing in a true public-private partnership with the private sector rather than compliance. with due respect to my profession, as an attorney, i don't see compliance lawyers as being the best means of assuring that we have enhanced our security in this country, because a regulation means there will be a checked block. and you did what the federal government did what they wanted you to do. and frankly, the technology available today, offensive and defensive as we speak is changing and it will be different tomorrow and the years ahead. i think the best insurance right now is to take the embrace whether it is pat gal ager from gallagher from nist who said

let's continue down this path of setting voluntary standards that both the federal government and the private sector agree upon and see how well they do about taking those standards and did divising the kind of defense strategy they need before we start thinking about regulations because i'm afraid -- i'm going to say this, congress, four, five years ago, appropriately gave to d.h.s. chemical facility, anti-terrorism standards and regs. three, four years later, there are a lot of people working hard on it. but that delegation of authority doesn't mean it was executed in the appropriate way. i'm simply saying for the time being, i think president obama said -- set it up with his executive order. we ought to let it come to

fruition before we think about regulations. i might add, three or four critical sectors and i think you were alluding to them, financial services, energy, transportation. i must say from my experience, these sectors have spent and will continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars sometime on their own, sometimes in cooperation and collaboration with homeland security. but we have evolved a long way. i remember we created an emergency response at carnegie melon because this was a problem in 2001 and 2002. we will be dealing with this forever more. forever more. i don't think we will have a regulatory compliance scheme that will keep up with a dynamic environment. my recommendation, even though i think your question is important, i think we need to let the nist standards play out

and push to far more public and private collaboration. my company deals with significant private sector companies that deal with cyber issues. and one is a multinational corporation and said, we have been hacked. and they said we know. we are a tax paying group of folks, don't you think we should sit down and work together on it. focusing on collaboration and sharing rather than compliance is the best approach for the time being. >> do you want some more time? i want to preff as, -- preface, you mentioned pat gallagher pat from nist and he said every now and then witnesses showed great wisdom and in his testimony before us, he said, we'll know

we're on the right track when good cybersecurity policy and good business policy are one. that's what he said. that's pretty good. pretty good advice. we have gotten a lot of good advice here as well. we also preface my next question by saying it's the anniversary of the 9/11. here we are maybe days before the u.s. could launch limited cruise missile attacks at some targets in syria. here we are knowing we are under attack, cyber front, 24/7. and we have an acting secretary of homeland security and we have an acting deputy secretary of homeland security. and just cries out for the administration and for us to do our jobs to make sure we have in place the kind of confirmed leadership that we need capable and confirmed leadership.

that having been said, let me turn to a topic i just mentioned that is on our minds and that is the potential for military action, limited military action in syria unless the country relinquishes its chemical warfare and dismantles its capability to create more chemical weapons. the prospect of using military force is a serious matter. the president visited our caucuses yesterday, the senate, both democrat and republican. i want to ask, as we are prepared to make whatever decisions we need to make in the days ahead in conjunction with the president, it's important to get answers to a few more questions and i would like to ask this seasoned panel of

national security experts for some of your thoughts. if the president does choose to take limited military action against the assad regime, what impact do you think that might have on homeland security? what should d.h.s. be doing to preparing to prepare for potential consequences that would flow from u.s. action, even on a limited basis, against syria? mr. baker if you would like to lead off, that would be great. >> we absolutely need to prepare here by taking on syria. we are also taking on hezbollah and iran, backers of that regime, and if they choose to try to make the united states regret the sanctions it imposes, they have very substantial capabilities.

hezbollah has its own cruise missiles. and so a terrorist organization with that kind of capability certainly can develop and use cyber attacks or can send people to the united states to carry out attacks. so we would have to go on a pretty substantial alert basis. they would be biting off a lot. they're already on alert against israel and fighting in syria themselves so they may decide it's not prudent to attack. we need to be worrying about defensive capabilities and for the first time we face the risk we will have a cyber attack in getting us to quit in engaging in military action. iran is widely blamed for a series of attacks on our financial institutions that have been visibly punch-pulling

exercises in which the attackers announce how the attack will last and what day it will happen. and obviously, they could do more and cause more damage. and again, iran having blamed us for stocks net is going to be less constrained about using that kind of weapon against the united states on behalf of an ally like syria. so we will have to up our game both physically and virtually. >> thank you. admiral allen. >> let me start with the caveat. it has been several years since i sat up in the tank so i'm going to speak in general. i don't want to speak in comments that wouldn't be appropriate. in regard to cyberthreats that could be generated by this, one of the problems, we are trying to evolve these structures and

we talked about them extensively here today. it's tough to talk about how you would deal with one of these things when you talk about what you need to do and haven't done yet. advanced persistent threat is discussed internationally and relates to what stewart was talking about. there are foot prints that are left regarding behaviors that go on out there that are indications of something that's going to occur and one of the things that changes need to be made and continue to be looked at in the executive order and in the standards and everything else is we need to move to continuous monitoring and after that we need to continually be able to look at the precursor or being set for an attack. any threat situation and this one specifically, i think there

ought to be a fine-tuning of our sensors of what's being talked about in social media and what type of activities are taking place. after 9/11, we talked about chatter. we have a much better capability now -- we have a mismatch in computation, spectrum and band width management. we don't utilize against these problems. in this case, we will be looking at advanced persistent threat. they had to put the mechanism in place to do it. >> i appreciate the question and i must tell you, we have had long conversations about topics of national interest, i'm going to resist the opportunity to tell you how i think we got into this mess and how i think we ought to get out of it and answer your question exactly. it reminds me of the national security council over to what

was then a small core staff between the time i was sworn in as secretary and the intervening six weeks before we opened the door on march 1, 2003, first day of the department of homeland security. couple members of the national security staff came over and said very confident at the time we are probably going into iraq. we know you don't have a department but maybe think about the potential blowback in this country and what can we do to minimize the effects. it is appropriate to play the we have learned a lot since liberty shield. i think frankly, the state and locals are far better prepared. we know the many maligned colored-coded threat warning system, at least we know there

are certain levels of security that are embedded in the federal government and even within with the state and locals and private sector, number one. number two, i think the most likely pushback would be in the cyber realm. and to that end, again, it's a great place to suggest that this is precisely where the federal government should be sharing the precursors that it may know or the addresses that it has seen as it relates to the digital incursions that we have been hit with from the syrian army, perhaps hezbollah and the like. this is a classic example where we are more familiar with the electronic incursions directed at us from russia, from syria, et cetera, and precisely the time that that information should be shared with not just state and locals, but with the private sector.

so long-term, i think we are far better prepared to respond to an attack because i think the word has been used, we are far more resilient than we were 12 years ago. this is an excellent opportunity for the federal government to share the information that the private sector would like to check -- check that information against what they see occurring on the grid, the financial institutions and transportation, et cetera, to see if they are missing something and be better prepared if there is an electronic attack or digital attack if we go into syria. >> thank you for those thoughtful responses. governor ridge mentioned, he will take the color codes to his grave and the leadership we provided, i'm not so sure you can work that into your

tombstone. my wife said, why do you spend so much time on postal reform. she was kidding on postal reform on my tombstone and i thought what would be appropriate are these words, return to sender. >> it's a classic example, something that the congress will have to deal with, i believe. we know russia and china have cyberattacks as part of their warfighting strategy. this is a condition of not only military and diplomatic and business activity, international activity. but again, where you need the public and private sector to sit down and cooperate and determine if there is an attack, what are the consequences and who is responsible for returning it to sender.

all of this has to be worked out. and again it just calls for collaboration and cooperation, communication and doesn't require for a regulatory scheme where you check the compliance box and everybody feels safe after that. >> senator coburn. >> i think secretary ridge agrees with this. we spend billions on grants every year. is it your opinion that those grants ought to be risk-based rather than parochial based? >> absolutely. >> senator coburn, following the attacks of 9/11, i was the atlantic area commander. i was concerned about the posture of our ports on the east coast and put a team together that developed port security risk assessment model.

we look at impacts trading off what you would protect in a port based on risk and consequence. i remember having a conversation with secretary chertoff about implementing that at a secretarial level across the department to inform the grant programs. and we had a pretty significant impact in doing that because there was logic attached to what we did. until secretary chertoff ran into the buzzsaw called new york city and we are stinging from that adventure couple years ago. i agree with you, it ought to be risk-based and conditions-based, based on local communities to adhere to the national incident management system. it ought to be linked on how they are making decisions on land use and reducing risk. there is every argument in the world to do that. >> one quick comment, i want to go back to the reorganization of congress and conjures up a couple of conversations we had

where we are were trying to move it to risk-based. i think the department of homeland security and all of the agencies and the federal government is more susceptible to political meddling and interference. once we got into the second year of the urban security initiatives, we had the f.b.i. talk about in the intelligence community, really assess based on the prior year's intelligence gathering and try to come up with a risk-assessment models, the cities that were impacted. given the traffic. long story short. from one year to the next, we took several cities off because based on an analysis of the preceding year, they were no longer on the list. and human cry from congress that those who represented those communities, not deafening but fairly loud.

not that we listened to it, but it ought to be risk-based and you are on something very important. but the whole system should be risk-based. >> one of the things that the president proposed is combining these grants together where you have an efficient and effective grant program where you set metrics, transparency to it, you are following up and if they are not following what the grant was for, you jerk the money. so that we actually saved money by consolidating the grant programs and have more money to go where the risk is and follow up with the money where the grant was for. they got a cold shoulder in congress and i got a cold shoulder when our committee marked up that we are doing things on parochial than risk- based. any recommendations on how we

can accomplish that -- i don't know whether you agree with the president's recommendation of consolidating these grants and using them on a risk-based process. any recommendations, one, on how we do that? and two, whether we should do it? >> one, without knowing the recommendation, it's very consistent with my thinking as to -- after 10 years of maturity and 10 years of growth, growth hasn't met with becoming more efficient and effective. homeland security is about risk management and resiliencey and the dollars out the door are based on some kind of assessment and would be well to bring that philosophy to everything they do as well as the approach in terms of appropriating dollars to these grant programs.

you might want to allow for -- i'm going to speak -- be interested in my friend and colleague, thad allen. i'm not sure we have done enough with port risk, maritime risk. some of those may be two or three verticals and identify the greatest risk which would be the maritime industry and more on there. there are duplication of programs and oversight and everything out the door needs to be risk managed at this point. >> there was a port security grant program as well. and i would like to attack the larger issue that you raised. i was prone to support request for grants in areas where i saw that there was not only recognition of risk but a commonality of purpose and regional approaches and we saw some areas, one of them is houston where they came together and created a regional entity

by which they consolidated all their requirements that came in for a grant program. when you do that, that behavior ought to be encouraged. whatever you put in place and this will be a lousy metaphor, but it's going to have a wall around it to be executed like the brac program. it's executed or it's not executed. and i don't know how you structure that in law but you are going to have a way to decide how it's going to be done, the criteria are established and the decisions are made, it's either up or down and can't be picked apart. the issues, i just -- i saw secretary chertoff get wire brushed up here, the political buzzsaw in new york. not to say that new york doesn't have problems, but that was a very, very difficult time for us in the department.

>> i think admiral allen raises the point that is worth thinking about in terms of how much -- of your personal credibility and time you would invest in that because even after you've built a pretty good risk system for grants, politics will not disappear and that risk system whatever it is is going to get distorted by the kind of politics that secretary chertoff encountered and others have. and so you may at the end of the day end up with a less mechanical system, but not one in which the politics have been eliminated. and at that point, it's possibly, you will ask yourself, how much did i achieve by introducing this risk concept. i believe in it, but in practice, i'm not sure that it

works out as well as one imagines. >> thank you. my comment on that, is you need a backbone of the person who is running the agency and take the heat, but do what's right for the country. when we have a bear cat garden of pumpkin festival in keene new hampshire and say what can we do to protect cybersecurity or advance our intelligence, what else could be done? we are dividing up the pie and we are -- this country can't afford to do that. we don't have the pleasure of doing that. the next homeland security director -- secretary, that's --ing to be one of the equal qualifications i'm looking for,are you ready to take on

the fight to do what is best for the country and not what's best for the politicians. >> i think it would make the next secretary and future secretaries, backbone would be essential, but nice to have the institution that applies so much pressure, change in their jurisdiction so the fact that you can apply pressure institutionalized, they are institutional-wide. you have a necessary oversight, it would be a heck of a lot of pressure if the decisions -- the legislative decisions that the secretary is obliged to follow is reduced rather substantially and therefore held accountable to senators coburn and carper. >> could i make one quick comment? there are a lot of different grants out there. i saw senator coburn making strong statements after the tornadoes in moore, oklahoma and respecting the earlier statement by jane harman in the passage of the emergency supplemental

following hurricane sandy there were amendments to the stafford act that created more leeway and flexibility for local governments to deal with debris removal, where there was an economic incentive for them to do what was best for them and preserve the funds and allow them for another use. there may be some utility in looking at what we were able to do. and i realize that was an unusual way to america the stafford act. -- amend the stafford act. but there may be insight to gain how you can empower local communities with an economic incentive for them to do what is right and build off a concept like that. and i congratulate everyone on that piece of legislation, by the way. >> it was back in march dr. coburn and i held a hearing to examine the progress that has been made and some of the challenges that still remain within the management of the

department of homeland security. i'm sure that all of you are aware of the latest high risk report from g.a.o. that the department had made considerable progress in integrating its components, moving toward -- actually having auditable financials. but the overall management of the department remains on g.a.o.'s high risk list. and i have been real impressed by the efforts of the department's leadership to address these management issues. with the changing of the guard, impending changing of the guard at the top of the department, there are still a bunch of questions about how the department can sustain and build upon the work of secretary napolitano and i hasten to add deputy secretary. what do you view as the most urgent steps that the department

should take to develop strong management institutions and are there any legislative steps that come to mind that would strengthen the tools and institutions that the secretary needs to manage the department? the last quick question. you were there when we cut the ribbon on the coast guard headquarters at saint elizabeth's. >> i was on travel that day. >> how does consolidation of the headquarters at saint elizabeth's play into management improvements? you can take a swing at those. three strikes, three pitches.

just make sure -- >> fastballs. i am not familiar with the report, not the contents of the report with regard to management. i have often said that the department of homeland security from the get-go had to-- two responsibilities, one, build the safety and security platform to do with risk and resiliency. the other was the business line integration. it is a business. the budget that has doubled. you have a couple hundred thousand employees. one of the ways -- one of the regrets and it is something you could not do anything about. if you were going to merge 20 plus agencies with multiple procurement requirements in the private sector, would have least have had a year or so the time you got the regulatory approvals. the homeland security was and still is about mergers

acquisitions, and startups and the management around those things for the past 10 years -- the gao has not dramatically improved. i do not have an answer. i think we have had some good people there trying to get those things done. but absent by and from some of the management changes and the restructuring that might recommend and that is by and by the congress, it is difficult to make reforms. it is not just endemic to homeland security. i truly believe there are still silos within that agency that will require -- that have to be merged to be done with legislative oversight and direction. i hope you find the money to build out saint elizabeth's

because when we would have meetings with the leaders of the five or six muscular agencies, it got about 20 departments and bureaus. there were five or six. to try to pull your leadership together a couple of times a week, taking them from their offices and bringing them over and sitting down for two or three hours a couple of times a week was not a good use of their time or ours and we had the opportunity to develop the day- to-day working relationship that i think that congress wanted when it put these agencies together. it is a tremendous opportunity for disparate pieces of homeland security and it has been demonstrated tactically with customs and border protection working with the coast guard, working with ice. the collaboration is report and -- important, but you get better management if you have the leaders of the entity interacting on a day-to-

day basis rather than piecemeal. i also think you get more managed -- better management and efficiency if the restructuring that is recommended by some of us from the outside and department of homeland security has put into law. >> thank you. >> this is an area i have a great passion about. do not field bad about cutting me off here. let me hit a couple of these issues. one of the things that happened when the department was created was we aggregated the authorities and the jurisdictions from the legacy departments but one of the things that has been insidious, i know this from talking with staff and the appropriations committees is that we took the appropriations structures from the legacy department's treasury, justice, and so forth and moved them to a single committee. there was no comparability in the department right now between components. because of that you cannot

compare and trade-off between components on where you want to make investments. i have said in several hearings here and before the house and you have to get to blocking and tackling if you want to take down the management issues and the first areas should be the appropriations structure and how the budget is presented in terms of the justification so there is comparability. congress cannot make the decisions on this there is more transparency and compared ability across the department. that leads to financial management and the ability to have better insight on how you're spending your money. they have a qualified opinion on their audit, that was a major breakthrough. the coast guard got a qualified opinion. the first military service to do that. that should be taken as the floor and it needs to move forward. you're talking about the integration of i.t. systems. there are three major financial platforms. there is a look at shared services and there may be a better way to do this. all that has to come on the table. we have to look at integrating

this enterprise and make it run efficiency like you were running a corporation. i have to sit at my hands here. i the commandant when we made the decision to move. all i said was i can support this. i am behind it. i do not want to go there without the secretary. i will leave it at that. the issue with the federal building funds, issues on how this project has been funded. issues with the department, the district of columbia planning into these. the overriding imperative to have a central operations center from which the secretary can operate and make decisions is a primary need in this department. it is in my written testimony. i will not belabor the fact here. national operations center. absolutely imperative moving forward.

>> thank you. >> i certainly agree with admiral allen. they say in washington that where you stand depends on where you sit. i do think that if dhs sits together, they are likely to stand together much better than they do today. and so to the extent that we can get everybody in one place where much better off. i too am reluctant to make suggestions for changing the details of management in the department i have left a few years ago. i think that there are probably some opportunities with respect to the quadrennial homeland security review to turn that from an exercise in which we look at some very interesting and difficult issues. into something that turns our budget into a multiyear, thoughtful priority driven exercise rather than something in which we say how much do we have and what can we cut. to the extent that authorizing

legislation can move it in the direction of actually influencing budget decisions, i --ink that would be an arm enormously effective way of dealing with the looming crisis we have with respect to appropriations for everybody. and making sure the cuts are much smarter than they otherwise would be. >> thank you. before we -- sometimes we have a hearing like this, i like to invite our witnesses to give up brief closing statement. a couple of thoughts you want to pull together or underline a few things and leave those for us. i would welcome, we would welcome that. dr. coburn.

>> do you want to give us a closing thought or two before we wrap up? >> yeah. nothing has made me prouder or cause me more frustration than my service at the department of homeland security. i am deeply fond of the institution and i believe that it is making a major contribution to the security of all americans. it has changed our approach to the border in ways that nothing else could have a dividends and almost every terrorist in it has been planned or launched against us since 9/11. we need the department but we need it to be better and we need it to be more organized, more consolidated, more coordinated.

that is the biggest challenge that the department faces is a. we got by with three great leaders but we cannot count on personality driven unification forever. we need to institutionalize it. it is a big challenge especially with the oversight authority that exists, but it is a challenge that you can accomplish. >> thank you. admiral allen. >> in regard to some of the mission areas we have talked about today, cybersecurity, comforts and immigration reform, a lot of that will involve the congress to do that. i sit on the advisory board of the comptroller area -- general. when it comes to the internal management of the department of homeland security, they are added -- there are adequate authorities in the administration of -- administrative space to operate. there needs to be a serious discussion about employment and management agenda related to functional integration in the department for the next

leadership team moving in. and those ought to be clear and distinct and enforceable in the budget. they ought to be laid out with metrics attached. i do not believe legislation is needed to take care of the management improvements that the department could implement immedially. >> thank you. governor ridge. >> [inaudible] to look back on those days when there was considerable debate as to whether we needed a department of homeland security. i remember my friends on my side of the aisle said we were creating a brand-new bureaucracy. we were going to consolidate units of government that had missions related to protecting our borders and gaining knowledge about the people and the goods that come across our borders.

long needed in the for -- 21st century world when the interdependency of the marketplace, the interdependency of information sharing for law enforcement purposes and the interdependency of countries with regard to security is part of our daily lives and how we're are going to live. we are interdependent. congress did the wise thing. they brought together the right agencies. i think the department has evolved and matured and i am reminded after it was announced as the the president's nominee to be the secretary of the department of homeland security. a couple of decades ago we saw there was a smaller aggregation of responsibility that created nasa -- natsa. he said, i see the vestiges of cultural -- cultures and silos.

we are not as risk-based as we need to be. i don't think anything is wrong with a management structure. there needs to be efforts to oversee the oversight of that structure to hold congress and department far more accountable for the outcomes we want. i think you have touched on some very important issues. it's about resiliency, risk managed approach. i would hope you can resolve these issues. the issues i just raised are not necessarily all within the exclusive purview of this committee, which speaks to one of the challenges the congress has. at the end of the day, i'm proud to have been the first secretary and i think they made marvelous

progress. i would like to see some of it accelerated. it has not had collaboration and oversight with congress that i think is essential. at the end of the day, the mission is the same. make the country safe and secure, do it in a way that is consistent with the constitution and rule of law. the big challenge associated with us has been with us since the 2003, when the snowden revelations and fast impact of the digital world and cyber world, that challenge to maintain the privacy of individuals and protection of these rights under the i lookution because -- forward to future invitations to share my point of use with all of you committed to making a stronger and better department. >> thank you.

day, foryou for this your preparation, and this conversation, and for your continued service to our country. i have a closing statement i will submit for the record. i think some remarkable progress has been made. thank you for that initial leadership. and mr. baker, for your great leadership. this is as much progress as may have been made. it is not a time to rest on our laurels. everything i do, i know i can do better. i will leave here knowing that , we havepecial day learned a lot of lessons, and

taken a lot of the appropriate steps to better secure our nation. there's a whole lot more that we can do. he gave me a great idea earlier dos year, that we should review of the department to try to figure out how we go about reauthorizing the department. what you have done today is a banquet of knowledge. we thank you for all of that. we want to thank our staffs for pulling this together today. we are grateful to each of you. the hearing record will remain open for 15 days, until september 26. any questions for the record.

our thoughts and prayers for those whose lives we remember today. god bless. we are adjourned. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> the u.s.-russian agreement calls for syria to turn over an accounting of its arsenal within a week. the resolution could allow for sanctions and other consequences if serious fails to comply. add that they understand theart decisions they have made are the beginning of the road. u.s. officials will discuss a deal on monday. a statement was released, president obama saying in part --

i want to read a few tweets about the negotiations. "rom "the guardian newspaper -- another one, this one from gerry connolly of virginia. the last one, elizabeth the consent of the world affairs journal. >> virginia congressman rob wittman discusses how automatic budget cuts known as sequestration are affecting the pentagon's budget and military's overall effectiveness. you can see "newsmakers" at 10 a

clock a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern. leaders willgence speak tomorrow about u.s. intelligence and the ability to respond to terrorist attacks. they also look at the u.s. .esponse to syria see that sunday at 10:35 eastern. >> the world is changing. we can't control every event. remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs. as long as i'm president, i intend to keep it that way. the president is talking about, we are the indispensable nation, he does not want americans to contemplate, we don't know how to win wars. we have the best military in the world.

we don't know how to win wars. it seems to me there ought to be a serious national conversation as to why that is the case. where does the fault lie? is it that our politicians are too stupid, our generals are inept? the size of the force is too small? by its veryct that nature, war is unpredictable? to go to war is to roll the dice. h> more with andrew bacevic sunday night at 8:00 on c-span's "q&a." returnambers of congress to session on monday. the senate gavels in at 2:00 consider twoto judicial nominations before returning to work on energy efficiency bill, aimed at

helping manufacturers develop energy-efficient technologies for their business. the house returns tuesday at 2:00 p.m. eastern for bills and speeches. next week, members will consider a forest management measure that would direct the agricultural department to establish sustainable timber harvesting zones. and later this week, food aid programs. possible work on a continuing resolution that would keep the federal government funded past september 30. see the house live on c-span. >> earlier this week, michael chertoff spoke about the u.s. response to syria and future relations with iran. he discussed the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. this is about an hour. [applause]

thank you very much for that kind introduction. me.k you for inviting this is a particularly significant moment to be talking about the issues of our security. this will be an important week in the history of this country. we are coming up on the 12th anniversary of september 11, which is always a memorable moment and that causes reflection. we are also on the eve of a presidential speech that will lay out the case, so we are told, for why we need to take action in syria in response to the use of chemical weapons. int will lead to a debate congress, and perhaps to authorization and military action.

we are poised between recollection of pourable events for this country and possible embarking upon a new challenge in another part of the world which could ultimately be quite serious not only for this country, but the region as a whole. if i was standing here 12 years ago, or maybe 11 and a half years ago, which would be shortly after september 11, i would probably be giving you a very different presentation. have hadot personally the experience of being the secretary of homeland security because there would not have been a homeland security department. our nation would still be coping with and recovering from the aftermath of the deadliest attack on civilians in the history of the u.s. we would be dealing with an open wondering we would be not if al qaeda would attack again, but when and how. in the almost 12 years that have

wesed since september 11, have invested heavily in our nation's homeland security infrastructure. we have also done that overseas. we have done a lot to protect our ports and aviation. we strengthen security across our borders and in our means of transportation. we have invested in training and exercises to identify and plan for future threats, and prepare respond if a thread is carried out. we have taken -- threat is carried out. we have taken steps in information sharing. you might say that in the world after 9/11, what is the equivalent of radar in the 20th century has become intelligence collection and analysis in the 21st century.

as a result of these investments i have identified, we have had a lot of success, both seen and unseen by the general public. we have only had two successful attacks on american soil. one was inspired by a qaeda to kill over a dozen people at fort hood, and then there was the tragic bombing at the boston marathon. as horrible and outrageous as they are nothing like the scale of what we faced on said timber 11. -- september 11th. by any reasonable assessment, we have to say the homeland enterprise has been a success. we have been relatively

successful not because al qaeda and similar groups have not tried to attack us. a 2006 airline plot was an effort and plan to take 10 to 12 airliners down with bombings that would have occurred over the atlantic ocean on flights originating from heathrow airport and going to north america. in 2009, you recall the christmas day attempted on plot with the so-called underwear bomber, which did not result in a successful detonation. within the next year, there was another effort to put bombs on printers. they were very highly sophisticated bombs that were only deflected because of good intelligence work. recall that he

attempted to attack the new york subway system with bombs. that plot was frustrated. , tworil of this past year individuals detonated two bombs that injured people participating in the boston marathon. us that wets remind cannot be complacent. strategy, rethink our innovate, adapt, stay ahead of the enemy. bomb making skills and 2013 are more advanced than they were in 2001. -- in 2013 are more advanced than they were in 2001.

it will abbott and flow. we cannot expect it will end with a bang or whimper. the question is, how do we use these lessons to propel us into the future and help us deal with the dynamic threats that we face. we need to step back and look at homeland security in a broad sense. i described a strategic sense. it is one that recognizes that today's battlefield is very different than it was 100 years ago. it is a global battlefield. it takes place in a conventional war environment, but it also takes place on city streets such as boston.

it involves state and nonstate actors. it involves networks, global travel, global communication, global finance. this has transformed the nature there are noefield. bystanders in this struggle. everybody gets enlisted as a combatant or as a participant or as a victim. we all have to conceptualize the nature of our strategies in a much broader sense. the second point i would make is there is a tendency to think about strategy when you think about terrorism in what a professor described as -- what our military assets?-- what are our military assets? how can we strike back using military force or similar types

of force against the adversary? we need to look at power in the broadest possible sense. soft power and smart power. we have to use all the tools in the toolbox. that does sometimes mean military tools. it also means our ability to analyze strategically. it means law enforcement. a great example is how the fbi moved from being a conventional law enforcement organization to an organization that is deployed -- has deployed people around the world in battle zones to collect fingerprints and forensic evidence, not for purposes of making a criminal case in a court room.

we have brought the capability of law enforcement into the battlefield. there are other elements that we have to consider as well. our diplomatic power, our economic power, our ability to lead and to invest in other countries, which becomes critical in our national strategy and has to be considered an important asset. one of the less known accomplishments of this country has been the vigorous investment that we have made in assisting people in africa fighting aids and malaria.

it yields enormous dividends in building goodwill for the united states. the people who benefit from these programs do not view the u.s. as an innovator or explorer. -- invader or exploiter, but aid and assistant their very important problems. you see that sometimes here in washington. we are blessed with a broad international population. i get into a taxi cab and i think the drivers must be high consumers of the news. i get recognized as being the former secretary of homeland security.

it strikes me the number of cab drivers who say, "i'm grateful for what you did to help us fight the malaria and aids." people question the value of foreign aid, it is an investment that pays enormous dividends and dividends that do not cost people their lives. we have to consider how we use tse let me identify three other principles that i think are important in dealing with the threats that we face in the coming years. the homeland and what happens overseas are not separate. security does not do the same function as the department of defense does, but there is overlap. the threat moves back and forth readily. we are not bystanders to world history. we are not optional participants to world history. we may have thought it was up to us whether we wanted to get involved in kosovo or korea. 9/11 taught us that if we do not reach out and touch the world, it may strike us and hit us.

we need to make sure the distinction between the homeland and what occurs internationally is not viewed as more significant than it is. a strategy has to be one that recognizes one-size-fits-all. i hope the lesson you come away with is that the strategy in each case has to be adapted to the circumstance. that doesn't mean being tactical. taking each problem and trying to fix it and move on. it means you have an overall strategy that you adapted to what the local requirements and circumstances are. the final overarching point is this. the regions are connected. it is easy to put the template of regional studies on the way we look at the world.

these regions overlap and there are consequences that may be felt. to take a strategic vision. look at how we deal with china. look at how china behaves in africa and what our policy in africa is. those things are going to be interconnected. let me talk about four areas where i think strategic focus deserves attention. first is al qaeda. as has been said, we have visited an enormous amount of damage on core al qaeda, the central group of leaders that ran al qaeda in 2001. we have degraded al qaeda 1.1. -- 1.0.

it has adapted and morphed and has improved its capabilities. we are now 2.0 or 3.0. this is an al qaeda that is regionally distributed. make no mistake. there is a unified ideology and there is a recognition that what benefits one benefits others. you are dealing in a network world with an organization that is different than it was 12 years ago. it can be more dangerous because it is more widely distributed. we have seen this in yemen, which is now probably the most dangerous platform from which attacks against the u.s. are being lost. we see it in iraq. al qaeda in iraq has experienced a resurgence in aiding and abetting what is going on in syria.

we've seen it in west africa, east africa, and nigeria. let's take the example of libya. we went into libya a couple years ago. the thought was that qaddafi was brutally responding to uprisings and we were going to support europeans in first trying to stop killings. that morphed into removing qaddafi. i am second to no one in saying that qaddafi was a bad man. the implications in removing him from libya. he decided he was going to give

up his weapons of mass destruction program and begin to cooperate with the western world. did he do that because he had an epiphany? no. he got scared in what he saw in iraq and got afraid he would become a victim. he surrendered in advance. was he someone who was in fact making progress towards reducing his program and cooperating? there was some forward movement. what was the strategic implication of removing him and doing it with the condition that we were not going as western powers and put boots on the ground and stabilize the country? there were a couple of things that emerged. we lost control of some of the weapons that he had, which are still out and about in several parts of the world. when he fell, his mercenaries

began to move south. they began to connect up with a terrorist affiliates. some who move south were some that were released from the prisons and they became reinforcements for al qaeda's franchise in north africa. we saw an extremist takeover in mali. we saw stress placed upon other parts of libya. here the consequence is not clearly a net gain. we may have -- i have to wonder whether the message we sent to tehran to those leaders who were contemplating what their position was going forward on nuclearizing, whether the

message was, "if you cooperate with the united states, we kill you." is the masses to keep your nuclear program going and not cooperate? i am not suggesting going into libya was an easy analysis. when you look at that, questions are raised about whether it was a strategic win or a tactical win. let me turn now to syria. between the time i started my speech, this may change a couple of times. it is only good for about 10 minutes. some would argue what i said about libya applies to syria and that we should not get involved in syria. the strategic position is different. syria is located in a different part of the region. what happens in syria has an impact on turkey, lebanon, iraq, and possible israel, as well.

it is much more strategically significant than the case in libya. the use of chemical weapons and the fact that the regime is acting in many ways as an extension of iran and in cooperation with hezbollah means the strategic outcome of what happens in syria is much more significant for the united states and our allies than was the case with libya. assad did not renounce his weapons of mass destruction. he has used them. the strategic calculus is very different. if assad wins it is a triumph for iran and for hezbollah. if assad loses but is replaced

by extremists, that will be equally bad. the only outcome strategically here is to have the minor groups of opposition forces the strong -- moderate groups of opposition forces be strong to be able to claim control of syria and give us a reasonable shot at controlling that country and preserving some kind of peace for their neighbors. superficially, two similar situations. i would say very different significance for the united states. that of course has become all the more emphasized by what is going on right now. the president has declared there is unequivocal evidence, that chemical weapons have been used by assad, notwithstanding warnings. failing to respond to that will

have a direct strategic impact on what goes on in tehran. it will be the reverse of what happened in libya. "if you do not cooperate with the u.s., you get away with it." weigh the strategic framework with which we occupy the region. finally, egypt. egypt is not in the state of syria or libya. there is a struggle going forth there. here is a case where there was a moderate democratic elections. -- moderately democratic election. there was not a mature electoral process or a mature set of electoral institutions. it appears the president who won the election was accumulating power and taking steps to

degrade the existence of civil society to continue. remember that one election does not make a democracy. we have had circumstances where we have had circumstances where we saw elections that turned out to be the last election because the people in power abuse their position to make it impossible for themselves to be replaced. there'll be a lot of debate about whether that is what happened here are not. i would say we have to start from where we are. a military regime that is not forcing civilians into power. the muslim brotherhood is now out of power. where do we go from here? it is important to move forward in the direction of restoring

institutions of civil government and having elections that are free and fair but elections that are rooted in a foundation of democratic institutions including independent courts and pretending further rights of minorities. an election is not merely a turnover of tyrants but has some kind of enduring framework of freedom. the strategic benefit to the united states is very clear. it means a stronger ally and a friendlier ally. likely to have a model for the region and it also means having hope for others who are looking into countries that are looking into the aftermath of the so- called arab spring. that there is a path to freedom and justice. that doesn't mean we should militarily intervene. this is an example where the strategy is about soft power. the proper kind of economic aid in the proper kind of assistance. these tools will be critical in helping the new government and

coaxing the new government into moving in the direction that is strategically significant for us and that is right for egypt. we have three different case studies. the strategy demands something different in each case. in one case, it suggests we need to intervene. another case suggest the rightness of power rather than hard power. let me talk about homeland security from a domestic standpoint. we have seen we still face a threat in this country from either lone wolves or people that are remotely affiliated with terrorist groups overseas, as we saw in boston. we do not want to militarize the united states.

we use other kinds of power. we use our intelligence capability to identify threats before they come to pass. we also want to use our criminal justice system, which has been effective in dealing the massacre with terrorists. some say when you do one the mastic issues, you should not use the courts. i can tell you that the courts can be quite effective in dealing with people that are caught in the united states or about two commit acts of terrorism. those are important tools in the toolbox. there needs to be out of reach an understanding of the causes for people to become radicalized.

part of the strategic approach is to address those elements, either psychology or propaganda, that have a number of people willing to put bombs on themselves or leave bomb someplace in order to kill americans in this country. strategy is hard. tactics is easy. tactics without a strategy take you into one problem after another. as you embark on careers in various parts of international relations, you'll find re dordeh more challenging world that maybe was the case 30 or 40 years ago, but a world in which understanding, listening, and the value of having strategy will be the paramount characteristics we need in this nation's next-generation of leaders. thank you very much. thank you h an interesting presentation. i am sure you have a lot of questions to ask and comments to

give. we have a professor with us to help us with this discussion. having worked with the united states senate and the house of representatives and the state department. he led an investigation team and develop the final reports for the intelligence committee on the terrorist event. he worked with the homeland

security committee. in 2006 and 2007, he directed a project at the national academy of public administration would focus on the aspects of the intelligence forecast of the fbi. for the past three years, he has been involved with national security at the george washington university. he is a graduate of dartmouth college. please tell me in welcoming him. >> some of my students who may be here will know that the world

does not rotate around the ivy league. gw is very, very important i want to thank manuela and the board for organizing this evening. since i have been teaching national security and foreign- policy related to 9/11 for the last six years now, it is terribly important. terribly important to hear from somebody with experience and background and vision that former secretary chertoff has. i also want to thank dean brown for creating a dynamic teaching

environment here at the elliott school. it has been a pleasure to teach here. i look forward to continuing to do that. because i worked for the homeland security senate committee and because i would have to with secretary chertoff would be coming for the committee to testify, one of my responsibilities as a staffer was to prepare very difficult questions for the secretary. and a number of difficult questions. i would work the night preparing pages and pages of questions. sure enough, senator lieberman would ask me, he would say, do i need to address him as mr. secretary or as judge? i would usually say to him that michael would work just fine. [laughter]

as those of you know and have taken my course, i talk about strategic thinking and planning and policy all of the time in my course. terribly important. i would like to ask mr. chertoff to focus on how a strategy that is a long-term vision that is a strategic vision, how do we address the continuing terrorist threat and persistence of the al qaeda network? and i would like him to address what he feels are some of the root causes for the terrorism that seems to fester in middle eastern countries and what can we do in terms of hard power, soft power, visionary power, strategic thinking -- what are the things that come to his mind on those basic root causes of terrorism threat? >> that is a huge question and i will confess in the answer i do not really actually know the answer.

i will tell you during the time i served in government, when president bush was in office, his view was the fundamental problems was lack of democracy. if you had freedome in countries in the region, that would eliminate the frustration that gave rise to some people become terrorists. i suppose he was modeling it after our own country and at least in theory that people have that democratic countries do not go to war. while i think there's a lot of appeal to that, it is not a sufficient explanation or approach, because there are other dynamics at work. some of them are social dynamics and cultural that need to be addressed and it is not just about the ballot box. the role of women in society, what your economic prospects are, where the young people feel frustrated and pressed down. it is about whether people feel an individual sense of fairness.

more important than the ballot box is the courtroom, the fact that a person does not feel they can be imprisoned or punished arbitrarily. if you look at how the tunisian uprising occurred, it was because a street vendor felt unfairly abused by a petty bureaucrat. maybe that is part of it, the idea of rule of law. a lot of this is ideology. societies own a certain responsibility to communicate within themselves to their own people what is the doctrine and morality and what is appropriate. there were times for example in some parts of that region where for reasons, and dictators or leaders had fomented a virulent type of ideology and some that took root in parts of south asia. i am afraid i do not have a

simple answer. i think we are going to be doing something more or less pragmatic watch the various iterations of the so-called arab spring play out. figure out what worked and what did not work and what did we learn from it. >> excellent. i want to open the questions as quickly as possible to the students and our visitors. feel free to raise your hands and i believe somebody will come over to you with a microphone so that you can ask your question. ok, let's go right here. >> what role does the media and

american public opinion play in homeland security strategy in the middle east? >> it plays a huge role. one thing you learn about homeland security is different from purely military activity is when you are dealing with the military, you basically have the enemy you are attempting to eliminate. your own forces, you have control over and then you have civilians but they are more or less bystanders in the process. in homeland security, civilians are actors. they have to cooperate. what we are trying to do is drive civilians to behave in a certain way to maximize security and minimize the threat. sometimes it is about the expression see something, say something. come forward if you see something that is dangerous. a remarkable number of plots that were disrupted because somebody came forward with the

fbi or the police said there is something funny here you have to take a look at. that is important way in which civilians attitudes are important. also civilian patience and commitment is important. we ask a lot of people. there are hassles in the airport. as smooth as we try to make the process, nothing to be perfectly smooth. you have to have identification or other things you need to do. in some sense, the public tolerates that. the consequence would be people will start getting killed. we would likely revert back again. ideally would like to not have groundhog day play out. we would like to learn our lessons. that requires exactly what you said, communicating with people and their attitudes. one of the lessons i learned was the public affairs element of how you deal with an event actually has tremendous significance. it is not just after thought, send somebody else to deal the

press. you have to look at all the ways of communicating as indispensable to carry out what you are trying to do. without public operation in a domestic environment, you are going to have much more difficulty carrying out your efforts. >> a question here. >> first of all, thank you for coming to visit us and speak to us. the question i have in regard to syria and the strategy there

since you mentioned strategy in syria is complicated. great britain has taken an unprecedented move in not supporting us as allies. what would you say if you were giving advice to our president now on the best strategy to look out in terms of syria especially with the thought of reprisal against american interests? >> let me begin by saying what i said which is we have to start with where we are. there are things i would revise doing differently over the past year or two. those days are gone. we find ourselves in a

particular situation. assad, he looked as if he was going to be pushed out by the operation of the insurgency itself, now he appears to be pushing back. he has used chemical weapons. the president has said there is a red line and did say that a year ago. there seems to be quite compelling evidence that a line was crossed. that is where we find ourselves. there are a couple of things we need to think about strategically, and admittedly a hard problem. what is the endgame we are looking for? four possibilities. assad wins, bad outcome. syria fails as a state and becomes a drain on all of its neighbors and persistent fighting -- a bad outcome. the best outcome, not perfect, is a moderate group is sufficiently strong that they are able to take control of the country and marginalize the extremists who are still a minority and syria is not a fundamentalist country. the best outcome is one that gives them the breathing space to put in place some kind of institutions, preferably with international help. that is the kind of base strategic issue. the second strategic issue is

the chemical weapons were used. we declared a red line. how do we not act without sending a message to iran and everybody else that, we tell you if you do x, we are going to do y, never mind. there is an idea floated if they give over their chemical weapons to u.n. would that stop things? a cynic would say it is a last- minute maneuver to push things out in many months. ask yourself these questions, do we have an adequate base line of what assad has? how would we actually inspect and enforce the rule in the middle of a war going on, absent a cease fire? how would we know if everything has been given to us? these are challenging questions. if you rewind the tape back, for many years in the mid-1990's we did this with iraq. hussen said he was destroying things and inspectors will come and he would not let them in and it will look like something had moved. that left the matters in a very unresolved way and in that circumstance, basically what

happens is the person who has the weapons is trying to wear the patients out of the west until they finally give up. again, as you evaluate that, i understand there are reasons. you have to consider whether in a practical sense this is measurable and achievable or whether it is likely to be a way of delaying while assad continues to do what he does. >> maybe at the end of the row here? >> excuse me. do you consider the cases of bradley manning and edward snowden indicative of the success of the departments if you see something, say something slogan? >> no.

[laughter] >> what insider when they know the government has lied to the american people? >> let's take these two cases. i do not know that manning put out there would be publicly disclosed, sure the government lied. most people said the u.s. government act pretty much the way they say they will. were there some may be harsh comments made about local political officials or candid assessments, yeah. and you should have that and the ability to do that. that is why when students in this room get comments from their professors that are candid on their papers, they do not post them on the internet so everybody can see the criticism. i do not know if manning qualifies as a whistleblower. as far as snowden is concerned, a lot of the stuff that he

disclosed, while highly damaging, does not reveal illegality. i am struck by the contradictory nature of the criticisms. there was a period of time where the fisa court which reviews whatever the nsa did as a rubber stamp. then it will be declassified when the fisa court gave a paddling to the nsa. the story was looked at the court is attacking the nsa. which one is it? it is easy to glamorize because a, they can be revealed in a way without context. i have yet to see serious malfeasance revealed by this or serious illegality. still less have i seen that snowden went into the authorities, the inspector general, anything you would

expect him to do. what i have seen is this though. somebody absconded to china, spent time in the russian consulate and now in russia where he considers the guidance light of future. the country where they deal with whistleblowers is by killing them. if you happen to be -- if your sexual orientation is different from what putin likes, that is illegal. if somebody wants to use chemical weapons, you have shipped them the precursors. i would not look to snowden as a whistleblower. >> maybe in the back there? four or five rows back. >> thank you, mr. secretary. in 2000 canadian citizen was

arrested and sent to syria where he was tortured. he sued. the canadian government awarded him $8.9 million for what happened. a british citizen was captured in morocco and tortured at guantanamo and his case was thrown out by the american court using the state secret privilege. several british courts upheld what happened to him was illegal and he was given several million dollars. it was revealed that the department of homeland security was opening u.s. mail from a foreign source. in 2009, it was revealed by the media that homeland security agents were targeting groups for terrorist activity based on antiwar group or islamic lobby group.

numerous times, when we try to have oversight, the government has invoked the state secret privilege. do you believe the department homeland security can be trusted to uphold the rule of law if they have little public or judicial oversight? >> i would not say there is very little judicial oversight. we could have a whole discussion about this. if you look at the totality of cases and discount media reports because there's a wide variety of outlets and professionalism. if you look at the totality, here's what is striking about the united states. in many cases, the u.s. has lost cases in court. in no case did the u.s. government defy or failed to carry out what the court's instructions were. some the big cases are cases where the u.s. did not either partly lost or lost a

significant argument. and when the court laid down the rule about what would happen, the government acquiesced. that is why there is a different process for people in guantanamo than there was several years ago. i would have to say whether you when a particular case is not the basis of the judge of law but whether that the courts are independent and whether that the courts do rule against the government upon the government obeys. if the united states, the government does obey. if you look around the world, that is pretty remarkable. >> wait for a microphone. >> mr. secretary, how has your department responded to global terror threats with communication may not be as vast as large organizations, financial transactions may not be as easy to track as well?

>> a great question. the model of what we first put into place after 9/11 when you are dealing with people coming from overseas is one that looks out. just as international terrorism relies on global communication, finance, and travel, those are also vulnerabilities that can be exploited. lone wolves may not communicate with anybody else. they are living in their hometown. low-finance operations. actually that is where increasingly we have seen communities and local police that play major roles. the behavior, the person who behaves out of character that actually is the tipoff that something might happen.

again, if you look at some the cases we have had in the past successful in disrupting a lone wolf has been because a small group because somebody in the community came forward and said there's a problem here. we had a case some years back where people from a particular community in somali immigrants came forward and said our children went to somali to fight and that tipped off the authorities that there was a pipeline. just as you have your high-tech kind of well-known national security agencies that deal with threats that are global, when you are dealing with local threats and lone wolves, it is police boots on the ground, local folks, community leaders who have got to be part of the process of identifying threats.

>> right here. right here, second row. >> mr. secretary, i wanted you to address the boston marathon. you said communication is key but in that situation one problem was communication between certain departments and government and certain governments. >> the full facts are not in and i do not want to speculate. you have to look at this in several stages. one set of questions will be, why? somehow they lost track of tsarnaev, the older one, when he went over to chechnya and was over there for a few months. why there was not an alert on that? why was the russian warning did not integrated or taken seriously? the second set of issues is whether within the u.s. government where people did have

warning, how come they did not pursue further communication? i do not know the answer but that's a second case of issues. once the bombings occurred, were the authorities effective? they were effective. that is a tribute to the training and exercises that had gone on for years to get the police in gear to do with they had to do in order to shut down these folks. that illustrates in many cases, it's important to mitigate damage as to prevent it. you will not prevent everything but if you can stop it, prevent the tsarnaevs from going to new york, that is encouragement. the facts are not in. all of these tragedies are always occasions to do a hot wash, to really review and reconsider what the lessons learned are. there will be some useful lessons here. >> right here in the middle. back there.

she will wave to you. >> we have a lot of questions of the middle east and obviously what is going on over there. a huge part of dhs is also ice, so over the summer immigration reform was huge in the news and there is nothing going on about it. my question is do you think this will come back 2014 and then 2016 and do you personally think it will come back? >> i've spent a fair amount of time in 2007 when i was

secretary, the president requested me -- and when the president requests it, that means you have to do it. i wanted to do it. he requested me to work with senators on both sides of the aisle to put together the immigration reform proposal. we actually came out with the proposal not terribly different from what you see now that had a broad array of people supporting it, both quite conservative republicans and liberal democrats. look, i think this is going to happen. it has to happen. the only argument against it is if you think the current system is great. i have not yet met a person who said great.

there are a number of different problems. while we have made a lot of progress in controlling the border, in many ways the real challenges are people come in legally and having visas and overstaying. what draws them in is illegal employment. how do you address that problem? we need people to perform certain jobs that americans do not want to do that we should open up a managed, clearly identifiable program that people can use to come to work temporarily. we have had that in the past. you identify them and they have to play by the rules and they pay their taxes. that both eliminate some of the demand and if you put in an enforcement system, you make a path for people who are not here legally to get work. you kind of force those people into a legal channel but given the opportunity. second problem is we educate, probably some people here from other countries in important skills. they get advanced degrees that we say goodbye, go create jobs in india or china. why do we not want to encourage

those people to create jobs here, not only for themselves but others? that's another thing that has to get fixed. we have people here illegally. many of them are rooted here and we have to find a way to deal with them. so they are not exploited and also create reservoirs where they can be preyed upon by criminals. that is coming up with some fair way to resolve the situation that involves some combination of penalty. a probation period where you can monitor them and make sure they are in compliance but not forever foreclosing the possibility of them being citizen if they want that, and many will not. history shows that only a modest percentage of people who actually have the opportunity want to be citizens. many want to go back home.

i understand there are challenges with all of this. we have taken three or four swings at this ball and pretty much everybody ends up with roughly the same vision of what has to happen. which tells me nobody has a genius idea for fixing this that does not have the basic outlines i laid out. the fundamental question is this if you think the system is good the way it is, you should vote against reform. i think the american people are coming around to that. it is going to be very tough with a lot of stuff going on to get on the agenda. its time will eventually come. >> right here. sorry to all of those with their hands up. >> thank you, mr. secretary. given the recent situations of the diplomatic realm and the

limitations on the security council's capacities, how do you think the diplomatic strategy will be effective and how relevant will it be in the future for other situations? >> in terms of what is going on with syria and the security council? >> yes. >> i do not think anyone was shocked at the fact the security council was unwilling to take action. it had made it clear they do not want to take action. the russians were not willing to take action in the balkans in the 1990's and there was resistance to taking action in iraq in 2003 even t solutions.ch of multiple u.n. there's a question of the role of the security council andethey to deal with issues that occur internally with this activity.

i was in cambodia. i went to the trial of the khmer rouge -- i read about it but you really have to take a deep breath and when you are confronted by the fact that almost 2 million people were killed. almost one third of the country, and it was a deliberate, painstaking killing. murder over a period of 18 months. is there any point in which there is a right of self-defense for the people in the country who are being victimized? we all agreed that we have rights of self-defense. is there such a point that a government forfeits his obligations to its citizens they

have to say somebody has to protect them from being killed and raped. that is a moral challenge. the security council does not answer that question. this should not be undertaken lightly. one of the big challenges for international activity in the next decade is going to be how do we deal with mass atrocities when governments cannot be reasoned with or sanctioned. i do not know the current mechanisms will be adequate.>> excellent questions. thank you very much for asking the questions, and you probably want to close? >> we would like to thank all of

you for coming. secretary chertoff, thank you for coming and offering such interesting remarks. thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] a metal this is represented about became a representative of the civil rights movement. >> good morning. in september 1963, a group of men with monstrous designs comes hired to place more than one dozen sticks of dynamite beneath the 16th street baptist church in birmingham. thetly after 10:00 a.m., dynamite blew. they killed the girls, injuring many others in breaking hearts across our country. the fourth of the explosion ripped through the church. , evenng debris and pulpit

crushing cars nearby. they were dazed and bloodied from the explosion. nearly every stained-glass window in the building have been blown out. save one. the window that showed christ leaving a group of children but with his face missing. was potent.m ofer all the tragedy september the 15th was just the satest in a wave of violent act at the time. those suffering through it could have been forgiven for feeling god had abandoned them.

we know the bombing was a decisive turning point in the civil rights struggle. it did not stay about the embers of freedom. it fan to them. the news of the tragedies read. widespread revulsion gave way to political action. pressure mounted. it soon pave the way for passage of landmark legislation in washington. attitudes began to change radically. looking back, it is amazing to see how far we have come since the days of awning. in selma.

yet the deaths of carol, cynthia, id may and denise remained senseless as they were tragic. i know the denial of justice for so many made the hurt that much worse. i want the family members gathered here today to know that the lives of these children meant something to the history. >> that was part of a ceremony held earlier this week and on capitol hill. you can see the entire event at eight 30 5 a.m. eastern here on c-span or any time at c- span.org. eastern here on c- span or any time at c-span.org tummy tuck. >> it was awful. life, people who

are the naysayers were saying the church was bombed. we upset things. they're taking responsibility. deal.is the hardest you'll it was so hard for all of us. will tell you what gave me hope. i'd seene first time this. >> commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 16th street at his church bombing including

a panel discussion with condoleezza rice tummy tuck. and your cock -- condoleezza rice. >> russia is playing games. the syrian government cannot be trusted. this destroyed serious chemical weapons by the middle of 2014. some of the specific, the u.s. and russia agreed that inspectors should be on the ground by november. they will work on a resolution that would verify the agreement and remove serious ability to reduce chemical weapons. officials say president obama does retain his right to conduct military strikes.

looks like you outlast obama. president obama welcomes the agreement. u.s. remains ready to act if it tales. since a tweet saying there is a lot of work to do. this is a big step forward, keeping the u.s. military out of cer syria. the president was followed by diane black who spoke about health-care and she hopes it will pass to aim fraud. i said in part because of the credible threat of military force there is the possibility of a diplomatic solution.

indicated a new willingness to join with the international community to join wisteria to give up its chemical weapons with assad used to kill more than a thousand people august 21. i asked congress to postpone this as the pursue this diplomatic path. that is what we're doing. is using this. it cannot be a stalling tactic. they need to verify that the assad regime in syria are keeping their commitments. thisre working to turn over to control and ultimately destroy them. it is determining the syrian regime from using chemical weapons, degrading the ability to use them and making it clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use. we have seen indications of progress. the assad regime would not

admit that it possessed chemical weapons. today it does. syria has signaled a willingness to join with 189 other nations representing 90% of humanity. ached its own credibility. these are all positive developments. we will keep working to see that assad gives of the chemical weapons or they can be destroyed. we will continue rallying support for those who need action to deter the use of chemical weapons. .t produces a serious when .- plan i prepared to move forward. we need to see concrete action to demonstrate that assad is serious about giving up chemical weapons. will maintain our military

posture in the region to keep the pressure on the assad regime. they must remain prepared to act. is use of chemical weapons an affront to human dignity and the security people everywhere. they must respond to this outrage. a dictator must not be allowed to cast children in their beds with impunity. we cannot risk poison gas becoming the new weapon of choice for terrorists world over. there is any chance of achieving that goal without resorting to force i believe we have a responsibility to pursue that. thank you. hi. tennessee's sixth congressional district in the house of representatives. what an honor it is to be speaking with you.

protecting taxpayer dollars is one of washington's most important responsibilities. your money should be spent wisely or not all. everything we can do to stop waste removes obstacles to creating jobs and building a stronger economy. this week the houston on a house ought fraud and abuse by called "noill subsidies without this act. it stops government from issuing health-care subsidies until it has a system in place to prevent fraud. it is that simple. ask whyd be right to isn't this the case already? the obama administration subsidiesey can doubt without verifying who is eligible. they just want to rely on the honor system. you heard that right.

instead of exercising common your and accountability, tax dollars no questions asked. is that unfair to hard- working taxpayers like you, it it happens mild -- why. $250 billion in bad payment could be doled out over the next decade. this is nonsense. members of both parties agree. have come out for requiring verification. we need the full democratic senate to act. this is the latest in a string of bipartisan efforts to repeal americans from the president health care law. there is the same delay.

the president has signed several bills that have dismantled parts of the law. this affects me personally. i have been a registered nurse for more than 40 years. i can tell you that patients and count on.ors this will not just fail to keep the promises. things much worse. you do not have to take my word for it. every day we are seeing more reports of higher costs. the focus back on patient centered solutions. economyuild a stronger that rewards people who do the right thing. honor to address you on behalf of my colleagues.

thank you for listening. both return the session on monday. you can see the senate live on c-span2. the house returns tuesday for bills and speeches. numbers will consider a member that will direct the establish -- the department to establish a zone. later, a bill that would revise programs that were left out of the farm bill when when it was dave david -- when it was debated earlier in the year. it would keep the government funded past september 30. the house was live on c-span. its5 years ago, they made .bu -- its debut

>> love, death, money. these are the three human concerns. love.all keen student of we are fascinated by every aspect of the matter. since then we have brought you the top non-fact -- nonfiction books and authors. readernted to give the a chance to understand the process by which i made decisions. the environment in which i made decisions, the people i listen to. tos is not an attempt rewrite history. it is not an attempt to fashion a legacy. it is an attempt to be a part of the historical narrative. >> every single justice on the and a love passion

for the constitution. .t is equal to mine then you know that you accept that as an operating truth, which it is. you canrstand that disagree. >> and nobel prize winners. >> what is interesting is negotiations. do no harm. love somebody. respect yourself. do some work. are reducedat notions. for officers -- philosophers have tried to reduce that option. what responsibility is. >> we visited festivals around the country. on the campus of

ucla in west los angeles. >> there is our signature programming. >> if you save a child anywhere in this country, more than 600 once upon a time, the child will positive listen. now you better cash the check. even her have more to say. that phrase is still magical. , his job had then to be pressed. be born ined me to th prague. i was born in prague. but father was recalled in 1938. he was in czechoslovakia when the nasties march in in 1931. >> book tv -- 1941. >> tv is the only national television network devoted x lucidly -- devoted exclusively

to nonfiction books. >> coming up next, the subcommittee held a hearing on satellite television laws for copyright wanted. fromll hear telecommunication attorneys. this is about 2.5 hours. quite ok. we are ready to go. >> good morning. . appreciate this

we welcome you to the subcommittee hearing. the circumstances surrounding s are exceedingly complicated to every congressional district. it comes to video i believe there is some point of which we can all agree that americans love to watch television and want to have as many choices available at the lowest possible price. promotedittee has three licenses. consumers anded stakeholders efficiently and effectively. i believe it is safe to say that they are not without their shortcomings. a classic example is when a local show is suddenly unavailable. forward to seeing the

particular show involved. you are likely to turn off the television and call someone to complain. i think that is a natural result. regardless of what first fact of a member has on the issues, we can all learn one truth. our constituents are not shy about telling us to do something about problems in a marketplace that have deprived them of their favorite shows. thee begin to review satellite licenses, one of our goals will be to find solutions to situations that would benefit one party over the other. our top priority will be to protect the interest of consumers. consumers are left with no recourse. this is an exchange rate complex area of copyright law. we have highly qualified

witnesses participating today. >> thank you. iday is the first of what suspect will be a series of hearings to consider the reauthorization of the satellite television extension and localism act or what we call "stella." 119 licensed be through december 31, 2014. enacted in 1988, the home viewer act created a compulsory license for the benefit of the satellite industry to retransmit distant television signals to subscribers. it is codified in section 119. it was originally intended to ensure the availability of

broadcast programming to satellite providers. they have enjoyed a upholstery contentto retransmit contained in both local and distant broadcast television signals. the intent of providing compulsory coppery licenses was to -- copyright licenses was to facilitate investment in new creative works by the satellite by cable industries eliminating direct negotiation with the copyright owners for the use of distant signal programming. although the 119 compulsory license is temporary and therefore the focus of the

reauthorization, we will be considering it is part of a complex and regulatory framework governing cable and satellite retransmissions of broadcast signals, making it virtually impossible to consider whether to reauthorize the provision in a back to him. for that reason, the committee on energy and commerce which has jurisdiction that govern the broadcast market has held multiple hearings in this congress on whether to repeal, revise, or reauthorize. four years ago, the judiciary committee also grappled with a number of issues that had emerged in the marketplace in an effort to simplify and modernize