that means that that decision to say no is going to be really carefully scrutinized. that is what i think is one of the problems here. that i raised with the members of the military. it is the fear that if you leave this with any commanders, somehow they will try to push this under the rug. by not deciding to prosecute or interfering with investigations. they can't interfere with investigations but they can't push this under the rug either. a no decision is going to be reviewed on a higher level. how this works in practice is something we have to see. these are new changes. it seems to me that the changes that have been made will protect the concern that the commander, the convening authority is making a serious judgment. the decision is made with

sincerity on a basis of the evidence and in an honest and honorable, straightforward way. if it is not, it is going to be reviewed and that is going to be reviewed. i think the changes that have been made should address the issue of trust and i think those people who want to see the system changed on to take a really, really, really hard look at what the alternative is. that has not been spelled out. it is very fuzzy, very vague and very problematic and troublesome to me, having been in that very hot seat of a prosecutor where we had to prosecute these cases. without the leadership and without the drive to make those changes, who knows what kind of bureaucratic response there will be? bureaucratic response to the issue of sexual assault by trained professional prosecutors that could happen and that is a danger here.

that hasn't been addressed by those people who advocate a change. thank you. >> i am one of the subcommittee members who is supportive of the majority, if you will, of opinion that has been reached. i think that to segue from congresswoman holtzman's comments about trained professional prosecutors, i have been a professional prosecutor in the military. i have supervised that. there are many things that i don't know. there are probably few people who have more insight into this dynamic than i do. in terms of the relationship of the prosecutor with decision makers in the military, i would submit that number one, we have much evidence that decisions will not change at all. overwhelming evidence that in a

statistically significant way, decisions one change at all. the decisions are actually better as a result of having commanders involved. having been here myself and having been down this road, i have learned from commanders who i have argued with. the decision-making process that comes out of that interaction produces a stronger, not a weaker decision. one of our witnesses this morning told part of a story that he told in its entirety at an earlier panel. former congressman mchale talked about how when he was on reserve duty, he was asked by a commander to do something he viewed to be inappropriate. he was asked to rush an

investigation. he was outraged by that. that is what he described this morning. in a previous session, he told the rest of the story. he pushed back on the commander and he argued with the commander and he persuaded the commander to do the right thing. that goes on all the time. the evidence of this that we haven't commented much on, i think it is pretty compelling for people, we have advocacy for a system where military lawyers are essentially put in charge of prosecution. if you stop to think about it, your natural conclusion would be to think that military lawyers would support that kind of aggrandizement of their authority and importance in their role of the system. it ought to say something that to a person, military lawyers do not support that increase in their authority. i was judge advocate general of the united states navy for three years. i think it would be a mistake to increase the authority of military lawyers in that way.

it is not a gender thing. female judge advocates feel the same way as male judge advocates do. why is that? why do we see it this way, and a way that is so curious to civilians and outsiders who look at the system that exists for the rest of society, that seems to work well enough? i do think studies that are coming out, to a certain degree give light to help well it really does work. why do we see it that way? when we have served, we have an understanding that at base fundamental to this is the issue of trust in the commander and the role that that plays in military society. it is not the decision to give somebody an appendectomy or set a broken arm. it is, as general brady talk about, fundamentally about behavior and the trust we place and people to make decisions and put people in harm's way, to go to their death, to die and to

say now at this juncture -- to acknowledge the obvious, we have a long way to go. to remove commanders from this now, i think sends a signal of distrust. frankly, i think that it is wrong to say that the military -- it may not be wrong to say but i think it is oversimplistic to say that the military has had 30 some years to fix this. this dynamic is changing. it is a moving target and a morphing target. we have to continue to keep our eye on the ball to get there. commanders have played a central role, a central judicial role in the solution of the drug problem in the military. they have played a central quasijudicial role in the issue of race as a problem in the military. i think the decision to keep the convening authority involved in this is the right one for those reasons.

>> madam chairman, two points. one is going to be exactly what congresswoman holtzman said. would it change anything if we did remove the convening authority keys? i still come back to the evidence and the legal advisor and a commander considering the same information, i don't see that the person, that that is going to change any of those results. i don't see that statistical difference. even if i assume that maybe it would come a changes the perception of the victims or the people involved, that is critically important as well. the concern i have is to take that to the next step. you do set up a centralized area of perhaps prosecutorial bureaucracy. you're talking about felony cases, not just sexual assault cases. if you have got a team that is

supposed to just prosecute these cases, that case that is now in a queue where it might be the most important case at an individual command where they are giving a priority, now it is going to fall into a queue with other cases. it becomes a number. if i try to think about the impact on the victim still in the field, on the command trying to maintain discipline with no input or authority, the victim may see extra delays. i don't see how that helps. the command may have an issue that they can't address and you have somebody who stands accused of an offense whether right or wrong, that person is now having this hung over their heads. there is no evidence to that regard but potentially longer than they might otherwise have. part of me says, we didn't get and the evidence that shows it would make a difference in terms of the decision.

we also have no evidence that those potential delays as being part of bureaucracy, that that is not going to cause more harm than it helps. the second point i would make is, in terms of recognizing. the people who read this report will put together a final report to the panel at the end. it is not going to be just read by people who have a military background. we watched the difference between a convening authority and the commander. this talks about the criticism of the justice system confusing the term commander with the person authorized to convene a court-martial. that is not the same. yes it can be. i would recommend we clarify that. there is command authority and convening authority and it can be the same person. a commander can have it convening authority and be the

same person. command authority and convening authority are not the same thing. it can be one person has both of those authorities. i request we clarify that. >> thank you. >> mr. bryant? >> first of all, i want to say how much i appreciate those who have been on the subcommittee. you are all very experienced people with a great deal of wisdom and good judgment. you have worked hard and hurt a lot of information. i have heard and been privileged to hear a lot of information that we have all heard. i am yet to understand how if we removed the convening authority from military command, that somehow this has a tremendous affect on morale, shows the troops we don't trust these men and women, we talked about

surveys -- it would be interesting if we could have a survey of e-5 and above. we will start with e-4. if jag officers were making prosecutorial decisions, would that somehow lessen your respect for your commander and your willingness to obey his or her reverse? the answer would be a resounding no. it is not going to affect anything because the ultimate thing we have to remember is our military, they are war fighters. that is what they do. that is what we want them to do. that is what we want to continue to empower them to do. this idea that somehow the perception of a commander is going to be lessened if he is not the one making this hopefully very small part of their overall duties -- who is

going to face the court marshal and who is not? i haven't seen anything to the consensus that that would be a problem. i haven't heard that as much lately. the other thing that we all need to keep in mind is, with injustice, it is perception that counts a lot. in your jurisdiction, congressman -- i just went blank on your name. i am sorry. in your jurisdiction, when you were district attorney in brooklyn, if the perception was that just as wasn't being done, then justice wasn't being done in the mind of the public. that is part of the issue here. we cannot deny that there is a perception, right or wrong, a substantial perception that if

we place this authority in someone other than the commander who has got all these men and women under command, that something fairer and better could happen. your point i think is pretty easily answered. the admirals, the secretary of the army and navy, they're going to decide whether or not this is going to be a priority. the jag officers who are now tasked to determine what priorities are. there is an awful lot of criminal experience at this table, people who have been involved in actual prosecutions and some defense work. what also needs to be said, in criminal law, everything is fact

driven. you don't have good facts, you don't have a good case. i don't care whether it is mass murder, terrorism, rape or simple assault. if you don't have good facts, you don't have a good case. for us to say that we have no evidence -- i don't even know that this is essential to this particular issue of removing convening authority, to say we have no evidence, that the conviction rate would go up or down, that to me that is a side issue from whether or not we can say that trained professional prosecutors are making these decisions about whether or not a case is one of them. it disturbs me a great deal when i read and hear evidence and testimony which i will relate in just a minute, and when i read proposals that indicate,

commanders would go ahead despite the suggestion of their jag officers. one of the examples i am leading up to is the document that refers to the prosecution at the naval academy where the convening authority went ahead despite the prosecutor's advice. looking back in hindsight, we know that probably they should have followed the prosecutor's advice. as opposed to the commander ignoring that advice. again, criminal cases are driven by facts. in my mind, the people who can best assess that are those who do it for a living. that is the prosecutors.

i know it -- i am going to bring -- let me finish with this. i don't remember what month it was, it was a full panel meeting. somebody on the end said they had a case that they were quite proud of. they had a case of sexual assault which they "knew we couldn't win, but i had him court-martialed to teach him a lesson." that is just wrong. that is not justice. it makes the system start to come apart and fray at the edges. when you start throwing bad cases into the courtroom, whether civilian or military, just to teach somebody a lesson -- first of all it is an abuse of the process. second, it doesn't teach that defendant anything. what it taught that defendant was, even court-martialed, i can get away with this. that person did.

that disturbs me as well as the language we have received indicating that victims in these cases -- i am taking this out of a particular paragraph -- the victims got their day in court because a commander, not a lawyer, had to move the case forward. if we create a system in which prosecutors have the only say, we will see fewer cases go to court martial. what does it mean to say that? that commanders are going to have knee-jerk reactions -- yes? that is one of them. we have had her before us. i agree with congresswoman holtzman that she is a dedicated, wise person who has studied this. >> [indiscernible] you are quoting me even though i wasn't saying that. >> you were talking about

senator gillibrand at the time. i have a little trouble with last names. let me check here, bryant, ok. there are some other things that i want to say and address in particular. when we say that commanders have to have that authority, the example that i have used early on was, in the paramilitary organizations of our sheriffs and police departments, some who have thousands of employees, many of whom are committing crimes from time to time, we do not say, you are the commander, you decide whether or not this officer will be prosecuted. that just doesn't happen. it goes to the prosecutor's office. i have never heard a chief of police or sheriff say, my men and women don't respect me anymore.

what puts the fox in the hen house sometimes is the perception that things are going aren't going like they should go. like people expect them to go. the criticism in the civilian world often times -- the police department investigating itself, no wonder they cleared this officer. that is the perception rightly or wrongly that is going on now. again, just to conclude, i haven't seen or heard anything that convinces me that if we put this authority somewhere else, we have somehow significantly damaged or even slightly damaged

the war fighting capability of our men and women in uniform longer decides who is going toio get court-martialed for a felony and who is not. >> i wanted to address mr. bryant's comments directly. i think we are all here to deal with the facts around getting rid of sexual assault in the military, not the perception of it. if the facts do not show that moving the commanders authority is going to do anything, then i think it is our job to illuminate those facts to the public and say, the evidence just doesn't hold up. what you said was, cases are

solved with facts. i think problems are solved with facts. i still think it is an open question. if more facts are brought before this committee at some point that say, we get rid of the commander and we are going to be able to deal better with the issue of sexual assault, and show us the actual facts, i think we can take that into consideration and make changes. we haven't seen it. that is my issue. until we see it -- i worked for the national center of victims of crime, we want to stop crime, not the perception of crime. that just placate us. if we are not getting to the root of the problem -- i am also fearful that, ok, we take the commander out, all of a sudden our attention shifts. is this change going to work? how many resources do we have to throw at it? it is something we don't know is going to work. we need those resources for things that are going to work.

i think that is part of what this committee is trying to do. figure out what is going to stop sexual assault in the military. i was -- congresswoman holtzman, i went into this thinking it makes sense. i was a former prosecutor. i like the independence of the prosecutor. when you hear at first blush, you go, yeah, i want to go with that. when you hear the facts like you would in a case, it just doesn't hold up. if there is evidence out there, i would like to see it. that said, i also think that many of the changes that have taken place in the last couple of years are because we are arguing about the authority of a commander. if that wasn't at risk, many of these changes wouldn't take place. we need to honestly have a conversation about how we keep the pressure on the military to

continue these changes so that we have real change and we see the end of sexual assault in the military. >> i also wanted to complement that thought as well in terms of -- we are dealing with so many variables at once. the more solutions and ideas to throw at the problem without really giving it time to identify the affect of what we are already doing is just, i think, potentially complicating the issue. >> madam chair? one of the challenges for us is that this decision to not alter the convening authority's power isn't taking place on a stable playing field. all sorts of things are changing right before us that we actually

have no idea what the impact is going to be on reporting rates or what the impact is going to be on the judge advocate general's or what the impact will be on conviction rates. we don't know what the special victims counsel program will be like in terms of ultimate justice or resource allocation. we don't know what the changes in the article 32 process -- that is a systemic change that is happening. we don't know what impact that will have. we don't understand how the emphasis on this specialized expertise to prosecute these complex cases that the military is developing and is transporting to the places where it is needed right now, we don't know if that is sustainable from a resource perspective. all these changes are happening. if we don't change this part of the system, then i deeply worry we are creating a system that is not only not better at doing what it has been doing, but will be much worse because commanders will pursue cases that aren't

warranted. they will do what general brady said. commanders are supposed to have full control of the system. yet it is an independent and impartial justice system. i can't reconcile those concepts in my mind. we can't consider this outside of the larger context. i don't know what that proof would look like. we have this change in other military justice systems but they are not enough like our military to draw conclusions from it. no one collects the kind of data the united states does on this. we have more information. even the information we have here is terrible. we are talking about an iceberg we can't see. if we don't have 75% of the reports of these incidents, which is our best guess, we don't know. until we know more about the problem, i don't think we can

find evidence to support this kind of change. >> in response to the last comment, you are right. i don't know what that evidence would look like. in the military, one of the basic reasons to have the uniform code of military justice and have an embedded military justice system is the expeditionary nature. commanders in the military need to focus on fighting and winning wars. having a case be prolonged with witnesses and victims and the accused is not -- usually the cases are handled very quickly. it gets moved on. i am not saying they're always resolved appropriately. that is part of why we are here. as far as that evidence goes, if you put it into a queue -- how long does it take? even within the civilian sector. i know from my own experience how quickly we have tried a murder case from beginning to end. within six months you have a conviction.

i don't know if that is even possible in the civilian community. i would need to know more before taking a risk to change something and put it into a centralized area. i prefer not to see any more cases. >> i also think there is -- when you think about our military and its mission, and the responsibility of commanders which no one else in the world has to make decisions that impact the unit, to send people to die, and you tie good order and discipline into that process -- it does not work if there is not good order and discipline. we have had commanders and

retirees come in and tell us they think it could be moved but the vast majority of current and former commanders come in and say that is integral to the way we function as a military. it is so critical to our discipline which allows us to get at our ultimate mission. without knowing that it will make a difference, it is about having evidence. i don't see how i could support a recommendation to change that. >> last fall we were discussing as a panel a prototype where it wouldn't be service-wide but a designated air force base and a

designated naval base, you know so on, would give this a try. then maybe we would get some of the facts and results and be able to look at this as a pilot program if you will. to see how it might play out across the services. i just ask whether or not as a subcommittee, you all might want to consider that as a secondary recommendation, that this be given a try somewhere even if it is not all the services. i remember one of the army general said, we follow orders. we will do what we are required to do. it was in response to that proposal. i put that out there as an

alternative and a way to find out if this would work. it would have to be something that ran for more than 12 months for you to find it. in terms of colonel hook -- cook, maybe my contacts need changing. [laughter] i am embarrassed. i have been with these people for months. i don't know why it would take longer to try the cases just because we change who the convening authority would be. wouldn't that say the same? maybe i missed your point. i don't know why that would change, the amount of time it would take to finish the case. jag officers are doing those cases. >> but if you have a team -- i think you increase and centralize the number of cases. you have got to prioritize

within that scheme. in a command right now, that case could be the most important thing on your plate. the judge is usually located within driving distance of your area. i get concerned that it gets lost in a number when it is all consolidated within a region. if it is consolidated within the united states. even if you put it on a regional basis, it has to be advertised, located, and it won't have the same -- it is not the only case in town. that may be what you find at a particular installation. if you try it at a particular command, the number would still stay relatively low. i don't see that it might be different from what it is now when you do a prosecutor and the commander. the volume is not going to be the same.

>> let's say, just hypothetically we pick fort bragg. i think that is currently the army's largest base. let it go there for a couple of years. the judges are there, the jags are there, the people are there. >> i will do far to the highest command. >> you have six different convening authorities and 50,000 active-duty soldiers there. you have a combined number of cases prosecuted there that exceeds all the rest of the cases in the united states army. exactly what holly has said, i think it would be a concern. you would pull it away from all of those commanders over to one part of post and it would become

like trying to get a medical appointment at the hospital. you are not getting that day after tomorrow. >> originally too i was open to the idea of a pilot project. i didn't come to this with an adverse approach to the proposal. i said, if everybody thinks this could be, let's try it out. i now reversed my view about that. i don't see any reason to do it. if you give me a reason to do it, i am ready to do it right now. where is the conflict of interest? i am not seeing it. i don't see it. it doesn't exist. if you show me the conflict of interest, i will say, that is very serious. just because a commander -- don't ask me what that is, that

is a pretty high level person. that convening authority is not likely to know either one of the people. where is the conflict? that person, the commander, that convening authority has to resolve all kinds of conflicts. two people on the base get into a fight, not a criminal matter but they get into a dispute that has to be resolved. the commander has to decide all kinds of conflicts. who gets to drive the jeep today or who gets two jeeps? all those issues have to be resolved. show me the conflict of interest here. i haven't seen that. to make changes just for symbolic purposes, i thought mai said it very well. i think we need to be passed

that. we need to be honest with the american people. what is really going on here and what is really going to make a difference? this is like a silver bullet. it hasn't solved a problem. no way it can solve the problem. they're all the other issues of victim services, quality of prosecution, how the rape statute itself which was rewritten several times -- maybe you understand what it means. there are a lot of other serious problems that have to be addressed. veterans administration, services is a huge problem. these are things that will make a difference in people's lives in a concrete way. i like symbols. i am very interested in symbols. i am really interested in the concrete reality of what we can do that will affect people's

lives. i am open. this commission has to the end of june or may? i am open to change my mind again about this. i would rather -- if you don't have the evidence that prompts the change, ask the military to review it. let's move onto something where we can really, in a concrete way, make improvements that will affect and qualitatively improve the prosecution of these cases. one other point i wanted to address, the question came up about, how can you get more prosecutions? that worries me because the facts are the facts. he says x, she says y. i am a prosecutor, tough case to win. it is not a question of facts.

it is a question of whether i put my win-loss ratio on the line. that is how a case can be brought or not brought. sometimes we don't want decisions made on that basis. it is a close case, the facts and the law justify the prosecution. we are willing to accept the possibility, the risk of defeat. some prosecutors may say, no, i don't want to. the question is, who is going to make those judgments? is it going to be someone -- i don't know who makes those judgments. >> in terms of your last comment, i don't think we heard one commander who came and testified to this panel ever use the term of a conviction rate. those were lawyer terms. they look at the command climate. they may be more likely to send the case to court.

put it in front of a panel or a military judge and let them have a day in court and figure out what comes out of the result. conviction rate is a lawyer's term. >> that could be a factor for a prosecutor in deciding whether or not to go forward with a case where is would not be necessarily for a commander. >> you think you may not win -- it is still ethical and within the realm of the attorneys ethics to do so. the fact that you think the case may not be winnable doesn't mean it is unethical to send it to prosecution. >> you have to take a chance sometimes with prosecutions. prosecutors are sometimes accused of just wanting to shoot goldfish in a bowl. i really don't think that is true in the civilian world. i don't think it is true in the military. it has to be assessed for whether or not you have a substantial likelihood of a conviction. i think that just throwing a

case out there and saying, is the government ready? when you know it is very unlikely you are going to get a conviction, it spoils the view of the system. no commander, no war fighters is going to say, we are going to attack that hill. i don't think we have a chance of taking it, but we will teach them a lesson. i feel like we ought to at least give it a shot. i hope we are not conducting wars like that. i feel confident that we are not. there is a third aspect to the conflict of interest, congressman holzman, that general brady brought up. in response to the admiral's two-prong conflict. that is bringing in these cases when perhaps they shouldn't be brought. that we are going to increase the prosecution rate.

we should only increase the prosecution rate if we have legitimate victims and legitimate evidence that has substantial likelihood of getting a conviction. that is contrary to everything i have seen and learned in practice. >> it has never been my experience as a prosecutor that we look at things in terms of, do we have a substantial ability to get a conviction? we think about it, of course, but in a sexual assault case, if you find the victim credible, at least in my experience over the years, and believe, you already have probable cause, but believes the victim is telling the truth, you go forward. if you can, if you have the

resources. the fact that you may not think a cases winnable is not a reason not to go forward. >> but if you know -- i have to tell you that the last trial i had in my career was back in november. it was a rape case. we had a victim who did not speak good english, had to be translated from chinese. we had no dna, no fingerprints, no sperm, no nothing. i took the case myself because i just believed that a jury would believe her testimony based on some of the other facts. we did get a conviction. three life sentences plus. i don't want to be misunderstood. i am not saying it has to be a slamdunk. we certainly try cases that are not slam dunks.

but when a prosecutor's experience and understanding of the law tells him -- there shouldn't be a conviction, there might be but there shouldn't be, in that case shouldn't be fought. >> i am very confident that the overwhelming number of cases out there, that military judge advocates are advising commanders on, that they are not treating these cases as jump balls. it is a large department. just like civilian jurisdictions are large. you are not going to find the perfect record in any jurisdiction but it is not a norm within the united states armed forces that the cases are being prosecuted this way. >> i was not suggesting that they were.

i was suggesting that that becomes part of the conflict when we put such pressure on the convening authorities, the commanders to go forward. >> i think all we are saying is that we are not putting win in the equation. you are trying to decide if you have a victim who wants to go forward and who is credible. and you have not just a probable cause case, but those other two factors. and then you go forward. i am just saying, i think we are only talking about win here. >> i agree with you. all the lawyers on this panel and nonlawyers have heard the cliché, if you are not losing cases, you're not trying cases. you are going to lose your share of cases. everybody knows and understands that.

>> may i respond? i don't think we have answered your question sufficiently. what is the conflict and if this is about perception rather than actually stopping the crimes, then why is it so important? those are reasonable questions. to me, the command control of the court-martial process is a great risk to the fairness of that process. that has the consequences of failing to achieve high prosecution and conviction rates has never been higher. we are looking at command climate, the term used to describe the atmosphere in which servicemembers work and live under the leadership of the command. if there is -- if there -- for instance, there could be many more reports that would go forward in a command climate that was changing. i could see pressure on a convening authority to force victims who report to convert from restricted to unrestricted

reports. i do not think that would be good for those victims. i want more unrestricted reports that can be investigated and prosecuted, but the pressure to demonstrate progress on all of the metrics, that we want to know what is happening on the ground, creates a lot of pressure on convening authorities in charge of this process. it creates an even larger specter of unlawful command influence. it is a matter of perception. unlawful command influence is litigated all the time and lots of times and sexual assault cases. some of these changes have already removed the commander from parts of this process. having the commander, the convening authority -- at the

front end, it creates a potential barrier to sustaining those convictions going forward. it is a very cognizable conflict. the other point about perception, the thing we have to do is to increase reporting rates. the biggest problem is not the failure to investigate and prosecute. the biggest problem is the failure to report. that is all about perception. the perception of how my case will get treated when i come forward and say this is what happened to me. the first person to hear that is the one we need to make the right choice about how to receive that report. i want our commanders to be fighting wars, winning wars,

taking care of their people, and educating everybody within the military community, over which they have far more control, so that everybody will say the right thing that will lead to an unrestricted report. it will get the perpetrator out of commission. this is all about perception. in may seem like it is some soft thing on which to base our decision, that to me, it is the whole ball of wax. >> two points professor hillman makes that are worth talking about, she has not said this, but others have implied or stated directly that the commander needs to be freed to lead and removing the authority from the commander will free the commander to lead. i completely disagree.

it does require the commanders consult with the law your to lawyer, to consult with judge advocates to make sure the public pronouncements are consistent with command influence law, but it is not difficult to do. most commanders do it. there are the occasional exceptions, that that is the -- that is the imperfection of life. i have not heard -- and the testimony of our survivors, today, and other days, i have heard many of them say they support the changes the senator is promoting. i have not heard one say that if

-- fear of the commander was a prominent part of their own situation. there is a difference. i think we need to be alert to that difference and i would not presume for a minute to be inside the minds of survivors and what they have gone through, but i think others have said it and i will say it again, i have not seen the empirical evidence that suggests that fear of commander is a prominent issue and why we have underreporting in the military. i would ask again why if the figure is correct, why 88 percent of college student women do not report. is it fear of their commander? of course not. i think ms. fernandez made a spectacular point and made it in a compelling way about this panel's obligation to study this issue rigorously and carefully,

to educate and not react to perception if we do not believe these perceptions are accurate. those who support the change say right or wrong, there is this perception. i want to go back to the right or wrong part. it is our obligation to point out if we believe it is wrong and not be led by the right or wrong phenomenon. >> one of our biggest things is to get reports going up. i will not sit in the shoes of sexual assault victims in the military. my sense is that working in this

field, your perception that the system is working for you, the first person you have contact with is -- says i believe you, i care about you, and they start to provide you with services. what is going to happen in a criminal justice system that i did not understand myself until i left law school is something that is pretty far away from the initial victimization. all you want is somebody to believe you and if you are hurt, help you get over your hurt. and then other things start kicking in. that perception is really important with where our resources need to be going to. those people making the first contacts with the victims. some of those could be commanders, some of them are best friends, some of them are all over the place. that is where the perception

that people will believe you is the most important. >> have we said it all for this afternoon? i wanted to thank those of you who came up and shared your personal stories. it is not an easy thing to do. it brings a real reality to why we are here. >> we have had our deliberations. i think we have a report from our subcommittee, which is an initial assessment. there is consensus on the panel

for the report. we have heard strong and very well articulated statements that disagree with the ultimate conclusion. ok. this process will continue. at this time, i will take a poll of the full panel with respect to whether or not you are in agreement with the initial assessment from the role of the commander subcommittee. colonel cook? >> i am in agreement with the initial assessment to leave senior commanders with convening authority.

the only thing i would suggest is -- i would like to see included, it is going to -- defining them in the footnotes. i would suggest that something that is defined in the footnote that talks about the convening authority no longer having jurisdiction over sexual offense cases, take that out of the footnote and put that up into the body. for any offense after june of 2014 it has to go to a general court-martial convening authority, does the special court-martial convening authorities still have the authority to dismiss the case at their level?

does the dismissal decision get made -- i do not know the answer to that. we do not address that point. i would want to see that. one of the comments we heard talked in terms of that conflict of interest piece. it was better formulated today. i would like to see the conflict of interest elaborated in terms of those things. what training -- the commanders have their own experience and they also get specialized training. with those comments made, i do agree with the strong majority of the subcommittee that believes leave the convening authority and the commander.

>> this is a subcommittee report out, which is being adopted or not adopted. it is not the final report. the final report will also have to be discussed. it is important for those of you not on the subcommittee to express comments. let me go to you general mcguire. >> [inaudible] >> i concur as well. i concur with the conclusions on the findings. >> i concur with the conclusions on the findings. >> i concur. >> i do not concur. >> with all due respect for the

wisdom and insight and the well reasoned conclusions that you have reached, at this point in our deliberations, i disagree. >> i concur. >> you make a good point. the job is not over. we have more to do. it seems important as we reach a certain levels of knowledge and information that we make initial assessments. thank you for being so attentive and being here. i thank the witnesses who came up and told their own stories with respect to what happened to them as sexual assault victims in our military. thank you.

do i have to thank the staff? >> yes, please. >> of course, we want to thank our staff. they have been with us since may. we will thank them again. our job is not over. [applause] >> if you live events to tell you about. live coverage from the hudson institute begins at noon eastern. a conversation about some of the security threats to the sochi winter games. c-span3, officials charged with setting up health exchanges

are in washington today. governors across the country have been delivering state of the state speeches. we will start with new mexico governor, then, governors of illinois, nebraska, and south dakota. the begins at 8:00 eastern. the head of the mayo clinic attended the state of the union this week. up, he will share his thoughts on the u.s. health care system. union,state of the president obama announced the creation of a new federal retirement savings around. in onoakley will weigh the plan. a report on how the workforce

will change over the next 10 years. will discuss the findings. we will take your calls and you can also discussed the conversation on facebook and twitter. host: house gop leadership has immigration reform proposal. secure the borders and zero- tolerance for those crossing illegally. entry exit visa tracking. electronic employment there are k shea shen -- verification system. temporary worker programs. opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those brought to the u.s. as