caroline diane craft, nominee to be the general counsel of the cia, and ambassador daniel bennett smith, nominated to be the assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. welcome to both and to the family and friends with you today. else understand that senator bennett will be introducing ms. craft and will be arriving shortly from another meeting. when he does come in i will give him the opportunity to make his remarks and then we will go back to whatever we are doing. to our received answers prehearing questions from both nominees and those can be found on the committee's website for anyone who is interested. we look forward to hearing both of your opening statements. this committee has the jurisdiction over all nominees requiring senate confirmation within the intelligence community. we try to move that process as quickly as we can. the number of these positions is fairly small. so i appreciate my colleagues's cooperation to keep the process running. it is my hope that we will be able to vote on these two nominees as one of the first orders of business when we return in