let me go back to the nctc. will you talk a little bit about what you think its role should be in relationship to other analysis organizations and to the so-called operators or intelligence collectors in the community? so if i can borrow from what we were discussing earlier about the dni, is the nctc, or should the nownational counter- terrorism center, should they be the leader or just a coordinator? >> well, it is a good question. i think the analyst is the person who has to spot the problem and to spot the threat. then there has to be an assignment of responsibility to someone to pursue vigorously that threat. i do not think that is likely to be the analyst, but somebody has to be in charge. in other words, the analyst says we have got five strands of information here that. to -- that point to x as a threat. you cannot stop there. somebody has to do it. somebody has to response orespoy of assigning someone to go after x. i do not think that is the role of the nctc. i am not sure that responsibility lies, but

let me go back to the nctc.you talk a little bit about what you think its role should be in relationship to other analysis organizations and to the so-called operators or intelligence collectors in the community? so if i can borrow from what we were discussing earlier about the dni, is the nctc, or should the nownational counter- terrorism center, should they be the leader or just a coordinator? >> well, it is a good question. i think the analyst is the person who has to spot the problem and to spot the threat. then there has to be an assignment of responsibility to someone to pursue vigorously that threat. i do not think that is likely to be the analyst, but somebody has to be in charge. in other words, the analyst says we have got five strands of information here that. to -- that point to x as a threat. you cannot stop there. somebody has to do it. somebody has to response orespoy of assigning someone to go after x. i do not think that is the role of the nctc. i am not sure that responsibility lies, but the as

leiter, you respond to this, is that at nctc we don't of that ability now.you got a series of separate databases from different parts of the intelligence community and the government so that in that sense -- and you've got access to all of them, plenty of sharing. but there's not a program, a search engine right now by which you can by act or by a somewhat automatic software programming can have expected in this case, for instance, that there would have been a hit and an alarm on umar farouk abdulmutallab or umar farouk, nigeria, december 25th, am i right? do we not of that capacity within the nctc? >> senator, we do not of that exact capacity. but i would note that over the past several years we have worked with folks from across government and some of the private sector companies that you would expect that best technology. your answer is that is not as easy a problem as you probably would expect. i think we have some potential technological solutions on the very, very near term horizon that we're attempting to implement within weeks. and, frankly, we were

somebody has to be nominated from that list and has to be determined by the nctc process to make the cut as it were for somebody to be no adverse affect a terrorist. there's another review that goes to determine if that goes on to a select the or no-fly. none of those determination for made or consequently when the passenger comes to board, he is allowed to board because there is no list that he is on. >> no, he is on the list. he is on the tide list. that's not what i'm asking. i am asking why -- why the guy on the tide list can't come up, which he was on. and why that wouldn't merit an extra look. >> well, it's merits an extra look today. i think originally but it was created was because not everyone on the tide list merited becoming a known or suspected terrorists. >> what is the harm? >> today believe that people agree there is a need to include the p3b from national security concerns before people board aircraft. and we are doing that. >> so now, as of december 26, people on the tide list are going to have a second look? >> no. >> no? i don't understand then. >> the tide list is

i don't think that is the role of the nctc. i do not think that is the role of the nctc. that responsibility lies, but the assignment of the responsibility to investigate and to pursue a suspect has to be very clear. you mentioned the word redundancy. i answered in response to senator kirk, i think it was, redundancy does not bother me. if you have got the cia doing analytical work on the the threat and the nctc, it is ok. the thing that impresses me about the analyst is the work can be boring. i mean, really boring. sorting through massive amounts of data and trying to figure out what is right or what is significant. and somebody is going to be asleep at the switch. cents -- so some redundancy does not bother me. >> i agree. it is the military concept, of course, for personnel and four systems. >> it is not a bad word to say you have a redundant system. is there to protect the life of a military person. >> one thing we should check on -- and do not know the answer to this. with these various agencies, who is attending nctc? what kind of priority are these agencies giving

somebody has to be nominated from that list and has to be determined by the nctc process to make the cut as it were for somebody to be no adverse affect a terrorist. there's another review that goes to determine if that goes on to a select the or no-fly. none of those determination for made or consequently when the passenger comes to board, he is allowed to board because there is no list that he is on. >> no, he is on the list. he is on the tide list. that's not what i'm asking. i am asking why -- why the guy on the tide list can't come up, which he was on. and why that wouldn't merit an extra look. >> well, it's merits an extra look today. i think originally but it was created was because not everyone on the tide list merited becoming a known or suspected terrorists. >> what is the harm? >> today believe that people agree there is a need to include the p3b from national security concerns before people board aircraft. and we are doing that. >> so now, as of december 26, people on the tide list are going to have a second look? >> no. >> no? i don't understand then. >> the tide list is

nctc and states authorities appear from our perspective to overlap. my question is, are the state department and nctc cooperating in counterterrorism planning? and how are you doing this? >> senator, i think we are cooperating well. but i would go back to something director blair said earlier. there are so many people involved here and i don't think the legislation that created nctc's strategic operational planning as i've discussed with this committee before -- i don't think the legislation gave clear authority -- in fact, it did not give us clear authority to negotiate actions and we were authority instead of director of action. i think the president's direction of january 7th to design a process whereby there would be follow-up of priority threat streams will be an empowering the strategic operational planning not to direct operations contrary to urpa bw7k to empower us to demd accountability for a more broader range of threats that we see. i think that will require a new level of cooperation from the state department but not just the state depart

>> nctc in terms of international terrorism, yes.t also, dhs in terms of the redress process when somebody files a complaint that they should not be on the list is then handled by principally by dhs, but generally you want to have on those lists many persons who meet that criterion should be on the list because it is protection against terrorist attacks. >> i couldn't agree more and people in this world, a lot of people have the same name and it is difficult to know and one of the reasons we are here complaining is because somebody didn't get on the list. but mr. heymann i think you should look to see how a person may have the same name as a dangerous person can somehow be not given as much burden at the airport is otherwise would be the case. >> senator there is a one-stop shop web site that was developed for redress person, www.dhs.gov/tripton anyone who has concerns that they are in the-- in a properly on a watch list ago there. there is an adjudication process. the department has adjudicated 56 felsen people. >> i would just say

and other information that did not get to nctc.o it was a question and i think it's fair to say that some person should have passed information into nctc and did not end up there. and the database where you have the information that leads to putting a person on either a select or no-fly list for international terrorism is generally goes through that process. >> i guess my concern is that it's not clear as to whose responsibility it was to take that information and to develop it, whether it is a serious enough link a monopoly to protect america against that individual, but to use that information to try to determine whether there is active terrorist plots against america. and i hope that is being corrected because there was information there that was just sitting there. and obviously, it could've been a very serious situation against this country. senator schumer. >> thank you come on mr. chairman. let me thank the witnesses for being here. my first question is for mr. kennedy from the state department. it's about multi-and should b

. >> of viper report was corrected within the nctc within a couple of days. the tuygan tree that was opened up on this particular individual had his correct spelling. as to whether or not any individual through this process check from that point forward to see if there was a active these up, we are still trying to sort that out. i can say we know that anybody did in fact from the point the database was opened on him whether that was a factor. so, this is in fact something, this is a critical lesson learned. the steps that we have put in the process, beginning immediately after december 25 will in fact make sure that future reports do have these the information in them, so that this is more, this is inserted into the process right from the outset. you know, so it is one thing to say that the database is that we have that have these the information in it, all those databases are available to all of the relevant agencies that are involved in this process but we obviously recognize it is important to put this issue front and center as part of this process moving

and other information that did not get to nctc. and so it was a question and i think it's fair to say that some person should have passed information into nctc and did not end up there. and the database where you have the information that leads to putting a person on either a select or no-fly list for international terrorism is generally goes through that process. >> i guess my concern is that it's not clear as to whose responsibility it was to take that information and to develop it, whether it is a serious enough link a monopoly to protect america against that individual, but to use that information to try to determine whether there is active terrorist plots against america. and i hope that is being corrected because there was information there that was just sitting there. and obviously, it could've been a very serious situation against this country. senator schumer. >> thank you come on mr. chairman. let me thank the witnesses for being here. my first question is for mr. kennedy from the state department. it's about multi-and sh

>> obviously, the creation of the dni and the congressional legislation of the nctc was the heart ofrecommendation and was to force information sharing. black of information sharing was one of the things we found that probably lead to 911 as much as anything else. -- lack of information sharing was one of the things we found the probably lead to 9/11 as much as anything else. that was key. i mentioned two areas before were recommendations have not been implemented. one is the civil liberties commission. we think it is very important and basically does not exist because the president never appointed its members. secondly, congressional oversight. we still do not believe, and we hear again from bipartisan people on both sides of the aisle that they are not satisfied in the intelligence committee that they have the ability to do the kind of oversight this country needs, and that is deeply disturbing. if they are not doing oversight, nobody is doing any oversight. it cannot continue to exist with this kind of problem. i could mention a number of others, but those are the most important.

what is the status of dni and nctc developing a policies? >> i am not quite sure what policy that refers to. all have to check and get back to you. but we're very vigilant about getting those policies out. let me find out where the shortcoming yes. -- where the shortcoming is. >> it is one consolidated policy. and in light of these events, we wanted to understand what the rules are that we are applying. >> thank you. senator levin, welcome. >> i welcome to our witnesses. apparently someone at dhs plan ned mr. abdulmutallab for additional screening what's the plan was in flight. what triggered that? >> let me explain the process. customs and border protection, when it gets the passenger list, pushes out to the immigration groups known as the aepe, anyone that appears on the terrorist watchlist or on the no fly list. the no fly list is a list given to the carrier, and basically is says do not but the sky onto a plane. the terrorist list is to inform the airport or a foreign government that you should put this person into your secondary screeni

let me say that the department of online security worst day in and day out with the nctc and other members of the intelligence community. these are dedicated men and women. all of them are dedicated to the safety of the united states. we simply had a systemic failure. dhs uses the list as the cornerstone of our efforts to prevent suspected terrorists from boarding airplanes bound for the united states. second, we will establish a partnership on aviation screening technology betweendhs and the department of energy and its national laboratories. this will allow government to use the expertise of the national labs to develop new and more effective technologies so that we can react to known threats but also proactively anticipate new ways by which terrorists could seek to board our aircraft. third, we want to accelerate advanced imaging technology so we have greater capability to detect explosives like the ones used in the christmas day attack. we currently have 40 machines and -- deployed throughout the u.s. we'll reschedule to deploy 300 more this year. we may deploy more than that. tsa does

gentlemen in particular, admiral blair, dennis blair who is the dni, and michael lighter who runs nctc, you're going to hear a lot of republican chatter about janet napolitano, head of homeland security. but i can tell you this, the president has 100% confidence in her. probably one of his favorite cabinet secretaries personally. they're very close. and a lot of white house aides believe she's gotten a bum rap in that she wasn't, when she said the system worked, which, of course, got a lot of criticism for that, she wasn't talking about the intelligence aspect, but about what they were doing on her end, after the terror attempt was thwarted. >> what is this likely to do, chuck, to the president's agenda going into the new year? because there are only so many major issues that can be fought. and there are so many issues that are brought about by this, from guantanamo, to airport security. how do we deploy our resources abroad? where does yemen fit in to all of this. what might this mean for the bigger picture? >> well, think about this. the president delayed the start of his vacation fr

therefore it seems there should be multiple resignations in the nctc. >> the national counterterrorism center. >> that's right. in the central -- >> that's headed by michael leiter. >> it is. i know michael leiter. he's a consummate intelligence profession professional. people in the bureaucracy who did not share the information widely, didn't connect the dots, should answer for it, it seems to me. >> janet napolitano is the homeland security secretary. as far as we know, no one has offered a resignation. >> that's right. the president did say, though, yesterday, of course, there are going to be accountability mechanisms within agencies. i'm not sure what he means by that. perhaps he means inspector general investigations. but if we don't have ultimately resignations or firings, it seems to me we'll talk about this again. >> you had a chance to sit down with janet napolitano this week, jeanne. you got a sense of where she approaches all of this and we saw her later in the week at that briefing at the white house. how is she dealing with all the pressure on her right now, because she is

nctc, you have a series of separate databases from different parts of the intelligence community. in that sense, you have access to all of them. there is not a program, a search engine by which you can buy act or automatic software programming that there would have been a hit and an alarm on all abdulmutallab, nigeria, december 25. am i correct >? >> we do >> we do not have that exact capacity. i would note that over the past several years, we have worked with people from across the government and private sector companies that you would expect to have that technology. the answer has uniformly been that it is not as easy a problem as people would expect. i think we have some potential technological solutions on a very near-term horizon we are attempting to implement within weeks. frankly, we were surprised, i was surprised, at the extent to which other agency searches were not hitting against very critical datasets that might have uncovered this and then highlighted that for us and others. >> do you want to add anything to that? >> i would only amplify on what director michael leit

>> the sharing happens automatically, when a cable comes in at cia, it goes to nctc, if it's any remotely related to terrorism they have ceo data bases, dozens and dozens of officer there with full access to the most sensitive intelligence, so it's shared. a lot of data flows in, intelligence, military, law enforcement and all has to be sifted through every day and decisions have to be reached every day and train, good trained all source analysts are not in clinical supply. >> shannon: do we need more funding, more resources for the agencies? >> i think we have the resources, i think we just now have to get experienced officers. we had a huge turnover of officers in the 1990's and a lot of the young officers have two or three years experience. when i was growing up i was told it was five years you may be a journeyman analyst and ten years may consider you worthwhile as a senior analyst, i don't think we have that kind of experience today. >> shannon: what would be the one change if you could do something at this point an improvement or change to the current situation? what would it be? >>

what is the status of dni and nctc developing a policies?ure what policy that refers to. all have to check and get back to you. but we're very vigilant about getting those policies out. let me find out where the shortcoming yes. -- where the shortcoming is. >> it is one consolidated policy. and in light of these events, we wanted to understand what the rules are that we are applying. >> thank you. senator levin, welcome. >> i welcome to our witnesses. apparently someone at dhs plan ned mr. abdulmutallab for additional screening what's the plan was in flight. what triggered that? >> let me explain the process. customs and border protection, when it gets the passenger list, pushes out to the immigration groups known as the aepe, anyone that appears on the terrorist watchlist or on the no fly list. the no fly list is a list given to the carrier, and basically is says do not but the sky onto a plane. the terrorist list is to inform the airport or a foreign government that you should put this person into your secondary screening whatever that hap

nctc and cia analysts did not put it all together in time to stop the attack.s being a systemic failure. host: photos of osama bin laden or released by the department of defense and the fbi showing age differences of the meteleader. guest: it is a guess of what he might look like, and if they put these out, people in that part of the world might recognize someone who looks like that. it is a gas, but people -- it is a guess, but people have the image of osama bin laden as someone with a very long. the possibility is that he does not look like that anymore -- someone with a very long beard. the possibility is that he does not look like that anymore. host: what is the last time we sought course, been laid and publicly, -- in one of the videos court last time we saw a osama bin laden publicly, in one of the videos or -- guest: a year. at the video messages are becoming more and more infrequent. you get a lot of reasons for why that is, that he is very sick, that he is on the run so much that he is unable to make these videos. but others just say that there is enou

that's not just something nctc can do, or the d.n.i.inue i want to start to focus on the future. what should the obama administration be doing for the rest of the term and however far president obama's service gos? >> i want to jump in here and just, again, kind of in a cautionary way suggest that there are not very many prices the public will not pay, unfortunately, for safety. and again, i'm not in any way disagreeing with the content of the arguments that i'm hearing. i'm just reflecting on the research that we looked at in terms of how to talk about this. >> i've been intrigued by the -- my sense that there's resistance to the whole body scanners, which are in one sense obviously an improvement in security, though marginal. >> there's no public resistance. the public is 80% or 85% in favor of full body scans. >> i'm hearing from -- >> it's a matter of changing moods. on the business of what names should go on no-fly lists, there were complains before, too many names are being put on it. if the last scary incident happened three week

the question is did it go from the nsa to the nctc as it's called, and did the cia share information it got from the meeting with the father with the national counterterrorism center as well? okay, there's too many agencies, too many participants, and it's unclear whether or not they are sharing and processing as fluidly as they need to be in order for this process to always work. that's the problem is that, you know, it's this old saying, you know, the terrorists only have to be successful once, and can, of course, the united states government and other governments have to be successful every time. so there's no room for error here, and i think that so far the system while much improved is not working well enough to prevent incidents like this. >> host: you touched on the politics. let's go through some of the headlines in the paper. irate obama vows air security changes. that's the headline in the baltimore sun. here's the "philadelphia inquirer" this morning, president says u.s. agencies failed to connect the dots. and here is the financial times, obama rebukes security agencies.

i've been told that people at nctc have sometimes three or four different cpus in order to have conduct with different agencies. i personally think that nothing sort of another attack on the united states will really move us off of dead center. the bureaucratic lethargy is extraordinary in this government. certainly, the leadership under the last several governments has not been inspiring. >> host: next on the democrat line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i would like it know how we as americans can stop someone who's willing to put a device on themselves and blow themselves up and others. i would like to know how can we stop it? thank you very much. >> guest: i don't think there's a way to stop it with 100% assuredly. one way is to decrease the motivation of those people to attack us. until we're willing to recognize what the basis of their motivation is which is things like support for israel, support for the saudi police state, we're not going to be able to stop any of them. or many of them. and the number of people willing to carry those devices and kill people will increase