uriarte. mr. uriarte: thank you. i completely agree with you that we would like to streamline this process as much as possible. the deputy attorney general has taken a number of steps to do that, but from a policy perspective we do think the , inspector general should get all the documents requested. what we are grappling with is a legal question about the interaction of these different statutory themes. on the one hand, the very general nature of the access provision and the ig act. and the stringent restrictions 6-, andtle iii, rule thee federal credit reporting act. those are related to intercepted communications, grand jury proceedings, and credit information collected from individual americans. those are very carefully thought through restrictions that congress included in the statutes given the sensitive , nature of that material. in grand jury proceedings, the information about those is protected from disclosure because the nature of those proceedings and how that might impact an individual who came before the

uriarte and mr. perkins?in your joint testimony you state the department of justice has an unwavering commitment to ensuring that the office of inspector general has access to all records necessary to complete its investigation. is it your belief that the department is, turning over documents to the inspector general in a timely fashion? >> senator, i'll begin. from a timely manner earlier in my testimony i mentioned some process changes within the fbi that allows for a greatly expedited review and turnover of progression to the inspector general. i believe we have worked our way through the vast majority of the backlog to what is only a minimal amount left and we are working very closely with the inspector general. i personally work with the inspector general as does the rest of the staff and his people and i think with the processes we have put in place right now you will see and have seen a greatly expedited turnover of documents. still somewhat hindered by the fact that we are, i do want to say hindered w

carlos uriarte is an associate deputy attorney general, justice department. thank you.and lastly mr. david smith, acting inspector general, department of commerce. go ahead, mr. horowitz. >> thank you, mr. chairman, ranking member leahy, members of the committee. thank you for inviting me to testify today about the critical importance of inspector general access to information. and thank you for strong bipartisan support of the inspector general community. the problem of our access information is a relatively new one. prior to 2010 not at the justice department or the fbi questioned our legal authority to access all documents in its possession and we obtained grand jury wiretapped and credit information without legal objection and without the need for a legal opinion. indeed, it would be hard to imagine how we could conduct effective oversight of the fbi and dea and other law enforcement component if we were prohibited from revealing information like grand jury and wiretapped information that the agency's frequently used. the oig always handle such information with grea

uriarte, i understand that the department has indicated they want to work with us and the ig to solve the problem. i believe our committee invited the department to come meet with our staff and the ig on friday after the opinion came out and far right upper reason the department declined to join the staffer that meeting. how many times has your boss met with the inspector general's horowitz to discuss potential legislative fix to this problem? >> senator thank you for the question. i i can tally the office of attorney general and the deputy attorney general personally have been invested in finding a solution to this problem. this is the general problem of access issue and one of the issues she took gone by when she got to the apartment and it was the topic of conversation during earliest meetings with the inspector general. she has regular meetings with the inspector general and since we have identified this problem and began working towards a solution i have been meeting with the staff to talk about specific solutions and have breathe with it deputy attorney general about this issue.