i'm troubled by the fact that it would appear that some of the circumstances that led to the shooting was a result of a military officer not following policies and procedures pacifically information in his official record we have questions why did it happen could have been prevented was response adequate more importantly we all share the same intent to ensure that everything possible is hood charter the review soon after the shooting and gave them forty five days to quickly examine the part of defensive programs policies and procedures related force protection emergency response and support of health care provider army and other services the performance report the army calls it only ours accurately reflect the strengths and weaknesses of officers problems must not be passed from one assignment to i would also remind the members of the conditions in which department share the restricted annex associated with this report was that we would not discuss its contents publicly and asked members respect those conditions the primary concern of this committee answering once again the call to duty to serve your country you had a short time to develop your findings and recommendations and i compliment both of you with regard to their breath is short you've documented and highlighted the lack of preparedness by the department of defense and by this nation to first recognize and then develop actively and comprehensively with the existing and growing internal domestic terrorist threat this threat is not a department of defense problem alone as your report points out an integrated synchronized nationwide effort will be necessary to ensure national preparedness to prevent and respond to future domestic acts of terror major hasan may have been an individual actor in the fort hood shootings but the radicalization of an officer who took it all to support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic and to bear true faith  allegiance to the constitution should send shock waves through all americans as the power and reach of an enemy like al qaeda in yemen to generate such radicalism among other u s citizens yemen declared war on the united states with the attack on the u s s cole in two thousand while the us has taken actions to curb their power and influence as an extra threat this nation and its allies seemingly him to join al qaeda in yemen and to help plan the christmas day attack on northwest flight two fifty three moreover the nation has not learned a lesson from september eleventh that organizations who have information about potential or actual terrorists must that information who might act to prevent terrorist activities as is becoming apparent such was not the case in needed the november attack by fort hood shootings your report is clear that major hasan supervisors were aware of his shortcomings as an officer and medical professional and failed to act appropriately the report is strangely silent on whether or not major hasan gave any clear evidence of his radicalization or whether there were any substantive clues about that radicalization that the supervisors should have acted upon i hope that your testimony will address these issues the report also points out numerous personnel policy short falls that contribute to the departments and preparedness to deal with internal threats among the many findings there was criticism of current policies practices and procedures related to identifying potentially violent behaviors information sharing the accommodation of religious practices counterintelligence activities in cyberspace and definitions of a responses to prohibited activities although you make no specific recommendations as how as to how to resolve these issues you're clearly suggesting that these policies practices and procedures need to be refocus implemented with renewed vigor such a course of action suggests the possibility for closer government scrutiny by d o d and other agencies for example of various electronic social media finally you made six recommendations for immediate action i would hope that in your testimony in the following questions you could address three of them in detail and those three from among all the other recommendations for immediate action creation of a d o d entity to concentrate in one place the d o d effort to gather analyze and data useful for identifying indicators of potential violent action and to create a comprehensive and usable catalog of those indicators that can be updated continuously and made available throughout the day and the military services in closing i want to thank you again for your past and continuing service to this nation policy for force protection emergency response measures and support of those who provide medical care to those he also asked to take a look at how the available to you we did not because that was already underway look into the intelligence aspect that was assigned to a different review and we were directed in terms of reference to avoid and if we did and we did not cause it is under control of military justice authorities look into the criminal aspect of this matter again a possible mass casualty event as reflected in their emergency response plan and their response on that day showed that preparation where have the indicators been noted and then to prepare ourselves to act without evidence before to make it available to our commanders so that they can act and to be clear about their authority to talk to you about the review that secretary west and myself have coa lad so let me get right to it i know you have questions first let me just talk briefly about force protection the principle message is this there are many policies dozens of policies in the department about force protection we've built lots of barriers since nine eleven that said existing policies are not optimized for the internal threat and the threat that we saw witnessed the fort hood answer that was evolving inside the barriers second let's talk about employees who can be a threat in this kind of circumstance to a difficult challenge the reality is that there is an sufficient knowledge and guidance to identify individuals guidance concerning workplace violence and the potential for self radicalization or radicalization in general as secretary west indicated it's insufficient and the key here is that we focused on violence of any kind what we found was a lack of clarity for comprehensive indicators which then limit the commanders or the supervisors ability to recognize these potential threats and so it doesn't matter if we're looking at somebody who might be inclined to hurt themselves and by the way that the secretary of defense had that specifically and our terms of reference answer thence of suicide or criminal and gang behavior are somebody advocating supremacist activity and dr in our family violence or the evolving threats like radicalization identifying the key indicators is critical to focusing the force on the threat so our focus was on violence that comes from any kind of the any kind of behavior but what we found especially was that policies on the and internal threat are inadequate prohibited behaviors and actions need to be addressed and our report says specifically that such guidance exists but it's incomplete for the day in which we live let me talk briefly about information sharing the secretary of defense indicated friday in his reaction to our review that we saw a requirement to create the ability to adapt rapidly and the changing security environment which exist today anticipating the new threat bringing in a wide and continually evolving range of tools techniques and programs into play robust information sharing is absolutely critical along with that the command and control system to convert information into real decisions and real action it requires active information gathering and we must remove the barriers all of the barriers information sharing is a key element allowing decision makers to connect the dots we've got to get the information these indicators to the appropriate levels of command and let me speak briefly about the response that we saw at fort hood because the secretary asked us to address the emergency response as secretary west has indicated we were impressed with what we saw of fort hood ladies and gentleman i served for thirty seven years when i went down to secretary west and i went down there on the second day of after the formation of our what i saw was the best after action report i have ever seen in my life with the kind of candor that was impressive lots of good news there the base personnel were prepared they were trained they took appropriate action their action was prompt as a secretary and a gated their response to the active shooter was and was  there were courageous acts the first responders the local law enforcement personnel d o d civilians health care providers all of their actions prevented greater loss that said we still believe it can be done better we've got to focus on better tools for commanders focus on violence prevention in whatever form it exists to we must adapt and evolve to the rapid change understand that this is not there is no single point solution here change is going to continue at a rapid pace we have to share information so the right people can connect the dots and exercise against the most stress and pressing scenarios to make sure that we have it right so we were impressed with what we saw at fort hood both the military and civilians on base as well as those in the community who were key players in the outcome of november and all of this reminds us of the greatness of our people the strength of our nation and the reason character of our people and so secretary west on this point and the rest of the our hearts go out to the families of those that were lost and those that were wounded in that sense that incident and the thrust of our activity of our effort has been to do everything that we know how to do to help the secretary of defense put the thank you for your very thorough and telling testimony it appears to me that there were two disconnects that lead on the one hand and the we are an academic evaluation second disconnect is would be one of intelligence type whether that reaches the viewers are not which leads to the bottom line question was a great deal overlooked because this was a medical he ask us for gaps in a way to assess and so we said well look if an individual track history doesn't stay with them that leaves you open to potential weakness and gaps so there are certain things that are required by by regulation that cannot move from station to station with an individual that's something that needs to be looked at with regard to the issue of performance appraisal we all know that performance appraisal is a challenge in any environment that said we use specific terms to say things that we wanted to we didn't use the term leadership we use the term officer ship  if you look on page six and seven of our report we say specifically what we think happened here we believe that some of the signs were clearly missed or they were ignored i can't tell you which and i can't go further than that because of the nature of the restrictions that are in the elevator information that's in a restricted annex but there's no doubt in my mind or secretary west mine that there are issues here and if there were not so we would not have said that to the secretary of defense with regard to the intelligence matters there's not so we did not do the intelligence review the president had already outlined and authorized a review and we were given specific guidance to do not interfere that said mr chairman sense our review team began this action there's been a number of things in the public domain that tell us that there is agreement that the dissemination of information process needs to be improved and there was a relation on friday by the f b i that talked about the improvements that are going to be going to be made and are being made in cooperation with the department of defense our encouragement was that we didn't tell him exactly how to do this by the way we don't do policy we were reviewing policy now you want people that are going to do policy to be confirmed by the congress not not to be able to call them on to do this in a matter of a few weeks i believe that i'm sure that having having been there so what i'm suggesting is wait we suggested what ever that outcome is what needs to be done is to ensure that the right from texas mr burgess be allowed to participate in today's hearing after all committee members of the have an opportunity to ask questions without objection thank you sectarian admiral the concern i think that that all of us feel probably most keenly is are there are other potential threats out there or do we have other potential people that are in the system and the system is not adequately working to to find them but are we open to further problems such as such as we've seen the report was strangely sila on whether or not major hasan gave any clear evidence of his radicals or whether there were any substantive clues about that radicalization that his supervisor should have acted upon we know from media reports of at least three instances where he acted in a manner in hindsight that should have raised concerns about his allegiance to the united states and possibly prompted actions by a supervisor his statement that shari'a law from the constitution his religious discussions with patients and his presentation to his colleagues that equated suicide bombers to service members who died for this nation what substantive evidence is your review turned up regarding major hasan's actions or statements they gave or should have given his supervisors any indication of his radicalization to what degree did the three instances i cited in my opening to this question arouse concern by major hasan supervisors about the appropriateness of such statements or actions and what was done with regard to those concerns and what policies practices and procedures limited or blocked the ability of major hasan supervisors to appropriately assess his developing radicalization and then and then i'm concerned if political correctness was involved here the i could answer your question in a very fulsome way we're in a closed session and we're not and and would welcome the opportunity to do that because there are real answers to your questions and those  those will be spoken to in the right time when it's and there's authorization to release that kind of information let me just make one comment about your question are there others out there  to make sure that it is clear why i don't have an answer to that that the answer to that would not be evident by researching the clarity and the viability  policies which is fundamentally what we have done the secretary ask us to find these weaknesses on our core in our structure in our architecture and i don't know how to express the  breadth that over the course of this this whole discussion it sometimes doesn't come through with just the way the written word comes out but that answer specifically has to come from the collection of entail sources we did not pursue entail at all by direction and we go off on abroad and hunt themselves that they could put the crosshairs on the areas that they had to go after first and so as a follow on to the things that that secretary west addressed it is clear that your question about what's the nature of the breadth of this look like that question has to be answered and we simply we didn't go there because we weren't interested and we went there because that was not our task and we really do not i don't not have an answer for you that said the things that secretary west commented on we do believe that there are there are indicators and those indicators need to be examined because the issue of self radicalization is one that is new to us in many many ways and i listed that's a series of kinds of behaviors that could lead to violence that are well documented in policy and directives and programs such is not the case when we talk about self radicalization that needs to be addressed with speed training and so they make their judgments based on that and that happens in the case of every medical officer and so it would have happened in the case of this office there are several members sitting on the board or they allowed to  in my time as the chief this was one of the very important things that the secretary of the service and myself including specifics about the guidance that went to the to the board y very exacting terms the kinds of affirmation that can come before the board and this is to ensure that everybody has an equal opportunity to promotion and all the things that go with that man has been developed over the years if you take our comment on page six and seven of the report when we comment on the fact that it is our view that something is or mr overlooked you know that can give  you a glimpse inside what our opinion is and again i would love i have i don't like the idea that i am and have a date and what i'm allowed to talk to about in an open hearing about this i wish it was otherwise but i would just say to you this you can take comfort in the process if that communicates to you you can take comfort in the process what they are allowed to review is what is  specifically ours or any material that the member chooses to put in front of the board and there's a very exacting process that has to occur that if there's other information going to be placed in front of the board and that's all i can say in an open command i can only repeat what i said i wish i could say more what thank you so much i don't want to take the much time but thank you for your service and i just hope that we can get to the bottom of it and the reason i'm asking these questions is because not only could we're just wondering whether we can also and maybe this is not in your line you do you look at it or do it but i worry about our service people in afghanistan in iraq and hoping that we don't get those bad people to be able to infiltrate thank the gentleman from texas mr burleson thank you both very much for your service i have a button with a message which i cherish it was given to me by ha baker who was a principal architect of the guidance system for the patriot missile i know him primarily in his role as a unapologetic defender of the second amendment right and i never saw her without his hat and this but not at that said politically incorrect and proud of it indeed that button was such a part of happy baker that i tended to  always pleased to see that it was there on him in his casket i probably should be wearing that button today because maybe i'm going to be politically incorrect i suspect that these  officers might have felt that they were following policy because they had to policies which were in conflict one of them was to be politically correct and not appear to profile the other was to o competent evaluation of the performance of the of the officer now one cannot get inside their head but i would suspect that they may have given more weight to the politically correct policy that you don't profile by the way do profile people understand that if you're looking for it right you're probably not looking too hard preadolescent males and women i suspect that if  ethnicity had been different here that policy might have been applied differently how do we get a proper balance between political correctness and the obligation to honestly and fairly evaluate and i know that people think they know what it means but but i'm not so sure i think what we're talking about quite frankly how do we do what we have to do to get the information to the people who are likely harm attributing characteristics to the entire group and convicting one person before we actually learn what's happening with that person and so i don't think there's a real tension here that we can't deal with  we've made these recommendations in our report that we can look for objective indicators if you have objective indicators if you catalog them that's why we recommend an ongoing organization to do just like that look at the indicators that a person might commit violence make them available and make our decisions on that basis we'll be able to get the job done and we won't have to worry about p c or any other short term suggest that we are not looking at a group because they're in a group i think that the average american would like us to be a little politically incorrect in circumstances like this if it's going to result in better security would you agree admiral i absolutely believe that the people of the united states expect and they should expect that we will pursue the best security posture that we know how to possess and certainly our people deserve nothing less my take on this is that this is especially challenging and this is why i'd refer to the secretary of defense again commenting on the nature of the rapidly changing environment the last decade you know the fourth generation clearly that we have done an adequate job identifying these indicators are from our focus is on i den five the behavior so weak weapon enabled the commanders in the command i love one of the things that the chairman of the organizations to understand what is going on in their command and for the chain of command to be function functioning in a vibrant a way and that's the adjured of these kinds of problems and challenges the new reality is that  the guidance on what kind of behaviors to look for for the self radicalized individual are inadequate and i will tell you that already some of them published i saw a review of one message that went out in the united states army yesterday which i did go in and look at in this discussion and i think this is going to be a frustrating experience trying to figure out where to go for the american people and policymakers if we have this dichotomy between a discussion here kind of in generalities versus talking about a specific case and i need to understand that by the way that's not a classified document is for official use only it is one thing if we had out in that room the criminal case file interrogation the matter with his lawyer whatever is there but in fact what you all are conducting is an administrative proceeding based on the records that are in the military in order to problem solve and it's not clear to me why the american people are not entitled to because as part of the problem solving process unredacted career reviews performance in college and we've concluded then because based on that that he's a criminal i mean help me with that here's a problem we're going to have not the right time to have this discussion when is the right time going to be observation in order for the american people to understand this part of the process we had five teams and one of the teams dealt with the scribed in the terms of reference look at the gaps look at the weaknesses look at the application here so that it is clear that we thought through the longer term process the person that headed that effort for us now was a four star general from the united states army and it is not just coincidence that he has already been given the task by the secretary of the army we recommended that secretary of defense refer the findings that we have in hand to the secretary of the army and the secretary of the army his name that same officer to proceed with the case in order to proceed to the process and rapidly come to the judgment of ability thank the gentleman mr chairman thank you very much and to the admiral and to the general thank you very much i had the privilege of being with you in previous years when you were in uniform and it's a pleasure and this important work done to try to get to the bottom of little different direction on those who evaluated his performance probably hurting very badly because maybe they did not see what they i know there's an investigation going on by the military as it relates to what criminal actions might have taken place but is there an environment where we have more and so we all need to understand their stress on the force now one of the things that and so i agree with you that that these are realities and these people  came to the conclusion about by the way the secretary gave us specific instructions to go look at the care of the health care givers and we haven't addressed that yet today we're getting of the conviction that they largely have been treated as a separate group we believe they need to be treated just like a combatant they need the same kinds of programs and support and all that goes with that  and so we did not look at t b i p t s d that what the secretary had of you i guess that he didn't need our view on that he must have looked at that he had that one where he where you needed it  and so we came to the conclusion that these people are a critical part of the readiness posture of the united states military and so great care is required and programs to support them  where one of the direct supervisors for the last year and a half now retired colonel i believe who had retired had been out of the military for about six months was on radio talk show talking about this alleged attacker and i don't know if you all got that interview but went on and on for about half an hour about all the signs with respect to this alleged attacker and how he never reported it i think it comes down to two things one it's always difficult as a manager and if you go  word we were just talking about the alleged perpetrator they were responsible for developing him and educating him and training him and developing in the field of medicine face today to look harder for the information and once we get it to consider whether we don't need to make sure it's passed along to the right places and perhaps active but the danger you mention you feel somewhat constrained by you've been told to talk just in a particular specific area fortunately we're not constrained in and don't seem to fit into boxes very easily anyway and the term political correctness has come up number of times this morning and it seems to be the high end in my mind i guess it seems to me standing back looking at the forest from a distance you've got a guy who is muslim but we also know that some percentage of these guys get radical and they're the ones that start wars and things in the middle east and blow people up we've got one of them that works for the military and he got radical on us and shot a bunch of people that seems to be just the simple face of it maybe that's not politically correct but it appears to be the facts so my question is as i read through all of this report there's no there's nothing that really makes a reference to theology or religion or what drives this guy and i suppose maybe there's a difference of opinion maybe some people think that somebody committed a crime like somebody just goes wacky in the office and decides to shoot some people and perhaps the other prospects given that we're dealing with an act of war an act of terror where somebody because of an ideological motivation decided that something tripped him the decide it was time to do holy war  you have been tasked the gentleman with looking at procedure and it seems to me the procedure would have to take a look at people who are potentially time bombs even if it's a time bomb motivated by theology or by some sort hey watch out for people that are from a certain sect of mohammad or whatever it is that potentially can go crazy and can we look at that when you're looking at somebody performance appraisal and watch for that i guess people call it profiling but when we look for indicators of potential violence with respect to procedurally we can do that it's not illegal when you're reviewing somebody's profile or their jacket they say comes before you and this guy people who are willing to work to thank you sir madam secretary west has answered the question exactly right and my early focus in my opening statement about violence and indicators is all about the subject that you are raising to us and i had not down on all the different kinds of categories of people but the focus is violence we didn't care where it came from we wanted to come forward with recommendations that said go look at this an area of self radicalization the end of caters or not understood and therefore we don't react well because we have not spent the time to talk  within the department about what those indicators are as i indicated just friday the armies of publishing the best that they've got today are our recommendation says you need to put together a group of people and look at this long term this isn't going to stop this is not a single point solution ever could i just got in because my clock is running pretty tight here i still think we have this figured out and part of what concerns me is that after this event at fort hood we had this guy louis sofie speaking luis off the is part of the islamic society of north america and according to the justice department is connected with the muslim brotherhood we're talking about a guy who is one of these money launderers who is a radical islamic and he's speaking to make people feel better at fort hood about islam i think we need to build in somehow the political correctness is overriding looking at the common sense that there's factors that drive this behavior and that's got to be built into our model and out of t care of mental health professionals or providers or professionals overall they looked at the issue of provider for medical provider what can you tell us about what you saw in function that's something that needs to be examined also look at policies in the way that they're put in place for example in order to care for the combatant there is a policy and one of the services where the doctors come home in order to provide continuity of care physicians with national guard for example tri care that sounds great but there may be some downsides if i could just get into another personnel issue because i think it's been addressed about the appropriate judgment and standards of officer ship as you spoke about and we know and even not necessarily in the military but in medical school generally that it is difficult to  perhaps inhibit a person's career in some way and that that has its downsides in terms of the processes personnel practices we've talked about that that you have to go through are are you  found is there is the educational side of this the dockside of this and that's one review group and then there's the officer side of this the secretary and i were having a discussion one afternoon talking about the specifics of this and wondering about the what ifs there's no way to know if this counseling had occurred if that kind of you know what was it like and the core of our institution is that we grow and develop people we're proud of what happens when young people in the united states of america go serve and the mom and dad and aunts and uncles see about  how they grow and when they when they get home that's the essence of what officer ship is about and creating and establishing in enforcing standards we suggested it be looked at thanks  thank you mr chairman mr secretary and we thank you again for your service you're both good and decent men who've done great things for our country and sometimes we see today that the american people oftentimes feel that we don't ask the questions that they wish we would ask and they constantly asked the question do you want to ask what you don't ask the ones that are really on our mind and they've indicated recently they're not going to tolerate that anymore so we struggle here to try to get our arms around the questions it's really of concern to them and here's what they seem to be saying they're concerned about individual acts of violence and that's what we talk about but even more concern  is when those individual acts of violence have an association or support from a more orchestrated longstanding patterns of violence that are kind of woven into the tapestry of concern to the american people that seems to be whether that political correctness of the military personnel from plying their policy the way they would have done that looks like to have been a question and even more particularly my question  for prohibited actions and activities here's the instruction d o d instruction and in our view it needs work when i ask myself that question i get to the problem probably don't use the words that you would use maybe i would maybe i wouldn't that's not the point the point is we were focusing on violence violence that would generate from any source do we have it covered do we have the guidelines in place so that commanders know what the reaches of their authority are and what indicators they can they can say that one crosses the line in our view and then i talked about information sharing this is a puzzle that fits together and if they do not have all the information that would allow them to connect the dots they won't get the right answer our conclusion is that these areas require immediate focus and we want to get that balance both of you talked about but to get it we've guidelines and then leaders take over we use the term officer ship because we want to differentiate just between really leaders and the requirement that an officer has that is even beyond what leaders are required to do to create the environment for success for our people so with regard to suggesting that the connection of the dots all had to be done to solve all the problems we have and said that we haven't taken that position we have said that there were indicators that were there and they were either massed or on page six and seven when i spoke to earlier  o clearly the essence of the institution is about leadership i talked about the growth and development aspect of it but then helping people along the road on the growth and development process with the kind of feedback that oftentimes changes their life changes their future and so what and that's why i find myself  alignment that said we were asked to look at gaps and weaknesses and we can see that there were things that would have even made it more clear had the dots been connected and we then talk about information sharing we're not talking about information sharing across agencies we're talking about what happens from command to command information that does not move because it's kept in local files and not as part of the official record and we believe that in order to deal with this evolving threat is that the secretary his words where that has really evolved in the last decade but the changing threat what happens when you have the alleged perpetrator being here as directed in the terms of reference training education supervision and promotion of the alleged perpetrator of the incident at fort hood i know that's how we talk and there are lawyers everywhere so we have an than you said mr secretary that you thought that we need to look carrying this information forward and i think you're on to something there i know that now many many years ago when i was a many more and thank you for that by the way that ability to keep track of our men and women has gone further and further away from commanders notebook to the fact that you can't keep track of major events that have occurred in the lives of our men and women in uniform so the question to you is i can't quite track it here but have you made a specific recommendation to do something specific about some statute or is that part of the reference for action by the secretary of the army or something can you address th  also you know your comments about the platoon commander reminds me again what officer ship is all about and it also aligns itself with what the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff s on day one i expect the chain of command to function effectively and know what is going on in the unit and in the group with respect if i may i want to got twenty but the point is that officer ship needs some tools and that platoon reference throughout talking about giving them the tools that they need and the gaps that exist and so measures that have measures that have occurred because of interpretations of what policy review is all about and so if it requires your kind of action well then it's exciting to know that there are people in the congress that are ready to lead that effort mr chairman but thank the gentleman yes yes please respond carries a recommendation that i think goes to what you said the ability to collect information and to carry it forward so that's part of what you had to the second thing is you mentioned that the that the victims and the wounded mississippi thank both you gentlemen for your continued service of the nation at moma directive that you think is the first time you've appeared before this committee out of uniform so you are free to speak your mind  could this have happened on your watch and regardless of how you answer that why and what's the message for the base commanders who are still in uniform a judge today that the policies and the programs and the procedures that guidance on authorize and prohibited activities are inadequate today and i would suggest that they were inadequate that we're talking about protecting our people in our workplace focus on the violence indicators and then once you do that somebody doesn't include does it include that of course it includes anything that is going to create harm for our people go deal with it create to get that guidance on the indicators and empower and enable the commander so they can take the actions they need and next in the case of this individual did anyone did any of his coworkers or did any of his patients raise an alarm flag and say i think this guy's dangerous i wrote this down at the top of my page i am constrained i if you want to invite me back for another day to have discussions about other topics i'm here representing this review and representing this area of discussion i'm restricted and i'd be happy to talk about it  so i think we have classification it ought to be politically embarrassing and that ought to be a classification top secret confidential politically embarrassing because a lot of the information the majority of that has come before the committee that has been classified is merely classified because politically embarrassing let me go to a question general casey had said right after the incident that after these people were killed that it was a great tragedy but it would be a greater tragedy if in fact we overreacted and i think he was those are not a part of this committee's work but other committees in the congress it's a matter of what in the public domain improvements need to be made in that regard and that that they would want counterintelligence operation to where they were vetted to where there were no question about there are a lot to do this this country but i think they are a valuable asset to  the armed forces the united states thank you again i yield back mr chairman thank the gentleman mister thank you mr chairman and thank you gentlemen for being here this morning and for the work you've done and i apologize that i had my own hearing so i information in terms of with the kind of intelligence we know we have and have the capability to evaluate internally your  good to see you again sir in the entire area of information sharing our recommendation in the simplest way to say it is take down the barriers get rid of them and make sure that you do it inside the apartment but certainly do it any enter a process i have in front of me i made it really f b i release on friday saying the series of things are going to be done in your other committee i know this will become something that you're going to look at now other investigations have occurred the president chartered an examination of the intelligence process i'm sure that subject to your other your other work but my response would be just as it was to mr taylor i'm not here to represent that report i'm here to represent this report but our recommendation is we need the barriers removed we need to  and we need to make sure that they command we're going to hold the commanders responsible and to do that we need to make sure that they have the tools and sometimes the tool is maybe a risk assessment tool that helps them look at a series of information other times it's straightforward raw ourselves within that a part defense from one commander to another from one command level to another to get the information that is needed to make assessments the second one know represent fort bliss and i get a chance to talk to soldiers and their families one of and i'm curious to hear your thoughts one of the things that they're conflicted about is the fact that before they deploy they're expected to read up and know about the country they're going to afghanistan and in  internet activity by all of us do we want to live in a country that creates a surveillance program of thoughts and ideas and those kinds of activities in our quest to be safe there's a movie out there tom cruise started it where they set in place a system to anticipate crime and they would go and punish folks who would commit a crime in the future before was committed just because it occurred that we don't sacrifice that in this quest to be safe because i don't know that you'll ever get there and you will be safe enough and i don't know that i want to live in a world where i can't go to the internet or some expectation of anonymity to look we've done better on this one and so what we want to do as well as we know how to do and the key word again is this balance and that's just why we took great care not to define exact outcomes but say mr secretary as you look at this this is an area you need put a spotlight on when you look at policy programs and procedures we believe that there prove to be harvested here and then people in responsible positions in the administration make a decision about what that balance is going to be and we believe that that is going to require everybody to challenge assumptions and then move forward with and certainly the congress has a role to play in all of that i think under i think i think i'm the last member here so i guess i'm the end of the totem pole so hopefully i just i just think that if we are ending here we need to get back to the beginning and that's what the chairman said and i think that you've seen consistency on both sides of the aisle here a lot of the questions that we have over here are the same questions that were raised on the other side and i think that the chairman though said it best at the beginning what we have here is two issues that the american people in my district and i'm sure across this country are concerned with and that that deals with the breakdown between communication the federal agencies the department of defense department of the army the f b i the cia whoever should have known about these things or been communicating i mean after nine eleven as we all know that's why we have homeland security so we don't have these breakdown in communication between federal agencies that's one thing that's not acceptable to the american people so those questions and those solutions as we move forward and i understand that you're under restriction i'm a former judge advocate i served at fort hood i was in the first calvary division and my son was born at the hospital that major assigned work that so it's very emotional for me to to sit here and but as as a lawyer i understand what your restrictions are and what the army you know i always say that you know people that are quick to react to the situation what the army has done or not done and my anisha will push back is we need to give the army the benefit of the doubt that we're doing things the right way and there aren't we're not purposely doing things to expose people to risk or danger that we can do better and and i think that you know with this review hopefully that that's true and whether or not you can address that specifically that we will get better and that as as admiral you said that if we have inadequate policies that those dots will be connected and we will address them in the future  one question though i did have with that admiral and i don't know if you're specifically saying that you alluded to the fact that commanders will be held responsible and i don't know if that means retrospectively because that there were things missed but i don't really understand what you mean when you said that the if the policy is inadequate but we're going to hold commanders responsible how can you hold commanders responsible if the policy was what it was thank you for the opportunity to clarify  certainly what happens when issues like this come up and hearings are held the judgment is did the commander do what he would do with the tools that he had and so that's what i'm saying if it's within the ability of the commander  to have the affirmation that's required to take the actions or to pursue the lines of inquiry then they're held accountable if they do not have which is certainly the case in a number of things that were citing today were policy we believe an adequate but then that's another story and that as a former judge advocate you know how you would advise a commander when it came before you and i will i didn't finish my point with the chairman his second point was what what may or may not have been missed with regard to major hassan and how we connect those dots and have the correct policy that's adequate and what we can expect from our commanders moving forward so those are the two things i think that the american people quite simply want to know and i'll just if i could clean up a few things here because i have a minute left mr west absolutely a terrorist act could could have been one of the charges referred here you know whether or not it is or it isn't i actually don't know the more i know that there's murder premeditated attempted murder charges here but within the rules and scope of the law a terrorist act is certainly evident here you know i'm not going to question why i was or was not charged but you're right well we were not there yet it may be ok and i do just want to close with this i think that with this idea that's been raised a few times here with political correctness versus good order and discipline disagree a little bit with what was just said all of these guys wearing the uniform behind you understand when they sign up that they are sacrificing a lot of constitutional rights that the rest of us that's part of sacrifice that's part of service and we know that when we're signing our name on the dotted line and file and getting into formation every morning i mean that's part of the deal but i just think that it needs to be i think that needs to be remembered that the supreme court is up held time and time again that for the sake of good order and discipline sacrificing some of the rights that we civilians have including political correctness for the sake of the you know it might not be all politically correct in the military that that the military gets to do that to keep us safe so with that i just thank you for your service and and for your testimony and very very you know our report points out that there are differences between uniformed members and civilians in the department and i i then refer back to mr mccance comments early on that this is not just an issue in the department of defense and so if you look at this kind of threat that we're describing we're talking about a challenge to us as a people and so we didn't say don't change those rules don't change that mix but we did point out that it's different and so when we then examine the whole force protection environment we have to understand what we have and we have to make judgments and those judgments have to made on balance and then those policies have to be defined and then able in way that goes back to the point that we've pressed here let's  equip and enable the commanders the leaders in these institutions so that they can lead the command in and with the context of good order and discipline and all that goes with that mission m final comment thank you mr chairman then and again thank you for being here and for being able to answer some questions and not being able to answer questions i don't know if we all understand all of that but but it is what it is  i said in my opening statement the officer takes an old to support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic i also said in my questioning that the media reports that we had been given one of them was that major hasan had made a statement that shari'a law from the constitution what i want to know is if you can answer that did he in fact say that yes or no cite it if somebody is an officer in the armed services and they make a statement such as i quoted that would indicate opposition to the oath that they took as an officer why would they have a right to be promoted to higher rank or why are they even indeed left as an officer in the service i think it's fair to say that statements like that comment was in the restricted annex any comments that he might have said that we decided to include an annex are in that restricted section and we would i would personally enjoy the fulsome discussion on that particular subject and thank the general and let me in summary if you agree with my comments that we've all been frustrated as you know by our inability to discuss all aspects of the shooting at fort we talked about it at length side our review just a couple of days ago one of the staff members came up and provided me with this instruction that has it in it and it happens to be from the uniformed services university of health elements that unify the role of a commissioned officer in the united states of america talks about upholding the constitution and they and then that standards and and and all of the things that we would expect that go with the leadership and a person who decides to live a life style of service and the role of leadership supporting the goals and objectives of that and the principles and values of the united states of america i think you know mr mccann joins me as well as all the members of the committee thank you for your service on this panel your leadership course the fact that you've been standing american leaders in the past thank you very very much thank you m