got overnight and i see that we have some members and hopefully the members will be able to come in i don't know how many are affected by the weather today today marks the fourth annual threat assessment our purpose here today is to address the threats we will face in the future it's not an effort to monday morning quarterback what has happened in the last year obviously is not relevant the challenges we have faced are in some ways indications of what we will face in the near future we've seen in recent months the tragedy of self radicalization and homegrown threats both in the attacks on the soldiers and attempted bombing on christmas day and the conspiracy of zazi in new york in the christmas day attempt we saw that we still have a ways to go to improve our defenses against terrorism in the zazi case frankly we saw that i believe times we get this right and really the times that we've gotten things right a khost afghanistan we saw the grave risks faced by the men and women of the intelligence community they paid the ultimate price and made a sacrifice that we as americans must never forget the central lesson of all these things is clear today more than eight years after september the eleventh our principal challenge is the same identify terrorist plots and stop them before they harm american citizens and american interest qaeda and its affiliates are determined the day as ever to harm the united states addressing that threat i think involves attacking the problem on three fronts at home in the border regions of afghanistan and pakistan and finally in emerging terrorist safe havens around the world on the home front we have to address the threat of terrorism within the united states and and the problem of self radicalization the shootings at fort hood were devastating to have you address are what steps will you take to identify and address terrorist threats within the united states how will we strike the proper balance between law enforcement and intelligence and i fully understand and know that this issue has been hotly debated lately but i want to know what your plan is what you will do going forward in the border regions of afghanistan and pakistan our efforts to fight extremists are greatly dependent on cooperation from both governments those governments struggle with the challenges of both internal threats and corruption despite the best intentions of our allies the afghan taliban is gaining strength back the taliban and building stability in afghanistan over the past seven years the war in iraq placed a huge burden on the intelligence intelligence community resources continues to support our war fighting operations in iraq today i am particularly interested to hear how you are supporting the president's strategy of increased operations in afghanistan as the united states continues to draw down its troops in iraq in pakistan the government recently claimed strain on its military pakistan could not launch any new offensive against extremists in north waziristan for at least six months havens we only have to remember that the bombing of the u s s cole in october of two thousand and to remind us that the threat from terrorist activities in yemen is not a new threat however yemen is not the only area of the world that a s terrorists relative safety to plan to train and to launch potential attacks against the united states and our allies in past years this committee has taken particular interest in somalia and areas of north africa horn of africa has been a particular concern for many years because they have weak central governments or experience great instability that might allow the creation of safe havens to develop our primary concern is raising this issue in raising this issue is one of sufficient resources so the questions are does the intelligence community have sufficient collection and analytical resources directed at understanding the political and economic military and the leadership dynamics of these nations in this  conflict if part of our world terrorism sadly is not the only threat that we face iran and north korea still pose significant threats to u s interests and to international security i remain extremely concerned about iran's nuclear weapons program especially in light of the revelation of a second nuclear enrichment facility it seems that the prospects for diplomatic dialogue are diminishing as the iranian government's crackdown on its people becomes more violent just overnight the iranians claim to have the capability to launch satellites into space those are all daunting challenges  on many different fronts but certainly affect our ability to have a clear understanding of the intelligence challenge that it poses poses to us i'm also quite concerned about north korea nuclear and missile program in january north korea issued statements proposing peace treaty talks and sanctions removal before turns to nuclear talks however just last week north korea exchanged fire with south korea raising tensions on a regional basis what is the intelligence community's current assessment of this program and this region and have we seen any willingness from north korea to dismantle the program as a precondition to negotiations china a u s ally still clearly poses a threat to our national interests although the president has promised a more conciliatory era in u s china relations we cannot ignore the chinese oriented cyber attacks and the continued and significant build up of the chinese navy despite reports the contrary i hope that china remains a top priority  for our intelligence community the united states continues to be a victim of a disturbing increase in the scope of maryland and potency of cyber attacks whether the perpetrator is a terrorist organization or a state actor the threat to our energy financial communications and security infrastructure remains the same the intelligence community has a critical role to play in understanding the threat securing our classified information technology systems and working with the business community to secure our critical infrastructures in the last year we have stepped back from the brink of financial ruin and even  nal global financial depression while times are still hard the greatest threat and the greatest threat has has passed we still have many challenges on those fronts i fear that one cyber attack could put us right back where we were a year ago on the brink of potential economic disaster finally i'm interested to hear your assessment of that i continue to monitor closely and that is the rampant violence in mexico related to drug trafficking organizations and criminal gangs and the calderon's of ministrations willingness to take those organizations on what mexico has concerned about the situation as you know director blair right across the border from my district is a city that has seen a staggering number of murders kidnappings and other violent years have witnessed a tremendous amount of violence and mass shootings and that raises the level of concern to our national security this is not just a matter of mexico's national security those of us who live on the border know that our future our futures are linked and that narco related criminal activity is just as much our problem as it is mexico's to that in i'm interested to hear how the intelligence community is coordinating with the government of mexico in the continued fight against traffickers and criminal gangs again director blair i thank you for being here this morning i know i've given you a lot to respond to but as you know we have many challenges coming at us from very varied and different areas globally and so we appreciate your willingness to come here and share your thoughts with with the committee so i'll close by noting that i have great respect for the men and women of the intelligence community who are working under your guidance throughout the world i take great pride in working on their behalf in congress and i am committed to making sure that they have the resources they need to protect our nation from the many threats that face us all collectively so with that let me know recognize the ranking member for any comments he may wish to make in his opening statement thank you mr chairman director blair it's good to have you here today mr chairman i've got a written statement but i'd like to submit the record and without objection for a couple of minutes i want to kind of change the tone a little bit and i want to talk about accountability i want to talk about the inability of the community to hold itself accountable for its performance and what i see an increasing from my perspective a demonstration that th community is unwilling to be held accountable by the congress and this committee how do i come to this conclusion we are coming to a to a close on a very painful chapter in the intel community the shoot down of americans the death of a mother and a daughter in peru almost nine years ago the accountability board has recently finished its work but if there's ever an example of justice delayed justice denied the justice or the accountability board was empaneled to investigate the wrongful death of these two americans misleading and some might say lying to congress by the intel community and the result of this is after eight years there's been minimal accountability i think the only reason that there's been any and accountability is because of the work of of exactly what happened in that fateful day in two thousand and one but the information that i've been told that i could share with the family was mistakes were made people were held accountable and it won't happen again that's totally unacceptable and i hope that under your leadership leadership of director panetta this family will get a much more accounting of what happened to their wife their daughter their grandchild on that day the community for months in terms of accountability has been unacceptable from my perspective you could almost say that the bureaucracy one these were americans that were killed with the help of their government the community covered it up they delayed levels of leadership within the community to hold itself accountable in perhaps the most tragic of circumstances were people family members were killed by their own government or with the help of their own government maybe you can explain today why it took eight years more than a year for there to be any type of accountability my second point is this committee can't do it if you don't share information with us it was last week that we began a hearing by holding up the washington post now because the washington post had more information than this committee had about what the intel community might be doing and were guards to targeting americans today we get a story from the new york times the white house hastily called a briefing on tuesday evening to discuss the new details of this case i wish you would  to get your best information on what's going on in the intel community today it appears you go to the newspaper and these are not the only two instances and also concerns for good to get information specific instructions from people in the intel community the information and the administration say when congressman hoekstra and he ask questions about these areas where he has oversight tell him you can't answer those questions and that information will be forthcoming when he comes back to michigan or when he comes back to washington d c what is the community unwilling to share with this committee what policies can pass public scrutiny or pass the scrutiny of this committee and finally i do want to get back i do want to get back to the story  i want to get back to the story that was in the washington post last week targeting of america it's a very sensitive issue but the again there's been more information in the public domain than what has been shared with this committee for bin laden for years he's an american he's been charged with treason we know more recently the north virginia northern virginia five people who are now under arrest in pakistan for supposedly terrorist connection we all know about a lot of american born radical cleric who is connected in certain ways with fort hood and is connected to the about how we deal with america we went through a painstaking process to develop that policy and hopefully get by and by the administration and congress you know the probably the best example of that is the terrorist surveillance program about how tools could be used against various targets including america but we went through a very painstaking process so that we all on this committee kind of understood the rules and the intel community understood what those rules were going to be and the box that they had operate with then in other cases we had congressional gang of eight briefings on some of the most sensitive issues but it was and it partner ship between the administration and this committee or representatives of this committee on the most  us policy i can't think of anything that is more sensitive in this threat that we face today of this emerging trend of them targeting americans for recruitment and sometimes being successful and how we will respond to those americans who are successfully recruited and have decided that they are now part of a radical jihadist movement targeting their fellows we need we need to understand and develop that policy we need to understand it because we need to do the oversight we need to know and understand and help shape the box that the intel community and the u s government has when it's dealing with america it's obvious in t wo thousand and one that the rules may have been clear but the policy was not implemented very well when we shot down the plane in peru the concern that i have today is that i'm not sure that the box is very clear or very well understood as to what the people in your organization can do when it comes to americans who have joined the enemy we've asked the questions of chairman has indicated he has a genuine interest in getting to the answers and understanding the question that i have when will the answers be forthcoming when will the administration submitted to having that dialogue with this committee so that we can understand and help shape that box and then that we will be in a position to do the oversight that needs to be done i can't think of anything that's more important for this committee to do at this point in answer the question because there's nothing more dangerous to this country than americans who have joined the s the amount of information that gets leaked and then i would remind all of us that although sensational some of that information gets reported in the in the media we have known and have heard from our experts in closed session that a lot of that information is wrong a lot of that information is embellished a lot of that information is untrue so it is aggravating and irritating let's make sure we keep that in perspective the other thing i want to mention before i recognized director blair is that  when mr hoekstra talks about the lack of information i have and i believe he has been contacted by members of the administration i know on christmas day when that we've had information but i also know i guess it's based on my law enforcement experience that it takes we need to give our professionals that you work with mr director at the time to fully investigate to find out what all the circumstances are and then bring people in and get to the correct information rather than information that's missed reported and misconstrued and and misused and in some cases so with that i just want to keep things in perspective we do have serious challenges that we have to face  was taking that issue very seriously i can remember back to the initial hearing that we held where i raised some issues that the circumstances of that shooting really didn't didn't make sense to me because you had a dynamic in there where people were having to translate several times before the action was taken so those are all things that we hope will come out in this subcommittee investigation and look forward to those results and then moving forward with how how do we make sure that that community and in the support that we give to the department of defense which is the other branch of government which blow stuff up and kills people we follow a set of defined policy and seriously we spend a lot of time making sure we're doing the right thing whether it's in collection or and in direct action and we can discuss some details subsequently but let me turn to let me turn to the overall threat record and in their remarks that will let me start with the subject of information technology since we all know on a on a personal and on the business basis every day there are new there are new gadgets the services which make our lives faster and more efficient but i think what we don't quite understand as seriously as we should is the extent of malicious cyber activity that grows with going out on precedented  extraordinary sophistication and the dynamic of cyber space when you look at the technological balance right now it favors those who want to use the internet for malicious purposes over those who want to use it for legal and lawful purposes and we have to deal with that with that reality and additional important factor is the growth of international companies and supplying both software and hardware not only to private companies in this country but also for our sensitive u s government networks this increases the potential for subversion of the information and in those systems that there is an intrusion of google is yet another wake up call about just how seriously we have to take a program cyber crime is on the rise cyber bank and credit card fraud has serious implications for economic financial systems worldwide attacks against networks that control the critical infrastructure in this country and others energy transportation attacks on those infrastructures could wreak havoc cyber defenders right now simply the facts of the matter have to spend more and work harder than the attackers do and our efforts frankly are not strong enough to recognize deal with that reality the united states government and the private sector and we are deeply intertwined in this in this matter have to do more to ensure that adequate cyber defenses are in place let me turn to the global economy where the trends are more positive a year ago i was here warning about the dangers of a global depression but in that year an unprecedented policy response by both governments around the world and by central banks has laid the foundation for a global recovery that most forecasters expect will continue through this year although unemployment will will persist and not all countries however have emerged from this and several of them are important to the united states pakistan and the ukraine are still struggling to put their economic houses in order nonetheless beijing still believes that the united states seeks to contain it to transform its society and that reform enforces their concerns about internal stability about perceived challenges to their sovereignty claims china continues to increase its defen spending preparations for a taiwan conflict involving a us intervention continues to dominate their modernization and their contingency plans and they're also increasingly concerned about how to protect their global interest with the recent rash of attacks last year both successful and and unsuccessful identifying individual terrorists small groups with short histories using simple attack methods is a much more difficult task w intelligence community community did not identify mr udell natalee before he boarded northwest flight two fifty three on christmas day for detroit we should have had as we've discussed with this community with this committee we're working hard to improve so that we can on a more positive note only a decreasing ever smaller minority of muslims support violent extremism according to a number of polls taken in many muslim  countries as radical ideology seems to appeal strongly to a group of disaffected young muslims and this is a pool of potential suicide bombers and this unfortunately includes americans although we don't have a high level homegrown every every threat intensified counterterrorism efforts in the afghan pakistan theater as well as around the world yemen somalia or elsewhere are crucial didn't mention the threat to working with our allies let me then turn to the outlook in afghanistan and pakistan where the intelligence community is putting extraordinary efforts in combination with both department offensive linemen and with several  made they can endure and responsibilities can be turned over to the afghans themselves now early successes in places like helmand where the marine units have been deployed for several months where there's an aggressive counter drug program economic improvement programs in place where local governance is competent show us that we can make valid progress we can make solid progress even where the threat is great the safe haven that the afghan insurgents have in pakistan is the group's most important outside support and disrupting that safe haven won't be sufficient by itself to defeat the insurgency in afghanistan but disrupting that presence in pakistan is a necessary and necessary condition for making overall progress in afghanistan the increase in terrorist attacks against their country has made the pakistani public more concerned about the threat from islamic extremists including al qaeda pakistanis continue to support the use of military force against insurgents in their country and islam about has demonstrated determination and persistence in combating the militants that are dangerous to its interests but it is also continued to provide some support to other pakistan groups that operate in afghanistan looking to the future u s and coalition successes against the insurgency in afghanistan could provide new long term incentives for pakistan to take steps against afghan focused militants and increased pakistani cooperation is more likely if pakistan is persuaded that the united states is committed to stabilizing afghanistan and is capable of doing so let me finally turn to iran where the available intelligence indicates that iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons this is being done in part by developing various nuclear capabilities to bring it closer to the ability to  to produce weapons one of the key capabilities around continues to develop is its uranium enrichment program published information from the international atomic energy agency that indicates that iran has significantly expanded the number of centrifuges installed in its natanz it also has had problems operating the centrifuges which is constrained the production of low enriched uranium and united states and other countries announced last september that around for in the next few years and eventually to produce a nuclear weapon the central issue is a political decision by iran to do so meanwhile around continues to improve its  the german mentioned another step it took recently and this enhanced its power and has its power projection provides iran the means for delivering a possible nuclear payload we do not know if iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons we continue to judge that it takes a cost benefit approach to making decisions on nuclear weapons and we judge that this offers the international community opportunities to influence around decision making meanwhile apart from these nuclear decisions which are of great concern to us the iranian regime has found itself in a weaker internal political situation following last year's disputed presidential election and the ensuing crackdown on protesters reacting to the stronger than expected opposition in the regime's narrowing base of support leader president ahmadinejad and their hardline allies are determined to retain the upper hand by force they are moving around in a more authoritarian direction to consolidate their power however they have not they have not been successful so far and suppressing the opposition as a chairman this is the top layer of threats there are other areas which you mention in your statement that demand o continued detention and focus looting continued security in iraq the korean peninsula weapons of mass destruction proliferation and challenges right here in the in the western hemisphere as you mentioned working with mexico against the drug cartels and also other developments in latin america i'm also prepared to discuss important transnational issues like global health and the very complexity a number of these issues large number of actors both countries non state actors increasingly constitute one of our biggest challenges as they all mix together and form a new international environment in which the united states operates but i'm very encouraged by what i've seen in the past year on the job about how the intelligence comm committee community is organizing to collect intelligence and to analyze this complexity one hundred thousand military and civilian intelligence professionals i have i have the honor to lead work hard in these problems they produce good good intelligence community this involves putting more emphasis on administrative measures within the intelligence community than turning over crimes report to the department of justice so far  crimes report method has resulted in delay justice if it's achieve justice at all and the track record is very it's very very disappointing in terms of in terms of actual convictions intelligence community there are several cases which i think we can which we can take care of pretty quickly and i think the example of being able to identify someone and take appropriate action will have a very salutary  being the internet and the availability of information that can lead to radicalization individual radicalization i have a couple of questions one is what is the the use of the internet for foreign based organizations trying to organize organize attacks give instructions arrange logistics arrange arrange arrange financing that that the spokesman of the overseas as happened with as happened with major hasan and so it's a relatively it has a significant force is relatively new we might  as you suspect be shooting behind the rabbit here and it's moving faster than we thought and we're spending a lot of a lot of additional effort now on that to try to to try to understand it and there are some technical things which are making it more difficult with the use of social networking as opposed to simply looking at a simply looking at a web site and and responding by by e mail so i think you're pointing out a threat which may be  increasingly we're taking it more and more seriously and and this is this is something that is very potentially very dangerous to us because of all of the for all of the reasons of within the intelligence with the intelligence community we have taken measures so that the intelligence information that is gathered lawfully on americans that indicates that a member of the department of defense or someone who also works for other national security agencies will be that can bring together the the agency and information plus intelligence information to identify threats to the investigation by admiral clark and secretary west  some internal b o d recommendations for our part we're going to make sure that we don't set a high threshold on that information so that we can we can catch these people and find what is the status of signed it sets out the procedures the f b i has the lead for it there are there are deputy directors one from cia one from the department of defen the principles of it are to bring bring together the best interrogators with the best intelligence backup the professionals to to interrogate important important detainee detainees the we haven't completed all of the training and the and the and the set up but even if we do we have sent teams to actually do interviews  some high value detainees who who who are who we exist now and we are using those using those principles in all  coming on online and i think it represents the best practice that we want to we want to achieve and i should mention the other part of the the other part of the charter right now it operates under army field manual both guidance and restrictions but we've given it the responsibility of doing that scientific research to determine if there are better ways to get information from people that are consistent white house speaking to reporters at the white house on the condition of anonymity and the white house hastily called a briefing on tuesday night to talk about the what was going on with the christmas day bomber from an intelligence standpoint why that why we would communicate that if we believe it's important to communicate that i'm assuming we invited al jazeera to be there last night to get that information they were quickly when we have asked people from the community about these types of questions and types of issues the one thing that is consistent there is no clarity as to how they operate there it may be there but they are not able to communicate it with any clarity what clarity can you add in terms of exactly what what is the legal framework what are the laws that govern this  we take direct action against terror in the intelligence community if that direct action we think that direct action will involve killing an american we will get specific permission to do that has to do with the ones that you outlined in your statement whether that american is involved in a group that is trying to trying to attack us whether that american is a threat to carry out the policies to protect most of the country and i think we ought to go into details and i believe that to be true ninety nine percent of the time the reason that i believe that this kind of oversight in discussion and dialogue is that it's one thing to say that we are not parallel that's why i started talking about peru because in peru we were careless and we were right and i want to make sure that this committee does everything that is within its power that it does not allow the community to be reckless and careless  absolutely sure that committee's determination that while i'm in charge we will not be jealous and reckless and i look forward to supervise vision from the committee on that on that score we've got to get this right all right thank you thank you thank you not threat assessments i just want to raise to and then i have some other questions when we go into into closed session what i think that we're all very concerned way i can't help but think that if we had this kind of system in place that the that abdul fatah libs name would have been flagged despite the spelling  can you tell us in the in the upcoming in the new budget that's been submitted the president's budget what you have included in that budget that will address the disparities that we have in what i think is a is a disconnected system i think it's it's a it's a key issue that we have to look at and if you might take a moment to describe exactly what progress you expect to make through the f y eleven budget under the information integration plan that's number one and number two there have been reports in the last few days about moonlighting in the intelligence community i think that this is a bad policy a for many reasons why there would be cia agents that are working with reportedly with hedge funds to teach them the art of deception i think we've had enough deception on the part of the financial community that has brought so much down around our ears in the in the country but this is a troubling policy we've had a reliance on contractors if we're not paying people adequately then i think that it's the responsibility of the community to come forward but i think that this is a policy that issue let me let me in closed session talk about some of the specifics of the technical upgrades to the both the search engines and the database databases and the algorithms like the fuzzy logic to  we are allocating additional additional money and we are going to we had a plan of gradually increasing technology and we are speeding up that planning putting more resources into it and putting more people to the problem and i'll talk about those in closed session on the issue of moonlighting sometimes i do i'm surprised by what i read in the press about my own organization i will tell you and this is a case of that when i when i went into it i found that we do have we do have rules within all of the intelligence community branches which which comply with the overall government rules the main activity of which i'm personally aware i know some of our officials and on the o backgrounds that i think you know what i'm driving at if people go out into that that's one thing but i think what i've read maybe it's not accurate and but that's why i think we need to have a full review of it we have people going out and working for hedge funds and other places so that they can make more money but they are government employees i think that there is a real potential for a conflict so i think we need to but i was stunned to read about it i have to tell you it sounded more like fiction to me than in fact and that's why i raised it and i think that we need to take a good strong look at it i certainly shall but i do know that the rules are that you have reason that would happen other than political cover national security reason that it would be helpful to the people in the intelligence community to have it broadcast from the white house reality and politics having to do with this with this issue i just try to do the job to do the right thing for the country and i just can't control all of the politics i just want to and i just  think it's extraordinary to use something like this for political cover and then i've got exhibit to two days ago mr john brennan sent a letter to the talking about places we don't have covered and then do something about it for for example yemen which on christmas day popped into our consciousness was something i would say six months earlier we you that we will catch every single every single new country and what you came out i think that we devote the right attention to that problem and we and we put resources and i'll be back if we don't have an if we don't have enough resources to do it thank you too for the record that letter to the speaker was in response to a question that congressman wolf asked mr brennan in number when we had the joint session here mr chairman thank you mr director for coming and and for trying to keep us informed all along the way i like to turn to afghanistan with to what extent we are or are not succeeding and i'm trying to understand just how good the intelligence coordination is with afghan and coalition  pakistan forces i want to understand how whether you think our intelligence is structured to support the surge that  is underway for our forces well let me ask you those two questions first congressman holt i would say that we have it almost all almost all right but there are a couple of areas that i still think we need to  talk i'd be glad to talk to in closed session specifically but in the area of supporting not military but civil units who have important responsibilities the provincial rican provincial reconstruction teams the  agricultural development governance development increasing the military intelligence skills of the afghan national army i think we have a good plan but we're not quite where we where we where we want to be i'm quite satisfied with the understanding of what intelligence is needed the resources are are adequate i would say to do that job right we just haven't quite finish putting all of the pieces into place to understand where we stand with respect to the taliban we have to have a good present a good outside of kabul yes ok now going on in afghanistan how do you determine the balance between  resources devoted to what i would call traditional intelligence activities collection and analysis and and the other activities  that seem more military or paramilitary i i'm not sure that they're mutually supportive in fact i think they tend to be at times contradictory  you determine that balance i think again we need to talk in closed session more about that but it's something that i and the other leadership of the intelligence community are although you can always tweak it i think we have the balance about right and i don't think we're giving short shrift to be support for support for the various components that  need we need to to be successful and in afghanistan not i think that all of us realize that the ultimate solution in afghanistan is not either a military or intelligen solution but it's fundamentally an afghan solution of that country having the governance the economic development of security forces for most afghans to think it's a good deal too for them to be in charge rather than for the taliban to be in charge so nobody is thinking that either support for military intelligence or support from our paramilitary activities is the is the end state the end state know has a lot more to do with afghan governance and economic development and that very much influences our intelligence support to reach that final goal thank you i do appreciate your thinking is the events of the early one nine hundred ninety s when after the soviet union left afghanistan the united states left afghanistan and then the taleban came back and took it over and in one nine hundred ninety three the pakistanis i think understandably feel that they do not want an unfriendly and and  of the level of the political dimension of what to me ought to be a national security issue as has been quite quite high i don't think it's been particularly good i will tell you from the inside and in terms of trying to get the right job done to produce protect the united states and we're just trying to bring intelligence and law enforcement to bear to get the right information to make sure that those who threaten our country get behind bars and and  getting the information and the decision was made to brief members of the media is that correct is that how it happened i don't know exactly what the origins of that  good morning director blair thank you for being here i've been concerned that the united states has been too prone to outsourcing our security in various ways to and wondered to what extent this group is using contractors if at all the contractors by the will be absolutely minimal the only circumstances that we discussed in internal deliberations where it might be used if there is some language capability which is some interpretation interpreting capability that you require that we don't have a government employee who has a level of skill required we would look to contracting that's the one area increasing finally our language capacity is that still happening yes it's a very very aggressive very aggressive program i just don't like to say that there will be never somebody dialect that we don't have the best don't have a three three person available to do that we might want to go outside to get someone so we get the nuance thank you we've been we've been told in the past that the out of the interrogation right i don't enjoy those sessions anymore than that and then you do and we have established a compliance official within the n s a directly in the chain of command of that program whose job it is to ensure that we are doing it we've got votes coming up and since a director has to leave at one o'clock i would like to be able to go into closed session so i'm not going to ask anything here i'll just conferring with the ranking member it looks like we're going to we're going to be voting at twelve fifteen we'll have five votes one fifteen minute and forty five minute votes which will effectively close out the time that we have the director here so what i propose to do is close this session close the open session reconvene in our hearing room it's now sixteen till twelve reconvene their ten