this hearing will start a few minutes late because there are massive traffic delays in town and our witness is late and our witness is just walking into the building goes to show what i know thank you meeting today to discuss to receive testimony on the ongoing efforts to focus the intelligence and information sharing missions of the office of intelligence and analysis i and a and to formulate an organizational strategic plan supporting both these missions the hearing today is entitled i n a re conceived defining a homeland security intelligence role mr johnson in your excellent testimony in june you said quote given the number one responsibility of d h s is preventing terrorism the primary mission of i n a is to be the recipient and developer of intelligence that creates the kind of situational aware this that we need to stop a terrorist plot and save unquote i applaud it in fact we all applauded and i in a mission that is based upon a two way information sharing system with state local and tribal and private sector partners creating a talented analytical court ion a improving coordination among the a g s components with regard to intelligence and assuring that all these efforts respect the civil rights civil liberties and privacy of citizens while i recognize that guiding principles for an organization serve a valuable purpose i n a s history shows us that simply articulating these principles is not enough to drive its organizational mission strategy and function to a successful outcome and so this hearing is to drill down to understand what i and a is doing and will do operationally to implement the principles you ably articulated in june many of us have great confidence that your background and experience equip you uniquely to realize ins potential in june i asked you how i in a can make our homeland safe for the how mr johnson is why we're here today today i hope you will discuss the new how how are you going to accomplish the i in a mission and the expectations you raised in your june testimony in your june testimony what progress have you made where have you encountered challenges and how can this subcommittee help you address the challenges as we've repeatedly said we want to be your partner not your adversary in these endeavors how are you coordinating your efforts your vision and mission your supporting strategic plan and corresponding metrics with the other elements that contribute to detecting and disrupting those who might potentially do us harm this committee is mindful as no doubt is the american public of the widely reported cross country terrorism investigation into a possible al qaeda cell my take and i will not reveal any information received on a classified basis is that our intelligence community is playing the critical role in uncovering the alleged plot and continues to work in close coordination with law enforcement at all levels in the ongoing investigation and i know mr johnson that you're playing a role and that your organization is playing a role and i want to congratulate you for that role in this effort welcome back the subcommittee needs you to succeed our nation will be safer if you do i now yield five minutes to the ranking member mr mccaul for an opening statement and i thank you madam chair and let me first start out mr johnson by saying in the loop if you will and i was very impressed by that and i think i speak for the whole committee when i say that we haven't always had that kind of cooperation the past and me say we're starting out on a great note  with this committee homeland intelligence and information sharing is obviously critical to our efforts in combating terrorism securing our borders ensuring our airports seaports and border crossings all have the information they need to stop illegal activity and as events of the past ten days in new york city in denver colorado illustrate the threat remains very real and information sharing between agencies is vital in  never possessed that information that he traveled to pakistan and back to the united states or even more important c b p had not shared that information there's a chance mr zazi could have escaped suspicion and could have continued his efforts let me just say again that i commend you and what you're doing and i applaud your efforts in the success of the fourteen what could have been a potential attack in new york  today's hearing will examine new strategic vision for the department of homeland security's office of intelligence and analysis since the department was created in two thousand and three the office of intelligence analysis as undergone various reorganizations the offices work during this time to determine exactly what its role should be within the intelligence community and how to best support its various customers at the federal state and local and tribal levels and i look forward to hearing from you on your plan and your vision for the strategic plan for i ne i'm also interested in hearing your thoughts and ideas for fusion centers as we discussed in the june hearing long term funding for these fusion centers is of critical importance i look forward to working with you in the future in the department to ensure that these fusion centers have the resources they need to provide and fulfill this critical role and lastly i hope to hear from me mr johnson on what this  congress can do to help you in your office to continue to mature and maintain a lasting role in protecting our homeland and with that i yield back to you madam chair thank you mr mccaul under the committee rules other members are reminded that opening statements may be submitted for the record i now welcome our witness this morning mark johnson is the acting undersecretary for the office of intelligence and analysis at the homeland security department prior to his may ninth two thousand and nine appointment mr johnson served as the director of homeland security and law enforcement at the office of the director of national intelligence his work focused on bridging the intelligence community with federal state local and tribal customers before this mr johnson served as a colonel with the new york state police he possesses over thirty years of law enforcement experience a credential that i think all members of the subcommittee think is a critically important credential that he brings to his current work he has now been to die in a for just over four months and we are looking forward as i said to hearing how it's going your testimony in june mr johnson drew wow from our chairman mr thompson who was in attendance and so that sets the bar fairly high we're now anxiously awaiting your summary for five minutes and after that we will  ranking member mccall and all the other distinguished members of the subcommittee it's good to be back it's been a very very busy summer outlining some of the steps that we've taken and hopefully some very meaningful ways and really try to lay out what we're going to do enforcement officers putting their lives on the frontlines each and every day and to do that we're going to be leveraging not replicating or duplicating what's already out there and by leveraging i mean the office of director of national intelligence the national counterterrorism center the f b i and the other intelligence community agencies that are out there and who pose a considerable amount of information and intelligence and we're going to do that all with a mindful i to privacy civil rights and civil liberties since my still seemingly brief sixteen weeks at the helm of intelligence and analysis i've been very impressed by the support of not only all of you but secretary napolitano having been a governor from arizona she understands it and really has articulated the importance of getting the information to the people that need it in the format that they need it so they get operationalize it and i also appreciate the positive feedback that i continue to receive from my prior colleagues who are still my current colleagues  state local and tribal so to get down to what we've actually done in that regard our steps have taken to empower our customers to be the drivers of our intelligence products so in other words we're listening to and being led and driven by the requirement needs of our partners also as i said ensure and the privacy and civil liberties of others optimizing and streamlines streamlining ion a production dissemination and process so in other words a production plan as to what we're going to produce and why we're going to produce it obviously in crease the coordination of our component agencies to include c b p and ice where that wealth of information and knowledge resides interacting with the intelligence community i met with director blair the other day and he's very very supportive of what we're trying to do with and also to further develop the core intelligence capabilities and training with once again dr peter lavoy of the o d n i to learn you know from what their experience is that they have these will allow now us hopefully to be the premier provider of homeland security and intelligence and other information strengthen our existing partnerships which are critical to our excess and then operate in a single integrated team and also the biggest thing you pointed out chairwoman is the enabling of a performance based process to hold people accountable for the metrics as we go forward so we can see if we're succeeding not succeeding and really making mid course adjustments as we go forward so what have we done state local privacy program office which we've deployed upwards to about forty five field we have ten others in process we've received considerable accolades about the national level exercise of two thousand and nine as it relates the information sharing but then again some gaps we're also identified about more need of kind activity and caroline we're working to reconcile those type of efforts as we move forward and i shared in my written testimony a goal of the secretary to create a program management office so not only i am a assets and equities are being brought to bear but department wide equities in full accordance of two thousand and seven implementing the nine eleven commission act as we go forward additionally as it relates to analysis that i mentioned we need to be better i've always you know over the past two weeks in particular realize the breadth of knowledge and experience and devotion to the mission that is possessed there there's a lot of great people there and i really want to take it to the next level and export that level of interaction to the field on a more regular basis as it relates to the two way flow of information the suspicious activity reporting that's going on or really harvest information at the street level integrate it with the intelligence community information and vice versa now comes the proof of developing the strategy which will be done by the end i was told october fifteenth and then developing that action plan the implementation plan the performance objectives to go along with that strategy as we move forward and i really appreciate this opportunity to appear before all of you at this time thank you ma'am thank you very much this is the second time you have concluded in precisely five minutes per example mr johnson we applaud you all of us applaud you five minutes for for questions thank you for the thrust of your testimony i surely agree that the mission is to be the primary provider of intelligence products to sta local and tribal and private sector partners and you've described in general terms how you're going to do that i have said that your objective is not to create a mini cia and homeland but to do something that will specifically empower those in our communities to know what to look for and what to do that is how we thwart a terrorist plot on that subject and without getting into specifics of any ongoing investigations which i will not get into and you will not get into does i in a have a unique role that it can play as law enforcement and intelligence communities work to detect disrupt and dismantle the plans of both networks and individuals in the u s who are suspected of seeking to harm our country and our citizens and if it does what precisely is that role i believe is in the best position to provide consistent information flow back and forth the state local and tribal i don't believe there is any other entity that does that uniformly and as consistently as has been done having said that we even need to do better when you take a look at the information holdings of the intelligence community based on past incidents in attacks overseas whether it's madrid or the london bombings in the acquisition of material the construction of the material the timing of runs the surveillance is how those attacks are carried out that's the type of information that needs to be absorbed by analysts shared with state local and tribal on a very consistent basis like it's been done over this past week as it relates to terrorist tactics techniques and plans however you know as i said there's so much more to be had i'm sure you're aware of the recent success of gaining access to information resident  and that relationship that we've built with the department of defense and this is all about criminal activity that's occurring overseas that's going to better inform our partners about how what type of equipment to buy you know how they should find it  importantly the first responders about when they see something that appears to be suspicious what actions blast radius should you approach it you cannot approach it and it's that type of information that i think we have been and we're going to provide value added in that regard well i certainly agree with that but it then leads to my other question which you also mentioned in your testimony and that is ensuring the privacy and civil  liberties innocent americans you said in your testimony that you i have provided about i think you said forty people to state and local privacy program offices i'd like you to give us some specific examples of things that have happened in the last in your first in the last sixteen weeks on the job that you believe are contributing to the protection of privacy and civil liberties and how are you proposing to continue or expand those programs and would you specifically mention suspicious activity reporting sars because you mentioned it in your testimony and a lot of folks out and about are very mandated and we're holding people accountable to number one make sure regularly refreshed on it and accountable to have take that training also that training is being exported out to the fusion centers to ensure  reps are trained could you give us a specific example of what they're trained about in thirty seconds or less sure as it relates to u s persons and non u s persons what they're able to collect what they're able to hold what they can collect what they cannot hold the checks and balances associated with that and the levels of review that go through it in addition to sharing that information you know with the fusion centers and in particular as it relates to the suspicious activity reporting that's something that i did back in one nine hundred seventy seven when i was in the city when you make an servatius of an individual that you just don't collect information on things that don't reach that level of reasonable suspicion so in other words something that i could articulate that makes me reasonably suspicious and then i documented what this our initiative does with the major city chiefs in the i s c p it really form formalize it trains to it has accountability associated with it so i believe that it's a much better much improved process that previously existed in fact we just met on it the other day with the bureau of justice assistance and the evaluation is nearly complete the results which york in the arrests that took place and the work of the d h s s provided in terms of getting the information sharing it timely to prevent a potential terrorist attack  that came under criticism for warning in a report that veterans returning from iraq and afghanistan could be recruited and radicalized by right wing extremist to carry out violent acts and that caused quite a stir across the country and my question is the first question is what have you done to realign the intelligence office to make sure this doesn't happen again so loosely and i appreciate very much that question as i reported last that was one of the things that first monday that i started that i was struck with to answer what occurred i believe it was on april seventeenth regarding that report the odeon i shared it with us an analysis of that report and they found that it was improperly cited improperly sourced and i agree with that assessment and the analysts that i've been dealing with are much better than that so i'm going to subscribe to say that that was an anomaly of a process that was not followed but i wasn't willing to just leave that alone i worked very closely with the privacy people in c r c l and created a new process that for example whenever a u s person's name or governmental agency or company is potentially mentioned in that report they getting gauged the front end to make certain that we follow the rules and the regulations of the road to ensure that something is not improperly released to cause an individual or an organization harm that heretofore you know should never have happened additionally there is a series of other checks and balances as it relates to check in with the office as general counsel if it could involve an ongoing investigation or for example if it's going to directly impact our state local tribal partners which it normally always does that very unique customer set is shared with the interagency threat assessment coordination group as  well should and we're not leaving that alone we're training to it actually having examples i saw them the other day tim martin and larry jasc here working very hard and if your staffers have not been briefed on it you know count on them you know being briefed on it and i believe that they will report back to you you know the comfort you know hopefully that you will gain from that briefing well thank you not appreciate your efforts to correct the process but my understanding was this report was released with little or no vetting in the process and i think hopefully you put the checks and balances in place to ensure that doesn't happen again and i appreciate the opportunity to be briefed fuller on that issue also want to ask you about  inspector general's report in december that while your office is made improvements in supporting fusion centers there are still several problems providing adequate and timely information  helping to navigate the department's complex bureaucracy and finally that the department had fallen short in deploying intelligence analysts to the fusion centers i know to that end that the department has announced it plans to provide each of the nation seventy two fusion centers with at least one analyst by october two thousand and ten and i just wanted you to comment on that certainly regarding the g s report our  goal is to really reorient reorient realign and we've already started doing that i met a retired chief from fairfax county police department just the other day and that individual is working with the analysis component they're working with dave so check former commander of chicago p d energy chambers former commander of las vegas p d i met with them as a group and they're you know walking around a integrating themselves with the analysts and making sure they're sharing information back and forth about what a law enforcement officer is really like really what they expect and really it's the energy is up taking so i'm confident and relying on the criticisms that were put forth within the i g report which i'm very aware of and sensitive to that the next time they do and i g report will show some improvement and falling back to the discussion and i just had with dr peter lavoy with odeon i regarding the assessment you know one important thing is that they have a rating system in their analytical products and they were mostly rated as good but on the poor side of good and most recent one they did it was good really relying on good so i hope to make that thank you mr mccall and again mr johnson your comments about the way you are integrating law enforcement into the activities of i in a very impressive it is precisely the kind of progress we were looking for organization i understand that the state and local program office may be going through a period of transition to be expected of a change of administration that's not unusual officially announced but yes there is going to be change but be assured it's not going to disrupt any of the activities i've had several conference calls and unfortunately i wasn't able to make it out to epic last week because of the ongoing things going on in d c here but they're very close to me i know the majority of them it's not going to be watered down it's going to be supported i think the activities going to be increased that cross pollination that i was referring to and the exposure to the analysts i think is a very very good thing s l p zero is not going to be subsumed within another operational component it's going to stay just the way it is the only change that's going to be happening is hopefully we're going to be standing up that program management office which is going to be on top of the organization and be supportive of the state local program office so in other words what the p m o is going to do department wide is going to further support the reps in the field some of whom i've talked to over the past couple days and i'm very supportive so i think it's going to be more supportive the only downside is that when things seem to take a while to change there's uncertainty and unsteady  i'm doing everything that i can through robbery to go and chat line or to mitigate any of that to those personal conversations i think it's going to be all just fine as we move forward what what sort of time frame we're looking at for the leadership  to be announced and come in and are you in a process of looking now and what sorts of background would you like to see in the next person to take over a person who really has a cross cutting capabilities to understand the needs of the state local and tribal familiarity with ops you know at the naacp and the national operations center so they know what's going on there i met with admiral john acton it's been a very very productive and positive relationship to make sure that we're speaking with one voice and i've been trying to pull the trigger on this for a couple weeks now and still trying to pull the trigger and i hope to have that pleated within the next thirty days ok and you start to grow this relationship how is it would sure to keep characterize that was absolutely i met with director blair the day before yesterday about my own personal performance objectives and i asked him straight up as it relates to intelligence and analysis and his support and he is very supportive of that aspect and supportive of not necessarily bart johnson but the undersecretary for intelligence and analysis and behind that comes dr peter l mr david shed and a host of others who are constantly providing support that i'm very willing to take as it relates to the national counterterrorism center i believe i have an excellent working really lay ssion ship with director michael leiter i speak to him and have been speaking to him on a regular basis he too is supportive we just took on a new individual dawn school who's going to oversee the analysis aspect she has very strong roots within the national counterterrorism center and that's going to be helpful it doesn't even mention the other component agencies within the department of homeland security through two meetings that i think and i hope have built you know a strong relationship with them and it's mine to lose quite frankly  i'm glad to see roger up to that duty then thanks much for the questions venture we don't expect you to lose mr johnson here now you have five minutes to mr brown of georgia improvement in what's going on over there in my opinion and i congratulate you on your appointment thank you for being here with us today in your testimony that you stated i know as realigned operations element will maximize the effectiveness of your knowledge management your county intelligence mission support training collection requirements annex tarnal operations programs when areas that i've been particularly disappointed with is the counter intelligence said d h s i'm a firm believer that the h s is not going to be a respected member of the intelligence community or very useful to its customers unless the h s takes counterintelligence very seriously the h s is too large of a target for foreign intelligence services and for terrorist organizations to collect a very griscom intelligence element within the within the program and within d h s s kill aberrate on your testimony and how will the real loud effect counterintelligence and how does it fit within your own strategic vision  certainly and i appreciate that question as a real a six count intelligence that's a world that's not relatively new but i'm not as familiar as other people are fortunately once again you know through director blair and some of the studies that he's been conducted regarding you know counterintelligence i've been leveraging and working you know very very closely with him and people who have supported him in that regard one in particular mr and i apologize for the first name bear bryan i deputy director i believe who is very well versed in that cia arena so i've already you know met with him and other individuals to include i had a conversation with director louis freeh on that particular topic and i'm going to once again leverage their expertise because i agree with their your assessment without going into any other detail regarding you know what people want to do what they want to gain access to and we haven't responsibility within the department you know to protect the department you know from far from our adversaries who want to get our information so i understand it like i said i don't have the expertise but i'll get the expertise  and use that expertise so as it relates to the operations component you know jim shapiro oversees counterintelligence and he's working it and he's leveraging those same things i expect to have more information and solutions by the next by the end of month because i will be meeting with some of those individuals to learn more about what their review revealed and really have to have them really tell us what we need to do better like ms johnson i asked the secretary about counterintelligence and i've been very disappointed with with the responses i've gotten thus far and a hope of particular with your background counterintelligence will become a much greater prod the within the within the department i think it's absolutely critical for us to do so to make sure that this that this country remains to be remains one that is secure and i'm also  in particularly interested along with the chairman harman about the protection of civil rights and privacy and i would like to see us focus more on the bad guys and not on people who who are just concerned who are american citizens and also people who are concerned about freedom and and believe in very limited government so the hope as you go forward that that we can focus on the bad guys in the counter intelligence will be a strong and very integral part of what you do in your position and that's one reason that i'm excited about your appointment to this position and hope that you can continue to assure us as members of this committee that i think counterintelligence is just as important as is right intelligence gathering and i would like to see the department be very actively follow up with the chairman you could be assured that the secretary's aware you know and she has been involved in conversations on that topic and i'm sure also where the d n i just released the national intelligen strategy that addresses that very topic and the performance objectives that are being built for well within the national intelligence strategy along with the priorities of the secretary so i just want to clarify that sir like  kirkpatrick of arizona is now recognized for five minutes thank you madam chair mr johnson i'm pleased to hear that we're making progress in the deployment of the intelligence officers and while forty five people sounds like a lot my question is  first is that enough to cover our huge country including our island state of hawaii and provide adequate protection for our border states and our coastal states both north south east and west i believe we need to do more in that regard and i just flipped to a chart here to try to give you some more definitive answers currently we have forty five officers on board in place which i think really is more than where we anticipated to be and that's because of due diligence of the state local program office and in processing or another seventeen so we're doing well but i don't believe it's an enough you know in light of what the secretary's goal is to support state local and the fusion centers whether or not it's you know through analytical capability or an operational capability or really you know working with our state local tribal particularly the border states down in arizona new mexico or the epic and you know i'm happy to say that we have more analysts assigned to the epic we're our dhoti is working i still have yet to get down there i don't want to get down there to thank guard and also tom shelton with everything that they're doing and they're responsible and they are providing overall arching you know collaborative environment with intelligence with mr bersin and everything that he's trying to accomplish so that was a long answer to a short answer that should have said we need to identify more personnel many police departments around the country particularly in the larger world districts like mine are still unaware of what is and how it can be a useful tool what are you doing to reach out to the smaller rural police departments and ensure that they understand how to work with us and what can i do to help facilitate this certainly hopefully i'll be going to the international association of chiefs of police meeting starting on october president we met with the major city chiefs you know i know chuck the witch here and tom frazier you know bill bratton and other individuals to make sure that message gets out because you're right we need to get the message out so i actually cosigned a letter with and director for the federal bureau of investigation to the president of the small agencies chiefs of police and that has been passed to mr ron brooks and also mr russ porter to get to the fusion centers to start that dialogue so the smaller agencies when they say as your fusion center doing they won't say what's a fusion center know what it is and hopefully see the value added that the fusion centers you know contribute that we need to contribute to the fusion centers are value added and then once that information in that structure you know starts you know that process will improve and it needs to be needs to be greatly improved in fact well please know that i support your efforts and if there's anything i can do today to be helpful in that regard don't hesitate to let me thank you madam chair i yield back my time and i finished in less than five minutes thank you very much you just got an offer from a former prosecutor by the way so that's good iraq going up a lot of responsibilities are well established so for example during a time of stress things don't break down that it's more of a memorised type activity that it doesn't have to be made up as we go along but personally yes i've reached out to roles and responsibilities and what can you on that point specifically can you say what the what i a s responsibilities are going to be as opposed to f b i and the national counterterrorism center sure the national counterterrorism center is the epicenter for really the development in analysis of information regarding to counterterrorism that information is then passed to us and also the federal bureau of investigation for passing to our state local and tribal partners our specific role and that i s role you know is to work with the joint terrorism task forces as it relates to the investigative aspects of it so our system more informed aware of indicators and warnings making she certainly that they're taking the protective measures working with undersecretary ranveer with the four years you know as relates to what their critical infrastructures are concerned so i believe you know our role within iran is pretty clear and i'm reinforcing it on a regular basis and one other quick follow up question local customers do you have the authority to require changes to intelligence committee products to make it more usable for the various local customers that's one i would have to get back to you on but working with the  and tom facer they influence they inform their part of the production process of assata cia so they're you know within it at the very beginning of the production process and same thing with their role more advisory then or is it the n c t c oversees the operational day to day activities of the i tag but the secretary the home security is responsible for the whole overall program and its effect in fact in this and i'm the person responsible for that can you can you take classified materials and sanitize and then disseminate them we take classified documents and then ask the creators of those documents to create airlines from ts to secret or secret to unclassified and we've had success on it needs to be improved but we're doing it we're exercising it in fact we're doing in our more frequent basis thank you know this out of respect for time while you ba you mr dan i would just point out to our members and our audience that this subcommittee authored legislation on overclassification which is passed the house twice and there is some optimistic news about some senate action on a very very ation of that but it would help mr johnson get products to those in need because there would be a reduction of overclassification and there would be portion marking of documents and that means that most of documents would be unclassified and be much easier for him to do what he needs to do i now yield to mr himes for five minutes of questions there is a vote on the floor that will be two votes i think you will get all your question all your time in i want to suggest that at the conclusion of his questions we adjourn this hearing there just are so many other things this morning that i think be difficult to continue it is there any objection to that ok five minutes thank you  mr johnson thanks very much for coming before this committee and i'm excited based on your testimony for the for the progress you appear to be making in a challenging role i'd like to devote probably not the full five minutes but a couple of minutes of my time today to a topic which actually hasn't been addressed which is the collection of intelligence and your evaluation thereof we've got lots of characterizations of dissemination up to the secretary to other agencies through the fusion centers i wonder if you could take a minute to talk structurally about what you see in terms of your ability with respect to collection you did make mention of one hundred ninety two trained intelligence people can you take a minute or so and characterize what you see as your collection capabilities and then maybe two minutes to talk about the strengths and weaknesses that you perceive their end certainly of first and foremost so there needs to be a structure about you know what's important what's of interest to not only the federal government but our state and local tribal partners so it's really a two way flow as it relates to the requirements so for example northern border states like new york as it relates to border smuggling their requirement would be for information from the intelligence community about individuals who may try to exploit the border and get that information to them so the i c would collect that information you know pass it through and get it to the new york state  intelligence center in albany so they could be better prepared better aware of what they need to do to prevent that from occurring you know from the flip side from that you know the information requirements of are  individuals who may be carrying out a terrorist attack within the shores of the united states or for the intelligence community people within the united states who through criminal activity are communicating with individuals overseas so that would be an information  requirement set upon them as it relates to you know things that we would be interested in so that's enabled through the dialogue of the forward deployed intelligence analysis personnel like an individual like carrie morgan who i spoke to this morning up at the new york state intelligence center that she's aware and they pass that information that they interact with an individual who has chemicals and who have who may have you know photographs or drawings of something occurring out in los angeles that that information needs to be shared with the i a e a analysts which it is and then it needs to be inputted it and then shared with the federal bureau of investigation and then if there's a nexus to overseas that needs to be shared with i see the intelligence community so that's the you know the the end game where we need to go are we there no we're not there but i believe that we have the structures the knowledge you know where with on the partnerships to really buil d towards that effort thank you so the second part of my question which was your percy of your analysis your perceived strengths and weaknesses of your own native collection capability what do you see as as  going well and what do you see of concern i believe we have a good foundation but i need i believe that we need to clarify those information needs and requirements and communicate them in a more consistent and regular basis to our partners at both ends of the spectrum the i c and also the our domestic partners in the field and then really build according to civil liberties and civil rights the ability to really you know glean that information and share that information in a lawful way to make sure that that information gets into the hands of the people that need it most so the structure is there the foundation is there the knowledge is there but really i believe the process is need to be mature sustained and most importantly the people who are providing us the information need to see a return on their investment and the value added that the contribution that they made really made a difference and what they're trying to do are you satisfied with the mechanism whereby the tens of thousands of eyes and ears that you potentially got access to local law enforcement that they are being trained and kept up to speed on what to look for are you happy with the infrastructure that allows you to convey to them what they should be looking for i'm very pleased with the relationships that we have with the various law enforcement agencies and the people that i interact with about the need to do that you know the major city chiefs c p s and national county sheriffs and  major county sheriffs they all understand it and get it the needs but working with them you know we all recognize that we need to improve so happy about the relationships i'm satisfied about the relationships and we know where we are and r your testimony and for helping to make real progress on two fronts one is the effect of two way sharing and the other is the protection of privacy and civil liberties we'll be watching closely and we are your partner not your adversaries there are just a few minutes in this vote so i'm joining the hearing you will be receiving some questions in writing from some of the members again i thank you for your for your testimony having no further business the subcommittee stan