check check check one two one two one two one t the committee on homeland security will come to order the committee is meeting today to receive testimony on flight two five three learning lessons from every tragedy good morning i'd like to thank our witnesses for being here today today's hearing will examine the circumstances surrounding that tempted christmas day bombing of northwest flight two five three this committee will examine what happened why it happened and what this nation can do to make sure it does not happen again we all know the facts abdulla talo border northwest flight two five three  amsterdam bound for detroit as a plane entered detroit's aspace he removed chemicals concealed in his clothing and mix them together with the intention of causing an explosion thankfully he failed courageous passengers and crew sub dude and restrained him until the plane landed and he was taken into custody since september eleventh this nation has spent billions of dollars to fix the aviation security system yet now and years later it is clear that the safeguards put in place doing last administration did not prevent another terrorist from bombing of boarding a plane and trying to do harm to americans this single failed terrorist act was brought those unsolved security vulnerabilities into sharp focus security weaknesses in the process of gaining legal that mission to this country gaps in the collection and dissemination of information are confusing put doria lists used to identify dangerous individuals stove pipes that impede the progress of information analysis and sharing and consistencies in the use of screening technology all combine to create the situation faced by the passengers on flight two five three the nine eleven commission identified many of these problems and while the previous administration engaged in much movement to solve these problems it appears that movement and progress  within two weeks of this incident president obama issued his preliminary report the president report found incoherent systematic weaknesses and human errors were the root cause of the intelligence failures that led to this incident to in a reasonable observation one fact was certain the system did not work in fact the president ordered a series of corrective actions a clear and unflinching assessment followed a quick action designed to address this long known vulnerability must be commended but it is important for all of us to realize that we will not address our problems with terrorism in a blink of an eye with a single technology that this nation must begin to lay out approach to see a secure environment we must not began our security assessment at the airport gate i want to thank our witnesses and i look forward to that everyone knows mistakes were made to happen i think what concerns us and what should concern us as we go forward is how those mistakes are addressed and what's being done to protect our nation in the future and to protect those attacks from occurring or those types of mistakes from happening again even when the concerns i have is what appears to be an uncoordinated response from the intelligence community i say that not just based on what we've learned over the past month but also from watching the senate hearings last week from looking at the testimony listening to what former congressman hamilton had to say the yesterday and i say that i still can't determine who's in charge who makes the decisions we go back to the two thousand and and in your statement i heard secretary an apology i know say this that the department is a consumer of intelligence i thought when the department was created we expected more of an affirmative role by the department again as what did occur i thought in the last several years to establish some more in the intelligence community lee hamilton said yesterday i do not believe the president yet has a firm grasp of the intelligence community all of us are aware that for the past six months there's been an open  the state police or anyone the u s marshals no one was consulted about the security implications of that which is what was repeated on christmas day when the justice department made this decision without getting any input from anyone else in the intelligence community house and i've heard this from a number of people other agencies and departments not to give information that we cannot get anything but if we got was on our own we were not given any information i believe john brennan to set up an iron curtain of secrecy in the white house you want to control the intelligence community you want to control the n can agree or disagree in these decisions but to have them unilaterally made by someone outside what i believe is the intelligence world is wrong and presidential address that and i also believe that as far as congress we the generals have information we have time and know with respect to any of this i absolutely support his premise that this committee has a function it cannot function without information in real time and that information should not be gleaned from the news media but it should be gleaned from the propofol was it should not be screened but i'd also say that  did contact me the night of christmas on this event and i think she probably reached out to you but now i'm not aware of anybody else who tried to get out to reach out to me discuss what was going to be done provide it and we will pursue that also other members of the committee are reminded that on the committee rules opening statements may be submitted for the record before i welcome our witnesses i want  indicate that secretary apollo tano was invited to this hearing we were told that she be out of the country i now understand she is no longer out of the country but she is not here so his man before the committee a number of times and has been very straightforward in the presentations and we appreciate that second witness is patrick kennedy on the  in view of that although her plans have changed we have been in touch with your staff that i would be here to testify for the department as president obama made clear immediately following the attacks at the department of homeland security and across the federal government we are determined to find and fix the vulnerabilities that led to this breach protecting the united states against terrorism calls upon the expertise and authority of multiple agencies and many partners in addition to the men and women of department of homeland security this includes the efforts of the departments of state defense justice f b i and then the broader intelligence community it also importantly includes our state and local law enforcement agencies and our international partners and allies around the world i'm very pleased this morning to be joined by my colleagues from the department of state and the national counterterrorism center as this committee is well  chairman boarding a plane means fulfilling three basic requirements the individual must retain proper documentation including a passport a visa or other travel authorization a ticket and boarding pass he or she must pass through the checkpoint training to ensure that they are not concealing a dangerous weapon or other dangerous material on her on their person or in their baggage and finally the individual must be cleared through preflight screening process that she has to determine if that individual poses a threat to the homeland security and thus should be denied permission to fly within this set of requirements let me briefly describe the specific role the department of homeland security plays first to conduct preflight screening the department is one of the principal consumers of intelligence gathered by other agencies including the terrorist watch list which includes the no fly list checks passengers against these lists to keep potential terrorists from boarding flights and to identify travelers who should undergo additional screening second within the united states d h s performs the physical screening at domestic airport checkpoints and provide further in flight security measures in order to prevent smuggling of weapons or other dangerous materials on airplanes and third outside of the united states the department works with foreign governments and airlines to advise them on the required security measures for flights bound for the u s and on which passengers may prove a threat t s a or any other part of the department however does not screen people or baggage at international airports let me say emphatically as the president the united states has is detailed in recent weeks has implemented numerous steps and is working closely with our federal partners to fix the vulnerabilities that led to the attempted attack as a consumer of terrorist watch list information the department works closely with the f b i the office of the director of national intelligence and c t c to improve our ability to connect and assimilate intelligence were also taking steps to strengthen standards for international aviation screening and bolstering amsterdam his presence on this list would have liked him to be prevented from boarding he was not either on the selectee list which would have flagged him for secondary screening furthermore the physical screenings that were performed by foreign authorities at the airports in nigeria in the netherlands failed to detect explosives on his person immediately following the attempted attack the department took steps to ensure to secure incoming and future flights we directed the f a a to alert all one hundred twenty eight flights inbound to the united states from europe of the situation we increased security measures at domestic airports we implemented enhanced screening for all international flights coming into the u s and we reached out to state and local law enforcement air carriers international partners and relevant agencies to provide information they needed on the ground to take appropriate measures in january january three secretary napolitano dispatched me and my colleagues in the department to meet with international leadership on the crisis in aviation security that was illustrated through the events of twelve twenty five we met with senior officials from eleven countries plus the european union to discuss ways to strengthen aviation security and we are determined to follow through on these contacts and i can report as question mr chairman on the results of those discussions the secretary has herself been in touch with international the identify to strengthen the international aviation security standards and procedures as the secretary said last week and as the president has said there are no one hundred percent guarantees against another terrorist attempt to take down a plane or attack us in some other fashion but what we can give you mr chairman is the one hundred percent commitment of the secretary myself department leadership and the hundreds of thousands of what men and women who work in recognize on the secretary kennedy to summarize his statement for five minutes thank you sir chairman thompson ranking member king of the singlish members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today after the attempted bombing of flight two fifty three secretary clinton stated we are all looking hard at what did happen in order to improve our procedures to avoid human errors mistakes oversights of any kind and we're going to be working hard with the rest of the administration to improve every aspect of our efforts this introspective review and the co agency review are ongoing we appreciate this committee's interest and support as we continue this review process noting in particular the recent committee staff visit to our consular facility in london we recognize the gravity of the threat we and we consider ourselves the first line of defense in our national security efforts we acknowledge the processes need to be improved and here are the steps we've already taken the state department misspelled  visa viper report as a result we did not add that information about this current us visa in that report to prevent that from occurring again we instituted new procedures to ensure conferees anse of these information is included in all our visa viper reporting this will highlight the visa application in issuance material also available already in the data that we have shared with our national security partners we are also reevaluating the procedures and criteria used to re the state department has brought in flexible authority to revoke bases since two thousand and one we have revoked over fifty one thousand visas for a variety of reasons including over seventeen hundred suspected links to terror new a new watch listing information coming from the intelligence and law enforcement community is continually checked every day against the database of previously issued visas we can and do revoke visas in circumstances where an immediate threat is recognized we can and do revoke visas to the point of people seeking to board an aircraft preventing their boarding and coordination with the f b i s national charting center we are both visas under these circumstances almost daily are standardizing procedures for triggering revocations from the field and are adding revocation recommendations to the visa viper report at the same time expeditious coordination with our national security partners is not to be underestimated there have been numerous cases where a state department unilateral and uncoordinated revocation would have disrupted important investigations that were underway by one of our national security partners the individual involved was under active investigation and iraq cation action would have disclosed the united states government's interest in that individual and ended our national security colleagues ability to pursue the case and a den of fight terrorist plans and co conspirators we will continue to closely coordinate these revocation processes with our intelligence and law enforcement partners well also constantly making enhancements to the security and into gritty of the visa process information sharing and coordinated action are foundations of the border security systems put in place since nine eleven and there remain sound principles the state department has close and productive relationships with our inner agency partners particularly with the department of homeland security which is statutory authority for visa policy the state department brings unique assets and capabilities to this partnership our global presence international expertise and highly trained personnel provide a singular advantages in supporting the visa function throughout the world we developed and implemented extensive screening processes requiring personal interviews and supported by a sophisticated global information network this frontline of border security has  offices in virtually every country of the world and are staffed by highly trained multi lingual culturally aware personnel the state department we support them with the latest technology and access to enhanced screening tools and information systems are introducing a new generation of visa software to more efficiently manage our growing mission and the increasing amounts of data we handle we are pyar new years in the use of biometrics a leader in the field of facial recognition and we are expanding into the field of iris screening we have and will continue to automate processes to reduce the possibility of human error the state department makes all these information available to other agencies giving them immediate access to over thirteen years of data we introduced online visa applicants applications in two thousand and nine which expanded our data collection tenfold and provides new information readily available for analysis by the state department and by other agencies and this system is being rolled out worldwide in a few months we embrace a layered approach to border security screening research results in multiple agencies having not for two hundred to review information and requires separate views at both the visa application and admission stage no visa no visas issued without it being run through security checks against our partners databases we screen applicants fingerprints against us databases and we run our facial recognition software against the photo array provided by the intelligence community at the same time we believe that u s interest in the gym and for a travel and educational exchanges are not an opposition to border security and fact the u s most tried to meet both goals to guarantee our long term security again the multi agency team effort to which each agency brings its particular strengths and expertise results in a robust and secure process a process based on broadly shared information we remain fully committed to correcting mistakes and remedying deficiencies that inhibit the full and timely sharing of information we've only recognize do or not perfect in our reporting and connection with this case however we are working in will continue to work not only to address shortcomings but to continually add hansard border security screening capabilities and the contributions we make to this enter o thank you very much chairman i look forward to your questions thank you for your testimony are now recognized directly like no to summarize your statement for five minutes chairman thompson reich a member k members of the committee thank you for holding this hearing along with other leaders have told the president i tell you i'm telling the american people we are determined to do better i have also pledged to the president along with the d n i freshened penetrating look at the human and technical factors that we think contributed to this failure and trying to determine ways that we can improve on our performance the president has passed me with two specific responsibilities one a methodology of pursuing follow up actions for all threats and threads specific improvements i'd like to briefly summarize the events of christmas day from our perspective and what went wrong and i want to start by debunking something that has in part become conventional wisdom that this is a failure just like nine eleven as the president has said this was not like two thousand and one a failure to collect or share intelligence rather it was a failure to connect integrate and understand the intelligence now one is not more cannot does not necessarily lead to more tragic consequences than the other but the differences in those failures obviously lead to a different set of reforms that might be necessary although the national counterterrorism center and the intelligence community had a long war and going back into two thousand focused on targets in yemen but in the fall of two thousand and nine we increased and he talked about the possibility of al qaida from yemen targeting the united states we also in fact analyzed the information that al qaeda was working with an individual who only again after the fact did we know to be more tolerant finally the intelligence community also warned repeatedly of the type of explosive device that was ultimately used by al d'amato and the ways in which that device could be used to undermine u s aviation screening but again despite having identified these overall themes we failed to make a last final connection what i would refer to as a last tactical mile here liking  talaga identity to the plot that was in train we indeed had the information that came from his father that he was concerned about his son going to yemen coming under the influence of religious extremists and that he was not going to return home we also had streams of information from other intelligence channels that provided piece of the story we had a partial name an indicator of a nigerian but there was no single piece of intelligence that brought that together nor did we  ar elsewhere in the intelligence community do that and our analysis as a result although mr abnormal talab was identified as suspected terrorists and placed in the terrorist identities datamart environment he was not watch listed based on the information that was associated with him nor was he placed on the no fly or selectee list had all the information the u s had available to time and link together his name would have been watched listed and thus on the visa screening list and the border inspection list whether he would have been placed on the no fly and selectee life based on the existing standards would have been determined by the strength of our analytic judgments and as i have already said i believe one of the clear lessons we have learned is the need to re examine the standards for inclusion on these various watch lists finally and i hope i have made clear i have no desire to try to make excuses for what we did not do because there are things that we didn't do well and we didn't do right i do want to give you at least a bit of context about the failure the context in which this failure occurred every day in the national counterterrorism center receives literally thousands of pieces of intelligence  related more than five thousand a day well over five thousand we review well over five thousand names each day and each day more than three hundred fifty individuals are actually placed on the one watchlist now in hindsight we can say with a high degree of confidence that abdulmutallab was plotting with a q a p and although we obviously have to do better we have to recognize that in my view there is no single silver bullet and that is especially true as this terror threat we face becomes more multi dimensional and more dispersed away from traditional areas of promoting terrorism so watch listing intelligence are critical tools in this fight i would echo the chairman's statement of the need for a layered approach to counterterrorism which includes technology international screening and cooperation and the like and very quickly i'd like to outline the ways in which we are improving the system already as i have noted the president has assigned to the inner agency to review the standards for inclusion on the watch lists including no fly and selectee list this has been done in addition we have immediately moved additional resources to focusing on yemen and other al qaeda affiliates that we believe pose a threat to u s homeland security third we are trying to move away from the names based system of pursuing these threats ensuring that our analysts have the time and resources to pursue the small tidbits of information so they can effect associate that with individuals and ensure proper watch listing finally as i also noted at the outset under the president's direction we are expanding and deepening our allocation of responsibility for specific follow up actions for a wide range of threats not just those that appear to be high priority threats from getting with that mr chairman i very much look forward to working in this committee and fielding your questions as we work on this together thank you very much i thank all the witnesses for that testimony and i remind each member of the he or she will this occurrence on december twenty fifth has any personal actions or disciplinary actions taken place in your department relative to this incident in the depart of homeland security mr chairman the personnel actions that have been taken have been related to intensified training my deployment but there have been no disciplinary actions taken  the committee that which the law allows so we can review it absolutely just so mt is standing near the even though this was a an unfortunate situation nobody has been disciplined we understand the president took responsibility and that's good but the question in the minds of a lot of us is is that good enough now my next question to each one of you is if that situation today would it be any different and on the state department it would be different mr chairman we had a process that had been worked out with the inner agency community and we have discovered that we did not have sufficient check marks in there was no requirement in our previous rubric when we reported on the visa viper meaning of somebody coming into america embassy and saying we have concerns about a third party we reported that immediately but we did not have in that process a check mark that this individual had a u s visa i cannot tell you why that wasn't included i can tell you probably because we had already passed to the law enforcement intelligence community's list of everyone who gets a visa on a daily basis we have now added that to our process so any person who comes in the embassy and makes a report of terrorist concern not only to report that individual in our visa viper message to the community but we add then this person has a united states basis and we've also enhanced the name checking capability in that system to make sure that if there's a misspelling ok so all right so you have a visa so what does that do in the process does it revoked a visa does it as i mentioned in my church state and mr chairman if we unilaterally revoked of a son and there was a case recently out we had that we have a request from a from a law enforcement agency to not revoke the visa we we came across information we said this is a dangerous person we were ready to revoke the visa we then went to the community and said should we revoke this visa and one of the members and we'd be glad to give you that out and in private said please do not revoke this visa we have eyes on this person we are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying to roll up an entire network not just stop one person so we will revoke the visa of any individual who is a threat to united states but we do take one preliminary step we ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners do you have eyes on this person and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot but i think the point that i'm trying to get at is is this just another box you check in some security value to adding that box of the list intelligence and law enforcement community tell us that they believe in certain cases that there's a higher value of them following this person so they can find his or her coconspirators and roll up an entire plot against the united states rather than simply knock out one one soldier in that effort i would offer four ways in way the way in which we now review that these and i can't go into in the open session would have detected a connection with mr album with hollow which would have sent an automatic warning to the state department and other intelligence community components so first of all he might not to ensure that if someone shows up with the visa if there's some confusion there they're also no fly that's a second step third we have yet ikeda teams that don't have any responsibility for producing intelligence but simply from following up on these small leads i believe those teams with increased likelihood we would have four we have is an interagency way reviewed already the standards for placement on no fly and although those standards and not yet been formally adjusted they are being  mr chairman i'd like to welcome our witnesses comment on the absence of secretary an apology this is the committee with primary jurisdiction over the department of homeland security she is the secretary of homeland security she is in washington d c she was invited to testify at this very important hearing and she should have been here under secretary lew to understand the parrot and you would accept our invitation but i'm very i was on a family vacation but secretary napolitano did call me after she spoke to the chairman and i'm quite aware that she had spoken to him and i also exchanged e mails and had numerous calls with mr leiter who was first in you know that i agree with that i also want to note that in recent years there have been many intelligence community successes the headley plot and others are examples of success and there have been many intelligence community sacrifices particularly the loss recently of seven cia personnel at forward operating base chapman in afghanistan obviously all of us know this and want to salute again today the hard working women and men of the intelligence community but despite all those successes and the risks that they take the christmas day problem does represent a failure two of you mr kennedy mr leiter have stepped up and  taken responsibility as has mr brennan and i applaud you for doing that but doing better and i applaud the fact that you have all pledged that you will do better doing better is not optional one hundred percent security can never be achieved but surely we can do better and least to me listening to all of this and based on my long experience with the intelligence reform act and other efforts to try to do better i think  that doing better is not about laundry list it's about leadership only through leadership will our system of layered security become more agile and responsive let's understand that the enemy that is seeking to harm us is agile and responsive and whatever it is that we now decide to do they will try to figure out a way to get around it so our system of collection now uscis approval watchlist ng and other things should get better but only through strong leadership will that better system stay agile and responsive and let me just add one thing at the tag end and this i commend the department of homeland security for doing very well and that is preparing not scaring the public there's a new tone i applaud it and let's remember that the successful layer of security on christmas day was a prepared public on that airplane so my finally let me let me make one other point there is testimony submitted for the record of this hearing by the a c l u and i've read that testimony and i think it's extremely thoughtful it reminds me that one piece of unfinished business since the intelligence refor act of two thousand and four is the formation of a privacy and civil liberties commission that is that was supposed to oversee new practices to keep our country safer i wrote a letter to the president in october with senator susan collins of maine and the white house has never responded to our letter and so far as i know nothing has been done i think that this is unfortunate and  l prevent us from assuring the public that we're enacting better practices consistent with our constitution but my one question because time is running out in each of you what are you personally going to do to assert better leadership in the near and medium term to make certain that the people under under your supervision remain agile and responsive against an evolving threat by a learning organization homeland security to bring a message of leadership from the united states to our international partners with whom we have to work very closely to raise the standard of aviation security i personally spoke with the officer on the ground in amsterdam  cornerstone of our average going forward along with other parts of the department who takes very seriously its leadership role to help create a homeland where the american way of life can thrive this is something we take extremely seriously the secretary of state is incredibly involved in this and she has charge me and i think i would offer a brief time i have two points but there are others the first we need to continually increase our software capability to take disjointed pieces of material and bring them to get together and the second thing we need to do is and i have to make sure that is happening and i think that we also have to make sure that we remain and improve our last shops with the national security and the law enforcement community because we are on the front line but while we're on the frontlines if we don't have the backstopping that is the best that we can lash up then then we would fail again and that is my pledge to make sure those happen congresswoman i've spent a tremendous amount of time since december twenty fifth with my workforce my analyst my watch posters my watch standers and cleared and then many things one i have to enable them to be able to do the job if they need something they have to come to me so i'm making sure that lines of communication are more open than ever so one of the things i've said to them is i want to know from every one of them how do we do our job better i didn't open email to my entire organization i probably got two hundred responses of what they think needs to be done the second thing i said to them in a way relates back to what the chairman asked i told all of them you have to ask yourself whether or not you can keep doing this because this is high pressure it's high stakes you're going to get beat up in the public realm and you have to make sure that you can commit yourself one hundred percent to this every single day and there's no embarrassment if they can't but we have to make sure that we have a well honed team that really stays on this and finally the last thing i would say i'm doing i'm not generally noted to be an especially patient person but whatever patients i have shown in the past in terms of trying to negotiate or massage interagency agreement to obtain data to provide cooperation and frankly i'm done with it i am going to ask once politely and after that i'm bringing to the white house and director blair and saying this has to be done if it can't be done i can guarantee and first mr kennedy i'd appreciate for the record if you would you said since two thousand and one you revoked fifty one thousand visas and seven hundred for suspected links to terrorism could you give us a by year number of visas revoked and number for suspected terrorists that secondly i know my friend from new york kept making the point about monday morning quarterbacking as a hoosier when you have peyton manning as your quarterback you don't have to do monday morning quarterbacking and that's important here because it's the person in charge and the people in charge when they fail when we do monday morning quarterbacking and it's not the agents who didn't have the information who messed up here that as you see these people at the airports as you go around the world there were signals from the top to back off back off of profiling don't focus as much  focusing as much on on capturing people as moving them through not putting things together i have some basic questions that we were in before and i was very disturbed at some of the briefings my understanding is  public record that we didn't know he paid cash because we don't collect information on cash because twenty percent are or some percentage of people who do foreign travel pay by cash and that that wasn't in his throat we didn't know a big cash that's public record is that true i think it is true that we did not know we pay cash one note i would say it's not i think you're right it's roughly twenty percent of global pastors pay cash that proportion from the region he came from in africa is vastly higher so frankly a cash payment for a ticket from where he bought his ticket really would not raise any suspicion they and we also didn't know that the british had amano fall flat less that correct that's would ask you in any type of basic tracking or intelligence in narcotics and that type of thing you build a system when a business is trying to figure out risk of something they build a system the cash would not be relevant in normal but the cash becomes relevant if the father said this and you knew you were watching something from there and you were tracking a ticket then all of a sudden the cash becomes relevant that the fact that he didn't have a visa was not relevant because it wasn't relevant to terrorism but the fact that he was a liar on his visa form suddenly becomes relevant once you know that the father called and he bought cash  that in other words as a point system my understanding is you don't have a point system is that true cars in other words there's no way to pyramid the information congress and i don't think that's quite true but i don't want to quibble with your point because i think you're exactly right i mean those individually irrelevant offenses bits of data add up to a larger picture and i will say that over the past several years as we tried to quote unquote accumulate data so all of that data can be shared analyzed together one of the consistent challenges we had at the national counterterrorism center is these bits of data that aren't terrorism information could add to that picture that has been one of the most significant obstacles we have face in making sure all that information can be what would you not agree that there are things where you're building a broad picture and there are things that are specific role that to getting on an airplane and other words i know early on until someone improve the system that one time going through the wash and airport six o seven people in secondary were members of congress why we got out early we bought a ticket we paid cash that that that those are logical things you watch for in an airplane and they build that but you might not need them in your full terrorism ban that that we worked hard in the very original bill to make sure that homeland security was going to be as many post where they were doing these things and as many posts at airports you have fifty deployments are you asking for more in other words the whole point of port security in airports is not to kind of arrest him after they've blown everything up it's to get it before it gets here are you asking and requesting more overseas one wants are you going to get this kind of information where they can say ok this is airplane specific this is harbor specific as opposed to we're collecting about the kind of technology that we can deploy about the weaknesses that exist in the system and how we can work collectively to raise that bar mr chairman with your staff it was coordinated and agreed that i would with all due respect it isn't true they have no authority to bodge you have the right to reject their entry into the united states absolutely right there's no question we're going to change or doesn't have to come in a person doesn't have to come in we have that authority not correct but to your point about additional information we have homeland security taking information that previously under our preexisting protocols was related to admissibility and now putting it in the service of making flying determination your time has expire capability today if it had been for kip hawley you know i've been a fan of those since i was first opposed to it about eight years ago and kept pumping up well my god we're going to see people's skin or bodies or images or whatever hawley you know after a number of failed administrators really focused on this he pushed it through i kept saying is there just way you could have software it doesn't have to be your body you can and kip finally got that done so the point i'm making here is we needed t s a administrator and i'm going to ask this question which i asked mr pollack title last spring can you just get it out of the way and allow the people in the t s a to unionize it will not impinge unlike some wacko republicans think on national security just get that out of the way so that won't be the thing that stalls the new t s a administrator she said she wanted to wait for an administrator to get it done you can't wait she needs to make the decision get it done give them those rights and get that off the table and then the next administrator can just deal with security issues and their history and background and not this specious issue that's just a message i wish she would deliver to her because she said here you know to me quite some time ago she was want to move this forward but she wanted to wait to the ministry can't wait to get it done point to the imaging technology is good may or may not have worked in this case but it has to be made with something that does vapor detection are we full out there working on vapor detection or trace detection dogs are great but you know we need you know maybe we need a heck of a lot of dogs or we need some technology that's more dependable than those puffer machines you're absolutely right congressman this technology does represent an improvement over our capability but it's only one part of a layered system other technology has to be brought to stupid names i don't know if the terrorist identity that i'm at entire but ever tied or all the people on the tide list now selectees i don't see why they wouldn't be it's an insignificant number of daily passengers compared to the number of people who fly daily it would not be an imposition are they now all selectees congressman they are not and although i must say i very much appreciate your sentiment and frankly from my perspective as a director ben it is no skin off my back if they all work there's five hundred thousand of them there's worldwide there's three million something people fly a day what i mean it would in significantly to the burden of time homeland security object to this homeland security has no in that direction always been in the opposite direction just a very changed i understand but you know congress acted and we pushed and we have in place now an appeal system so if somebody is on that list like john lewis from georgia  colleague or former senator kennedy others who got on the list you know there's an appeals process you can get off the list but why not not err on the side of caution a way on that list becomes of at least get that slightly higher level of screening they have some a forty or fifty times increase in the number of selectees we have today but it's i don't think so on a daily basis five hundred thousand people on the list how many of them fly on a daily basis you know when there's three million people a day flying i mean i just can't i don't think it would be lots of we currently have fourteen thousand on the selectee list increase from forty but i don't feel but i know it would increase the list that much but in terms of daily workload it would be nowhere near that one other quick question to state you talked about  revoke a visas that you didn't revote ok thank you thank you thank you thank you very much we've been told that some votes will happen and i've been fairly lenient with time but in giving every member an opportunity to ax questions we will strictly adhere  to the time gentleman from alabama mr ross is for five minutes thank you mr chairman as everybody on this committee knows for many years i have been a vigorous advocate of canines use and and going to remain that way and i want to talk mostly about administration he should have been proposed earlier secondly you did raise the issue that i care about is that canine use right after this christmas day bombing of the sacred a part of tonto in her remarks at the white house press my concern that we are utilizing that asset enough and and i know for a fact that the t s a only uses seven hundred fifty canines now these are very inexpensive very effective  means of technology and you've cited in your statement the written statement in two different places that you have increased your use of canine to take ssion dogs or explosive dogs in our transportation hubs can you tell me where and how many and what your plan is on that that  this open setting congressman i'm not going to detail any of the specific security measures that we've taken but we believe that canines are an important part of the multi layered defense is that we've been talking about and we look to use them to the greatest extent possible we know their value we're convinced of it and we're going to expand their use ok but you have a significantly expanded time since the christmas day bombing that we have we have in fact expanded but the details of that in this setting on another that's fine and i do want to get back with  normal private setting but i want to dress up a new technology currently the amtrak now the capitol police and the federal protective service all use a new type of canine explosive detection dog ca the smell the odor there for fifteen minutes in that wake so when it comes to transportation hubs like airports bus stations subways whatever the dog doesn't have to smell the person directly can just stand by when the person walks by technologies techniques leave no stone unturned to and increase the security of the traveling public well they're used extensively in europe one of the things i was hoping that secretary napolitano would do during her trip to europe and i thought about it when she announced it was i'm hoping that as a part of the greenwich that we work out with are our allies around the world that before planes that are destined to the united states that we can at a minimum deploy canines to those airports to be at the gate of any plane that's leaving for the united states to make sure that at least those passengers are screened with that layer of security that we have some control over if they will let people get on planes going elsewhere that's their business but if it's coming to this country i want to make sure their screen with every tool that we've got not to box and a frustrating that i've got is we're spending billions a year on bells and whistles and we have a very simple technology that works and we are using it anywhere close to the level that we should be using so i would ask you if you're going to make this a priority as you go forward and in the near future as the secretary did make clear to her european colleagues when when they met together on this issue at her request  there are number of measures that need to be taken this is not a business as usual environment that we're in and it takes the collaboration of all of us to be able to assure the traveling public that we're doing everything to keep them safe including  one of the questions that maybe that maybe you can answer here and i would be interested in hearing you know some of the the more detailed information that in the right setting proper setting but  is there any willingness abroad to support what we're trying to do in terms of aviation safety for for other countries to contribute financially to enhance technological measures i mean or are we the only western nation that is engaged in spending a lot of money trying to increase the technology or create more sophisticated technology this was an extremely intensive trip my many years in the army deploying existing technologies to best effect and there are new and promising technologies we are not the only ones with an investment in technology and reliance is one of the defense that we have in place and there is a recognition that this  it's more than a failure to connect the dots as we talk about so much it's a failure to identify specific threat information coming in and acting upon it appropriately we had christmas bomber's father going to approved may be involved in yemen based extremists i think members of congress and american people don't understand why with that type of information and then director wider with the specific intelligence coming in through the i c the intelligence community why that wasn't linked together number one and why it wasn't acted upon to ensure that this man never got on this or play in the first place i think we all agree that this visa should have been revoked immediately which was his name was entered into the terrorist identities datamart environment but that didn't have automatic repercussions in terms of screening these are revocation or stopping him from boarding the plane the other intelligence simply wasn't identifying associated with this individual i can tell you that there was concern on the intelligence community's part about potential attacks by al qaeda in yemen but what we did and we were concerned even about the timing of that what we didn't connect was the individual's name or where that attack where that was our failure and it was that because it was misspelled the name was misspelled i mean that to me you know if you type my name into google for instance they'll say did you mean m c c a l l and so do you not have a similar type of capability to actually the misspelling did not of and in any way it did affect is i understand and i'll defer to undersecretary kennedy on this from our perspective when his name was sent to him we actually put the spelling in both ways and the technology we use it would have made a difference did you not have the cable that the state department sent we did and we inserted the spelling based on a number of things and then you made the decision not to revoke the visa i give him that information i don't have the authority or but he says that's what started right can't you call the security canada and say you know i think we have a problem here we have to think about the intelligence community can frankly that normally doesn't occur if the nomination itself comes from the state department base where i think that i think there needs to be a lot better coordination going on here between these two entities and mr kennedy why have we given the information that you had why wasn't the vote as soon as i mentioned earlier when we get any information when anyone appears at american embassies they say that they have doubts any other information i don't want to take like your time the guy to visit with you after well i think the father is a very credible source and some anonymous person coming in saying this we have people coming in certain american embassies every day attacking their relatives well let me get on my time and this was this was a failure extraordinary and i sure hope it never happens again sir terry lose the last remaining time they have identified a vulnerability in our system i'm very concerned about future flights now the system didn't work in the screening you know they were there always a simple genius they used chemical explosives which would be detected through through x ray but not through the magnetometer i know we're the sixteen countries of interest in terms of pat downs more danced screening but i concern about still the majority airports out there we're still vulnerable they could still use this technique and get it explosive chemical explosives through  chairman i have to echo the sentiments of a number of our colleagues today who i'm very dismayed that the secretary yourself isn't here i mean it's probably fair to ask where the health secretary  this this hearing to be quite honest and i understand that you're prepared and that's great but she was invited to be here to address something of this magnitude and i concern now how are we responding to the information that we have to ensure that there are no other flights that are subjected to any danger that pose any threat to the american homeland i want to  number of other measures that we're taking internally to clarify roles and responsibilities in what is a significant enterprise for this country that is homeland security and we believe that the aspirations and way of life can ok thanks for question and you didn't answer my second question first comment do you know why the secretary she said the system worked in her first reaction she has made clear she was responding to a series of questions that were also related to what are you doing in response to this information what are we doing now to ensure that the traveling public is safe planes in the airlines what information are we pushing out ok mr leiter i'd said a couple moments left from your and by the way cyrus i respect you an enormously and your what you bring to the table and i really want to know from your perspective was there a single point of failure double point of failure multiple points of we can all we can submit them but a record in response ok multiple probably could go a long time if you'd like me to expand i always can but i was well know as the chairman of the oversight best subcommittee i think maybe we'll have you come in and chat with us a little bit appreciate that no more questions just tell you very much i don't committed to be misled and i talk with the secretary two days ago we did not talk about  we are here now but we still can't come because of some other things and that's the courtesy i think the committee still deserves and it does not require coming gentleman from pennsylvania  lew based on your testimony your written testimony and also your testimony that you gave last week before the senate but it appears you believe that the federal government did in fact collect the dots but did not recognize authorization act of two thousand and ten that passed the house permanent select committee on intelligence that was not considered on the house floor included sharp decreases in staffing levels for the office of director of national intelligence is it true that your staffing at noted i believe last week my discussions with him in december were about how i was going to absorb cuts of up to twenty percent of my personal areas to lose and watch listing personnel so then do cannot guarantee detection particularly when you rely on human interpretation of an image do you believe that the whole body image or would have had a better chance at detecting or identifying abdulla towel of explosive device than the current technologies we're examining all aspects of imaging technology full body imaging aware of some of the technologies that exist out there are also engaging in dialogue with our international partners like the dutch to see what they have what they're using  and we believe this is an enhancement we take the privacy concerns very seriously there are a number of measures in place with respect to whole body imaging now the dislocation of the observer than on retention of image but we believe that this is an area where we don't want to settle for just existing technology but also want to explore most promising new but we also don't want to take forever we want to put tools in the screeners now to enhance security good and then i hope you'll certainly  responsibility for failings within their respective organization i think coming before this committee is part of that the acknowledgment of responsibility and  correct the problems to make sure that people aren't becoming complacent in the years since nine eleven and and protect the flying public and i think those of you who make very clear continues today to really stun me that given the level of information granted in different parts of the system that there was sufficient information that at least to me it seems that he should not have been  there was sufficient information apparently for him to be tagged for questioning when he got off the plane and i don't understand i guess why the customs and border patrol was agency that was charged with questioning him when he got off the plane congresswoman that is we have standing protocols that have been in place in this case since two thousand and six related to admissibility issues and questions of the customs and border protection persons were prepared on the basis of to question him when he arrives we have changed that process we now take that kind of information and push it forward to a pre boarding opportunity individuals be questioned of before they get on planes precisely because we recognize now that there is important information they can help us understand whether or not an individual poses a threat to aviation security and so we have to change that process appreciate that things move forward and people would be get to question the head of the process but when you have this incident that has occurred and thank god that actions were taken that all passengers and crew were able to get off that plane safely but once you have this person who has attempted this atrocious act when and who what agency should be involved in taking custody that person who is trained to interrogate a terrorist and who has the ultimate authority in the chain of command in such a situation i can only speak to the to the part about the information that we had regarding admissibility no one is satisfied that this individual got on this plane with this material it should never have happened and we have to do everything we can so it doesn't happen again we are taking the information we have about admissibility he was at no time identified as a no fly or select which would have triggered certain actions prior to his i understand that but he took actions on the plane everybody on the plane was aware custody he was handed over to the department of justice and f b i official so the reports that i read the customs border interrogate him for an hour before he was turned over to the f b i saying that would be incorrect the customs border had him upon present pati for entry and he was handed over to law enforcement officials very observant of body language as well as their use of different senses with respect to the changes in the visa process have have there been any and it really doesn't matter whether a visa has a validity of one day or one year if information comes to us on the day after a visa issue thirty days after ninety days after if the intelligence or law enforcement community comes to us and said you cleared this person because there was no record when you cleared them we now have something new on this person that is he or she is on a date or national security we have we re visa that day gentleman from georgia for five minutes mr brown like rist chairman mr chairman during your opening statement you seem to blame the bush administration on this instance on christmas day  me there's a whole lot more going on here than just blaming president bush and his administration because i think this administration has a lot to blame too and a secretary lew to assume that you're just a good soldier in carrying out the orders that you were given  e chain of command you mentioned attempted attack in there actually in you before your testimony you just talked about that during your discussion about secretary not being here i mean since frankly that she's not here she same even the foreign visit was to brief people in europe and she ought to be here briefing these people in this committee who have responsibility to ensure the safety of the american public also the secretary said that the system worked which is hogwash the chairman ask if there was any disciplinary action being taken and all of y'all said no and frankly i'm incensed by that and i think the present united states should ask for the the resignation of sectarian politan a and get somebody there who is not in lala land and frankly i think she's in lala land and i don't know who else in new york apartment is but whoever he is they need to go because the safety of american people absolutely is critical of having good leadership at the top and i don't think we have that here in this country so i'm incensed and i think all the members of this committee are incensed that secretary won't take her time to come here and face this committee and i hope the president will take disciplinary action and get rid of her and get rid of anybody else in your all's department who who are in denial frankly about the seriousness of this the united states marine corps i was taught to know your enemy i've heard testimony from some other of the members of this panel they seem to get it but i don't think the department on homeland security and i'm not sure the president and his administration get it we are facing not a war on terror we're facing a war against a group of  fascist in this country who hate this nation hate everything we stand for including the freedom including the freedom we give to women and they want to destroy this nation and we must as a nation start facing the fact that these are islamic fascist terrorists who want to use a tactic in a war terrorism is only a tactic we're not fighting terrorism and we need to stop talking about this and to me the failure here is political correctness gone amuck and there are many members of this committee pressley on the other side who don't profile we just had a hearing about the un documented attend dinner we've got a lot of undocumented attendees in this nation that the state department allows to come into this country and some that are documented we need to change the whole philosophy of how we're trying to protect this nation and i don't think we're doing the proper job and frankly i'm incensed i hope the president will start paying attention to what's going on here and will stop this this inane fall of not profiling people that are  entities that we know hate our nation and will do what is necessary to protect american public and keep this nation say well it will a gentleman yield and no i won't you won't yield no i won't ok i've got just a minute left and there's no way unless we search every body cavity on every person who who wants to come in this nation but we know one of the big glaring flashing dots red is radical islam we've got to start focusing upon that and there's absolutely no question about that our people are going to die and those who are worshipping at the altar of political correctness are going to that that worshipping at the altar of political correctness and and we expect to return in about twenty five minutes committed stands in re of consumers ranging from the president to the members of the cabinet i would say though that nothing was done that things that were done for not turned out not to have been ones individual steps were taken why do i think that we didn't shift enough focus on to this individual i do think that al qaeda was although we saw a desire and a possibility to strike the homeland i don't think we colleagues about the process and the failures of our protocol etc and many people have commented about the absence of secretary napolitano and i would associate myself with those remarks however i will also say that it is stunning to me that attorney general holder  nobody from the department of justice is here to talk to this committee and to testified to this committee and i would respectfully request that at some point he does testify before this committee that's our responsibility is to have oversight  i want to focus i think on what has happened since the attempted act of war because that's what it was it wasn't a criminal act it was an act of war by terrorists an enemy combatant i was stunned that this terrorist was not turned over to the military and again i'm just incredibly dismayed no one from the d o j is here and yet it was under the direction of attorney general holder that made this decision to turn these turn those terrorists over to the f b i and not as an enemy combatant he made the decision and i believe that the attorney general is creating a culture at the department of justice that fosters an ideology of approaching this war on terror like a simple police action and i will cite a couple of examples of why i say that because i do believe it's dangerous to our security and i'm very concerned about it we know for instance that before becoming the attorney general eric holder and his law firm represented the accused terrorists that were in the custody of the military any urge their release to the civilian justice system and that includes jose padilla and they were very proud about giving free pro bono legal service to seventeen yemenis and one pakistani who currently get mull we know that he and president obama have placed many of these attorneys in high ranking positions at the justice department  again attorneys that provided free top flight legal assistance and the detainees i mean my husband's an attorney i know a lot of attorneys you might have pro bono work for child abuse domestic violence case this this is what they decided they wanted  to give free legal advice to enemy detainees we also know that the attorney general has senator grassley who is attempting to discover who these high ranking justice officials are and what their role is in making these decisions we know that the attorney general has been a close gitmo and to bring these detainees to the united states we know that the attorney general has made the decision to bring them to and others implicated in the nine eleven conspiracy to new york city without trial for trial without consulting any security officials in new york or other high ranking officials in the military or intelligence communities ranking member mentioned that he had not consulted them actually i think it was on the jim lehrer show where he said he consulted his wife and his brother before he made that decision so i have concern with that we also know that in this instance the attorney general did not share manson's of the christmas city a bomb christmas day bomber that he did not share the intelligence gleaned from the christmas day bomber with the military or intelligence officials before giving the miranda rights to this terrorist i believe another president has said that no one is accountable that no one will be held accountable no single person but i believe that president  must hold attorney general eric holder responsible for the loss of additional intelligence that would have been gained to protect our citizens from attacks he has been rather flippant i would say in saying that he's not afraid of mohammad being given a platform to his anti american rant in are just and system he says we have nothing to fear from giving terrorists constitutional rights and access to our court i disagree i am the only member on this committee from the detroit area and this incident may have faded in the front of many papers newspapers and media across our nation but i'll tell you in detroit we're looking every single day at this terrorist enemy combatant an act of war against america who was treated at the university of michigan burn center which is probably the best burn center in the entire world and not only given one a court appointed taxpayer funded attorney he has three three attorneys and we are looking every day at what's happening at the federal building in the city of detroit all of the expense that is being taken on by the detroit police department at a time they can't afford that kind of expense and other security officials just to make sure that we have no incident there and the first thing this guy here is when he gets off the airplane is you have the right to remain silent and here's your great justice system that we're having here in america and in the absence of anyone from the department of justice let me just ask director leiter do you think that attorney holder's decision to miranda denied us the opportunity to garner very valuable information and do you think that if we got a terrorist in afghanistan or yemen or in theater type of enemy who doesn't consider the battlefield to be just in yemen or in theater the battlefield bad day was like one thousand a northwest flight and these are enemy combatants and i think it is i think it is dangerous for america to treat a civil seek to do is harm terror if you will in civilian courts and been very successful there so you know i think that this is an issue we can go back and forth with but i think that we have to also make sure that in doing so we don't manifest through our conversation just the outcomes that we're that we're seeking to prevent and that is encouraging others by labeling enemy combatants to become enemy combatant i think that we have the talent and expertise in our nation to to address all of these concerns and that's why we're here today to to to win coverage one another to use those talent and expertise to do  needs to be done to protect the american people and certainly as we review our failures and our mistakes we learn from them to strength than ourselves as a nation to to do what has to be done to protect the american people so having said that my concern has to do with our ability to manage the database i have felt all along since really hearing from constituents in my constituents the bad they've had a very hard time getting off the list that we were building a quagmire and i say that because that a certain point you the list become the proverbial trying to find the needle in a haystack when you're not purging it when you're not moving people to the cleared list and so i'm just concerned bed as we build out the data infrastructure to be able to find individuals to communicate in real time about individuals that we may have have on one list but may not be on another that the time that it takes is again to do the data input because it's my understanding that particularly on in the in the tide  database that there are people with similar names in addition to actual name and i'm sure once you sort of plug in a name you're going to get a list of names i want to raise the question with each of you about how we refine our capacity through through data maintenance and gathering to to to be able to do that type of id in real time the g a o has found the agency involved in screening international visitors to the new u s do not screen individuals against all records in the watch list can we say hard to address that and believe me i am very sympathetic to your concerns because i have the responsibility to get through all of this data and make sure it is clean and we want to clean a system as we can have  next step really is moving towards greater integration of biometrics and under secretary can these already noted some of those advances that we've made and i think both at the initial screening when someone is getting on an aircraft but certainly when they are getting a visa when they arrive at a port of entry the integrated use of biometrics which is there already is extremely helpful it has to be expanded there is a significant resource tale and there's also a significant civil liberties concern that have to be addressed as we do  but we know that's the right way to go thank you very much now recognizes for five minutes and most over thanks very much mr chairman and before you start of a lot of questions i'd like to identify myself with my colleague from michigan as a mark on the decision to use the criminal justice system our country the military justice system to prosecute this individual may very briefly what i've understood is you know what he was brought off that aircraft after he tried to kill all the people aboard the plane he was taken into custody was taken to the hospital for medical treatment two f b i agents asking questions he was giving them actionable intelligence for at least fifteen minutes intelligence that saves lives those agents that were asking those questions there's the exception to the miranda rights that if you believe there's imminent information that's going to save lives another bomb of that aircraft or as we saw unfortunate september eleventh there are other aircraft in the air with bombers like mr on it and they have the the discretion to ask questions and again for fifteen minutes by reports they got actual intelligence information five hours later another group of quote unquote clean team showed up the first thing they did was read him his miranda rights and no surprise he has a talk sense that and we'll never know what information we've lost and what risk and what damage we may put to our country by not interrogating him fully and getting all the information we have he had to learn about what al qaeda in yemen like to change tactics a tone of my i want to talk a little bit about you know one thing the that i believe that the most both abroad and here at home was part of the you know the organization to help him get trained and certainly keep him indoctrinated also conserves member from texas apparently there were contacts email contact between him and  here congressman i really can't i can't go to great depth here i would tell you that the intelligence community has been concerned with the activities of anwar locky for some time he was initially investigated in association with the events of nine eleven when he was a mom in san diego and later northern virginia and i can tell you that even well before major hasan but certainly after the events of fort hood and the f b i and other agencies have been very very focused on a lot but also other individuals like  stressed that is that the bureaucracy itself is as great a threat to our national security as anything else you heard the bureaucracy today part of it let me just point out that congress is not exempt from this criticism indeed this is at least the fourth different full committee to hold a hearing on the attempted attack on december twenty fifth this strikes me as entirely counterproductive to what we're trying to accomplish it seems crystal clear to me that the events of december twenty fifth were allowed to occur because once again we failed to connect things and the information that we already had we already knew about and once again our intelligence agencies failed to communicate with each other  is a human error not electronic error and we spend a lot of time talking about the state of the art of these machines that are in airports or aren't in airports we are not told the american people the truth to serve as the head of the intelligence community that consists of sixteen different agencies spread throughout the federal government sixteen each of these intelligence agencies have different standards for their personnel each of them nine eleven nine years ago they still have different standards i would hope i would conclude that you're not going to get the proper relationship between these agents amongst these agencies until you have basic standards in fact the agency within all of these sixteen that has the toughest  i would begin where we established the position of director of national intelligence to finally provide some leadership and guidance over the intelligence community so that we could finally close the gaps in this information sharing sharing and clearly we're not there yet what troubles me most about this incident was that we allowed this individual to receive a visa in the first place to enter the united states and i think of all those families who tried to get united and were denied a visa because they thought if they came to the united states that they wouldn't go back and many of those cases were adjudicated correctly and many of them were not we never took steps to revoke his visa before he entered a foreign airport to travel we already had negative information on this individual not only had the state department spoken to his father but we knew that he traveled to yemen for a young man to travel from nigeria to director leiter the national counterterrorism center is often described as the arm of our intelligence community that is responsible for i hate the phrase but and probably you do too connecting t intelligence gathering do you agree that is your primary role and responsibility and if so doesn't that hold you primarily responsible for the failure to connect the dots on the at teligent we already had on this individual absolutely i've said several times congressman and the primary analytic organization it was our responsibility to do this we didn't do that there was another organization that also had responsibility under the d n i standards that didn't occur there either do you wonder why some of us have concluded that maybe we have added an extra layer of bureaucracy to the intelligence apparatus that is slowing down to get to the ball on the i wonder why we think that at times or do you think that the d n a is absolutely necessary to stop those who wish to bring harm to our families to our neighborhoods into our borders what's your thoughts cano you work for them what your thoughts congressman i think the d n i is a useful construct to advance intelligence reform i do not think that the d n i in this case this contractor the layers was the problem and the men i think many of the weaknesses you've identified are fair weaknesses i just don't think they were the issues that caused this failure here today do you have the authority you need to work with intelligence across armaments and agencies do you have the authority to do that carson it is not easy for the eight i'm not saying it's easy believe me i'm not just the latter but my question is very specific i do not nor do i believe the d n i as currently constructed has of the authorities to move all of the information in a way that will maximize the likelihood of detecting these blasts mr chairman i hope that and i know you are listening in the ranking member to the last answer th the gentleman has been forthright i thank him for his service to his country we have created my conclusion not their conclusion a monster and we will never get to the safety of the american citizens ais we build these levels of bureaucracy that do not get to the heart of the issue and i would ask you to go back and i would ask you to go back and i would ask you to go back mr kenn to look at this paragraph see as being this systemic problem this was human error but maybe it's human error for sip it tainted by the fact that we have created a bureaucratic nightmare so that no one in a manner you deem necessary and this chairman and i'm happy to do that and i will work with the d n i i would add that although i say that i don't have any particular authorities right i believe as has been indicated this was a failure of intelligence but i'd like to make sure that i state that it was not a failure of all intelligence personnel and i say this because we have many people who risk their lives on a daily basis and some by the way lose their lives as was evidenced by a recent event that we need not go into and their families they'd see these hearings and i don't want their families to assume that i have concluded that all intelligence officers are failures because i want them to have the morale necessary to do a very difficult job under circumstances that are extremely complicated and sometimes almost impossible if not impossible i believe that the structural integrity of a plane at five thousand feet three thousand feet traveling at five hundred miles per hour is a paramount importance it is as as anything that we deal with and because the structural integrity of that plane is so important i want to system that will reveal and allow us to capture the i want to system that will capture the abdulmutallab whose religion i'm not aware of if we focus only on connecting the dots that could have been connected to the exclusion of designing a system that will allow us to capture the abdulmutallab who are not obvious who are not intuitively obvious to the most casual observer if you will it will be a mistake we must have a system that will reveal the abdul talab who is anglo saxon and has blond hair because this beast that we have to deal with continually metamorphoses it becomes something else somewhere else and if we only assume that it will be tomorrow what it is today we will make today's mistake and it will impact tomorrow so the system that i'm looking for is one that will allow us to understand in my opinion that the last line of defense is the airport that's the last line of defense and the american p well don't ask us to do the impossible they do demand however that we do all that we can that we do all that we can and at some point the excuse that we didn't do all that we could is not going to be enough for the american people so we've got a duty at these airports to do all that we can we owe it to the intelligence officers who risk their lives every day to make sure that we do all that we can at the airports our last line of defense a quick question if i may did we know the religion of richard reid prior to december two thousand  i don't believe so i don't think we knew anything i think that that that answer suffices the reason i ask is because if we focus on religion and and then some other adjectives we're missing a point here i want to capture the the the culprit who's religion may not be the religion religion days you will for our purposes is serious business and it goes beyond the ability to simply identify that which is superficial the superficial social analyst who can come in after the fact and connect all of the dots and see how clearly we could have saved the day had we connected the dots so i suppose i had more of a statement than questions for you because i just absolutely believe that we must not allow ourselves to be trapped had to be there for that vote yeah i hope we're not prisoners of wrong impressions either but also we're not prisoners of p c we're in a war declared on us by radical jihad radical islam and that happens to be a fact we didn't pick the war they picked the war and i haven't seen too many irish catholic nuns blow themselves up and sometimes we do stupid things like having my six month old granddaughter a couple years ago taken out for secondary search when they searched her diaper that kind of stupidity hurts us i think even though we do it to make sure that we have some if the father had if we had the information the father had presented before we asked my question what we would have done is we would have not issued diseases we would have sent into the intelligence and law enforcement communities  security an advisory panel and ask them what additional information they have and then made the decision on the basis of what additional information they provided as well so so if that's the case why wouldn't we move to revoke if we have that information because we sent the request into the visas viper sir went into the intelligence and law enforcement community and asked them if they had any additional information on members disgruntled business partners and others who say that so and so might be a terrorist and so we are been very carefully analyzed that we consult with our partners ok i understand it let me ask you this then so do we have a lot of fathers who have experience such as mr abdulmutallab father did who turned their sons in with that kind of information there have been family members so there are a lot of them there have been there have been family members who you know i you know i appreciate it i don't like people getting cute with me this is very serious business absentee american people are asking us i was just calling people are saying how in god's name can you screw up like this and we have spent billions of dollars trying to do it and we say well you know a father comes in like this with this guy's pedigree says that about it we got a lot of them i would argue that you don't get a lot of them and i would argue that you ought to be a little more serious about this than doing that you know it's easy to be a second you know monday morning quarterback but when you tell me that it bothers me a great deal if i can just finish my sentence you can finish your sentence but we're in a serious question here about people who want to kill us and you talk to me it sounds like the state department's doing things the way they used to do it now sir that is that that is the second part of my sentence or is that we are reviewing all of our procedures we regard ourselves as the first line of defense and we have every intention and we are committed you weren't the first line of defense or were you i believe we were sir this is amazing i'm sorry it's amazing to me so you don't it doesn't work the way it should be that absolutely not ok i said that in my add my testimony so we're reviewing the procedures and criteria so what would you do differently now if you got this information or would you do anything differently except make sure it went up the line i think we have the mister if he had been a visa applicant we would have we would have coded that information we would have sent the inquiry to washington we would have asked other people in the intelligence community like crazy wasn't it wasn't a visa applicant he already had a  visa so i want that what change would take place now if you were confronted with the same information not applying for a visa i understand but he has a visa this information is brought to you at one of the  at one of your embassies i would think ops as you suggested your we would do we would do a more in depth review to make sure that the information being presented to us was valid and then we if it was valid we would move to revoke the mediately ok i just like to bring one little bit of information back the state department i have an adult daughter who is busy gambia the week after christmas she thought it might be important for her to go to the embassy to indicate that she was their american citizen there she was told the person that would take that information was sick and the person who was excuse me was on vacation and the person who was supposed to take that person's place was sick therefore she could come back in a week to tell them that she was there she was leaving in a week i just want to tell you that she didn't pull anything about being my daughter or anything else i just happen to think that kind of a response to a simple american citizen going to a country saying you know you might want to know i'm here in case anything happened out there she thought i was going to happen in that country but that was the response she got that was that was totally inappropriate and wrong and i will look into that sir we have a we encourage we request we have web sites to encourage any american traveler to record their press which we did she was told to come back after she left we that was an error and we will look into it and why that is not our procedure gentleman's time is exp deleted from texas for five minutes and quickly thank you very much mr chairman and to the witnesses let me thank you i think all of us echo the fact that we know that there are men and women on the front line and we appreciate their service we also appreciate the  leadership of the president the united states is the commander in chief he should be able to expect the highest level of performance of his staff of his executive staff and he should also expect that congress is a collaborat with him in team homeland security unfortunately i think that there were enormous challenges and missteps that did not equate to the team working together and playing on the playing field together infrastructure protection looked into the question of watch lists we actually made comments about the burdensome this of that watch list of how heavy laden it was how inaccurate was to the extent that we have eight year olds that we had an eight year old as a witness another eight year old have been interviewed it's a simple path to look at that watch list and provide the intelligence and the staffing to make it a watch list that is credible of the name the other broken part of the system is  responsibility still as i understand it on airline personnel as people come to counters and their names they go to the back and check the names civilians looking at issues that happen to deal with homeland security issues we have a problem and a crisis that needs to be fixed and the other part of it is that we must acknowledge that we will not have people bearing flags running down airports and saying i'm a terrorists individual operators and actors franchising of terrorism seems to be the call of the day and then taking credit for it one way or the other we know now that osama bin laden has taken credit for the december twenty fifth action many of us who are not inside the department were aware  that there was activity going on around the holiday we know that that is the modus operandi of terrorists a goal when a country is focusing on something else so my questions go to this whole question of interrelated quickly to secretary kennedy are you related is your council offices do they have a direct connection to the watch list efforts of secretary lute and the counterterrorism efforts of secretary lightner director lightner so that the nigerian council it person would have had that direct connection and intelligence communities provide us with information every day on new threats we load that into our database and that information is available to every embassy and consulate throughout the world as a counselor general have the authority or the ability or the individual who dealt with the father of the alleged perpetrator in the instance of december twenty fifth to be able to call back on a telephone on a cable on an e mail or whatever is secure to ask questions out of the secretary lutes area or the counterterrorism area they what they do is they call the visa office at the state department which is our central repository and which is in daily contact all the secure means with both the national counterterrorism center the department of homeland security the f b i s terrorist screening center yes ma'am we are in contact with daily that is one of the major improvements since nine eleven we are all lashed up as if you were in contact and what does that mean does that mean that the person who engage with the father of the alleged perpetrator had the ability to get on the phone and call and get a quick answer of the person who answered the phone in washington d c i am suspicious there is an individual here talking about activity of an individual that has a visa was there a direct link for there to be a response yes by checking live intelligence by way of a direct call to the counterterrorism or direct call to the watch list those into different areas of the was not on the watch list he was not on the select list and the state department when the when the the father came in talk to an embassy officer who then immediately reported to the consular section that this is the information that was received and that information was immediately sent to washington have you made changes to ensure that information that would describe someone as suspicious can be responded to quickly because frankly i believe that all that the father said was enough information for a well trained official whether they are state department or not that we're living in a different climate and maybe i should do something about it have you had a retraining of your staff around the country around the world rather we yes ma'am we have sent out revised and updated instructions and we emphasize we've added additional information to the immediate report that is sent and it is called visas viper that notifies the homeland security and intelligence and law enforcement communities of the state department has come in to a piece of information that may well be important and here it is secretary lew if i might on the watch list which has been one of the major complaints and  burdensome lists that is poles i believe inaccurate in many instances it plays into my colleague's comments about profiling for the basis of religion and otherwise which does nothing to fight the war on terror  question is the distinction between the watch list and the no fly list in this instance this person should have definitely been on the no fly lists and so my question is what is the strategy for a comprehensive and coordinated watch listing and screening approach and to a archives implementation and investment plan that describes the scope governance principles outcomes milestones training objective metrics cost and schedule of necessary activities as relates to the watch but to be able to move to the no fly list if i may also raise to secretary lighter so i can have these questions out which i think is very important i hope that we  when we are on notice that an incident is occurring all hands will be on deck similar to making sure that embassy personnel who we have great respect for are at their desk at appropriate times because all times of the of the schedule if you will the calendar people are coming and going i hope there's a terrorist act we have all hands on deck on this information secretary light and i would say my question is there's been a lot of discussion about the failure this was not a failure to connect the dots but to analyze what we had it has been said that the intelligence community's eight to build a more robust analytical capabilities pacifically what steps are being taken to accommodate this goal in training system design and technological changes but more importantly on the human intelligence and behavioral assessment which if you had done that on the gentleman's actions he would have been on the fly list secretary l yes ma'am thank you as you know the department of homeland security does not own or control the watch listing and abdulmutallab was neither no fly nor selectee what we are working very closely with our colleagues throughout the inner agency to identify the kinds of information that is necessary for us to take steps related to ensuring aviation security in fact in the wake of this incident we will take information such as undersecretary kennedy was talking about and put that in the hands of our immigration advisory that are stationed abroad in nine locations so that they can engage in additional questioning and examination of persons who come on that list an important step in the direction of increased security and we're looking at others as well you also mentioned the prostration with ensuring the accuracy of the list we share that frustration it's important that we have when we do have lists on which we rely for ensuring the safety of the traveling public to be accurate we are working very intensively to establish an easy way for people to dig conflict information when it's erroneous and to ensure that those lists are the accurate important tool that we need them to be but we also know that we're facing a determined adversary who is looking to people who are unknown to any system and in this regard we need to evaluate their activities travel patterns and other activities which can tip off that this person may be dangerous certainly is worth additional screening and questioning and we're working intensively with our inner agency colleagues to get a better systems in place for those  contingencies question i think you're exactly right that we have to improve the ability of these analysts to understand the characteristics of this information is are coming in and so they get a true feel for what a father walks in was the father walking and what we're doing a number of things on this front most importantly we are creating specific teams that are not bound to writing daily intelligence but when they get that from the father can dive into it and connect that intelligence in a way that you do have all the information necessary to make that determination about whether someone should be or should not be on the no fly list so you also do not get people on the no fly list that you don't want on the no fly list because if you the only way you're going to get the bad guys off the planes is to also ensure that the good guys can get on the planes otherwise the system just becomes on wheels so we have already begun additional training the director of national intelligence is studying how we can advance our training more and we are creating teams to pursue these to ensure that they have the time they have the resources to track down the scree piece of information and put them together congress on us you also ask is the state department on duty in addition to the embassy people you mentioned we have somebody responsible for this in our operation cent seven days a week twenty four hours a day three hundred sixty five days a year is a question comes in from an embassy that may be on a different time zone or comes in from our partners in the national security community that officer knows who to reality reach out to to get them to get the right information they need to be chairman manages to say a point on the record and i think the witnesses one point that i heard secretary lupe said is that homeland security does not have ownership of the watch list i think it speaks to again the work we have to do and have been doing to get a synergism so that we have some mutually interrelatedness on trying to help all these persons and that we can get an understand everybody has ownership of a watch lives a no fly list we've got to find a way to weave in and out security so that there are no gaps not putting the fault on these public servants but there has to be a cleaning up of the cracks in the system that will allow this kind of breach to happen and it has to be a combination mr chairman with the executive working with us as a team homeland security and no distinction between republicans and democrats team homeland security and i hope in that spirit that we will have the appointees necessary for the running of the homeland security department to move as quickly as possible to be appointed and confirmed on the back of the american with the instructions you reference sam and jackson lee that have been implemented since december twenty fifth incident with respect to that you want to make sure the good guys get on a plane as a good guy here who is a member of congress that has an awful difficult time getting on planes is congressman john lewis from georgia  lou can you look into that and and figure out a way how he can not be flagged for secondary screening and other things because he is in fact john lewis now there's another john lewis out there we still ought to have a system to figure out how to handle it so we should know i'm on ok thank you very much and i'm sure he would appreciate it mr chairman could i make one note on that front yes and not knowing the facts of congressman lewis is case and certainly not accusing him of being a known or suspected terrorist i do want  flag for the committee and they support understand that a desire to have more people on the watch list will inevitably lead to more false positives and we have to accept that i believe as a cost and there's nothing we can do technologically or with humans to a lemonade those false positives from occurring again not speaking directly to a congressman's gaze but exempting it will be a byproduct of ensuring that some bad people don't get on the plane and i understand but that's going forward this is been from day one so we're not even to that to the next generation but obviously we'll soon inconvenience that adding to the list will bring but these a different kind mr candidate last question can you provide the committee with either if you know right now at a later date how many people we actually have working in of these office in your shop here in washington here no further business the committee stands a joint