know issues and without objection the chair and ranking member will have five minutes to make opening statements followed by opening statements not to exceed three minutes by any other member six recognition that objection members and witnesses may have five legislative days to submit a written statement or extraneous materials for the record and the purpose of today's hearing is to examine the laws of external hard drive containing data from the executive office of the clinton administration we will hear from the acting archiv this security breach occurred and what steps have been taken and what steps should be taken to tighten security at our facilities the missing hard drive which is a backup copy contain the entire computer files a one hundred thirteen white house employees their entire computer files where were downloaded and stored on a hard drive and later transferred to the backup hard drive that is now missing classified documents and personally identifiable information former clinton administration staff and visitors to the white house are now exposed before we continue with this hearing let us be very clear that the subcommittee has no intention of interfering or impeding the investigations currently being conducted by the nara inspector general the secret service or the federal bureau of investigation we urge everyone's cooperation with these investigations and i thank all of our witnesses for appearing today and look forward to their testimony now we are on a tight schedule today so what i am going to do is normally we would yield to the ranking member who is not here yet when he gets here he will be allow an opening statement but i will swear the witnesses and i'll introduce you and swear you  oversees the condo and execution of audit investigations and inspections by the agency in compliance with provisions of the inspector general act of one thousand nine hundred seventy eight as amended years of experience as an hour and specter general and thirty years of exceptional service to the us government currently at nara mr bragg fails tenure has included the recovery of hundreds of stolen archiv ok thank you chairman and members of the subcommittee i appreciate the opportunity to discuss a recent security incident that is a serious breach of the trust placed in the national archives to protect our nation's records learned in late march that an external computer hard drive containing copies of clinton administration executive office of the president records was missing from the electronic records processing room as the acting ar someone who's devoted my entire thirty nine year career to the national archives i'm deeply angered that unarmed for your contractor may have intentionally removed with me today or not general counsel and senior agency official for privacy gary stern and sharon deputy assistant archivist for records services the loss of the hard drive occurred while our was conducting preservation processing of electronic media received from deterioration on september eighteenth two thousand and eight to my book hard drives created by the contractor were delivered to nara the hard drives were labor labeled master number two and backup number two the two hard drives were taken to fifty three hundred at the national archives in college park and placed on a shelf in the end classified electronic records processing room within the suite at the time approximately eighty five nor employees and contractors had badges that opened three doors to the office area of the suite individuals with access to suite fifty three hundred also had access to the electronic records processing room for unclassified records on october thirtieth the work of verifying the records on the hard drive was the size assigned to an information technology specialist work was performed only on the master number two hard drive not the backup number two which would later be missing on february fifth two thousand and nine place the master number two hard drive into its original manufacturer's box and noted that the backup number two hard drive was in a similar hard drive was empty the master number two hard drive was still in its box and immediate division wide search was initiated on april second two thousand and nine the inspector general general counsel and i were informed of the loss while the office of the inspector general continues its investigation there are currently no facts to determine whether the drive was stolen or misplaced and no suspect has been identified nar has offered  reward of up to fifty thousand dollars for information that leads to the recovery of the missing hard drives in our staff reviewed the master number two hard drive and discovered that it contained numerous files consigning personal name and social security numbers in addition are also found a small number of files that contain marking indicating classified information while information from the e o p provided at the time of transfer indicated that the hard drive list of those individuals who may have had their personal information compromised and a credit monitoring contractor is notifying these individuals as they are identified to date approximately fifteen thousand seven hundred fifty notification letters have been mailed nar is offering each individual one year of free credit monitoring services and fraud protection today seven hundred and ninety six individuals have signed up for the credit monitoring services because of the extremely large volume of data on the drive over eight point seven million individual files we do not yet know the total number of individuals whose privacy has been affected nar has taken steps to improve internal  security the office of record services is also conducting an announced inspections of all records branches and divisions on a periodic basis and supervisors are required to do periodic walk through inspections during the day or failed to adhere to proper records handling procedures the national archives is a public trust and the three thousand women and men who work in r s forty four facilities across the country take their jobs and that trust very seriously every day our staff reforms work to our democracy by preserving and safeguarding the more than nine billion records that make up the national archives of the united states at the same time we must balance safeguarding the records with providing the people of this country access to those records as with any endeavor that relies on the work of human beings our work by our best efforts and intentions is subject however the loss of even one record  terms mr chairman and members of the subcommittee i thank you for offering me the opportunity to testify today i have been called before the subcommittee to provide testimony on the circumstances surrounding an external computer administration which contained a vast amount of material from the clinton administration including presidential records act or p r a material the president's a record active one hundred seventy eight governments the official records of the president and vice president created or received after january twentieth one thousand nine hundred one the p r a change of legal ownership of the official records of the president from private to public and establish a new statutory structure under which presidents much manage their records i that in reaction to the loss of the hard drive new policies procedures and processes will be defined implemented at nowra and certainly my office will evaluate these actions provide guidance and appropriate independent and skilled oversight however our focus now  on the criminal investigation of the disappearance of the hard drive capable of holding two terabytes of our government information and which my forensic investigator informs me was essentially filled with data at the outset i must say i am not able to talk about all aspects of the investigation at this time this is an ongoing criminal investigation which may have elements affecting national security therefore i know that the chair and members of this distinguished committee would not wish me to provide any information that  investigations integrity or potential success currently we are working with the assistance of united states secret service and the federal bureau of investigation to more precisely identify the content of the hard drive however an initial cursory review identified that thousands of examples of personally identifiable information or p e i data reside on the hard drive we reported this to narron management officials and they have hired a contractor to further out further analyze this p i aspect and provide breach notification per o m b requirements i should also note that at my request the special agent charges secret service washington field office generously made their twenty four seven hotline operation available to us in order to support the investigation of potential recovery of the missing dr in response to our suggestion never has estab a reward of up to fifty thousand dollars for information leading to the successful recovery the missing hard drive no productive leads have resulted today from this action the subcommittee is asked about the security in place at narrow at the time the hard drive went missing and after the hard drive went missing the direct answer is that the controls in place were inadequate and what controls were there were readily bypassed an obviously compromised on an ongoing and dynamic basis quite simply this was an accident waiting to happen and now it has a direct result of these failures and controls my office's capacity to investigate this incident has been severely compromised the last one unnoticed potentially for months conserve the speaking at least one hundred fifty people access to the area and even rudimentary access control such as bads or sign and logs were not maintained or could be readily bypassed while the drive was kept in an area ostensibly were secured by a proximity card reading a lock in practice the system failed people could simply piggyback by going through the door when other persons opened it and even worse doors which should have been secured were propped open for ventilation purposes it was also reports my investigators that the processing area in which the hard drive went missing was used as a conduit or shortcut to the restrooms therefore can be argued that the security for this area was no greater than the general security for the building as a whole the loss of this hard drive holding p r a material is not the only concern i have in this investigation many in the pool of potential subjects of this criminal have access to the processing area where this destroyed disappeared as well as more traditional storage of stack areas therefore i cannot say with any confidence that data stored in these areas was not compromised this includes the records of the nine eleven commission the warren commission as well as large quantities of other national security holdings in a benign case where proper controls were in place of the subject hard drive was lost or rawnsley disposed of one might take comfort that other data was not compromised the fact that i'm afforded no such comfort if the drive was deliberately removed the person or persons could have just as relative removed other holdings or copied information on to other mediums i'm also deeply concerned about how now originally treated the category of president of data like that which was on the missing hard drive specifically when the data was copied from original executive office of the president or e o p computer tapes to modern hard drives the copying was done by contractors offsite without any security requirements narrative fixed price delivery of four hundred twenty eight such e l p computer tapes to external hard drives to include the missing hard drive a small business was provided complete custody control of the housing content of the e o p material amazingly this contract was one of the series of like contracts in which never was silent in addressing any security requirements for the tapes or the information which they held in fact the contract made no absolutely no mention of the sensitivity of these records nor include a non disclosure agreement when handling a processing groups of p r a material i would think it essential insisted appropriate measures security over transport and processing of of these records offsite by contractor however no such measures were identified in this specific case the tapes were sent off site to a small storefront operation new jersey the existing security at this location was rudimentary and clearly an adequate to protect and limit inappropriate access to p r a material and ended june eighteenth two thousand and nine letter senator charles gra asked the acting artemus in night states do you recognize now as a national security agency she stated quote no now is not some national security agency by any shared means of that term within the executive branch for which we are aware now or does not make nor does it implement national security policy now is only relationship to national security is our responsibility for ensuring that those security security costs are the requisite come into our custody from other agencies are stored protected and handled following the rules to which all agencies that handle classified records must adhere i would submit that never has in this in other recent cases breached that relationship while by some technical standards merit now or may not meet the track digital definition of a formal nasa security agency the information or records we hold are vital to our nation's security when what i will say specific to the loss of this hard drive is that the american people deserve better security and accountability the narra has provided them i can assure you that through our audit and investigations management consultations and briefings we will work to help narrow strengthen its internal control and security mechanism while some corrective measures have and i trust will more will be taken it is analogous to closing the barn door after the horses left the event has passed and damage course national our cabins and records administration or zation all issues but i think that sort of diminishing then ports of this and organizational issues i think is putting it lightly the scope of the magnitude of the problem that we're facing the national archives is an agency with an extremely important function it serves as a keeper of our nation's valuable records preserve government and historical records that include copies of acts of congress president proclamations and federal regulations while the archives maintains public access to some documents other records contain highly sensitive data miss ratchford thank you for touching on the national security component your in your testimony and these must be secured ensure our national security and shield personally identify all identifiable information as well the second is the archives as protector of the records under its control is key to preserving our history and maintaining accountability in our government their archives conduct truly invaluable work very important work obviously yet they are an agency that the public doesn't often hear much about unfortunately they've been getting quite a lot of press lately all of which are most of which seems to be negative and maybe the national archives inspector general mr bradfield brought mr brad feld sorry notified congress that external hard drive containing national security information is gone missing from the agency's college park facility between sometime between october two thousand and eight and march two thousand and nine when its absence was first noticed that drive contain one terabyte of information  what we've come to know is that it was clinton and presidency records the equivalent of which are millions of books full of information as mr brassfield as previously put it the missing data including more than  hundred thousand so security numbers the personal contact information presidential administration officials the entire computer files of one hundred thirteen former white house employees secret service and white house operating procedures and other highly sensitive information disturbingly the missing hard drive a stored and easily identifiable package as miss thomas testified to today in a workspace of the archives says it has already admitted was unsecured on  on attended an accessible to personnel without clearance even now it's still not known whether the hard drive was misplaced lost or stolen or even when it was actually went missing is my hope and the national archives management would immediately react to what has been called a catastrophic loss by tightening security inaccessibility their college park facility particularly in the area which the hard drive was removed however when a bipartisan group of oversight committee staff visited the campus on july seventeenth they have observed many of the same deficiencies in security measures and left with an impression that a motivated criminal would be able to remove sense of material with little to no resistance now this is a bipartisan has c'est meant there wasn't much of an effort on the part of national archives staff to even make it appear that subset of changes had been made to secure the location to be fair the pattern of material mismanagement the national archives proceeds miss thomases by quite a few years we're still remembering clinton administration official national security adviser sandy berger caught walking out of the archives with his pants stuff full or actually rather socks stuffed full with classified and inventoried documents there are many more alarming cases of negligence at the archives yet none is agree just as a disappearance of the drive these include the disappearance of six million dollars worth of taxpayer funded equipment over the there is a two thousand to two thousand and six this puzzle of countless original records from the bureau of indian affairs with the archives trash and the disappearance of fifty five thousand pages of cia and other federal agency records right off the shelf in two thousand and six there's a prevalent culture of carelessness at the national archives and must be replaced with a meticulous accounting for all materials paper and electronic answer to and strident and stringent security measures that restrict access of unauthorized employees to areas where confidential data is kept on tuesday president  announced he had selected his nominee as archivist to replace mr thomas david ferraro quite frankly i believe this announcement couldn't come soon enough mr ferraro as certainly had a lot of experience managing mass quantities of paper electronic documents and other information in his tenure as director of research libraries the national public well at the new york public library and i look forward to hearing about his qualifications and his plans for the national archives after  is senate confirmation hearings whenever the senate really gets around to doing their job and i thank the witnesses for appearing here today look forward to the testimony but explanation of how the harddrive full of sensitive information was lost or what is what does it mean by personally identifiable information to damage a person's security in security banking for identity theft along those lines it could be names addresses associates that kind of information as this information was a compilation from the clinton era white mint administration it was it was a compilation it has information that was residing on individual computers and thus there is information that meets that definition that reside on the hard drive that is missing notified of the breach into the breach occurred i'm sorry when did the breach occur when was it noted at the end of march actually on april the second it was reported to me  mr brock failed and to mr stern that the hard drive had been lost considering the nature of the summation and this is the month of almost august are you saying that most of these parties have not been so notified we don't at this point know how many people's names and social security numbers are on on the hard drive why do you not know that information are eight point seven million individual files on this hard drive and we have a contractor at this time trying to extract all of the data that they can come up with to go to that contract or like this one off the premises another contracting out matter where people who apparently should not have been handling secure information were doing so now where where is this contractor located walk wouldn't this be done on the premises not a hard drive not a head why did the hard drive had to leave the premises this poses my question let me answer your last question the hard the process of copying the information from white house tapes what were white house g o p employees tapes to the hard drive was done offsite and that is what i testified regarding that was done offsite up in new jersey and that's where i've raised significant security issues the second part of your interest which is on now attempting to mine and identify those individuals whose p i i may have been compromised that is under a separate contract which is being administered by the archives the reason it is taking so exceptionally long is this is probably as far as i know through my thirty years career this is probably the greatest challenge in trying to identify you have to reconstruct since it was on a hard drive with nothing to go on what what my investigators are trying to do in the p i o m n two the contractor what we're attempting to do is to use the latest forensic investigative software available this is not normal data that sits in one standard language or one standard format if you think about think about every record that you've ever captured over your career in different languages and different spread sheets in different formats all being compressed into one entity it's that's what's happened it's not readily mind a ball and definable as one would think so nobody's been notified as of now that we have to believe it's fifteen thousand trying fifteen and sixteen thousand letters have gone out to notify people of the breach of their information to have any idea how long it will take before all parties have been notified or kind of harm could be done in the  meantime i think it's going to take several months i think one of the things that this is perfectly has made perfectly clear to us that it's very difficult to get the information off the hard drive there are so many so you think that that in terms of a various x someone trying to use the data that would not be very easy to do given that we have a contractor that was suggested to us by the national security agency is somebody that they had worked with who they thought was the best in the field to try and do this i do indeed believe that it was going to be difficult for anybody to extract this information from the hard drives abroad compiled do you from the investigation is going on d where would that have been since they were only two places it should be either their archives or with a contractor i cannot dismiss any aspect as to whether or not i missing somebody took it for purposes of benign intent just to use it for their own medium or the worst case scenario that it was taken for more nefarious purposes that that is a potential i also want to state that people with the correct technologies and tools can mine this data we have a contractor now that is trying to my mind vesta geishas focus focusing on how it happened what the impact of the of the losses and if we can find the subject i'm also looking at what classified material resided on that hard drive and other sensitive information i am no longer involved in looking at r i content that is now being yielded to the contractor for working for the national archives what i can say is again people with the capacity to read this data the tools can do it my investigators my forensic auditor could in fact pull up p i information fairly readily now to find the tremendous quantity issue p i i letters as the agency is doing that's another subject but certainly somebody with if they had that intent and if in fact it really is out there and somebody is using it for that purpose certainly they could pull information off of that dr misses you know could i just ask to the extent that there is a discovery of criminal use of this information that the chairman of this subcommittee be informed mediately i don't know what people could take do to protect themselves but i think the worst thing to happen in a circumstance like this is not to not even know that out predates you i mean this is this doesn't necessarily simply fall your feet so i mean how long have you been with our costs thirty nine years thirty nine years full career so there's been  studies on job satisfaction within the federal government i think is american university best practice best place to work in the federal government two thousand and nine merican the university's institute for public policy are you familiar with the study yes yes it was telling to me based on our oversight committee to where the national archives and records administration ranked it's  satisfaction well actually let's start here what would you tribute the low job satisfaction assessment to what we did some further analysis of what the different rankings were in the different parts of the national archives and the truth of the matter is that most of the very low rankings came from our regional facilities and we have for example in our federal record centers which are fairly low paid occupations they're not exactly intellectually stimulating it's people moving boxes in and out and so forth there's not a whole lot of promotion potential within the record center system and and a great deal of the very low scores in terms of job satisfaction came from those regional activities if you look at the national archives in the washington area the we  rank at least the same averages most other agencies are a little higher so the regional scores basically bring the agency score down to the level that's reported in that study ok that there's any linkages between dissatisfaction and disappearance of records or staffed of records i think there could be  the averages for the people who are working with archival records are much higher and they're not below the records center records of course our agency records temporary records not archival records the incidences that have occurred over the past several decades have occurred in our couple records ok so i'm not sure that the that the linkage is there in terms of your testimony you said that this this  drive with one terabyte of information was kept in its original package is that true that's yes that's correct is that standard procedure within the within your division of government to put it put these objects back in their original box in most cases information you don't have a policy then that's fine if you'll just state that i don't know i could provide that for the record i don't know the answer if you could that would be good it seems somewhat bizarre to me to have such important information and this is not a it's not really judging the information but having it lost to history is a major concern and being able to piece this back together all the information is not lost because this was a backup tape it's a copy ok where was the original kept what wasn't on the same desk the originals are the tapes that were delivered from the e o p at the end of the clinton administration those tapes were backed up on to these hard drives one of which was a master hard drive and one which is a copy card and they were next to each other yes but the tapes were stored in the lock step area the original records do you think it is is there a procedure for having a master original and the backup the two drives is there a process to keep them separate if you have the backup and  the the main drive right same information is there a any policy you have within the archives to keep them in separate locations not while they're processed and that's what was happening at the time that the hard drives were there is it not true that the reason why we don't know if it's october or march is because they've been sitting on someone's desk the whole time and they were not being processed they were left untouched i think it's clear how long they were left untouched which tells me you don't have any policies or procedures on how this works practice felt i'm sorry is there are there policies and procedures on paper within the archives about how to handle two copies of the same data i will answer your question by getting specific in this matter in this case i should note that drives that were not used new were maintained in a locked area where is the drives that were in process and therefore holding the kind of data and quality of data we talked about today were left in an unlocked exposed area put back in the original box so to me it seemed curious and bothersome troublesome that clean tapes are locked up for security but tapes that me have documentation were left in an open area as far as policy and procedures i get gets more specific that's what we're investigating right now my focus investigating a crimp potentially criminal act we have time and we will look at audit issues we will look at new internal controls i can simply say that as i said in my testimony it would seem that internal controls are not the focus in this area well thanks for tests my time is up but it seems to me that the basic archives procedure was the quill of the quiver putting your your keys your car keys and your backup car key on the same key chain it seems that it was a very basic procedure that was not instituted nor was there a culture of following those procedures to ensure that you have two pieces of data all right kept separately both secure so that therefore you have in this new technology age that we have with diminishing documents from the early ninety's as that technology is getting older that you would actually have those policies and procedures so you know it's a larger issue here is making sure this doesn't happen again for any administration or any document and with that  anything about hundreds of thousands of veterans that is being compromised when the national archives an encrypted hard drives to a vendor in we are in the process as i stated in my last summer and report of conducting an investigation specific to that matter and at this time i do not have information to the extent that i can respond fully to that question we do believe an  vent occurred the question is what is the nature of the event and what are the implications we are currently investigating that matter there is also been other issues related to have been reported late in a management letter related to st louis in the military veterans records in terms of other policy procedures that have been violated that also potentially compromises veterans information and again that's an issue which i cannot discuss in a public forum because  center at this stage i believe all of them have been implemented staff has been an information security program manager has been hired a vault number down to i believe one hundred twenty five boxes of material that is not apparently on the shelves at the washington national record center these records are owned by the agencies they are not in our records they are not archival records they are often called back by the agencies and often what has happened in the past is that an agency calls back records and they keep them because as a new accession and they contain boxes from the old so there certainly was a record keeping issues that needed to be straightened out so we could better control over what went back to the agency whether they were permanently withdrawn and kept in the agency or whether or not they were returned to the national record the washington national record we are now for the hundred twenty five boxes that  still not accounted for we've contacted six different agency records are and ask them if they could check and find out if perhaps they've got a record of whether or not they borrowed back these records i believe there was something from the energy department just in the past few weeks that said oh yes they've got fifteen of the boxes that they've been able to account for so we're still working the process to find out where the records are and similar inventory of the secret and confidential vault under way and we will go through the same process of completing the amatory determining to the best we can where the records are and processing area the card reader on the office door would in essence get you in the office area and into the processing office now the processing space has another layer of security and so you've got different card access for those doors they are doing spot inspections the supervisors and managers are going through the space to make sure that the procedures that we put in place are being adhere to we intend to do more training for people so that they truly get the message that this is a basic part of their job is protecting the records that they are working with and that that's  it's a balancing act between providing access for research purposes and securing the items but securing the items is critical critical part of their job certainly now the audit ok because at that point it was it was pointed out in that audit the archives was not a can't quote not accounting for artifacts in a timely manner one and t among other things artifacts were quote not maintained in appropriate space so the audit they are expressed some of the same failings that resulted in the disappearance of this data  did you have any actions you took off that audit i think that audit referred to the museum items the artifacts in presidential libraries yes and they had presidential libraries had started an inventory process it was at various stages in the different libraries we indeed poured more resources into completing the inventories and they're under way some of them have been completed some of the problems that existed in the older libraries will not exist for the bush library already or any library going forward because there will be a complete computer system that tracks every artifact as it arrives in the white house and then that system is provided to us so that we will have a complete list to start out with the record keeping in the white house gift office wasn't as complete and in the past and it was not consistent if i can give you an example a tea set is that one item or is that teapot and four cops and is there a is that seven item you know there was no consistency in how they dealt with it within one division of the ark when you have issues like  having information secured and appropriate space does that raise questions for the overall system do you look at overall systems within the archives or is that just one division and therefore isn't a flexible to anywhere else for the issue with the hard drive we are going we are going to undertake a complete review the office of of record services in washington has already branching out to all of their records holdings unit and as you said looking at it more holistically across the agency as opposed to just in one division so we're looking at all security procedures and whether or not they are sufficient whether they need to be improved we certainly have decided that we need to improve our training and that we need training at a lot of different levels for example i'm proposing that we will train every employee that comes to the national archives as part of their orientation whether they're a budget analyst or whatever to make them understand what the mission of the agency is and that everybody has a responsibility to make sure that records are protected contractor providing the credit monitoring services as well and so while it's on our letterhead it's it was put in an envelope that looks more like the kind of envelope you get from  or something else so i think some people thought were unsure is this really from the national archives or is this just some company just trying to solicit my business and so we are sure those people that it really was from us we refer them to our website and we put up an updated notice we have sent these letters out and they are legitimate and we are informing you of this potential breach and offering this service so there was some confusion that we just hadn't occurred to us that duty is to do the investigations we review the language in the breach notification letter as a courtesy and the language seemed to be appropriate as far as the contract or the mailing that's completely outside of my domain so address they were provided with a hotline number that they could call and they were notified that they could look at our web site for further information so that they had any question about the breach notification letter they could contact us in several different into contract documents with your vendor well the contract the contractor that did the work on the latest batch of copying because there were five different contracts i believe protection of government information government products that were produced or were provided to the contractor in hindsight they should have people should have included some additional security requirement clauses in the contract and that will certainly be a part of any contract going forward  i have pretty much all the documentation related to this contract and what's clearly missing is any any mention of security as even a consideration within the body of any the solicitation the company we see the tapes did not even respond in terms of their having any security arrangements in place again there was no clause for non disclosure of information as it should be customary in such a sensitive information we visited the site and it's not the contractors fault per se because the contractor was doing a duplications service they were honoring the terms of the contract it's but if you went to the contractor site as my age did along with other law enforcement you would see it in a basic storefront operation with security clearly not the focus you would see that the tapes were kept in a room with doors or propped open also you would see i have actually images of this and it will be my investigative report when it's finalised or i could present them to you have to subscribe to this hearing it was not the environment that one would expect you would keep something of even minimal importance necessarily an adversarial thing i mean i'm just perplexed at how something so basic could disappear and you know these hard drives in my experience aren't cheap  to get anyway they're not cheap objects to have lying around much less with no information much less sensitive information on it and so it seems to me that even so much is actually taking that hard drive instead of leaving it out putting it in a locked desk drawer would have been a world apart from what happened or near as we can tell happened with the minimal amount of information i actually known right now and i know the i g still has the investigation going on and i would love to have any final any information as you produce it that you're able to share with us we certainly