Transcripts For CSPAN Homeland 20240703

Find it anytime online at cspan. Org. Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events future markers that guide you to news highlights. These points of interest markers appear on the righthand side of your screen when you hit play on selected videos. This time lentil makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided it washington. Scroll through and fended spent a few minutes on cspans point of interest. Announcer the Homeland Security undersecretary talked about challenges during a conversation with the Atlantic Council including challenges of gathering intelligence outside the u. S. , transparency, and oversight of the was intelligence gathering process and the need for resources and funding. We must value the gathering of intelligence that will protect u. S. Citizens from Cyber Attacks as well as the rest stemming from the u. S. Border while respecting the civil rights, liberties, and privacy in trying to the u. S. Constitution. There is no increasing skepticism in congress over how much authority should be granted to dhs for intelligence collection, and all of this will come to a head with the budget negotiations of the Upcoming National Defense Authorization act. Todays event will address intelligence challenges currently facing dhs and how ina will continue to support his growing missions had an Cyber Security and strategic competition with china. We are excited to be here today. This event is part of our future of dhs project hosted by the center for Defense Program and generously supported by deloitte. This project aims to advance performs an bipartisan policy efforts in order to improve the was department of Homeland Security. We are pleased to be coasting this event with our colleagues. The agenda today will feature opening remarks from the undersecretary, and then we will move to a moderated discussion with ellen gilmer. I would like to remind everyone this event is public and on the record. We encourage our online audience to join the conversation on twitter and using the hash tag future of dhs. Thank you for joining us on what will be a captivating conversation. I would like to turn it to scott marcus. Thank you, met. I am delighted to be here at the Atlantic Council, and on behalf of deloitte to welcome you to a lunchtime conversation about what we need to know to keep the country safe. It is worth one hour of your time today to hear an expert discussion about the intelligence challenges posed by a wide range of threats from terrorism to cybersecurity and beyond. To launch todays dialogue i have the privilege of introducing the honorable tim wins dean, the undersecretary of security and analysis at Homeland Security. His public life is unique. He served in both democratic and republican administrations. His expertise in National Security, counterterrorism and intelligence comes from his service as a federal prosecutor. As a general counsel and chief of staff of the fbi, as a First Assistant attorney general at the department of justice, and as Homeland Security advisor to president bush. Today he leads the information arm of it Organization Secretary mayorkas calls department of partnerships. Ina is the only agency in the Intelligence Community charged with providing intelligence to support state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and the private sector. Equally important is their role to employing the work of the Intelligence Community. Ina must execute its mission to walk carefully protecting the privacy, rights, and Civil Liberties of the American People while many inside and outside the government keep a close eye on what ina does. The rest of the American People of the American People have changed significantly since 9 11. In the private sector, local communities, and the public has become increasingly important. Let me welcome the undersecretary. Thanks very much for the kind introduction and for your explanation of ina and its operations, its responsibilities and its place in the National Intelligence enterprise. The two said it better than i could ever say it. But you did strike a lot of things that was important for us to focus on today. I have known my colleagues and friends from ina, grateful that you have us. Thank you for the service that you provide for being an influential voice that assesses the most critical global challenges for the United States working with our partners and our allies at a time when this is a really critical mission. A mission to jointly confront the challenges facing our country and alliances and a wide range of transnational threats. It is great to have an opportunity to talk about these threats, and particularly that the that focus on the homeland, but before i get into my remarks i would like to thank the Atlantic Council for two things. I would like to thank the council for the scholarship of tom morrick. Tom is a friend of mine who is among the ranks of the council, and he was the first person who reached out to me when i was nominated for this position. I will always be great for your guidance and mentorship and your scholarship in this area. You have written extensively on dhs and our operations at ina. I want to thank the Atlantic Council for one other thing, and that is my colleague. Ash was with the wall until recently. We brought him over to ina, and he is a powerhouse when it comes to local thinking and ideas, and we could not be more thrilled to have him, so thank you and i am not trying to rub it in, but maybe just a little bit, but i do want to say we are tremendously grateful that you share him with us and the American People. What i would like to do is start off by just remarking on the fact that next week is the anniversary of 9 11, and we need to take this opportunity both to remember the lives lost and all of the lives changed by that horrible day, but also reflect back on the lessons that were learned in that were taught by 9 11. That is particularly important for dhs. 9 11 was the founding of dhs. Dhs was warned for the very reason of the recognition of the need to harden the homeland again threats like 9 11. Ina was formed out of the recognition that there were two gaps that helped lead to 9 11 and allowed the terrible attacks to take place. One was that there was a gap in terms of intelligence work being directed at the homeland. Intelligence was considered foreign intelligence prior to 9 11. The effort of the Intelligence Community was focused on that. Intelligence by foreign actors taking place largely outside of the United States. 9 11 changed all of that. The First Time Since pearl harbor we had been struck inside the homeland, and that made it clear we needed to have an intelligence operation, a preventative operation that focused on the homeland, not just overseas. Congress set up a new definition of intelligence, shedding the term foreign intelligence and creating the term National Intelligence that included threats to the homeland, information obtained within the homeland to make it clear that was a new mission, and it was important not only to have that new mission but a new structure. There was a gap for that kind of structure. That is one cap ina gap ina was established to fill, and the other was making sure that we were providing the information that was needed by state, local, territorial, and tribal partners information they needed to harden their defenses against threats. That was information sharing process, and as a result we saw the lack of information being shared and lack of dots being connected prior to 9 11. To develop the intelligence process that will be focused internally in the United States and also be that bridge to the state and local, territorial, tribal, and private sector partners. To do so but as a traditional Intelligence Agency but it kind or Intelligence Agency. The Intelligence Agency is focused domestically and because of that has limited authorities from the collection space. We can only collect overtly. We can only go to publicly available information to collect, unlike other intelligence agencies that have covered authorities for example. That is the way ina it was designed, and those where the gaps that we intended to fill, and for the first five or six years of its existence i watched ina develop under great leaders like Charlie Allen and pat hughes as this nation intelligence capability expanded and became a real force. I left government in january 2009. I had been an advisor from president bush, and i left on Inauguration Day and stepped back into Government Service just last summer, and it is been fascinating to see the progress ina has made. It has also been fascinating to see how the Threat Landscape has changed so dramatically in those years. Back in 2009 when i stepped out, International Terrorism was the main focus of the governments intelligence and enforcement work against foreign threats. Today that the right picture is much more diversified, and i want to take a few minutes to go through some of the major threats we are facing, all of which will be familiar to you. It is important to understand the threat picture, and that i will talk about what ina is doing to meet those threats. When i stepped back in last year that the threat picture changed dramatically, and nowhere more than in the terrorism space. Whereas International Terrorism was her primary threat, now the most primary, lethal sustained threats from terrorism is domestic violent extremism. One example of that being a tragic incident last may with the shooting of the supermarket in buffalo that killed 10 and wounded three by a shooter that was inspired by racist and antisemitic theories. We have seen threats against public personnel, judges, Law Enforcement officers. In january i Georgia State trooper was shot by an individual protesting the construction of a Law Enforcement training site down in atlanta. These domestic violent extremists on all sides of the spectrum are also radicalized and encouraged ruth social media platforms that enable them to build echo chambers, to cultivate groupthink share tactics and procedures thereby enhancing their region and impact of their activities. Domestic terrorism is the primary threat, but we cannot forget for terrorism remains a live and lethal threat. Organizations like isis, al qaeda, and others are still active, still recruiting, Still Holding honing social media messaging and planning operations, and there is no better reminder than that than the killing of someone as a reminder of the deep roots in persistence of that foreign terrorism threat. Lets talk about nationstate threats. They are not a new threat. They have been around since the beginning of the republic. We were created out of a conflict with another one, but they are becoming increasingly complex and serious. If you look back on a threat assessment produced back in 2006, nationstate adversaries was not mentioned until page 20 of the report. This years threat statement assessment devotes the first four pages. We see the threat primarily from china, russia, and around. Iran. China is a league of its own. I am not bashing china, but we have to look at the facts. The p. R. C. , the government as aggressively employed a whole of government approach to undercut u. S. Interdependence and technology to innovations, amplifying narratives publicly that sow doubt in our institutions, and targeting negative campaigns against u. S. Politicians, including one who ran for congress who had been a protester and demonstrations back in 1989. The Chinese Communist party as inserted agents into local Law Enforcement agencies and also engage in a range of u. S. International oppression by which they monitor, harass, and tried to suppress perceived regime opponents here in the United States. To meet this threat from the chinese government, secretary mayorkas has announced the beginning of a 90 day sprint defending dhs to focus on those areas of operations we can ramp up to meet this growing threat. So cyber for a second. On the cyber front, we faced a sustained right from sophisticated cyber actors as well as cyber criminal groups. In terms of estate adversaries, with the war in ukraine pitting us directly against russian that possibly increases targeting of the homeland with malicious cyber operations. With china have come up with sharpening competition between us in china and the possibility of a crisis over taiwan, we can expect the same from beijing. One concern being those powers are actively trying to reposition themselves within our systems in a way that they can then take advantage of that positioning if and when there is a crisis and they went to exploit that positioning to disable our readiness. The last threat i would like to talk about is transnational organized crime, and this is an enduring and serious threat to National Security. Particularly of threat from mexican organized crime cartels. They continue to wreak havoc on the American Economy and prosperity of our communities and the health of the american citizens. They have become increasingly sophisticated and are no extending their traditional narcotics activities into human smuggling and even taking over legitimate industries in the area of mexico that they control. Two particular cartels dominate todays drug smuggling market. These cartels are trafficking a range of illicit drugs. In just at the last year there were over 100,000 overdoses of americans who died, most of which were from fentanyl, often young kids who took those drugs not even realizing how dangerous it was. It is tragic and deadly serious. In 2023 alone so far cpb has seized over 9000 pounds of sentinel traveling across the southern border thanks to greatly ramped up enforcement activities across the border. If you assume a fatal dose is just 2 mg that is in a fentanyl to kill 2. 1 billion people. The threats from these drugs is serious and tragic, that will require a whole of government effort and a whole of society effort to combat it, and that means it will also require that we use all available tools. It will require using our tools of interviewing people down along the border could know about trafficking activities and getting that information out into the intelligence bloodstream and also require use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act tool 702, which is up for reauthorization by congress, and as the Intelligence Community has been expanding is incredibly useful in the effort against fentanyl. Got to use all of those tools, and we need to maintain them. That is a brief overview of the threats we are facing. Let me take a minute to say what it is ina is doing to meet those threats. When i came on board the secretary pulled me inside aside and said he wanted to do a 360 review of what ina was doing and make sure we were doing everything in an optimal way to protect against these threats. To do that i brought in friends from the Intelligence Community, and they helped me do an overall review of the operations. Since we have some folks here who are as wonky as me when it comes to dhs procedures, i will walk through those organizational changes. I do that to give you an update on where we are, but also i think it is important to demonstrate ina is an organization in change, willing to change, and it is looking to change and improve, and you cannot say that about every organization. Certainly not every organization and government. The fact that this organization has showed itself so important so open to change is one of the reasons i am proud to be considered. We have taken a hard look at the organization. We have done a number of programmatic reviews. We have taken a look at our field operations. We have people around the country working with state and local partners, and another thing i will mention, there was a recent report. It was quite critical, it is sizing the center. Good report. I did not agree with everything in it, but it was good, provocative insights. Listen to a podcast between him and tom worrick, like two heavyweights facing off. It helps to show how you can have two very smart, reasonable people seeing issues very differently. We have asked for a field review. We have a contractor coming in to help with that review, and they are doing it right now. Another area we are doing an intense review is argument collection intelligence program. We interview people to get information related to Homeland Security. We put a pause on certain aspects of the Interview Program. We undertook a very indepth there was actually criticism in the press, and we responded to those criticisms, then we undertook a very indepth review that resulted in changes right now. We are doing the same thing in our open source collection space. We collect information off of the internet, social media and the like. Once again, as i said, very limited to only go to public information, but we are looking at communications with u. S. Persons, so we are taking a hard look at that. Last deep probing assessment is looking at the priorities which control where we devote our energy and resources and attention, and that review was looking across the scope of everything we produce intelligence on, making sure we meet todays threat and not yesterdays threat and focusing on those areas where other agencies do not have the capability to cover that area. We are able to focus our resources and attention on those areas. We have a distinct advantage like around the border were we have the advantage of being in the same department as other border enforcement agencies. Those were views and operatives offer a number of different changes. We created a new undersecretary focused on intelligence partnerships, focused on building the bridge to the state and locals. We have taken our collections operations and analysis operations and divided them up into two directorates. Those of you from the Intelligence Community know that is a perennial discussion topic, should intelligence and analysis be in the same unit or different ones . If you get intel experts in the room, you will get 10 different opinions. We need separate supervision in the collection space, because collection is so sensitive, it implicates u. S. Constitutional interests, and we wanted to focus supervision and oversight. We brought in a 25 year intel veteran to run that, and she is knocking it out of the park. Another thing we did is we set up an office devoted to the intelligence enterprise. The intelligence enterprise is the combination of all of the intelligence components or elements throughout dhs, and by regulation, the head of ina is also the coordinator of the intelligence enterprise, and for those of you who are old enough to remember when the cia director was the head of cia and the Intelligence Community. I have the same challenge as the cia director, trying to balance those two fulltime jobs. We created a new office, put the head of that office over the Intelligence Community, and a veteran named steve cash is running that office to make sure we are helping to coordinate intelligence activities not just at the ina but of the whole intelligence enterprise. As my introducers mentioned, that is a very important point at any time in our history. Right now, getting a lot of questions about it, and i want to make sure to enter them both from the hill and the public. The bottom line is what we do and the way we approach Civil Liberties and privacy is that is a mission on par with our mission to protect the homeland. Those are dual missions, and that is not a foreign concept. I grew up in my career as a federal prosecutor for the better part of 15 years. You have the same kind of mission, to prosecute the guilty and to get convictions where warranted, but at the same time to protect the rights of those people and folks who might be subject to search or arrest powers. You have a seemingly contradictory but dual function. Our job is to get the intelligence that is going to inform decisionmakers to harden the homeland, but at the same time to make sure those activities are done in full respect of u. S. Person, privacy, and Civil Liberties, and as scott mentioned earlier, many have been raising questions about that recently, and i think that is good. The more people talk about this, the better we are sensitized and depressed to give answers to those questions, and the better we become at making sure we keep an eye on those issues. That is to our work on all threats. Most importantly, in many ways that is particularly the case with domestic terrorism. On one hand, to domestic terrorism as everybody has said is the most serious terrorism threat we are facing today, and we have to do everything we can to prevent those from happening, but on the other hand it is in many ways the most constitutionally fraught and complicated with four intelligence and Law Enforcement personnel, and the problem is so much of domestic terrorism and violent extremism grows out of political thought, political rhetoric, which is the most protected thought and rhetoric under the first amendment. And finding that dividing line between communications and rhetoric that is protected, and that which is designed to generate violence and is not protected is not as easy as it seems. You can take a look at more celebrated events, examples of domestic terrorism and see that whether it is january 6 or portland and other similar events in the year prior, and you had people who were domestic terrorists engaging in violence that was motivated by ideology, but you also had people who are following the greatest traditions of the american democracy voicing their political views out of the streets, which is fully protected. That dividing line is not so clear, and it is really important that we work hard that we work on the against unprotected actions and not actions, and that is why we are significantly ramping up our Civil Liberties and privacy efforts across the board. That is where we set up the transparency and Oversight Office i mentioned. That is why we doubled the the staff within ina and significant the enhanced and expanded Training Programs within ina about the attorney general guidelines that are designed to protect privacy and Civil Liberties. That is why we are doing the reviews i just talked about, about so many sensitive aspects and operations. We are revising the guidance of our open source collection and human intelligence collection, expanding the review conducted by the general counsels office in the Privacy Office within dhs of intelligence products within dhs. That is why i welcome the dialogue with the hill, the Civil Liberties Community Groups and with groups like this about how we should best pursue that function. When we see the damage that is done by domestic terrorism and active terror, and also by all the threads that i just talked about, we have no choice but to recognize the need to protect against those threats and do intelligence analysis and dissemination and sharing, but sharing that allows the federal government and our state and local partners to prevent these threats before they become actual attacks. As one of the primary agencies and in many ways the primary Agency Responsible for that blocking and tackling we ask for two things. We ask for legal authorities we need to perform this mission and we ask for the resources to do that mission at skill given the current direct. But we also ask for one more thing. We ask for the oversight and the safeguards to be put in place that will give congress and the American Public the confidence that we are using those authorities correctly and in alignment with the constitution. That was one of the lessons of 9 11. After 9 11, we asked for the authorities but did not focused enough on asking for the oversight, and those authorities therefore were not sustainable first and only became sustainable and fully accepted once the oversight was in place that will give the American Public the confidence that they are being used appropriately. And learning from that lesson, we are asking for the authority that we need, but also for the oversight that will give the American People and congress that confidence, and that was really the governmental lesson of 9 11 along with lessons about the need for a bridge to stay local, the need for ina. It was that lesson with the authorities, but we also need oversight for sustained commercialism counterterrorism efforts that apply across the board. And that lesson has stood the test of time and is just as true today as it was back in 9 11. So with that, i will wind up my review of the threat environment and of the and its activities and turned to ellen. Turn to ellen. Thanks so much for being here today and for giving us a detailed rundown of the Threat Landscape and what ina is doing and how ina is changing. I know the audience is looking forward to this discussion. I want to start big picture looking at the institution of the office. This is an office that has faced a lot of scrutiny. There were the issues around failing to adequately warn january 6, just reading intelligence by u. S. Journalist in portland, a lot going on there. You have outlined changes you made to the office to increase oversight. Our those changes durable . What is to stop whoever comes next from applying a more political lens to the office . Thanks for joining us here. Thanks for asking these questions and thank you for your focus on dhs and ina. That focus can be critical. It can be laudatory. I think it is important to American People here what we are doing and are able to ask questions through you and fellow reporters about what we are doing and why we are doing it. That is a good question, because when you take a look at government, i was in the justice department, the white house, and on dhs. Every different leader comes in and makes changes to their unit, their organization, their division, what have you. There is always a question about what is going to stick and what will stick. What i found that sticks is when you do things of the type that i described right now, which are clearly linked to the mission, so the people in the organization see this link to the mission. Congress sees this link to the mission. Those are difficult to unwind. When people put pet projects and because they have some sort of pet brainchild they went to implement, sometimes it is easy for those who change, but in this case the changes we are implementing up the secretarys direction at the deputy secretarys direction are fully aligned with the efforts of protecting the American People, and the second mission, protect the American Peoples rights. Once those are instituted and become accepted, it is hard to unwind those, so that is what i have seen over time and that is what i expect to see and ina. I think it was matt who said ina is the least understood part of the Intelligence Community. How are you helping to address that. You are engaging the press. What is the longterm approach or . Here . It is the least understood of the Intelligence Community, and there are a number of reasons for that. Unlike other agencies, we do not own a particular space of the intelligence enterprise, so if you are nsa you own signals intelligence. If you are the fbi, you are human Intelligence Agency, and they obviously produce intelligence for the president. So you have the fbi, obviously, they are on point for investigations of National Security crimes and that sort of thing. Ina looks at that as your space. If you look at our mandate, it is really vague. Do intelligence cycle requirements, collection, analysis, dissemination against all threats to the homeland that are within the national and Departmental Mission space without much more definition than that, so it is not surprising people do not understand how we work. That is why i start off my remarks today as i usually do with going with First Principles. The First Principles are 9 11. What was missing on 9 11, and what was missing was the intelligence approach. Intelligence is a fancy way of saying collection. That approach was fully developed and matured ever since world war ii outside of the United States. It was not fully developed within the United States. That was the mission, and the main part of that is being that intelligence bridge to the state , local, territorial, tribal partners who play a Critical Role in Homeland Security, making sure they are prepared with the intelligence that they need to help with that effort. When it comes to the realignment that ina has recently done, the first phase of adding oversight transparency , what reception are you getting from congress . The Homeland Security committee was frustrated and did not feel like they had enough information from your office. What reception have you gotten from congress and from privacy and Civil Liberties advocates . I have heard from some of them initially that they viewed it as windowdressing. How is that conversation developed . The realignment we are talking about was announced in summer. Which was taking a hard look at the organization to see where we needed to ramp up certain areas, and i listed the three things. One was establishing focused supervision and oversight of our collection operations. The second was creating an office that would never see the intelligence enterprise or responsibilities i have as the coordinator of the intelligence enterprise within dhs, and the third is the transparency and Oversight Office. When i have explained it to people on the hill and Civil Liberties committee folks, i think they agree that they are appropriate, and they are good decisions. They appropriately say the proof will be in the pudding. Show me not just a new person coming in as the leader who does what all new leaders do and rej igger the Organization Chart and put two new boxes of deer. I can tell you i think we are already seeing that the result of these changes and how much better operations are because of them, all you have to do is sit in more meetings that i have with an exceptionally strong 15, 16 year lawyer at dhs, and uc what it and you see what a voice he has, and that voice is all about Civil Liberties and privacy. Keep asking us to make sure we are being true to the intentions of reorganizational changes, and i think you will find that they are a strong step in the right direction. What does that look like on the ground, this oversight. I am sure you cannot speak specifically, but is it do not collect information, that is not sensitive to privacy Civil Liberties . Stephanie dorsey is the head of the new collections division, and she is focused like a laser beam on the different types of collections we do, and these have been quite controversial. It is appropriate to ask questions, because collection is a tentative thing. You are getting information about or from u. S. Persons, so when i talked about the human intelligence Interview Program and the review of our open source operations, she is the one who is pushing them. Theyre working hard in helping, got these senior advisors helping. Because she is focused only on collections is able to really get into the weeds on that, and it is exactly what you said. Our guidance allows this kind of collection. Are we sure that is consistent with constitutional limitations, consistent with privacy, and is it actually producing enough that whatever intrusion there is is appropriate. That is exactly what it is. It is the focus and supervision that we have. I definitely want to come back to the human intelligence collection programs. That was a big issue in congress, but i want to talk about the institution a little more. These are some unflattering descriptions of inas work. A tough democrat accused in of incompetence in relation to january 6 portland. Republicans accuse the office of Mission Creep and overreach. An intelligence official described ina to me as a backwater. Im sure this is not helping, me repeating these things, but how is morale . [laughter] i was feeling great until that. That is a fair question. As is always the case, you have as an organization within government, you develop an image and reputation, and some of that is innuendo and rumor and personal impressions, but some of it is based on your track record, and i am a believer whether i am talking to my kids are talking to a sports team i am coaching, i am leading a Government Organization that when you create a track record of dedicated success, over time that changes. Look, ina, we are the new kids on the block. We were just created after 9 11. We have a vague, hard to understand mission. We are not one of the big organizations like the cia. We do not have sexy or fancy collection authorizations like the others do. The ina has developed its own place in its own image, and i actually think given those circumstances, given that it had to happen in the course of dealing with the post 9 11 threat, given that it happened in the context of a huge agency trying to find its own footing, i think it is done pretty well. And when you get in there and see my colleagues who were working hard day in and day out and taking this criticism and forging ahead, it is inspirational. So actually think before i came on board things started moving in the right direction. They did exactly what an organization should do. You learn from those experiences. You made mistakes, you confront them, ask why we made them, ask what can we do to prevent them in the future, put them in place and then move on, and they have done that. That was happening before i got here, which put them on a positive guide glide path. How is recruitment, and do you have any longterm workforce challenges or concerns . I was actually talking to dustin, who is the head of our Management Group today who is exceptional in keeping an eye on everything, and if anything we have a problem of too many people coming to work here, and we have to make sure it fits the budget. One example of that is anybody who has collegeage kids or is a college educated, we have this tremendous program, Internship Program where College Students come in for the summer, get a clearance, and human intelligence. No joke intelligence work, and hopefully they come on board permanently afterwards. We have a lot of folks from across all colleges, all different levels, different types. We have got a lot of kids, especially kids from hbcus and others. I see that as an example, the next generation is looking at us. You mentioned you have to figure out what fits in the budget. You need or money from congress. What happens, why do you need it, it happens if you do not get it . What happens if the government shuts down . What we need is the authority and resources. Obviously as any intelligence or Law Enforcement agency you need those two elements. We focus on the authorities. There are areas where we need more resources that we have not gotten, things like we need a stronger platform to do ai work, that kind of thing, but we are actually doing pretty well with what we have now. When we ask for things, we ask for specific things. In terms of a government shutdown, i do not know that it will happen. Once overlying one Silver Lining of being in d. C. Is that you go through this process a lot. We go through plans in the event that happens, but strongly hope that it does not happen. Disruptive, and we do not want to have to put those plans in place unless absolutely necessary. As the chief intel officer, we talked about the coordinator role recently added to your office, it is still part of your job to coordinate with the whole agency a department that is a lot of diverse components that do not always work altogether work well together. How is developing having this additional person on board . It is funny, when steve gash who is heading up this Enterprise Group came on board, he went and catalogued every one of my titles. Executives and chief Intelligence Officer and safeguarding executives, and he posted on my door that i had more shadows than queen victoria. The intelligence elements of cpb do not report to ina, they do not report to me, but like dni now who has coordination responsibility, it is a rough analogy because there are differences, she coordinates the whole Intelligence Community without the heads of each agency reporting directly to her. At intelligence elements and different components of dhs report sorry, do not report any me formally, but are to be coordinated by me on behalf of the secretary, the undersecretary. That is an area where i think the components and the secretary would like to see more coordination, and steve cash has been working hard since he came on board has found that actually the components are eager for that. They want to see more harmonization, because they recognize them or their intelligence operations are in sync with other agencies, that is more efficient, costeffective, and it will be better for Homeland Security. You mentioned centers earlier. Your predecessor told lawmakers a couple of years ago that inas relationships with state and local partners had atrophied during the previous administration. Do you agree with that assessment . What work has been done to strengthen that relationship . I do not know i am in the best position to imply that they atrophied during the last administration. John kellan who served in active capacity was very strong in the partisan space, incredibly strong. I have reaped the benefits of that. When i came in, i was really surprised at how uniform the strength of the relationship was between us, agency chiefs, governors association, and state and local centers all around the country. And that is due to the tradition of ina focusing first and foremost on the bridge building element of their mission, but john did a great job. I cannot speak to it in terms of the last administration. I want to go back to the overt Human Intelligence Program. You have paused part of it, interviews of people who are facing criminal charges, other parts are ongoing. You have been in the center of it in the face of scrutiny from capitol hill, from advocates, civil liberty advocates. The senate is looking at a proposal that would restrict your abilities. What is at stake and is there room for compromise, some kind of deal . The determination is thats all, just that. Those are good questions. You and i have talked about this. The Human Intelligence Program is the program by which we interview people and those people could beat state and local partners, Law Enforcement partners. Getting information that is useful to other parts of the federal government, state and locals or the Intelligence Community. We put that into intelligence channels. Or it could be talking to someone who is in Law Enforcement custody somewhere else, another state or a migrant who has been detained at the border. Thats where the interviews take place. Without lawyers present . They could be with lawyers present. That program has been done since the beginning of ina. Its an Intelligence Agency, it does collection, analysis, production, dissemination of analysis. In 2016 my predecessor frank taylor decided the job is institutionalizing the planning operations, put in place a program for governance of the human interviewing program guidelines. In 2016. When i came in, i learned that there was the possibility that we would be doing interviews of people in Law Enforcement custody facing criminal charges. I was a little sensitive to that. Concern was raised because while the situations have to be perfectly appropriate. It could be seen to interfere with the relationship between counsel and the person in charge before a court of law. So in the meantime, pause it. That got reported along with other reporting about the program, some of which was fair, some was not fair. We did an audit and we learned we had never interviewed anybody who had counsel appointed and was facing charges. We reviewed a dozen or so people after Law Enforcement arrest and before they got presented with criminal charges. We put a pause on that as i said last summer and have kept that, so that is what the pause is and that is what you are referring to about counsel being president. Im a defender of that program because keep in mind we do those interviews under strict conditions. We have to advise the person that we work for dhs, we have to advise the person that it is completely voluntary and theyre not going to get anything out of it, we are not going to do anything for them for giving them the information they give us. They have the right to stop the interview at any time. As a matter of policy, this is nothing coercive. We get Important Information. We cited a lot of it including Important Information about cartels trafficking fenton all, names, places, accounts, who is doing what in the trafficking chain of events. Really Important Information. Same thing about a variety of different threats. Ive defended the program for that reason. I welcome scrutiny because that is a big help to take a hard look at the program. I think you will see with the new guidance and supervision peoples concerns about whether these interviews are going over the line in terms of Civil Liberties and privacy are being addressed. You say there is nothing coercive about it. How do you ensure that . You are talking about peoples who are immigrants for whom english is not their first language. What i mean how could you reassure somebody that you are not coercing the people you are interviewing . You know, people will be unconvinced by this idea of a kinder, gentler part of the Intelligence Community. Are there safeguards there, you know, is it just an ina person walking in the room and sing it boilerplate information . The person on the other cited the people really knows what their rights are. Thats always the case. We have maranda. Not Everybody Knows what maranda is. Not everybody. That is dictated by the supreme court, those warnings are considered circumstances of coercion. We make sure we have training, we make sure everybody hears the policy. We are in there with Law Enforcement or other officers that make sure that both participants adhere to these rules. We audit what we do. We have oversight from the oversight entities listed within dhs. We have the Inspector General. In fact you talked about the legislative issue were dealing with right now, one of the things that were saying is do not limit our authority now. Instead, bring in Inspector General for the Intelligence Community who is a serious, real serious person and serious office. Have them take a hard look at what were doing in terms of collection. Dig into the issues, see whether we are adhering to the rules, whether the rules are protective enough. Then advise congress, go back to committees and say this is what we found. Based on that, go ahead and legislate, circumscribe authorities, do it based on that record. Not public understanding of the way things are. My point is we are certainly inviting oversight to make sure that when we say there is nothing coercive there truly is nothing coercive. We are talking about a legislative provision that is in the National Defense authorization act, the annual defense policy bill, that would restrict ina. This is championed by senator rubio, it would restrict them from intelligence except in narrow circumstances. How are conversations going on the hill on that . So, as you said, there is a provision that is in the ndaa that was part of the intelligence authorization act that got passed by the senate. Without using the actual language of the provision, it would prevent us from collecting information targeting u. S. Persons, so the idea is as i understand it to prevent us from using our intelligence tools and Intelligence Agency to collect u. S. Personal information. From the beginning weve made the case and people have been hearing us. We will see how it plays out but certainly getting the meetings, the calls to meet with members of congress. We have been making the case for why that is not necessary. Why instead we are having to report out to them on a quarterly basis for the next year while the Inspector General does their review, so they can have a clear on what we are doing in the collection space. Weve been making the case for how valuable information is that we are collecting, how we are taking a hard look at it, genuinely secondguessing everything we do. That we are putting new rules in place and getting oversight from outside parties. Privacy within dhs and then also looking to congress for the oversight. Im hopeful we will end up at a good place that at the end of the day, congress will see that we are genuine in our effort to make sure this is done right and that we are netting valuable intelligence about serious threats like the china threat, fentanyl, and now is not the time to clip our wings, but rather just do focused oversight and make sure we are using the authorities we currently have in an appropriate way. Does ina have a value add a fix wings are clipped on this . This is the collection space, were talking about collection work we do. We take information that we get from other parts of dhs. Some of that would not be allowed because of u. S. Personal information, but we get intelligence products and one of the things we do is make sure that that information which is pitched at a classification level that does not is not usable, we get that information. Focusing on observations that can be made that are most relevant to state, local, territorial, tribal partners. And put them into products that go out to those audiences. There is a lot of work that dhs does, not strictly collection. You would still have a huge value add, we would be doing a lot of bridging state and locals that i talked about, but it would undercut our ability in these important things. When you are going through your confirmation process, you faced some pushback from Civil Liberties advocates who were concerned about the work you did during the Bush Administration. This you managed to quell those concerns before you were confirmed. Now there are concerns about the human intelligence collection program, so how has it been Building Trust in that community . What you are referring to is i think concerns that were raised by the broader community, the Arab American Community and concerns about programs under the george w. Bush administration after 9 11. Im forgetting the details of the letter that they wrote they raise these concerns but the question was whether i was involved in those programs. I was able to explain how those were within my remit but also generally the nature of the work that was done after 9 11 and whether there is anything that could be read into that work that could be profitable in the eyes of that community for someone like myself at this point in time. As you said, that was a matter of sitting down and talking and i really credit the advocates that i met with back then, so they did what should be done, a community advocating particular groups. They raised the legitimate issues, they heard my input, they sent a letter out saying they were not opposing my nomination but they wanted to make sure that we were sensitive to this issue. We have remained in touch, i went to dearborn and met with that community and its a very thoughtful, vocal community. I enjoyed my interactions, i was on the phone last week. That relationship has been quite good. They did their job, kept an open mind, now theyre keeping their eyes on us to make sure that their issues, they know they can raise those issues and have confidence that we will listen to them and address them. We wanted to have time to talk about 702, i dont think were going to get to it. If you want to take it into the next question feel free or to the next answer. I wanted to ask you, you worked in the Bush Administration in Public Service for some time over a variety of roles, then you took this really hard job. What motivates you . 702. Thats a motivates me, 702. I will squeeze this in. I apologize to the organizers and schedulers, but it is so important. 702 is the electronic surveillance statute, it is part of the Intelligence Surveillance act of 1978 and in 2008 it was amended in part of that was implementing section 702, which put in place a program that allows the Intelligence Community to effectively collect intelligence by surveillance of people in threat areas for nonus persons outside the United States. That has been vital to National Security since 2008, absolutely vital. You can listen to everyone who has been in the space in they will say that. Congress is going through a serious debate about the reauthorization of that program but that provision needs to be done by december 31. It is vital. The administration has done a good job of laying out and officials from past administrations have been energetic about making the case about how vital it has been in each area. I wanted to raise the second one because that is so is important. You need every tool and 702 is as vital as we are going to have. So that motivates me and i spend a lot of time betting the original amendment through and thats why phil so passionate aside from the facts. Motivation to come back, i grew up as a government guide, right out of law school and ive loved every minute of it and the mission of it. A lot of working with people. Great time in private practice, 13 years and was hopeful i would get an opportunity to get back in and i count myself fortunate that i was blessed with this opportunity and it has been great. Youre right, its a tough job because we are doing tough stuff. Under difficult circumstances. The Intelligence Community and dhs, the secretary on down. Theres nothing more important and more energizing than this work. Thank you for sharing your insight. Im going to turn it over to tom to close us out. Thank you very much, undersecretary, for shedding light on one of the most important and less understood parts of u. S. Intelligence community. Thank you also to alan gilmer for insightful questions that explored important aspects with the departments intelligence and analysis. I want to thank my colleague matthew and scott marcus, whose sponsorship has made today possible. The work of the department of Homeland Security is among the most important Security Work in the u. S. Government and in many wayss as weve said here at the Atlantic Council, it mandates a lot of attention from the American Public whose lives and wellbeing is protected by Homeland Security, especially within the office of intelligence and analysis. Thank you for joining us. Please continue to look for our work at the Atlantic Council, continue to follow the issues that the undersecretary has identified, because they are among some of the most important challenges facing u. S. Homeland security today. Thank you very much. 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Next, democratic and Republican Senate leaders briefing reporters. First Chuck Schumer and democrats talk about legislative agenda and bipartisan efforts to move Appropriations Bills out of committee. Then Senate Republican leader Mitch Mcconnell responding to questions about his health and discussing the appropriations process, telework and the economy