Will continue to do that, and to make sure that in the second incident that were using their input. Well, i think its absolutely crucial. Mr. Chairman, i would like to really thank you also for having the ig at the table, when i chaired the committee, it was my habit or really my administrative procedure that all of my subcommittees either had an ig come in what was the hotspots for agencies or at least submit written testimony, the fact that youre utilizing that is really crucial. Well have a lot to talk about this afternoon. Thank you so much for your service. We so value the work of our Inspector Generals theyve been enormously helpful to me, both as chair and now vice chair of the committee to really get value for our dollar. To identify management hotspots, and we really want to thank you for the identification not only of the problem but the recommendation for solutions. So thank you very much and all the igs. Youre very welcome, senator. Thank you, senator. Senator langford. Thank you, let me ask you a followup question, you said am coulding from the caio council, many federal agencies have similar issues. Yes id like to two fold question, one is to define what issues mean on this. And then the second one is give me a percentage when you say many other agencies. Im not asking you to articulate, what are the Security Issues and specifically where are vulnerabilities, not asking you to do that give me a guess here, how much agencies were dealing with, and what snows issues are. I would say many of the federal agencies and its have a similar kind of problem that we alluded to. In and of itself not necessarily a bad thing, its been very, very difficult for many of these agencies as theyve rolled out systems and then have to support these systems, the complexity factors have grown so significantly that its just very difficult for them to get their arms around systems, i mean, we would do at dhs, the call out dhs specifically, we would do inventories and try to if you will, find all the systems that we had right . And i think we did a relatively good job at that but it would not be every year we would find more, try to secure that, and i say thats the first thing is that most agencies i believe have that problem. When i talk to and i dont want to put a percentage on it i dont know how to measure that as far as a percentage. Most of the major agencies have this problem that the cio does not would not be able to sit here and say they have a good handle on their true inventory of it systems. What about use or credentials . Well, i would i give all the world credit to dod for having rolled out that card years ago, and having the leadership and wherewithal to make that happen. Most Government Agencies are still struggling to roll out the what we call the hspd 12 program or the smart card, and use it for Logical Network access control. And its still an issue if you go to the cap goals and look at where were at its still an issue at most of the agencies on the civilian side. Authorizations of networks . Yeah, i again i think youre hitting the hotspots here, the many systems we would find, we would either have they wouldnt have authorizations, because they were out in the field, and they were not under the cios control, or what i also didnt like, which was kind of hiding the ball a little bit here, could you do an interim authority to operate and some of those would last way too long, and you wouldnt be there would be weaknesses in the systems, and it would be difficult to clear those weaknesses, i cant put numbers on that, but hopefully ive given you a sense where i feel many of the agencies sit today. My question with that related to appropriations. None of those seem like big dollar items. The wonderful term hygiene, really for our systems. Am i hitting that wrong or right . Yeah i want to be a little careful here. Government if we have to monitor crt with an orange screen on it i get it, we have some old systems out there. The initial Security Side of this seems to be the first rung, how were handling the information in the inventory. I would agree with your sentiment that says we could manage this a lot more effectively and we dont necessarily need new dollars to do that. Some of the issues though, that go to true modernization, you do need investment. Sure. Okay. Let me ask you a question, you had in your written testimony then again your oral testimony as well. You kind of talk through the time line of how things went. Some areas you were specific of how things moved and in what order, there were a couple terms that jumped out to me there. As a result of these efforts to improve our security posture, april 2015, an intrusion that predated the adoption affecting opms data was detected by our new Cyber Security tools. Opm immediately contacted the department of homeland security. Can you give me a definition of immediately is it the same day, a week a month . Same day. And then you had the same issue, where we talked about the scope and impact of the intrusion shortly thereafter, opm notified congress ap leadership. We have a 7day requirement in which we met. Met it within that 7day . Yes. The contractor that was involved in this that had the responsibility for a strategic it and the security plan. Who is that contractor and what were the assurances that they gave early on during the conversation of the contracting process, to say, well provide security structure management im kind of looking for what they said they would do and what they actually did. Who is the contractor . I think its i want to be very clear that while the adversary leveraged, compromise key point user credential to gain access to opms network, we dont have any evidence that would suggest that key point as a company was responsible or directly involved in the intrusion. We have not identified a pattern or material deficiency that resulted in the compromise of the credentials. And since last year, we have been working with key point and they have taken strides in securing its network and have been proactive in meeting the additional security controls that we have asked them to use to protect all of the background data. The question is then with key point, the security controls they put in now, the security controls that were discussed earlier, that were not fulfilled or are these things that were considered . Were discussing i think two different. I think i understand, but let me be sure is that our detection in april detected an intrusion into our system in late 2014. The detection was in 2015 we detected an intrusion into our system in late in our stim in late 2014. So what im trying to drive at is then there were changes in security protocol were those changes recommended before or are these entirely new . These are ones that we had planned and were installing as we progressed through our improvements. And unfortunately, we didnt have them in place soon enough. We are working as i said with a legacy system we were testing many of our signature security tools and as a result, of actually being able to install this particular security tool we were able to detect it. And that had been in place how long to be able to put those security controls. Its part of our it security plan which we developed you said the 2012 plan . Its a 2014. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Senator koons. You are in the midst of a major i. T. Modernization project. How much do you expect that total project to cost . There are four steps were using for that plan the tactical, what is the tools were going to need to protect our systems even as we move forward, were building a new shell, its called a new shell system which will be the platform and then as the third and fourth are the migration, and then the disposal of the legacy system, we are at the step right now in june of 2014, we hired a contractor to assist us in the development of the shell. And were moving toward that we as ive said have identified 67 million in 2014 and 2015 that would enable us to move toward that. And were asking for an additional 27 million in the 2016 budget to aid us. Were working closely with omb to determine if another request slu be made. Has a major it Business Case been prepared . Yes, it has, and weve worked very close with omb. This was one of the points that the auditor or the ig brought out in his flash audit and i can assure the auditor or the ig that we in fact have been working very very closely with omb. This is an urgent issue. And we are moving very as fast as we can, making sure that we track, we justify and document all that were doing. Consistent with the om kb standards that have been given to us, we have a budget that weve worked very closely with omb to deliver. Why in response to the ig audit one of the concerns was you give a soul source contract if i understand correctly, to manage all four phases of this very large project. Now, what type of contract is it . Is it a fixed cost project . And what steps are you considering in light of the audit. As i said before, theres often times places where we have areas of agreement, and areas where we would like to have further consideration with the auditor, in the flash audit, the Inspector General encouraged the use of existing contracts or the use of full competition, and i would like to assure you and the Inspector General that the process follow eded in awarding the existing contracts had been perfectly legal, and we will continue to ensure that any further contracts and processes entered into will also be perfectly legal. Owe also expressed concern that the soul source contract used in the tactical and shell phases should not be used for migration and the cleanup phases as i described earlier. I understand his concerns and i would like to remind the Inspector General that the contracts for migration and cleanup have not been awarded. Where we would like to have further discussion with the Inspector General is the time line, the practical time line for our major it Business Case, hes suggesting that we move that out into fiscal year 2017, i would like to move that much quicker, given what weve already experienced. I assure the Inspector General and everyone here that all of our decisions are being tracked documented and justified. Hes made a number of recommendations regarding contracting and standards that rely on external sources for assistance, and i believe that the federal government and the good work that tony scott is providing to us, and all our partners in government have Strong Solutions to offer, and im going to look forward to talking more to him about his suggestion. Have you had a chance to look at other agencies that have had successful it projects to use as a model you have some sources of valuable insight into how to manage multiphase expensive and Time Critical it projects. Have you looked at whether having an outside contractor managing the project or breaking it into more bite sized pieces may achieve some of your goals. Were looking at all of our options, this is a very serious issue, im taking it very seriously, in looking into all the resources i have available to me. And i will certainly do that i believe that the federal cio is an Important Agency et to us as is our partners at dhs, were looking to those and i would i welcome the Inspector Generals suggestions. And as i move forward through this process i will be listening to him carefully as well as my partners across government. I appreciate that response. You were the former cio at dhs and irs, both of which have had very cumbersome expensive difficult challenged it projects, were you able to turn around some of the sort of legacy it failures there and what advice do you have to opm as they engage in another dispensive complex modernization effort. First i would make the note that its always about a team effort, right . In order to deliver these kinds of programs i actually joined the irs and took over the businesses Modernization Program, and at that time it was on the gao high risk list. Im pleased to say that as a team effort, we were able to it took a long time but able to improve our processes to the point where recently that program was removed from the high risk list, which is quite an accomplishment. Let me just say that i have ive reviewed many programs and there are we could have a long discussion about how to appropriately manage it programs, i would make a couple points very quickly. One thing thats very critical is the overall Governance Framework you put in place you need to get the right stakeholders in the room to Work Together to make this happen. All too often ive seen issues where that does not happen. The other thing i would say, dont overrely on contractors. You need to have the requisite experience and skill set to be able to run these programs, i would say, im not picking on opm, i dont know much about their months earnization at all. The smaller agencies struggle more with this, because they dont have the heritage of having learned those lessons. Thank you for your testimony today. Grateful for your input we try to offer critically needed reassurances, particularly to Law Enforcement but all federal employees and to find timely and Cost Effective solutions to this, and other cyber challenges. Senator moran. Chairman, thank you very much, mr. Spiers, based on what you heard today, your knowledge of Government Agencies and their cyber Security Issues, is this a management issue or a resource issue . Its more of a management issue, sir. And why do you say that . Because of the nature of the way it has been run in a lot of agencies there are so many lets say inefficiencies that have been crept into the system that i dont believe we effectively spend the i. T. Dollars we receive now, i believe that with a proper drive toward management, can you drive a lot of savings from the existing budgets. Caveat that, when youre talking about modern new Modernization Programs sometimes with the right Business Case, it does make sense to invest in those. I assume based upon your response to senator coons i assume theres a senator inclination when these issues arise, the easy thing to do is to hire a contractor, we dont know within the agency we dont know this stuff, this isnt our primary mission lets get somebody in here who takes care of this, weve worked on this committee when chairman udall was its chairman we worked on fitara how do we improve the role cios play in an agency. In part trying to compensate for an attitude that were not tech folks, somebody else is responsible for that. Describe to me how you work with your cio. You let me ask a question first about this. The breach the first breach i think youre aware of goes back to june of 2014 as i recall you and others testified in front of this committee in may of 2014 and the following month june, opm became aware of a breach, is that yes let me just the first breach that we discussed with you was i dont think you discussed this with me because i dont think if you knew about it i dont think we knew about it. Im sorry sir. Its probably better that let me start, ill i want to look at my make sure i have my months right. On march of 2014 was when we identified some adversarial activity. But there was no pii that was lost in that, in june of 2014 which is what you may be referring to is when usis was breached and there was opm data that was compromised that impacted about 2. 6 individuals. Thousand, 2. 6,000 individuals. In august of 2014, the Key Point Government Solutions which i described earlier theyre adversarial activity, they were breached and that breach compromised approximately 49,000 individuals. And then in april of 2015 was the breach that ive described earlier as well as the one in may. So there were make sure i understood what you just said, there were three breaches that occurred prior to the two were now talking about. There was the opm network in march, june of 14. In august key point. So what was your change what change did opm you obviously became aware on three occasions, somebodys trying to intrude on our system what then did opm do after realizing that. In i could just go back a little bit, because i want to reassure you to my colleagues point, one of the first actions i took was to hire Donna Seymour, the other second action i took was to develop an it Strategic Plan that had exactly the things that the pillars that my colleague describes. So i. T. Leadership i. T. Governance, must buy into the design and the structure of the i. T. Plan, and its development and i. T. Architecture what was it going to take for us to build out the systems that we needed in view of our legacy system. I. D. Data we needed to be informed, we needed to know that what we were doing was right and kwerp doing this in a way that was an lit can, we also had as an Important Pillar there, i. T. Security. Obviously, very, very important as we were building out evens we were working on our Strategic Plan, one of the most Important Pillars was i. T. Security. And since Donna Seymour came in as cio and because of her experience, and as mr. Spiers said the good towns and experience we have in government, we brought her from dod and dot, she was able to apply those skills and talent to identifying not only what our strategic steps are, but how we could begin to develop them. The first thing we needed to look at, what could we place on that legacy system, and what would it take to do that . Thats where she began and what she continues to do throughout her tenure. Your point is from not necessarily following the three breaches that we just talked about, but from your arrival, your priority was to get a cio and begin implementation of a plan . I will tell you, senator, that from the first time i was briefed on our its infrastructure, during my confirmation preparation, i knew that there was a problem. And that is why in my confirmation hearing i said it would be a top priority and i promised your colleagues that i would develop an i. T. Strategic plan, which i did, and produced within the first 100 days, i was also wise enough to hire Donna Seymour. The i. T. Strategic plan you just mentioned is that something we can see . Its on our website, and i will make sure you get a hard copy as soon as possible. Let me see if i have additional followup. Following that i. T. Strategic plan, theres now is there any new plan as a result of just implementing a plan is dynamic, as we learn things that plan changes, but we are following it, we are making sure that every component, governance leadership, making sure that were making sound decisions on the architecture that were building and making sure its based on clear analytics, and that Cyber Security is an important component of all of that. Are you are there benchmarks that are now in place as a within that plan that we see whether were making the progress, benchmark by benchmark . Id like to come back to you and show you what those benchmarks are sir. Let me ask you about notification, you indicated in your testimony, and i wrote this down as soon as practicable. And i understand the value of that phrase. You know, the president s proposed legislation for notification to occur within 30 days of air breach, how does how do you think practicable fits with the 30 day requirement . Well, i think within that proposed legislation, as practicable as also included in there, and where i can assure were doing everything we can to come as close to that date as we possibly can. Is there anyone who overseas i. T. Security outside of opm . Whats the relationship between omb its very close relationship. We work very closely with the federal cio who has responsibility for this. Tony scott has been in at omb for 90 days now hes been engaged with us from the beginning. And his he and donna have a very strong relationship and he has a strong adviser role to us. Prior to his arrival 90 days ago, was there someone filling that responsibility as well . I dont know that, sir, but id be glad to get that information back to you. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you all of you all for being here. Again, i apologize for the earlier delay. This is such an important hearing, i think this is probably one of the most important hearings well have this year. And we will be following up in the not too distant future making sure that things are moving in the right direction. I want to thank all again for participating. I want to thank my staff senator cons staff for the excellent job that they did in preparing for the hearing. This time i ask unanimous consent, the statements by the National Treasury employees union and the american federal Government Employees aflcio being included in the hearing record, if there are no further questions, the hearing record will remain open until next tuesday, june 30th at noon for subcommittee members to submit any statements. With that, the subcommittee hearing is adjourned. President obama heads to the pentagon today. Hell be making a statement just before 4 00 p. M. Eastern time. Youll be able to watch it live on cspan. When congress is in session, cspan3 brings you the best access to hearings, news conferences and key Public Affairs events. Every weekend its American History tv traveling to Historic Sites discussions with authors and historians, and eyewitness accounts of events that define the nation. Cspan3, coverage of congress and American History tv. Up next former congressional staffers who worked on intelligence oversight for lawmakers share their experiences. We have two panelists. I know we covered some of the issues and so on this one. Were going to try to get a little more indepth on some nuts and bolts and how things have worked and how they can be improved. My first panelist was a Church Committee staffer hes now the regions professor of public and International Affairs at the university of georgia. He served as a Specialty Assistant the to senator frank church, and later the staff director to the house intelligence oversight subcommittee at the first house Intelligence Committee. Hes had a career in both other staff jobs on the hill, he was also the staff director of the aston Brown Commission. No, i was the assistant the to the chairman of the aston Brown Commission on the role and capabilities of the Intelligence Community in 1996. You could also say that he is written the book on intelligence, that would be wrong, because hes actually written the books on intelligence. More than a dozen of them. So were pleased to have you here. We also have diane rourke, she worked in executive branch positions at the department of energy, and the National Security council and spent 17 years as a republican staff member to the House Permanent Select Committee on intelligence, where she stayed until she retired in 2002. And many of us probably would not know her flame but for a New York Times article in 20 o 5 that reveiled the wiretapping program that president bush had authorized after 9 11. Diane was targeted with a very aggressive fbi investigation and threats of prosecution that ill let her get more of the details with. Why dont we start sort of from a higher level. Some have argued that National Security and Foreign Policy are the demands of the executive and that congress should let the executive have free reign in those areas whats the appropriate role for congress in intelligence activities, and how is it performed in that role . Thank you, mike. This is a complex topic and i approach it with a great deal of humility, and some of my former colleagues on the Church Committee remind me that the humility is well deserved. I would begin by pointing out that we have pictures in our head of how government ought to work, some people have a picture in their head that indicates power is it most important, and efficiency efficiency. One things former Vice President cheney for example or the uc berkeley law Professor John yu, they believe particularly when it comes to National Security, the president ought to be the sole organ of the government basically. I much prefer the model projected at the Founding Fathers convention that is often called the mad sewnian model there is a higher value. The higher value has to do with preventing autocracy from taking over a country. If you read federal statement 51, which most of us have i think, its a primer on how the government should work when it comes to accountability. If you walk into the library of Congress Wing youll find etched nicely on the wall a quote from him, not from paper 51, but another document in which he says power lodged as it must be in human hands is ever liable to abuse. The Founding Fathers werent power oriented, they were antipower ear currented. They understood the danger of power power. Today i think most people have studied the mad sewnian model. Those who adopt the mad sewnian model point out the reason we need accountabilities, its not enough just to pass laws. Congress has an obligation to make sure those laws are being carried out properly. Accountability is all about keeping the bureaucrats on their toes. Accountability is all about keeping bureaucrats from doing something stupid. One can review programs which has a kind of expost fak toe facto situation to it. I think thats what were talking about i think that and ill wrap this up quickly i think the pattern over the years has been highly uneven. I disearn this pattern when it comes to accountability. I use the metaphor of Political Science about Police Patrolling and firefighting by Police Patrolling i mean lawmakers checking the locks on the door, shining the flashlights into these agencies you know, monitoring what theyre doing on a regular basis, when things really go wrong, theres a train wreck, go to the rescue and put out the fire what i see being the pattern, a lot better from the Church Committee. I guarantee you the differences are night and day. Until a shock to the system, i mean a scandal of some kind or a terrible intelligence failure, such as what proceeded the 9 11 events. When you have the shock lawmakers become energetic, they conduct the investigation this has happened five times. It lapped at the Church Committee, the iran contra scandal the the Aldridge Ames Counter Intelligence case it happened with the wrong hypothesis about wmds in iran. Those have been the main fires. What concerns me is what happens in between these fires what that points to as the need for more energetic Police Patrolling. Right after the firefighting and members are aware of the importance of accountability. That begins to ebb away. You go back to low level, low energy until what madison would have predicted. These agencies abused their power, they make major mistakes and then we have more genuine accountability. One of the Big Questions we need to address is how we can sustain this Police Patrolling in order to avoid the fires that eventually break out. How did you see your role when you changed from being in the community to being an overseer of the community . Anyone who says with the straight face that the executive branch is extremely efficient and streamlined has never served there or is not being honest. My main two issue s issues were verifying compliance with arms control agreements and some Counter Intelligence issue and reciprocity with the soviet union at the time. The story of my career both in the administration and the legislative branch is a struggle with bureaucracy theyre basically do not want any oversight from anybody include ing in the executive office of the president , and they dont want it from the Intelligence Branch its much easier for them to put off the legislative branch but we do believe in separation powers. Its fundamental and the founder not say that Foreign Policy was exempt they gave commander in chief powers you cant get approval for every tactical move from the congress, they didnt exempt Foreign Policy in general. I have to say that i came to the legislative branch determined to do significant oversight as i had been in the executive branch, and it was tough in both places, but tougher in the legislative side. I was known as a pretty aggressive oversight pretty aggressive oversight, once the republicans came in power, i had the nro power first and insiflted they should complete their contracts. Questioned the way they were going in a number of areas, this was very unpopular. Then i was assigned to nsa when i came to the nsa shlgt the general perception was that it was in good shape after about three months i was totally depressed, i thought the National Security was add risk, because they were they had not even begun to adapt to the digital age and had no real plans to do so. This was 1998 . 1997. Thats when the Telecommunications Industry was changing rapidly, security also becoming an issue at that time. And both those are nsa accounts. So i was really worried extremely worried, at the lack of urgency, and they also, what became more important, a cultural problem. At the nsa, i focused not on operations operations which most people had done, i focused on development and engineering there was a considerable lack of engineering discipline. They were not used to building big integrated systems any more. We had a very scler ottic enemy previously. They didnt change their intelligence much i got some money for fbi for some of their technical capabilities that were later used against me. The other big issue to me was the complete lack of objectivity in evaluating technical approaches. These became enormous issues. How did you your oversight work . Did you go to the nsa to members to go to the nsa. How is your interaction with the agency trying to get them to understand the problem. I was always at the nsa, at least once a week or they were down at the i mean these are briefings upon briefings, upon briefings, there was a lot to learn. What i learned and i became very concerned, i said within a few months, there was nothing was connected. Everyone was doing their own project s projects and other staff became concerned also and so in this respect, both the democrats and republican staff were on the same page we both began telling our members about this quickly. How is it received . I think one of the issues here is you have to look at staff can have a lot of power. They were willing to go along with me, with some marks, as long as they werent too ambitious as long as they didnt cut major programs. And they were willing to let me put in really tough language into some of the reports, which did not embarrass the agency as much. But i was warning frankly that their Modernization Program was zoomed from the start. I just looked i took one look at it, and i when they finally came up with a proposal for a Modernization Program, i asked nor their decision paper. I read it i called them and said, i want to understand this, am i correct from seeing that what you want to do is take your old analog system and modernize it into the digital age . They said, yes, yes, thats absolutely correct. I said, it will never work it will never work. I say this to i. T. People and they shake their heads they cant believe it. First of all, the old analog system was completely inadequate. How you build on that is ridiculous. Did you have a technological background . Crash course . Does the committee have experts that it can rely on . Or do they rely on the expertise . The senate did get some technical experts on board and some auditing people they used. Theres a problem with this because the real experts in this system tend to be from the agencies, the problem is they have an Agency Perspective often if they want to go back to the agency thats a big issue, they dont want to antagonize them. If they want to go in a contractor world afterward they also dont want to an taggenize them, because there is an they could go along to get along kind of attitude where you get the expertise without everyone what are the reasons i really want to have you on the panel is that i think its very important to understand these agencies arent mono lidgic there are people in the agencies trying very hard tory form them from the inside and i know with intelligence oversight youve written quite a bit about the importance of personalities in how oversight gets done and how reform gets done. I really think thats true. You look at these oversight committees youll find that the devotion to accountability according to personalities, if i may refer to mondale, for example, he became the hero of the Church Committee staff, because wed give him thick briefing books and get them back at the end of the day with notations in the margins, things underlined. That was inspiring to be a staff member, who had someone so interested and so dedicated. I see four times the members of the oversight committees. First i called the cheerleader, this is the person who has nothing but praise for the intelligence agencies. I think thats warranted. Its extremely important, they do a lot to help protect us. We couldnt do it without their help. The cheerleaders is involved in unallied devotion to these agencies, the American People need to understand why were spending 50 to 80 billion on these agencies. Another type i think is the os stretch this is the type of person with his or her head in the sand who is on one of these committees but doesnt do anything. To put a couple names to these, when i think of the os stretch, i think of Barry Goldwater, he voted against the creation of the Senate Intelligence committee to begin with and he became chairman of that committee, and did very little until he became angry with the dci, William Casey who misled him. That became a matter of institutional pride the cia was misleading the Senate Institution committee. Put a name to cheerleader, thats there are lots of people that would fall into that category. 82 of these committees are purely cheerleader ss porter goss might qualify. He once said to me, calm down about oversight, weve had a lot of trouble having a good relationship. Were going to be partners for a while, calm down, for a while, i think weve engaged in cheerleading. A third category is what i call the lemon sucker and i take this from bill clinton who said all economists are lemon suckers, theyd come into the oval office and they would have nothing but bad news to tell them about the economy. The lemon suckers see no value whatsoever in the Intelligence Committee i think Daniel Patrick moynihan was over the top when he wanted to close the place down. And finally, the guardian, this is a person who combines some skepticism that one might find in the lemon sucker category, but balanced off with some cheerleading as well. Someone who strikes a balance between the two. You know when were raising children we try to compliment them and reward them if they do well, if theyre good parents well criticize them. This is what the guardian tries to do. An example of the guardian i think gary hart hamilton played that role very well. Person ail if is matter very much, and the energetic guardians continue to be the most energetic Police Controllers many what we need on capitol hill, what you can fill in that blank with a lot of different things, one of the things we need is more guardians and more police patrollers. And diane your worst fees come true, nsa isnt prepares, 9 11 happens, what happens next. I retired in april of 2002 but before i retired. I found out the nsa domestic surveillance program, which i was not supposed to know about. I immediately wrote memos and updated memos many memos to the chairman and ranking which was porter goss and nancy pelosi, 1k34r5i7bing the whole thing to them indicating where it was going, which to my mind was very serious. It became clear to me, this was not a temporary thing, it thing it was to be a permanent thing and also indicating that the it was expanding in terms of the data to be covered. It was expanding rapidly. To my horror, i found out they had already approved it. And so i argued that it was illegal and unconstitutional. And that it had taken off the Civil Liberties protections that had initially been built into it and that was encryption of u. S. Person names until there was probable cause and a warrant from a judge and secondly i think equally important, it was automatic tracking of all accesses to the databases. And what was done with the data. Obviously, this would take you know it would be a huge boon to oversight which is precisely i believe why they didnt want it, both those. So i argued that that was the absolute minimum they could do. It would be illegal and unconstitutional but we would have some protections. And when i got nowhere on the Intelligence Committee i then went to other people in the executive and or attempted to, in the executive and judicial branches whom i knew probably were cleared into the program and i would ask them are you cleared into the post9 11 nsa program, they would say yes. They would listen. And i made the same argument to them. Of course i knew it was originated at the white house. And this was a big problem because there was nobody who could overrule them. It went all the way to the top and a lot of the avenues you normally could take were cut off. I tried to meet with david addington. He was the counsel to Vice President cheney. And i had sat six feet away from him for years. So any way, nothing worked. I did everything i could including a few months into retirement. I met with the general who was concerned about my constant agitation and called me in with the obvious purpose of trying to shut me up. And in doing so he said, i want to run this as long as i. Can you can yell and scream and wave your arms all you want after it leaks and by the way every Single Person i talked to knew it would leak because it was so obviously contrary to all the training the Intelligence Community received in what they could and couldnt do. Particularly in the nsa. Nsa they had to review the legal standards and sign off. And it was you do not spy on americans. Right. And so you make all these extraordinary efforts and then realize theres not an avenue to go through. I basically you know, i tried to see chief justice renquist. I tried to see the head of the fisa court who told me she could not talk to me because it might prejudice her consideration of a future case. And in retrospect we know she was briefed into it and prejudicing a case in which one side is received anyway. My main issue to her was going to be also and i think if she had listened to me and had done it you know, encrypt u. S. Names, the capability is there. Do automated tracking and give it to the court. Have a court review of that. I think the future what it would have given the fisa court a lot of power and we could have avoided a lot of this. But anyway everybody i went to just listened silently and did nothing. I retired and then myself as well as some of my compadres. Decided that we would at very least try to avoid the fraud waste and abuse that had appeared to become rampant at the nsa. The waste of money in the modernization process and the killing of programs that were much more advanced and appeared to be much cheaper, also. And more privacy protection. And more privacy protection. So we went to the department of defense ig given that the nsaig was heavily involved in the modernization effort and used the hot line for protection of our reputations. Tom did not sign the letter that we sent but he helped them from the inside. He gave absolutely crucial help because nsa stonewalled what eventually became an audit that went for two and a half years. All these years later, it is in a black hole. And the program does eventually leak in 2005. Tell us about the fbis contact with you. Well, it leaked and when it leaked i thought i had warned everybody it would leak. And they had all agreed and i couldnt believe how long it lasted. And so had finally decided maybe i was wrong and the next week i opened up the paper and there it was, the headline. You know, so at that point i was free to discuss my objections under the hayden guidelines. But i did so well, i wrote an op ed. I became concerned when the administration started stonewalling the courts and trying to get the whole thing kicked out of the courts. That was basically my trigger. And i wrote an op ed on it that i passed through the guys and i said its not classified. And so i came back with no theme left. Black marks everywhere. At that point i contacted the committee and asked them and they claimed they could take out unclassified too. And i contacted the committee and asked for my nondisclosure agreement for a copy of it and i didnt get an answer. Now one of the reasons may be because this wasnt very flattering to the committee either. But i think from that time on the committee was in league with completely in colleague, it appeared to me, with the fbi and the administration. But anyway so i wrote this op ed died and a reporter from Baltimore Sun contacted me. And wanted to know wanted my comments on this. And so i told her what my objections had been and these two safeguards should be restored. This apparently was another nail in my coffin because when when the leaks occurred in 2005 in the New York Times i was immediately apparently targeted as the likely leaker. As i said to people subsequently how dumb do you think i am. Do you think im going to talk to everybody who is cleared and then leak it . This is counter intuitive. As it was revealed in toms sentencing hearing they never had any evidence. They pursued this investigation for five or six years with no evidence or either motive or fact. And raided your home. They raided my home in 2007 at 6 00 in the morning. At the same time they were raiding three, bill, kirk, and ed and later they raided tom as well. And they were attempting to indict tom and or i. They decided with tom. Both of us gave only unclassified to the reporter. And toms were basically as said earlier in the Good Government kind of waste and abuse category. And that investigation has gone on for five years. Do you have some idea that the investigation is no longer moving forward. The other four were resolved but they deliberately left me hanging. And so finally we well, initially all of us to try to get our property back. They told us they were not giving it back. You are found innocent and the nsa one of the many powers they claim that i didnt realize before was that they can basically seize everything in your computer, all your papers. And this has become become some unfortunately has recured. We saw during the torture report debate that the cia had made a crimes report to the department of justice accusing Staff Members of violating criminal law. Locke, in some of your writing you discussed different eras of oversight and described them. Explain those eras and how would you describe this new era where there is such aggressive attacks on staffers. I think if you look back from 1787 all the way up till 1974 which is the wide sweep of our countrys history, you find that intelligence is treated as an exception to the madisonian rules. That was going to be a special case because it is delicate for normal accountability. With the Church Committee responding to the family jewels leagues we enter a new era which i call an Uneasy Partnership where congress and the Intelligence Community were going to try and Work Together. And that lasted all the way i think, with some bumpy road along the way, until the iran contra scandal which is a bit chilling when you think about it. Because we had all this finely embroidered oversight regulation and statutes to guide this partnership. And yet it all fell apart. And again it shows you the importance of personal. And jimmy carter set a tone, were going to follow the regulations and obey the law. And with i would argue when the Reagan Administration came to town it was a different tone embracing the unitary presidency. So we had a brief period which i label the era of distrust starting with the iran contra scandal in 1987 and going up to 1992. And we enter another disappointing era which i call the era of partisanship where every vote was along party lines. That did not happen in the earlier eras with the exception of the nicaragua votes. Now everything was partisan. With 9 11 we enter the era of ambivalence. Now even republicans which tended to be cheerleaders for the community were becoming more skeptical about the effectiveness of the agencies. They couldnt warn us about the 9 11 attacks. They got the wmd hypothesis wrong in iraq. Now you had criticism from republicans as well. This latest era which i think dates to snowden forward im calling the era of rebalancing. Where republicans and democrats alike are saying wait a minute maybe weve gone too far in the Security Side of the equation and maybe we need to move back to the liberty side. And you see that in the house vote on u. S. Freedom act. You go through different phases. I would make two overarching comments about accountability. First, you have to have you have to have an executive branch willing to share information. And all too often that hasnt happened. So you could able size administrations one from another by looking at the willingness of the people at the highest levels to work with congress. Ive interviewed every single dci and most understand what i call the new oversight. They realize the importance of this. They are madisonians. I will tell you the major exception at the moment. And one of the reasons they like the oversight is they tell me it say allows them to share the responsibility. If you have the bay of pigs, you say i told those people about it and they were with me. That takes the burden off them. Most of them are realizing that the postChurch Committee accountability is a good thing for them. The exception you all know it william j. Casey. I asked him what is the role of congress when it comes to intelligence and he said the role of congress is to stay the blank out of my business. Insert your favorite sailor word if you want. He was a unitarian presidency kind of guy and it got him into trouble even with the ostrich cheerleader, Barry Goldwater who became very anticasey when casey was so disdainful of the Senate Intelligence committee about actions in nicaragua. Even when the executive does share information with congress or a limbedited number in this case, it was just the two. Four. Two on each side. How can those four be assured they are getting truthful information and how did you get information about these programs that perhaps wasnt beening briefed to those four . This is when you get into whistle blowers, i think. In my experience with oversight it is absolutely essential that any staffer has to develop informal sources of information from within the agencies. They hate this. They absolutely despise this. There are rules that no one can talk to congress except through pr. No one can talk to press except through pr. I heard at one point that the nro threatened to tap all the phones to find out who was talking to me. And the nsa was really upset; also, to the extent that finally, general hayden sent a notorious directive to the entire work force telling them that once the nsa had made a decision they were not to tell anything to congress that would undercut it. So oversight is not really accepted especially when it is vigorous. They are quite willing to share their responsibility when something goes wrong. But often i have to say, in my career often we found out about something the day before it was to appear in the newspaper. And a free press is absolutely essential to legislative oversight. I would agree with that. I forgot the other side of the equation, you to have an executive branch willing to share information and you have to have a legislative branch willing to take it seriously and get involved and read the information and go to the hearings. And they can be a problem as well. I think one of the most important developments since the Church Committee is the establishment of mandatory reporting requirements. The hughes ryan amendment occurred before the Church Committee by a few days. And now when you have any important covert action, you is to come up and brief the two committees. And the 1980 intelligence oversight act, this is thrilling in the sense that it required antifacto reporting on all important intelligence activities. Unheralded even in the donations of executive agreements, but the 1980 intelligence oversight act say use will let us know in advance of any important intelligence activity any collection operation or counterintelligence operation. There was the socalled gang of 8. In times of emergency you had to tell only eight mebsmbers. But you have to tell the full committee within two days, both the house and the senate committees. So these acts are important but they havent always been honored by the executive branch. What protections exist for the agency whistle blowers and how does congress and particularly the members of the committee protect the whistleblowers . I believe it was during my time there it was pretty much up to individual staff to protect their own sources. My staff director would say, where do you get that stuff . Who did you get that from and id say i am not telling you. I didnt tell anybody who my sources were. Its just a lot better for everybody if they dont know. And so i really tried hard to protect them. But the committee as a whole particularly post 9 11 seems to be totally uninterested in protecting whistleblowers which are their life blood. They absolutely are their life blood. Tom, obviously tom was one of them. Tom was talking to me about problems at nsa before 9 11 and i think thats one of the reasons he got it. You know, he got the treatment. So did bill benny who also had sometimes talked to me. So the i think its evident and i think you have experience in this, that the intelligence communities did not sign on to whistleblower protections. They did not include National Security information on this. For a long time they were hung out to dry and there are still inadequate protections. And i think its also my case is pretty i dont want to center this around myself but i think that my case indicates a lot that is a lot of problems and a lot of dangers that face us today. One was i went as the fbi did finally contact me about eight months after the New York Times leak and asked if i would voluntarily cooperate with them and i said yes, but i will never tell you my sources and of course thats what they wanted. And so, i went to the committee and called the committee and asked them if they would support me on this and i did this a number of times and never got an answer. Went to meet with the fbi some months later in february of 2008. And found to my surprise that it was not a meeting, it was an interrogation. And it became clear at that point that i was a target. And also it became clear at that point that the committee had thrown me under the bus. And they repeatically asked me for my sources and i repeatedly told them i will not tell you my sources. And i said i would not tell you otherwise, but this how can there be a more important issue than this. If i set that precedent in this all important issue, the committees are worthless they will have no sources whatsoever. And jumping forward to the present time anybody who goes to the Intelligence Committees at this point as a whistleblower is out of their mind. They will do nothing. They will do absolutely nothing at least on the post 9 11 nsa issues and they will not protect you. As they did not i should also add just to finish that, after i was raided and all my items were seized guess what they seized . My telephone logs and all of my meeting books for the entire time i had the nsa account. So potentially they had access to every person from the nsa ranks or otherwise that i had talked to. And the committee decided they also wanted to search my computer and all my papers and so the nsa did a separate keyword search for them. All these searches illegal, by the way. And they also told i have it in writing they told nsa they could keep all my agenda books and telephone logs. And this is a separation of powers issue right . Its an absolute separation of powers issue. Yes. That congress is allowing the executive branch to gather information about their oversight activities. Not only allowing but facilitating in my view. The big issue was before that time, all they cared about was stopping leaks. That was on the public agenda, that was almost the only thing you read about. When the fbi comes to them and says we think shes the leaker of the New York Times they dropped me like a rock and they dropped all the sources and all the committee prerequisites and legislative privilege as well. You know, again as weve seen this happen in a similar way with the Senate Intelligence report on the abuse, are there tools that congress has to better protect at least in that case to her credit Dianne Feinstein came out and made a very big deal of the fact that the cia was going after her Staff Members that way. But are there tools other than that sort of Public Appeal that congress has to protect its staff and to protect its investigative prerogative . Its lost on these committees unless you have champions among the members. Members who are willing to go to the mat with the executive branch if there is a problem. I can think of Fitz Schwartz and mr. Mondale and others getting into a struggle with the Ford Administration during the Church Committee inquiry on some matters, threatening and sometimes using subpoenas. I think we went to court on a couple of issues. You have to be a fighter. And unfortunately the cheerleader species is spreading rapidly since 9 11. They have to defend their fighters within the staff as well. Yes thats what i have in mind. If they dont do that thats what i meant, if the staff doesnt have these champions they are really lost. You know, it becomes accountability begins to revolve around a couple of key people and thats all it takes. I remember on hipse we had a reporter there, we had a fellow in this case who had a mask over his face and taking things down verbatim and he said whats he doing here . And admiral turner said i dont want him here. This is a breach of security. And so mr. Bowlen during his peaceful loving period during the Intelligence Committee said well get rid of him. And aspen says mr. Chairman bowlen was number two on appropriations, the best friend of tip oneil, getting in a fight with bowlen was not healthy fur healthy for your career but aspen said i would like a roll call vote on this. I think its important to have a verbatim record. And bowlens face turned crimson but any member has a right to call a roll call vote. So the final tally was 76 among the members in the room in favor of keeping the reporter there. Bowlen was furious and remained so for many weeks. But the importance of that cant be understated. Hence forth the house Intelligence Committee had a verbatim record of the covert action briefing and all the questions and answers that came after. So a year later we could go back to that record and have admiral turner come back up here and say is this what you have done. Very important and the word spread to the senate and they demanded to have a reporter there. One of the most important moments in the evolution of accountability. And one of the most i wanted to Say Something in regard to the problems that they had with cia monitoring of their computers and seizing of records they had been given. I believe after the way i was treated and there was no reaction but instead complicity i think that invited what happened to the cise. And i would also would say im glad Dianne Feinstein did her onehour speech and presented all that information. I still think the Senate Intelligence committees reaction was less than it should have been. First of all, this was not the first time they had done it. It was the second time. As she said in her speech. The first time she tried to keep this all quiet. Tried to keep it in the family. Was unsuccessful in getting them to back down. They had taken documents off the staffers computers that they had been given and sequestered there. And she went quietly to the white House Counsel who got them to agree they would never do it again. But there is no indication those documents were ever returned. In her speech at least. And then it just happened again. And they had the nerve to go on the offensive, best defense is offensive, apparently, thinking apparently she would back down. And she has shown some weaknesses since also in trying to resolve it in order to prevent the staff from being indicted, she said. But instead, what she should have done is gone to the senate General Council and said we will back these people in court. So how do we get to a place how do we reform this system . Have you had any thoughts on what either the committee can do or what laws can be passed . Obviously passing a whistleblower protection law that applied to the Intelligence Community and giving them rights to enforce those rights. I have many ideas. I dont know i dont know that they will be palatable to a lot of people but its pretty clear. We are so far gone. Nobody i think most people do not realize how far down this road toward a complete overturn of democracy we are. The only i see this as population control. Population control. Bottom line. Account not be justified by terrorism. It is not helping with terrorism that much the domestic surveillance programs. There has not been a single tip yet from this program because they are drowning in data. If they were doing a targeted approach instead they would have been far more successful. But what is the use of all this data . Why do they still say we have to have it all . We want to own the web, you know, that was a big thing earlier too. Well, why . Its because all this information contrary to what they say sometimes publicly all of this information is filed under your identity as soon as it comes in. Its automatically filed. That was bill bennys contribution to the system a very good database. And with all your Social Circle all your connections. Its all there. And people dont realize how much data is involved. This socalled metadata is a tiny tiny percentage of it. Im not saying this is a very significant thing trying to take the metadata database away from the nsa and cia and fbi and everybody else, which most people ignore. But this this whole program is so massive that theres no way, nowhere for any terrorist to go to hide. Listen i know. Ive been trying to find some shred of privacy since 2006. And ill attest to that. It took a while to find you. But i want to put this out because this is now you think that so theres phone metadata which the administration has focused everything on this as a red herring to keep you from looking at Everything Else theyre doing, everything that snowden has revealed. There was email metadata which they claimed they had stopped even though it was the most productive program. My contention is they havent stopped it. They almost certainly moved out of the fisa courts purview because their requirements were too expensive. It was too expensive to do it the way the court wanted them to do it. And they moved it into overseas collection of the databases held by the isps and telcos overseas which include a lot of domestic stuff. So clearly, locke, part of the problem is we dont know enough. These questions, what other programs that we dont know about. You signed on to the report asking for a comprehensive investigation that i do indeed. One of my favorite president s is harry truman. And he once said, you know every seven years or so, the government needs a House Cleaning and i think thats a good rule of thumb. I think a Second Church inquiry or Something Like that would be very helpful. But you know, lets dont be fully pessimistic about oversight in america today. We need to worry about what diane is talking about very much, i agree. But the democracies around the world look to the United States and its postchurch new accountability as something they want to emulate. And slowly but surely, holland and germany and france and england and australia and new zealand adopting serious parliamentary oversight committees. They still havent gone as far as we. Have most of the countries dont give the committees subpoena powers for example. We are widely admired for taking the dark side of government and bringing some modicum of democracy to it. Id also point out, you know before the Church Committee, the idea of having a fiveyear study of torture carried out by the cia would be unthinkable. Youd never have that. So there have been some examples, i think since the Church Committee of really rigorous oversight. And ive been in the room in the house Intelligence Committee where members have changed covert actions through dialogue with the dci, this the stupid. This costs too much. What do you want to achieve here . And the dci will go back to the white house and say, the house or the senate thinks we need to make these modifications. And lets never forget the importance of the power of the purse. Eddie bowlen in the later stage where he went from cheer leader to guardian turned off the spigots for covert action in anything rag nicaragua. That had terrible negative effects but its a good example of a power that congress has if it wants to use it. Could i reply to that . Sure. I would have to say there is no visible oversight today. Post 9 11. I see there may be things that we do on the sides that arent publicized but there is nothing on this big issue which is our freedoms. And the bill of rights, and the very purpose these committees were established, that they are now ignoring. I just dont see it. I think the i agree that the feinstein report on torture was long overdue. And probably deliberately delayed by cia by doing a huge data dump and trying to take it back. But lets look at that there is nothing done that is contrary to the administration in power at the moment whether it be republican or democrat. In this case, the democrats felt that they could do a torture report because obama had already stopped it and opposed it. The republicans unfortunately did not support that because they felt it was aimed at bush. So this was a highly politicized thing. It was the only thing really that i have seen that was done that made waves. And it was because they had permission from the president. Thats why. So i just i am to reform this one has to get rid of the democratic and Republican Leadership in the house and senate. There is no hope otherwise because they are pulling all the strings. And why can they pull all the strings . Number one because this is these are the only committees on which they appoint the membership. So they have appointed almost totally membership that is supportive of this program. And then, they manipulate the whole process the whole legislative process, the whole process behind the scenes. And so everything goes through the Intelligence Committees, the judiciary committees have to accommodate the Intelligence Committees before anything emerges. This is a kabuki dance. The only thing that gets out is what the administration already agreed to do and what the house and Senate Leadership agree to. And mr. Boehner said recently we dont mess around this with, its very fragile. As mr. Mondale has suggested in the crucible of fear the constitution can take on malleable proportions. And i think we begin to bounce back. And i think the times are achanging. I think we are in the middle right now of something of a sea change back toward the liberties side in this balance between security and liberty and the house vote is good evidence of this. And i would imagine. I certainly cant prove it but i imagine the comments made by ron widen and udahl has helped feed into that change that were now seeing. So im a little more optimistic. Could i reply to that, please . Sure. Get a little dialogue going here. Good to hear different points of view. Ill take on the Brandon Institute on this. I believe the usa freedom act is a red herring. And it is pretty much crafted by the administration to distract attention from Everything Else they are doing. They are giving up what admittedly is an ineffective program and still maintaining ties into it. The bill is riddled with problems that allegedly increases transparency but it can actually decrease transparency. If you want to look at all this stuff, look at marci wheelers comments on the usa freedom act. And what you have to do, the other thing, these you know, have we learned nothing . Basically, what the administration has done is they have redefined terms. They have exploited vague language. They have done all these things and we keep giving it to them over and over and over again the same thing. And this bill is one big example of that again. I just dont i just dont i agree that its great to have that Metadata Program ended in the administration. But look at what else there is. I mean, as i started before we have email metadata probably, we have things that are going on outside the fasisa court. We have a mail program that they photograph the front and back of every letter. Dont put your return address on. Everything on your computer, everything is collected. You know your emails, your chat, your it goes on and on and on. And and let me finish. Ill but and there are many other aspects as well. And i just think that this is as i said, there are no options. All the browsing, all the websites, everything is collected. You cant escape it. There is nowhere you can go for electronic privacy. There is nowhere and every potential terrorist this is the same for them. If i think we can impede it if only by you know, they become very inefficient if they try to elude all of this. And basically i think the other thing that has to be done is that people have to be told there is no perfect security. There is nothing we can do that will absolutely give us a protection against another terrorist attack. And we have already witnessed that. And there is no amount of intrusion into your privacy that will do this. And i think the president s review group that looked at the program put it very well that part of security is security from unnecessary government intrusion into our private lies. I have been terrible at time management. Let me get questions, john . Is there a microphone that were supposed to use . Go ahead and ill repeat your question. I have a question for locke do you remember in 1981 when Barry Goldwater insists that bobby inman be the deputy dci and when Barry Goldwater ensured directly with the white house that there would be full consultation on the revision of the executive order with the bipartisan Senate Intelligence committee fully staffed to be able to review the white house draft of an executive order. If you recall those does that adjust your view of Barry Goldwaters role . These are not pure types. There is no such thing as being an unallied cheerleader. It doesnt change my mind about him but what changed my mind is the tussle with casey. Then he became a true overseer. But i grant you your example there. And to complete the record of the story, can you explain to people what we now know about the source of the New York Times leak that was not you . Well, actually, russell tice had already admitted he was one of the sources. As i understand from reading i believe james risen has said there was about a dozen sources. But none of the other ones have been revealed. And risen took the unusual step of saying publicly on a number of occasions that it wasnt the five of us who were targeted and that he didnt know any of us and had not received information from us. Who was this person who came forward . Russell tice. Where did he work . He was a contractor at an nro ground station and if i want to depress you more, the satellites are collecting on us too. And he said that he he had high level clearances and i think he was working nights and he went there once to put a piece of paper into a burn bag which are usually bags about this big, paper bags which they collect in classified that is supposed to be burned. He saw something in the bag which was unusual and he took it out and read it and this was his First Insight into the program. He educated himself further from the burn bag. Do you recall a thomas tam also came forward but he didnt give any content. All he told the New York Times was there was an Illegal Program and he was also persecuted. He was an fbi agent from a long line of agents. There are a lot of conscientious employees in these agencies that are trying to get the information just very quickly. I would certainly agree, the hubris at the nsa the attitude if we can collect it, lets collect it. Russell tice is one of those who has stated that there are numerous very highly compartmented programs that target the elite in the u. S. Which he has said include all three branches of government, congressional staff, congressional members judges including the supreme court, attorneys, white house staff apparently they check loyalty also, reporters, first of all. If you think this isnt population control, what is . Id like to shift ground a little to what i think is a central question that really hasnt been touched on. There has been a lot of very Important Information about how the executive branch does oversight of the congress. And valuable insights about members and different orientations of members on the committees. But as to the core question of how can these committees and especially staff really do oversight thats effective and penetrating of the agencies . There hasnt been much discussion. Id like to ask a question of all three of you. Ive been trying to do that for after the Church Committee for house and Senate Intelligence and at the white house under carter for the iob and ive evolved forur or five basic rules for how staff or committees could do effective intelligence. Its not a letterman list and ill be brief. One that was touched on by diane is that when there is an expose and they say youve got us and heres the stuff that means you got to look for what theyre not pointing to and what they dont want you to get into and diane indicated that. The second thing with regard to the briefings, my second rule is that when the agency head and his top aides say there are no more records they have all been destroyed. We have not theres nothing left for you to look at they are probably telling the truth as they know it. You have to go into the bowels and talk to the people involved and you will probably find out there are files somewhere. Thats where i found the lumumba assassination. But the most important rule is the fueling at the end of the day the only way to have effective oversight especially of operations that impinge on u. S. Citizens is for the staff on a random basis to have full access to the file on an investigation or an operation. And to look and see whether it complies or whether they complied with all the rules and executive orders and statutes. And if they didnt, what is to be done and if they did and it still shows problems, what it indicates about how those rules and statutes have to be revised. And unless thats done. I think its been done by the committees sporadically. But to me unless thats done you dont have effective oversight. Id like your comments. I think all the rules you mention are excellent. As i look at the people in the first two rows here we have masters at ferreting out information from the executive branch. The Church Committee was one daily struggle after another to get access to information. And i think a lot of it is done informally. Most is done informally with staff developing a relationship with people in the executive branch. Going to breakfast and lunch, being on the telephone. And you have to do all that without being co opted. You have to keep your distance so you are not part of the organization you are studying. Can you do it without looking randomly at files of operations . I love this word randomly and its important. We dont do enough of it. In canada they are much more effective of these random searches of intelligence files. I agree with all your points and regarding the one most important i think we have to go further. We have to have a technical i. T. Team that goes and gets into all their computers and has Systems Administration rights and so on to find the stuff that is buried and if this ever comes out there also has to be a law that if anybody destroys evidence they will be hauled before a court. And one of the things is key as well is that we talk about the section 215 telephone Metadata Program which when Edward Snowden leaked the scope of it became a topic and we were talking about how it was used for terrorism and how it came into being only to find out later that the dea had been doing something similar for decades. Unless you are doing something that touches all the agencies you not going to really understand where there might be other activities that are equally could i also add just one sentence here in regard to what you said the nsa program started no later than 1999 and was hidden from congress. And this is this was a program looking for an excuse and they found it. Good. Id like to ask a question [ inaudible ] if you have secret records and you also have record destruction, responsive to the comment you just made and let me give a specific example which i admit is a historic example when judge green ordered the preservation of fbi records of historic value in 1980 you established the National Archives special fbi record task force and that task force invited historians to make recommendations as to the kinds of records that should be maintained perfectly. I served as consultant to that task force. In my own research i had come across the fact that there seemed to be the case where fbi officials maintained separate office files. And the specific discovery i had was in a 1946 memo where the fbi director was briefed about the accessing Certain Records and he asked where were these records maintained and the response was the tellson fire. One of the recommendations i made was to seek to ensure the preservation of fbi office files. In response to that there was not only the disclosure there was a toleson file but there was a memo created in 1975 but responsive to all the intelligent agencies to abandon their normal destruction procedure and preserve all records. This created a problem. What fbi officials discovered was that in violation of hoovers march 1953 order that fbis system directors ensure the regular destruction every six months of their office files that tolesons file was maintained from the period to 65 to 72. The officials were regularly destroying office files and for some peculiar reason make had to do the fact that hoover reached the mandatory retirement age there was a decision to reserve this office file from 65 to 72. How can you have effective oversight if not only is the case that intelligence officials ensure that records are secret records arent maintained and ensure against discovery destroyed on a regular basis sensitive records . And the obvious example was the torture videos is another one. Thats why i think you need a Technical Team that will all these files now are electronic. They are all on computers. And so you need a technical i. T. Team that goes in and searches. It has full range of search to find this stuff before it gets destroyed. I once asked bill colby what can congress do if its lied to by agencies in the Intelligence Community and his response was when you find out about it as eventually you will come down hard on these agencies and shame them and cut off their funding for certain programs. There are tools of retaliation. I agree. The budget is the biggest power that congress has and i think if we would have the nsa budget wed have a lot less trouble. Go ahead. Sorry. Steve winters of washington based researcher. I have been following the investigation in the German Parliament where they have an Intelligence Committee and bill benny gave extensionive testimony there. He said over there they want to hear my story and what happened. But i dont see that here. And also because of the obviously the connections between the our intelligence agencies and their intelligence agencies their investigation is as much an investigation of certain practices of nsa and its really heating up over there. What is striking to me is there is so little coming this direction from that investigation. I can remember the Church Committee and the spirit of this committee in germany a lot of these people reminds me of the Church Committee. I think its worth being aware there is an active investigation going on right now in the spirit of the Church Committee and we why dont we invite some of those people over here and get a little bit going back and forth. Comments on that . I would say i have been in touch with that committee. They have been doing a good job, i think. In germany you have the memory of the nazis. And you also have the memory in the cold war in east germany. And they find intelligence organizations potentially highly toxic. Thats one of the reasons they are very agitated. They are agitated but what the germans want to do is join the five is and make it six is. This has to be the last one, im afraid. Im sorry. This has been a fascinating revelation. Your experience. In 1975 and 76, with the discovery of the capacity of nsa and other agencies to acquire information not only about individuals but about every subject that affects mankind, the question immediately arose, what do we do with this mass of information. How do we make use of it . How do we prevent the kinds of abuse that youve indicationed . We wrote a report thats contained in volume four of the supplementary documents that we published on intelligence, was written by dick garwin one of our countrys most prominent physicists a member of the Manhattan Project and an extraordinary cando sort of person. We asked him to him to look into the future and the future that he foresaw foresaw. Was an ability which would be exponential in acquiring data. The problem was addressed about massive files, what do you do with the discrimination of information on massive files increasingly massive the electronic world is accessible now. The answers that were given at that time by us as well as by the technical people of the quality of dick irwin was minimization. You have to work on the question of minimizing the files, whats kept kept, whats distributed. You have to be very specific about who has access and why. This is the essence of the warren procedure and in the world of mega information the problem is still the same and the answer is still the same make rules and regulations about who has access and why. For how long. When i went to see general hayden in july of 2002, he told me we are not in the business of minimumization. They have claimed since then they are. Its a joke. If they wanted to minimumize they would keep track. Its still deactivated. If the Congress Wants to know what they can do thats what they can do, they can demand that that. Im afraid weve run out of time. Congress returns tomorrow from its fourth of july break, this week the house plans to continue and finish up building the interior Department Also in the house, a bill making changes to no child left behind. U. S. Senate is also back tomorrow working on a separate proposal dealing with no child left behind that would give states more authority to determine how much weight to give to standardized test scores. They have a confirmation vote scheduled for later in the day for a federal Circuit Court judge. See the house live on cspan, the senate live on cspan two. Jack lou aboard he overseas. He appeared before the House Financial Services Committee Last month. The committee will come to order, without objection. This hearing is for the purpose of receiving the annual testimony of the chairperson of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, now recognize myself for five minutes to give an Opening Statement when democrats first passed the dodd frank act they claimed the Oversight Council was one of its crowned jewels. Fsoc would now be able to clearly identify risk to Financial Stability and take action before these emerging threats metastasized into another crisis. A fatal flaw in this pipe dream was always the failure of dodd franks supporters to recognize that among the greatest threats to Financial Stability are washington policies themselves including policies of the very agency heads that sit on the council. Fsoc simply refuses to look in the mirror. It omits any references to specific Government Policies or agencies helping cause this Systemic Risk it identifies. Greater risk taking across the Financial System is encouraged by the historically low yield environment the council reports. Yet the council refuses to identify the obvious source of this apparent risk, one of its own members the Federal Reserve and the feds unprecedented loose monetary policy. The Council Warns of reduced liquidity, yet never acknowledges that dodd franks volcker rule have reduced liquidity. Risk taking of large complex Financial Institutions as a threat. Yet again it fails to mention that dodd frank amplifies the threat by empowering the council to designate certain firms as too big to fail thus enshrining the concept into law. The designations will make worst profound threat ignored by the council, recently identified by the Federal Reserve bank of richmond and their bailout barometer. Taxpayers implicitly are now on the hook for a staggering 60 of the liabilities of the entire u. S. Financial system. Fannie mae and freddie mac barely received a mention. Our unsustainable National Debt 18 trillion and counting perhaps one of the greatest existential threats we face, more debt incurred under this administration than our nations first 200 years, totally ignored. This is beyond negligent, it is beyond egregious frankly it is offensive. Another glaring omission from the report is any meaningful reference to Economic Growth or rather the lack of it. Along with obama care, dodd frank is at the center of the administrations economic policies. As we approach dodd franks fifth anniversary, we see an economic recovery that has recovery created 12. 1 fewer jobs. Again compared to the average, we didnt see an economic recovery that has left our fellow citizens mired in poverty. I find it stunning that in its report fsoc can find a link between greece and stability in the eurozone but can find no link between Economic Growth and stability on this side of the atlantic. Also, nowhere to be found in the Councils Report is the threat posed to our stability growth and personal freedoms imposed by the rule of law under this administration. Our president never seems to fail to tell us he has a pen and a phone. Americans become less governed by the rule of law. Fear, doubt and certainty and pessimism are assumed. Increasingly, washington decides what credit cards can go in their wallets. What kind of home mortgages they can receive if they like their bank account, they can keep it. This includes the Financial Stability Oversight Council which operates largely out of public view, yet its decisions have the potential to profoundly alter the lives and livelihoods of every american. Fsoc typifies the regulatory system, the unfair washington system that americans have come to loathe. Powerful government administrators secretive government meetings to punish or reward reward. Mr. Secretary, your council needs to awake tonight obvious truth washington is a large part of the problem. Now recognize the Ranking Member for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman. Welcome back second chair, lew. We received the report of the financial Oversight Council as required by law, as we all know, this year marks the fifth anniversary of enactment of the dodd frank wall street reform and Consumer Protection act. Its hard to believe it was just five years ago that we were coming to grips with the magnitude of the financial crisis which caused the greatest loss of wealth in a generation. All told the financial crisis cost our nation more than 13 trillion in Economic Growth and 16 trillion in household wealth. Not to mention the devastation of an Unemployment Rate topping 10 in many states. The leadup to the crisis, nobody in the private sector or in government was looking at the
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