To affordable internet so homework and just be homework. Cox connect and compete. Cox along with these other Television Providers, giving you proceed to democracy. Richard klein is Principal Deputy director of the federal protective service. He said the agency and its officers stand ready to defend Federal Buildings, employees and visitors at all times. , came despite funding challenges the agency is facing. Cyber Security Officials spoke before the subcommittee on oversight and accountability. This is just over an hourand 15 minutes. Good morning everyone. Welcome to the subcommittee on oversight and management and accountability. Im sure the Ranking Member is okay with theseproceedings. He is on his way in and has a lot of contradicting messages this morning. He supposed to be on the floor on committee or both or neither. Subcommittee on oversight management and accountability will now order and without objection the chair is authorized to declare the subcommittee in recess at a point. I want to thank everyone for being here today. And for joining us to discuss this most important topic of Federal Building security. Protection of the facilities employees and visitors, a very important part of the department of Homeland Securitys daytoday work. As all of you know tensions have risen recently in response to the fbis raid on maralago, the passage of the inflation reduction. Weve seen threats towards federal employees and office buildings. Just last month and armed men attempted to commit violence, gain entrance to fbi office in cincinnati. Less wellknown are the increasingly threatening language thats been directed to irs employees and those working to preserve government documents the National Archives and tsrecords administration. While multiple, those highsecurity facilities, these are government il buildings and the men and women who visit them every day are facing new Security Risks. With asked a federal facility on the rise we look to the first front lines of defense the department of Homeland Security federal protective Services Also known as sts. Fes ensures more than 9500 9500 family owned and operated buildings across the country are safe and secure Government Agency headquarters here in washington dc uato rural courthouses and field offices across the country across 50 states. If youve ever visited a federally owned building youve noticed thousands of fsb officers and contract cars providing onsite security. But estes or i should say fess role extends beyond the guard posted entrances and exits. Fbs also helps agencies prepare for and prevent any Security Risks that result from the changing threat environment or aging infrastructures. Fbs performs Facility Security assessments sefor all federally owned buildings at least buildings next recommendations bfor improvements to ensure that buildings meet required Security Standards. These Facility Assessments and recommendations are very important to ensure that security protocols with the types of threats we are seeing on a daytoday basis. The suggested recommendations can range from replacing. Cameras and alarms to updating security guidance. However, despite the good coordination between fps and other Government Agencies, also often these recommendations go on and limited leaving huge gaps in our security systems. According to the Government Accountability office of gao customer agencies have described fpss Facility Security assessments as comprehensive, timely and useful. But they rejected about 70 percent of fps recommendations. So again, good recommendations, awesome but 70 percent of the time not heated you. Gao found in a variety of factors result in the majority of fps recommendations not being implemented including incomplete information and course lack of proper funding. We can and should do better in making arrests and facilities federal employees and citizens that visit those buildings. Today we will have the opportunity to hear more about interagency cooperation that goes into developing Building Security standards as well as the challenges meeting those standards that i thank you again yesterday our witnesses and other units. I will reserve time for a Ranking Member mister mayer from michigan for an opening statement. When he gets here. Members are reminded the committee will operate according to the guidelines laid out by the chairman and Ranking Member in every week regarding procedures and without loobjection members not on the subcommittee shall be permitted to sit in and question the witnesses. Mister meijer, i call on you for an opening statement. Thank you mister jerman for holding this hearing on the security of teFederal Buildings across the country and i appreciate the subcommittee diving into this topic and lgrateful to our witnesses are here today to shed light on this important issue. The thing Committee Held a hearing focused on federal protective services role in june 2019 and its important we follow up on that today. The ps as an agency has a whole overtime by experiencing multiple transitions in the department of Homeland Security formally established by the General Services administration in 1971 fbs primary federal Agency Responsible for the protection of all buildings, grounds of property on occupied or secured to the federal government. Its obviously an enormous responsibility for an agency that often goes unnoticed and taken for granted. Fbs employs 1300 federal staff, approximately 944 of whom are lawenforcement specialists, criminal investigators or trained at the federal Law Enforcement training division. Fbs heavily relies on 15,000 contract guards staff or protective Services Officers to conduct security screenings at more than 9000 Federal Buildings across the country. Tsos are the backbone of fbs operations and fps would not be able to carry out its mission. Protection of our Federal Buildings and properties is of utmost importance but unfortunately violence against the government buildings , property and personnel is not out of the norm and has become more prevalent in recent years. Its disheartening we must worry about such things but we must and therefore our conversation takes on added importance. With such an important e mission we need to ensure fps has the ability tooperate as effectively as possible. Fps is on the gaos highrisk list for nearly 20 years, gao has found fps is not assessing risks in a manner consistent with standards that is the National Infrastructure protectionplan Risk Management flame framework. It is especially worrisome because of a failure by fps could have catastrophic results and the focus of todays hearing is on the process. Fps provides recommendations to every federal facility to protect the Interagency Community standards. This standard is housed within infrastructure w Security Division collaboratively establishing monitors and enhances the security protections of the federal facilities. As we hear from our Witnesses Today a large majority of the Recommendations Health of those assessments have not yet been implemented. Which begs the obvious question why not . Here i would like to hear their perspectives from witnesses on the following questions. Number one, is fps positioned correctly to be the most effective . Number two how does fps work with cisa and how that borative is relationship. Why do such a majority of recommendations go on implemented and in turn is there a better way we can facilitate this process . 4, does fps has the right structure for most of their workforce and contract support and five, is the Fee Structure appropriate and effective or the role of fps today. Mister jerman im grateful were holding this hearing as they play an everImportant Role in protecting our government. We have to take a oversight responsibility here seriously and i look forward to hearing from our witnesses to determine what actions we can take. Thank you and i yelled back. Thank you Mister Meijer and now id like to welcome our panel of witnesses. First we have mister cline, Principal Deputydirector with the federal protective service. Mister attran cline has worked with fps for six years where he coordinates to ensure the protection of buildings grounds and property that are only occupied or secured by the federal government. Mister klein previously served 20 years with the u. S. Army military police corps regiment. Our second witness , mister scott bregor, associate for the infrastructure Security Division at the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency or cisa. He helped lead efforts to ensure the nations Critical Infrastructure in coordination with government and private sectors. Vehe has over 30 years of military and Senior Executive experience in the us government. And uour third witness, miss catina latham, acting director of the physical Infrastructure Team at the Government Accountability office or gao. Shes worked for gao for ha nearly 20 years where she oversees gaos work on federal Real Property management including Facility Security and personal assets. And without objection, the witnesses. Will be inserted into the record and i now ask each witness to summarize his or her statement in five minutes. Beginning with Deputy Director cline, welcomes her. Welcome Ranking Member meyer and distinguished members. Im honored to be here to represent the federal protective services or fps and testify about the role we play in protecting facilities. Thank you for the opportunity to raiseawareness about the criticality of awareness. We employed about dedicated Law Enforcement officers to protect the property of the federal government. Our Services Provide protections and deter threats at thousands of federal facilities. And protects millions of federal employees and businesses. Our highest priority is the safety and security of the 1. 4 million employees who work in a federal facility that we attacked. We cannot achieve this without the dedication and focus of the men and women of the federal protective icservices. I firmly believe they are the most dedicated and professional employees in the federal government and it is an honor to represent them here today. Due to recent acts of violence in communities across thecountry our nation remains in a heightened threat environment. According to the advisory system bulletin potential targets included government facilities including mail. Theres been an increase in threats towards agencies most notably the federal bureau of investigations, Internal Revenue service and National Archives. We have increased our protection efforts at those facilities occupied by these agencies and remain prepared to protect and respond to criminal activities at these locations. On a given date a single fps protected facility dozens of our countermeasures are in place. Working to protect the integrity ofbuildings. We closely monitor while countermeasures ensure our facilities are secure. Are lawenforcement officers and protective Security Officers are protected against attack and has recently demonstrated the chicago fbi field offices. We should ask that those locations are typically the first line of defense. We celebrate the dedication and their commitment as part of the national Security Officers appreciation week. From federal courthouses where high highprofile trials take place or childcare facilities where we protect the most innocent, fps has proven we are a Dynamic Dedicated Law Enforcement agency. Fps protects 230. Congressional districtoffices located at 176 buildings and the protection portfolio. While we have a responsibility for protection efforts at these facilities we have strong relationships with the Us Capitol Police and house and Senate Southern arms staff to ensure safety of all members. Established over 50 years ago fps has made remarkable progress as an organization and is an integral part of the department of Homeland Securitys mission to safeguard the american people. While lawenforcement officers have saved lives by administering lifesaving medical treatment , the ability to conduct yearlong investigations and even being injured in the line of duty protecting federal employees. Our officers were among those who responded to the all hands lawenforcement call january 6 of 2021 and help to secure the capital. Simply put fbs has been successful in answering the call to defend and protect the very institutions that t allow our government to function. I sincerely appreciate the subcommittee holding this important hearing and for inviting me to testify on their Important Role and i would be pleased to answer any questions you may have. I recognize chair prayer to summarize his statement for five minutes. Ranking member and members of the subcommittee, the associate director for security programs and Cyber Security Infrastructure Security Agency infrastructure Security Division i appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the Interagency Security Committees role and the production of Federal Buildings s and its efforts to improve preparedness and coordination. On october 19, 1995 six months after the Oklahoma City bombing at the Federal Building president clinton issued executive order 12977. Creating the interagency security or isc. To address the quality and effectiveness of physical security requirements of federal facilities. Membership of the ioc consists of seniorlevel executives from 66 federal departments and agencies. This collective security subject matter expertise allows the ioc to develop toptier riskmanagement resources and coordinate in t areas to see solutions to problemsthat cannot be solved by ieindividual departments and agencies. The ioc is a collective forum that carries out its work by with and through its members with a primary government framework for subsidies and working groups. These groups which are provisional our taskbased bodies established by iasc with a clear objective to to find deliverables. In march 2003 the role of chair transferred from the General Services administration to dhs. Dhs dominated this response ability to sysop enlightenment role to protect and secure the nations Critical Infrastructure. It is the stewardship of the ioc ensures its work to support and leverage state local territorial and tribal organizations as well as the private sector, all essential partners as we work to ensure the continued protection of federal facilities and assets across the nation and around the world. Executive order 12977 gave the ioc three key responsibilities. These include established policies for security in and protection of federal facilities. Develop and evaluate Security Standards and a strategy to ensure compliance and take actions to enhance the quality and effectiveness of security to the protection of federal facilities. The isc fulfills these response abilities including the riskmanagement project standards. Risk management process standard provides an integrated Single Source security countermeasures and guidance on countermeasure customization for all nonmilitary federal facilities. Ioc members created the Risk Management process to provide a common method for all federal Facility Security stakeholders to guide Risk Assessments and a standardized way and help the facility owners identify levels of protection to mitigate that risk. Further, the ioc validates member Risk Assessment tools and Training Programs. This helps build individual organizational capabilities to successfully implement guidance and conduct needs assessments. Fbs uses Risk Assessment tools as has been validated by the ioc. To modify infrastructure serving tool. Additionally sefbs fiscal and Security Training program located at the federal lawenforcement Training Center has similarlybeen validated by the ioc. This Training Program trains personnel on how to conduct Risk Assessment using their validated Infrastructure Survey tool. Through some of the main drivers of threats at federal facilities are targeted violence. As noted in the most recent dhs National Terrorism advisory system. These threats are becoming more varied and complex. With that and will remain a top priority at dhs. Dhs is committed to using every resource available to prevent, detect, mitigate threats or violence directed at federal facilities. Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today. And for this committees continued support in the department. I look forward to continuing to work closely with you and other members of congress to keep our federal facilities and those who work at them safe and secure. Thank you for your retestimony and i now recognize miss latham to summarize her statements in five minutes or less. Welcome. That morning. Chairman correa, Ranking Member bregor and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to discuss the federalprotective Services Security assessments. As you mentioned we have designated federal Real Property management as a high risk area in 2003 in part because of the physical security challenges federal facilities. My Statement Today will focus on our prior and ongoing work at fps. First ill cover stakeholders views. On Facility Assessments and the implementation status of mbs security recommendations. Next ill discuss the preliminary observations of fbs lawenforcementdeployment. First we reported in june 21 2021 that stakeholders were generally nsatisfied with fps security assessment process however many of them expressed concern with the cost estimates they provided in these reports. As they lacked Important Information that could help agencies make decisions. Stakeholders reported their concerns about the cost estimates and discourage them from implementing security measures intended to reduce the security threats. In that report, we recommended the director of fbs ensure that Facility Security assessments documents both the assumption and sources used to develop the cost estimates for each recommended security measure. As of august 2022 fbs had taken steps to address our recommendations in part by updating its rtdirector and manual iconducting these assessments. We are now in the process of analyzing if fps actions are fully responsive to our recommendations. Next, data indicates that security recommendations are generally not implemented as the chairman mentioned. Our Analysis Shows that between fiscal year 2017 and 2021 fbs made more than 25,000 security recommendations at nearly 5000 federal facilities. These are recommendations range from addressing physical vulnerabilities to ensuring policy or guidance not be concurrent. T. Furthermore fps data shows it did not receive a decision as veto whether agencies improved or rejected more than half of the 25,000 security recommendations. This data shows an Agency Approval of a recommendation does not necessarily mean it will be implemented. All all that 1600 of the approved recommendations only 22 percent have been implemented as of september 22. Fps officials also noted some recommendations stayed open for years and they can take time tosecure the funding and implement some of more costly security measures. In our ongoing work we will explore and identify factors that influence agencies decisions to improve or reject security recommendations but we will also look at why fps is not receiving information on those decisions. We expect apart on this work in early 2023. In addition to conducting Facility Security assessments fps provides Law Enforcement support to other federal agencies, preliminary observations from our ongoing work shows the number of days fps deployed Law Enforcement officers have increased since 2020. These officers are deployed to security at fps protected facilities to support other agencies Homeland Security operations. Maralago deployments for example have helped in securing federal facilities during protests and Housing Units for migrants. And a final point, staffing is also an important consideration as fps continues to have shortages. In june 2012 ffps was in the Infrastructure Security Agency we reported fps had difficulty obtaining needed staff. Fps had not failed 21 percent of its authorized positions including about 200 lawenforcement positions. We are currently conducting work on these changes since fps moves to a Management Directorate and how theyrela collaborating. We expect a release in issue on this part by the end of 2022. Ranking member meijer and members of thesubcommittee this concludes my statement and im happy to answer your questions. Thank you very much and i want to thank all the witnesses for your testimony and ill remind the subcommittee that each one of us has five minutes of questions and now will recognize myself for five minutes of questions. Your testimony is very important. 70 percent of recommendations not implemented. Miss latham, you cite a number of factors. Budgets, you cited the challenges at the southern border. Is this 70 percent nonimplementation something you or has this been something thats been going on for a number of years, miss latham. Thank you for the question. The work were doing now will further adapted to how long this has been an outstanding issue not being weimplemented. Some of the reasons as you mentioned we had heard in our prior work was due to not having the cost estimates as i noted and for the agencies noted that they needed these cost systems to further understand the scale of whats needed to address them. They also nesaid that they needed the information for example if they were in a building that was older. Let me interrupt you, i only have a minute or two to ask these questions but again, is this something new or is it has this been going on for three, four, five years, a decade. I dont know the time period but its understandable. Could you help me out here. Absolutely chairman. Its been going on for a good while. And. I ask this because the first of all let me say thank you for the good workyou do. Keeping us safe. Our buildings, our citizens, our federal employees. Job is finding a needle in the haystack. Yet failure is unacceptable. HoOklahoma City bombing, 911. When we have failures, they are the. Its not you, its us. And what im trying to do is figure out a roadmap here to help you doyour job better. 70 percent, help me out here. Give me a little bit of a roadmap, a little bit of confidence. Tell me youve prioritized some of the things you need to do because 70 percent of your recommendations not going implemented is not something im comfortable listening to today, mister cline please. As a representative from gao mentioned, we have corrected the cost estimates for the countermeasures thats an approach that we corrected. Its is very difficult to get these countermeasures implement it and like weve mentioned its typically last resource from tathe agency to be able to implement those countermeasures is the multi tenant facility and all the agencies in the facility number one have toagree to that countermeasure recommendation and number two have to fund their share of that cost or countermeasure recommendations. My counterpart at ifc have nt established a program to observe the compliance by agency of the countermeasure recommendations. I think it might be worthwhile to have mister greer talk about how were doing that. Mister greer in a few moments i haves other than this riskmanagement process which came out in 2013 , one of the key aspects of that is you have a standard now compliance to that standard so were working with our interagency partners because im here representing the collective of all 56 members of the agency that make up the isc. At the end of that tale it is that specific Department Agency that owns that risk. What weverolled out in 2019 , we are now receiving reports from departments and agencies with respect to their compliance to the Risk Management process standard, active shooter and also prohibit items into federal facilities. Im happy to say that this year, and going along with gao best practices we actually finished a pilot Verification Program so its one thing been to collect on compliance, its another to verify that compliance. Going forward we will be able to verify what agencies submit into the Compliance Systems. Im out of time so id like to recognize the Ranking Member of the subcommittee, gentleman from michigan Mister Meijer for his set of questions. Obviously its a difficult position you find yourselves in well youre making recommendations as the gao noted. Weve been trying to get those recommendations, when s trying to make those recommendations do so in a way that is going to be most conducive to them ultimately being adopted while at the same time having fbs personnel standing in the breach. I think that was drove home by the pso Patrick Underwood on the 2020 during the george floyd protests. The group took advantage of that chaos and shot and killed Pso Underwood and wounded his partner so i dont necessarily want to dwell on that one tragic incident but how does fps balance the desire to have those recommendations being implemented with the fact that its fps personnel that are protecting entities or protecting and potentially made vulnerable if those recommendations are not ultimately implemented by the facility and mister cline that is most appropriate to you. This puts us in a difficult situation when the countermeasures are not implemented. We balance our staffing requirements. We work with our local and city county state federal partners to make an awareness of threats to facilities. And we balance our deployment efforts and staffing efforts to those facilities based on what we hear. Im with you on pat underwood. Hes a hero, went through his Memorial Service in oakland. Bad situation. We had 17 fbs officers at the time of that incident. Total chaos, very violent. And like you said, bad actors took advantage of that situation so for us its a balance on how we deploy ourselves. We know by facility where the highest risks are and where we need to put hepeople so for instance the fbi facilities and field offices, the resident agencies are very secure. You observed that in cincinnati during the attack. Theres no way anyone was going to get inside the building. Our officers found the alarm and the agents responded. Working to get the other agencies to hereach that level of awareness and preparedness is our issue. But like it was mentioned before primarily it comesdown to the funding. This is a agency in ames iowa, theyre working with our departments agencies in washington dc and it could be 20,000 with a portion of the camera project and getting that 20,000 back to bio web is a difficult situation at the facility securities found themselves in. I want to follow up on one thing you said but i dont want you to have toanswer it. Miss latham, mister cline mentioned the fbi is a Tenant Organization that is both aware of the threat they face and the Critical Role e and also wellequipped to understand and balance that threat versus the costof the countermeasures. Are there any and this is why i didnt want mister cline to have to answer it, are there agencies you think are particularly less inclined to adopt countermeasures on the opposite end of the spectrum. If fbi is maybe the better practice. I would say in terms of the question, the agencies we did our review that we noted has more recommendations that were not adopted with a Smaller Agency, that would be understandable. We have similar challenges to address them but we didnt look further into that. I would take the Smaller Agency compared to the larger oneare more address right now. I wanted to get back to you real quick. Broader question, fbs has been transferred to three different parts of dhs the last two decades. He is now the management directory will be a permanent home for fps or is it another home within dhs . Thank you, our transition to management has been wonderful. We are taking advantage of the expertise of otherlines of business. The rso, you name it. We need to mature our business programs within fps and management is helping us do that. Ultimately the decision on the placement of fps as we grow and mature, we would be ready to prepare ourselves to become a component within dhs but right now are alignment with management, specifically under the leadership and guidance of acting under secretary for management mister alice has been a good place for us right now. With that my time is expired. The chair will not recognize members of the committee for a question that they may wish to ask the witnesses. In accordance with the guidelines laid out for the chairman and Ranking Members in the february 3 we all recognize members in order of seniority. Alternating between majority and minority. Members are also reminded to unmute themselves when recognized for questions. Id like to recognize mister payne of new jersey for five minutes, welcome. Thank you mister chairman and thank you for having this titimely hearing. Deputy, mister cline according to the Government Accountability office, federal protective services is facing a Staffing Shortage approximately 21 percent of its positions unfilled including about 200 Law Enforcement positions. How are you ensuring that fps is still able to respond to threats and should the federal property perform security x assessment and execute its other Core Missions while working with a reduced number of Law Enforcement personnel . Thank you for your question congressman. Youre correct. We are experiencing about 21 percent shortfall on our staffing needs. For a variety of reasons for this, like most other businesses and agencies within United States were all dealing with labor market challenges. The the same as everyone out. Were also competing for the same people so city county and Law Enforcement agencies are all looking for that same person to join their agencies and irbecome a Law Enforcement officer. We continue to work with dhs, office of chief Human Capital officer, our recruiting team will be at a military base tomorrow to continue our recruiting efforts. We just started a class at the Law Enforcement t Training Center and we have other classes scheduled for this year. So its a continued challenge for us but our goal in fy 23 is to fill all of our vacancies including ourLaw Enforcement and support position vacancies. Given what weve seen in the aftermath of january at six investigations that uncovered both military and lawenforcement personnel being involved in the insurrection, what is fps doing to weed out the potential nature of this ideological threat amongst our ranks. Thank you for your question punishment. When we recruit and hire a new officer they go through the security clearance process. Through the dhs office of chief Security Officer. Their rigorous process is very detailed and thorough analysis of the background and suitability of the applicant. Once they come on board the office of the chief Security Officer and dhs has stood up program, i dont know the exact name but its basically Continuous Monitoring so if that individual lets say me for instance. Tonight i was arrested for some reason, that Continuous Monitoring program would, the chief Security Officer would know about that cutomorrow and take action on it based on whatever that circumstance was. So its our goal to make sure that the people we hire are not involved in any dbe type activity. We do hire a large number of veterans. We have 80 percent of our Law Enforcement officers are veterans today, im a veteran like they are but the process they office uses to do that Background Investigation based on the prospective employee and their monitoring of the employees activitiesis helping us to make sure we weed out those bad actors. I think that was a focus on new hires, what about officers that are already in the organization . Thats the process the office of the chief Security Officer uses on their Continuous Monitoring program m but also with our relationships with citycounty state and federal Law Enforcement. As youre aware they lawenforcement agencies actively monitor different types of media, looking for individuals that may be associated withdomestic violent extremism. And if we receive notification or are aware of the dhs or an fps officer then that will be turned over to our office of internal affairs to investigate that employees activity. Mister chairman we have to stay vigilant in this area because as we know, weve done an incredible job stopping the foreign fighter but it is the internal issues that we have with domestic ro terrorism that plague our nation today and with that i yelled back. Now i recognize the gentleman from North Carolina Mister Bishop for five minutes, welcome sir. Thank you mister chairman. Mister klein i want to focus on something that almost slipped from the National Consciousness but it always struck me as something very strange in Portland Oregon over i think june and july 2020 there were 52 consecutive nights in which antifog anarchists and other radicals i guess carried out violence. A lot of it focused on the federal courthouse in portland. But one thing that just sticks in my memory about that is i know there was some reports at the time that officers were blinded or injured by lasers. How widespread was that and have those officers recovered fully or have been there been permanent injuries . Thank you congressman bishop. Portland was achaotic , unprecedented event. That we hadnt seen before. A number of officers within fps, 363 officers were injured. I think roughly a total of 800 injuries to not only the fps officers but also dep and ice officers that provided us assistance. Primarily with the green lasers molotov cocktails, smoldering shop with slingshot. Commercial grade pyrotechnics were thrown at them. Dhs officers before the event are in my eyes they are heroes and they their level of restraint, their goal was to ensure that the courthouse and federal facilities of portlands workprotected. They achieved that goal. Si they stayed inside the courthouse until someone was attempting to cause damage like setting the building on fire. To take action then when they did come out they were with a barrage of violence. So all those officers have recovered from those injuries. We did have one fps officer who did die of a heart attack. Not during the event but as he was going to work and unfortunately another officer within dhs did commit suicide but we dont know if it was related to that but he had served in portlands. What an excellent summary of that mister cline and you started with avthe term unprecedented and i think thats how it struck Many Americans who had never seen anything like this in terms of the continued activity over a long period time. One thing remarkable is the Portland City Council did as i understand it to prevent police from cooperating with federal Law Enforcement and the mayor of their 10 wheeler said at one point in the presence of dhs officers it is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism. He had mayors from a number of cities write the attorney general and acting dhs secretary saying the deployment ofofficers to protect facilities was an abuse of power. I know that if i understand gaos report on dhss strategy in portland, it suggested there was an assumption youve received support from local Law Enforcement but that wasnt the case. Gao rerecommended implementing anew strategy to account for that. I hardly believe im reading words like that in a congressional hearing and certainly that they would be true but what can you offer us about that issue. How does, how do you intend to respond to the fact that mayors have supported the City Councils supported that kind of lawlessness and refused to help. Thank you congressman bishop. Through the countrywe rely heavily on city county state Law Enforcement to assist us in the production of our facilities. Typically in a large city if there is some type of violence or criminal act in a Federal Building local Law Enforcement may be the first to respond. The majority of federal facilities we protect our country jurisdictions meaning local Law Enforcement agencies have the ability to respond as well. Within portland we, the fact that this board and Police Bureau we are tight with and work well together with, the fact that they were prohibited from assisting this group thats the reason we had to deploy more officers out there to protect the federal facilities. They will provide assistance but during that timeframe they were restricted and were not able to support us which cost us more people out there. It seems to some of us this kind of attack is something that can bring up lots of places. Does that not need to be looked into by congress to determine whether people have the ability to give this attack to federal facilities at anytime they choose . I think between the summer of 2020 which a lot of Law Enforcement not just fps but a lot of Law Enforcement officers and agencies were dealing with largescale demonstrations and in some cases some violence, you all experienced that on january 6. We experienced it out in portland. So i think we have done well working with our Partner Agencies and the federal government and the city county state, to share the information. Weve all learned our lessons so that we all need to work Better Together sharing information to make sure we are aware of incidents that pop up and that has really increased over the last year. Thanks for your Outstanding Service and testimony mister chairman. Now i call on gentle lady from nevada miss titus for five minutes of questions, welcome. Thank you very much mister chairman and the previous member of this committee was in portland being an unprecedented event. Letstalk about another unprecedented event and that was the storming of the capital on january 6. Nobody could have anticipated it would be as terrible as it was but there were certainly warning signs including ta radical commentary on the internet for several days leading up to the events of that day where people trying to or didnt try, they did storm the capital and try to overturn our elections. It was hyper partisan, it was neofascist. It was proviolence and it was racist. This was festering online for several days and were not seeing that kind of incendiary language to that extent right now. But i think theres lessons we can learn about how tospot potential events like this. I would ask mister cline how is your Agency Working with others to keep apprised of this Information Online and to stay aware of Credible Threats to Federal Buildings that might come as a result of that or in conjunction with that and does the Interagency Security Committee factor in online threats environment when youre conducting your Risk Assessments of Federal Buildings and if you dont, why not . Thank you congresswoman titus. As we mentioned before we have to manically increase our communications with our city county state and federal Law Enforcementpartners. We maintain regular and active communications with our Law Enforcement partners, dhs and centers throughout the country. The federal executive boards which are the 28 federal executive boards through the country that have a level of oversight into federal agencies and their area of operation andwe continue to maintain awareness of threats. Sharing of information is critical to make sure we are all prepared to activate and respond to a situation that may be escoming up. You mentioned january 6. On that day our job at federal protective service was to protect the Federal Building that were in the area of theb and the march that took place at the capital. Thats what we were focused on. We did provide requested support and we did provide support to the capital as soon as i call without but the sharing of information, the preparation for events like what could occur has dramatically increased since january 6 and i thinkits been a good place. We certainly appreciate your help on that day in trying to keep all the building members, staff, press, everybody safe so thank you for that. Could you talk specifically about t the protective Investigations Program and how your numbers work there or are trainedthere for cooperate with them . Absolutely maam. Before this year weve opened up 201 protective threat investigations and weve made 90 rs to this point. We anticipate we will make more arrests as those investigations continue. Mostly investigations we are informed from an agency of an employee received threatening medication whether its an email, phone call, text message, whatever it may be. Information is provided to us and our special agents or criminal investigators will conduct investigations, work with city county and state partners, federal partners, do the background on the bad actors before making the threats and we will make a determination coordinating with the Us Attorney Office within that area to make the determination on the threat. Thats typicallyhow that process works. Thank you so much. This hit many and we really appreciate the job that you do and i understand its hard to get people to work, to recruit and also to maintain that force but at least youre letting us know what resources you need if we need to provide additional funding or assistance in a way so thatyou can do your job. Thankyou mister chairman and i will yield back. Thank you miss titus and id like to recognize the gentle lady from tennessee, miss harshbarger for five minutes of questions. Thank you mister chairman and Ranking Member and thank you to the Witnesses Today and honestly i want to thank Law Enforcement for the job they do. They dont getenough thank use. The first question is for mister bregor. We heard about the process of recruiting facility but theres many federal facilities that are not under the cisa preview and my question is what is fps doing to make sure they have a robust assessment process that complies with isc standards. Thank you for your question. This is back to 2019 where we released a Compliance Systems so the 66 departments and agencies that make up the Interagency Security Committee, part of their Compliance Report and everything about was framed around compliance was created by them grow our compliance subcommittee so they are part of the process. Now they must report on what they are doing both at the organizational level and at the facility level with respect to meeting the standards of the Interagency Security Committee and im happy to say this year we were subject to a verification pilot and we are Going Forward now to work with the departments and agencies to verify what they are submitting so that we can better monitor and track their submissions. Its all about tracking what they need and ensuring those outcomes. I have a question for miss latham. Facility security has been on gaos high risk since 2003 and what are the issues that are keeping these facility securities on that highrisk list and what are the key actions fps can take to address gao concerns. Yes, they have been on our high risk list since 2003 and there are two remaining items that need to be addressed. Fps currently has two states they are working on and have been developing and these systems first focused on what their morning activities are as well as to what extent the officers have completed training. We are looking for offbs to one fully implement these and in addition make sure these systems are interoperable and are coordinating together so they can know who meets the requirements and more importantly who should stand focused and be ready. Do you believe that is the best way for them to operate then . Sorry, the first part of your question . Fps is a feeforservice organization and do you believe that the best way for them to operate . We have certainly looked for components of the Fee Structure for fbs to see if there are any advantages or disadvantages to the structure. We havent done this as a whole for you but we certainly have made positive comments as part of that. Those are my questions mister chairman and with that iyield back. Thank you miss harshbarger and i recognize Mister Torres for fiveminutes of questions, thank you sir. I want to make sure i understand the process. So the Interagency Security Committee sets Security Standards, federal protective service at makes security assessment and recommendations based on those standards and the Federal Building Facility Security committee must decide whether to comply with those recommendations. Is that how the process works . Thats correct. If i scored 30 percent on an exam i would receive an f, a failing grade. And my igright to be a compliance rate of 30 percent is a failure. Mister klein . The 30 percent is definitely a barrier. A variety of factors involved in making those decisions. Nso if its a failure, rather than take her at the margins should we not fundamentally rethink the model of voluntary compliance , should security assessments be binding . The new compliance implementations at the Interagency Security Committee is doing, thats not what i call a stick but thats making the agency oversee an office in ames iowa, making the agencies more aware of what those counter recommendations are and memaking them comply with an executive order. The executive order came out in 1995 requiring these certain countermeasures to get the facility to the necessary level of protection. It has no obligation to implement so its also a model of a voluntary compliance and my question is is there any circumstance under which security assessments could be binding, in what about the level by Federal Buildings if the Security Risk is highest . Should it be binding on the circumstances . It definitely needs to have more influence. Not influence, binding. Requiring them to be implemented instead of requesting them. If we do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result that the definition of insanity. You said earlier if i understood correctly in order for countermeasures to be implemented , you need all attendance to agree. Notsimply enough to have a majority. There could be scores of tenants in the building. That just strikes me as a process that breeds inertia and failure. How could we possibly defend that . Thats the Facility Security committee that we talked about earlier agreeing because they all have to fund their portion of that countermeasure. Its a 10,000 project. One could imagine a model in which a majority of the committee agrees and then everyone is required to pay their fair share. Thats a much more rational system than expecting unanimity in every case, thats unrealistic. Theweight of the vote on that committee is based on Square Footage. There is a way to wait those that have more of a presence that may have a stronger boat. Would you be in favor of substituting a majority requirement for aunanimity requirements . It would seem to me that the scale of your responsibilities are disproportionate to scarcity of your resources. You have the stats you need to sufficiently secure 9500 buildings . Is 1000 enough . Our current goal is to fill our current vacancies. Get those done. As, if the threat environment continues to escalate as it has and speedy lets assume theres no escalation. You have 9500 buildings. Lets assume you fill your vacancies. It seems to me 1000 is a small number given the size of your portfolio. Are authorized strength for law. Enforcement is 1131 d there placed throughout the country based on the number of facilities, population of the federal employees, threats. The highest risk for sillies would have more people fear we have more officers in d. C. Than in ames, iowa, primarily because they are needed here. Like the Capitol Police have thousands of officers for one complex. You have 1000 officers for 9500 buildings. There seems to be a disconnect. My time has expired. Thank you mr. Torres. Wanted to go through a second round of questions and a one to follow up on mr. Torres concept here. Youve got tenants that are supposed to pay you their fair share. Ms. Latham you said one of the big issues is money. To implement. 30 compliance, 70 , none. Do we have to mandate other federal agencies pay theirir far share of what you recommend, what you prioritize needs to be done just you secure these buildings . Thank you, mr. Chairman. There is no mandate, no law that requires it. Do we need one . I speed is it other Government Agencies have x number of dollars and you just said you need to invest the following to protect the building come personal and citizens who come visitco your buildings, this up and going on for a number of years, noncompliance. This is unacceptable. What do we need to do to mandate that the financing be there, be reallocated so to speak to make sure to set of priorities to secure these buildings is actuallyar addressed. Its a critical issue for us. With my counterpart from the isc danger and working directly with those departments and agencies mr. Breor . We are seeing modern compliance since 2019. We are seeing an improvement a couple of issues that you arise and what were working on now is the internal guidance within departments and agencies on how to implement and isc standards within their organization. And a followon to that guidance and policy from headquarters i hear he works but im still concerned. You have alleviated my concerns because all of you out there doing a good job protecting us citizens but yet now essentially the threats are turning on you, on us. Im trying to assess in my mind actually hear from the statements whether youre prepared to play defense as well. Im not getting a good five out of yourr statements today. Thoughts . I think where we are with respect to the committees, that when the multitenant facilities we have rolled out training, rolling out workshops. We now have regional advisors that are across the United States so i think the facilities that have tenants, i think theres work that needs to be done so that they better understand im hearing your words. Id like to get more of an insurance were going to move to a better compliance year at the priorities of things that need to be done to harden these buildings to makee sure that thy are not vulnerable to the senseless attacks, actually takes place. None of us here, none of us here condone attacks on her federal offices, federal personnel as well as u. S. Citizens. Let me shift real quick, mr. Cline, mr. Bishopmr talked about oregon. You talked about coordination. That was an ugly situation, unprecedented, your words. Something that none of us condone. I dont like seeing, i disagree, i do anything i can to stop her federal offices in the attack. You talk about coordination. You extended your authority to cbp and ice to help in that situation. And yet the local portland Law Enforcement officials didnt want to see that happen because of the controversy, the local elements there that essentially my words, may be inflamed the situation. How can we move forward to make sure theres betterca coordinatn you are at the fed. They are at the local bearcat to figure out the situation, situation before gets out of control, mr. Cline. Lessons learned. Thank you, chairman. We learned a lot number of lessons at a a portland. We rely heavily on city county state Law Enforcement is what our mission. As mr. Torres mentioned, we are a small agency. For us, we dont want to create a federal policeed force across the nation. R we rely heavily on our contracted protective Security Officers to protect our facilities. Right now theres about 6200 tso posts that are staffed this minute. Xray machine, magnetometer, monitoring cameras, Perimeter Security that we rely heavily on. We made a lot h of changes after portland. Public order policing doctrine, we signed that in june 2021 and a directive new directive on how we approach public order. The use of force policy and directives is within the director for his signature right now. That was courtney to civilno rights and Civil Liberties come office of privacy, the office of policy and we managed to change the process on how we approach civil disorder. As far as utilizing cbt and ice, that was necessary because the local Law Enforcement portland Police Bureau who we work handinhand with daytoday during that instance they were prohibited from assisting us. The county sheriffs office, Oregon State Police came in at times to assist with the locals were prohibited. Well see that anywhere else and we think its done important that we no longer have a situation. Thank you very much. Mr. Meijer, your line of question. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to follow up on what mr. Torres was asking about and just to clarify the fscs, obviously any assessment or responsibility for the security counting measure and mentation is shared on a pro rata basis with the tenants but for the fsc it does have to be unanimous support of all members of that to adopt a recommendation, am i correct . The fsc the ten members are given a weight with respect to the vote based on Square Footage. Footage. If you have a facility with three members and one a of those members Square Footage was 66 , then their vote would be the driving force. The other two members out of majority could not go against this to move forward. To build on his line ofin questioning, is a majority of the fsc . Based on Square Footage. Thank you. I think it was a misunderstanding unanimity versus majority opinion. Dating back to the reasons why they are not implemented, the gao report there were inexplicable reasons. Agencies planning to move and if youre only goingen to be in a facility and release is running out in two years doesnt make sense to maybe make sufficient upgrade. The other one was obviously the implementation cost. So youre going to have a. Rang. Building on that prior question, in some off those situations it may be a facility that is a smaller facility. Oftentimes in her mind we had the conception of the main massive Federal Building when you may have a social Security Agency outpost and it is just renting a fewew or a couple hundred or a couple thousand square feet in one facility. When we are talking about blend, but i guess my question is to what extent, and i recognize this as morehi of a gsa questio, or to what extent where there may be recommendations, if a small agency, a smaller footprint, these are not f affordable or costeffectively upgrade for scaling ouriv logistical circumstances, are there ways where, but they chose application because it was relatively less expensive than maybe a more w secured facility was leasing on a square foot basis. You can understand where im getting atan here. Fps is more of an advisory role when offering recommendations, the costbenefit analysis of each recommendation is going to be dependent on that agency but theyre making costbenefit analysis in a separate tranche on their individual leasing side. Does fps offer recommendations prior to gsa approving or suggesting a Lease Location for agency . Thank you, Ranking Member. Yes, absolutely. Lets say an agency decide the want to move to a new location in dallas. Gsa will make contact with us and we will go with gsa and the agency and will do preleaseded assessment. This is to go out and look at gsa has hear some offerings from some leases in the city. Youve got these many people, this much Square Footage come unity this kind of space and then we will go out and look at it and then we will narrow that down to thee top three and then gsa will work with the agency to establish the lease. We will workll with the agency o establish the necessary level of protection for that facility. We want to get in their first before they move in. Lets get this established before people are here. Lets get the projects in place. In a number of instances that the agency says i cant afford to do 20 cameras around my building, and if you cant do that can we get a lease cameras at every entrance . Song we can see whos coming in the building, record some type of nefarious activity that goes on there. Lets come up with something. Lets dont leave it, we cant afford not to do anything. Lets try to do something that makes sense that helps us secure the facility. But to be clear prior to the lease being signed a understand okay maybe this is a facility that is in compliance already with what fps might recommend, thats 30 a square foot, thats square foot. If were going only on a cost basis i dont want that agency taking the lower cost one. They may have to add another ten dollars a square foot so you doing that prior to those leases are finalized . Absolutely. Window protection on the first floor of the building. A number of facilities that are offering to be leased to the government have that already. If it has it there then that is one less countermeasure rift wee to implement because it is already in place. Yield back, mr. Chairman. Any other members wish to ask questions of our witnesses . Seeing no further questions i want to thank our Witnesses Today for your testimony, and members for the questions. Members of the committee may have additional questions for the witnesses, and ask you respond to those written questions expeditiously. The chair reminds members that the committee record will remain open for ten days. And without objection, this committee stands adjourned. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] today on cspan2 mac former u. S. Solicitors general look at the Upcoming Supreme Court term beginning in october, hosted by the heritage foundation, live coverage starting at 2 p. M. Eastern. The Senate Rules Committee considers a bill to reform the 1887 electoral count act to ensure electoral votes tallied by congress accurately reflect each states vote for president. At 8 p. M. A conversation on the biden administrations policy agenda with White House National Economic Council director brian deese. On cspan2 the Senate Returns at 3 p. M. Eastern and vote on whether to proceed to a shortterm spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. With Congress Facing a september 30 government funding deadline both the house and senate are expected to work on a shortterm spending bill to avert a federal shutdown. The house returns wednesday at noon eastern. Members will vote later in a week on Veterans Affairs and banking legislation. The Senate Returns this afternoon at three and will vote on whether to proceed to a shortterm spending bill to a bird that, shenton. They will debate a proposal by a lesser gender senator joe manchin on streamlining the federal permitting process for energy projects. Watch live coverage on cspan now or online at cspan. Org. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded by the Television Companies and more including wow. The world has changed. Today fashion bible Internet Connection is something no one can live without so wow is therefore our customers with speed, reliability, value and choice. Now more than ever it all starts with great internet. Wow supports cspan is a Public Service along with these other Television Providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. Next discussion about the history of political polarization. Heading into the final stretch of the 2022 the 2022 m. Former obama health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius and republican pollster Neil Newhouse were among the speakers. The discussion was hosted by the Dole Institute of politics at the university of kansas. Tu hello. My name is Heidi Mattson and of a Discussion Group coordinator andy number of the student Advisory Board at the Dole Institute. Welcome to the dole