Transcripts For CSPAN3 House Armed Services Hearing On Fort

know -- >> we take you live now to the raeburn house building with members of the ft. hood finding committee. after the mass shooting at the ft. hood army base in 2009. >> our hearing today is a hybrid one. we are going to be looking at the military criminal investigative organizations reform recommendations from the ft. hood independent review committee. we will have two panels today. first panel are members of the ft. hood independent review committee who have firsthand knowledge of the findings and recommendations made and given to the army. the second panel are heads of each of the services, investigative agencies who are here to tell us how their agencies work and could be improved. the ft. hood report is required reading and continues to reveal new challenges and problems as well as demonstrate the devastating impacts of problems that have gone unaddressed. also and more importantly, solutions to create a smarter, safer and more ready force. ft. hood independent review committee's report is a stinging repudiation of the army criminal investigation division. 92% were apprentice agents that resulted in up solved murders until civilian law enforcement stepped in. a disturbing sexual assault conviction rate of 22% and an installation in which soldiers felt unsafe. a damning result. the independent review committee found was starting. ft. hood cid is a training ground. young, inexperienced agents were checklist driven. focused on developing a case file that checked the boxes rather than identifying and working leads and suspects that are most likely to resolve cases, unquote. ft. hood cid investigations were extremely long. quote, yearly average days to xlet an investigation between 2016 and 2020 ranged between a high of 214 days in 2016 to 115 days in 2020. sadly, quote, victims seldom saw the outcomes of their cases and there was minimal deterrent value derived, unquote. sexual assault cases were lost or dismissed at court-martial partially due to investigations that lacked essential evidence, unquote. finally ft. hood detachment was underresourced and underexperienced between 2018, 2019 and early 2021, typically one-third of cid positions at ft. hood were unfilled. there was a very limited in-house capability to conduct cell phone tracking and exploit global phones, laptops and other electric devices, an inability to maintain liaisons with local police and the failure to provide the proper materials to support search warrants. and none of this would have come to light without the tragic deaths of so many individuals. among them are specialist vanessa guillen, brendan widell morales, scott rosencranz, and specialist freddy beningo de la cruz jr. for them, their families, friends and soldiers in arms, we must demand greater professionalism and accountability. we must give the mcios the tools they need to make sure investigations are done right. the staffing to be able to complete cases in a timely manner and rigorous evidence-gathering capabilities sufficient to hold criminals accountable at a court-martial. the military often says it has zero tolerance for sexual assault, but when criminal investigations are hap hazardly done, consisting of box checking, it undermines any hope of accountability and does a disservice to brave service members who make an unrestricted report. that, in no way, is zero tolerance. it is the job of this committee to make sure that the army completes a full and thorough investigation for every reported crime. while the ft. hood report focused on cid, i believe all the mcios, cid, ncis and osi will benefit by doing an internal review of their respective departments. with an eye on the ft. hood committee's findings and recommendations. i've said it before. i'll say it again and again. i'm heartened that ft. hood leaders have already taken some action within their authority to improve, but until all the findings and recommendations have been put in place and ft. hood is well on its way to being, quote, the great place, unfoet, it professes to be, we won't look away. i will ensure we keep our foot firmly on the pedal until the army turns itself around and service members and their families are safe. i now would like to invite ranking member banks to make an opening statement. >> thank you, madam chair. i share your concern about the conditions at ft. hood and look forward to hearing from our panelists today. the ft. hood commission's deep dive into the army's criminal investigation division on the post highlighted very concerning issues. rookie agents were sent out on their own. leaders struggled to keep their heads above water, as support functions were nonexistent. just 12 of 76 uniformed agents at ft. hood had more than one year of experience. these apprentice agents should, by definition, have been mentored and supervised by experienced agents to learn the ropes and keep investigations on track. instead, the lack of experienced agents at adequate resources led to long lead times and poor investigations. individual missteps added up to chronically lackluster investigative work on suicides, homicides and sex crimes on and off post. only one of 53 suicides in cid's jurisdiction received a completed assessment. sex crimes progress slower than all other posts. and undermine the soldiers belief of criminal wrongdoing would be taken seriously. for many victims of crime at ft. hood, justice delayed felt like justice denied. the ft. hood leadership also failed to use a variety of tools to connect with local law enforcement and disrupt hot spots of known criminal activity. these tools are available to every post commander. they have been used successfully elsewhere in the past. i'm interested to know exactly why that wasn't the case at ft. hood. this is no way to handle serious crimes. i look forward to hearing today from the seasoned investigators on the review commission about their impressions of the situation at ft. hood and what they believe could be done to produce better investigations in the future. i'm especially interested in their findings about how the army could better resource cid offices with admin and support personnel to keep agents in the field doing investigations rather than behind a desk. second panel includes representatives from each service criminal investigation division. each service has a different model for tracking this problem and is designed to fit their mission and deployment needs. hopefully, we can learn more about what builds strong military investigators and how the army plans to move forward in improving cid. with that, thank you, madam chair. i yield back. >> i would like to ask unanimous consent that nonsubcommittee members be allowed to participate and ask questions after all subcommittee members have had an opportunity to ask their questions. without objection? so ordered. each witness will provide a brief introduction and focus on the committee. then mr. sweeker will have a statement and each member will have the opportunity to question the witnesses for five minutes. we respectfully ask the witnesses to summarize their testimony in five minutes. your written comments and statements will be made part of the hearing record. so it's an opportunity now for me to welcome back both mr. sweeker and miss riche. you certainly wowed us with your presentations, gave us lots of food for thought. and your report has become a bible of sorts that i carry with me on my plane rides and find every time i read it, i learn something new and, unfortunately, something that dismays me even more. so with that, let's welcome our first panel which includes mr. chris swecker, miss carrie riche, mr. andy banks, consultant ft. hood independent review committee, miss mary counts, ft. hood independent review committee. thank you all for being here today. >> good afternoon, chairwoman speier, ranking member banks and members of the subcommittee. we appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss our findings, findings of the ft. hood independent review committee. we are doing a consolidated opening statement. i'll try to summarize it and get through it in the next five to six minutes if possible. as you noted the rest will be entered into the record. former secretary of the army appointed five executive members of the ft. hood independent review committee but also we were supplemented by five subject matter experts who assisted in various tasks associated with the independent review and i would like to introduce the four members appearing here today, carrie riche, jag, associate general counsel for the department of agriculture. mary counts served over 25 years as an fbi special agent and supervisory special agent in offices such as honolulu, washington, d.c., el paso and fbi headquarters. she's worked and supervised investigations of drug cartels, gangs, crimes against children and kidnappings. in her role with the fhirc, she conducted 157 face-to-face interviews with female service members at ft. hood, the majority of whom were assigned to the 1st calvary division, 3rd calvary regimen. she also summarized the -- or over group 80 interviews we did that encompassed over 1,800 service members of all ranks. she also reviewed cid investigative files of sexual assaults and death cases. andy bland is a 23-year veteran of the fbi. his final assignment was special agent in charge in houston, served as the legal attache in baghdad, deputy director of the special divisions of the fbi and served as the head of the fbi training academy at quantico. as chair of the fhirc, i'm a former state prosecutor in north carolina. i retired, spent 24 years with the fbi and retired as the assistant director, cid, cyber division, international operations and five other divisions. i currently practice law in charlotte, north carolina. it is absolutely critical to understand the basic mission of cid in assessing its effectiveness. fundamental objectives of cid are set forward entitled objectives. relevant portions are in the opening statement but i want to mention two of them, as areas where we had particular focus. that is in the area of serious felony investigations. that's one of their mandates. the other is maintaining a proactive criminal intelligence collection analysis and reporting cycle to alert commanders to threats and criminal elements. commanders who are provided with validated criminal intelligence can initiative force protection measures. members of this committee interviewed various members of the 11th mp battalion, relevant cid commanders at ft. hood, cid agents, dozens of cid stakeholders, on and off the base, including sheriff's, district attorneys, jag officers, federal prosecutors, community leaders, texas department of public safety, texas rangers and the fbi and other federal agents. we reviewed all death and suicide cases and a broad sampling of sexual assault files. products were conducted providing heavily relevant insights into the cid's ineffectiveness. one of nine findings in the report stated the ft. hood cid had various inefficiencies. we determined that the criminal detachments were understaffed, underexperienced, overassigned and leading to inefficiencies that had an adverse impact on investigation, especially the complex cases involving sex crimes and soldier deaths. we determine these inefficiencies were the result of staffing protocols and policies and procedures that transcend ft. hood. but it's very important to note at the owset this finding does not challenge the competence, motivation, work ethic or on-site leadership at the ft. hood cid. the issue is one of inexperience, resources, staffing methods and the overall cid business model. a signature portion of the report, conducting prompt, thorough investigation of death, felony sex crimes and cases, an important objective we looked at in providing that intelligence, as i mentioned, to ft. hood commanders to enable them to adopt mitigations. as you mentioned, chairwoman, we found it was a training ground. too journeyman level to work the sex crime cases, death cases while still mentoring inexperienced and unkres credentialed special agents who were constantly transferring in and out. there was minimal continuity and institutional knowledge within cid. it also impacted law enforcement relationships as discussed in the report. the inexperience of the agents was evident after reviewing the sex, death and suicide reports from 2019 and 2020. completeness and file documentation, which increased with the complexity of the investigation. state and federal prosecuting attorneys and local law enforcement advised there was minimal interaction between their offices in cid, unlike other army posts there no cid agents embedded at any of the local police departments and they could not remember a true joint investigation. we determined crimes were neither identified nor addressed and there was lack of an effective risk management approach to crime incident reduction and soldier victimization. in short, the staffing model as it relates to ft. hood did not work to effectively support their mission. there were not enough experienced agents to provide continuity and institutional experienced to work complex cases or be proactive in crime prevention. a mix of journeyman, apprentice and experienced investigators are needed. to handle the 340 sex crime cases and 20 to 30 death cases. evidence analysis and informed judgment about investigative strategy. cid must be provided the capability to work joint investigations with their state, local and federal counterparts and not wait for a crisis investigation, such as vanessa guillen, to do so. among the 11 recommendations we made were that the cid to ensure they're staffed at a level, engage in proactive crime suppression in conjunction with department of emergency services and commanders, especially during suppression as well as competently handling the death and sex crime cases. and just to wrap it up here, we asked the cid and army department in administrative services to evaluate whether this requires a greater number of cid civilian special agents of the 1811 category for purposes of continuity and effectiveness in handling these cases. this concludes the opening statement. as chair of the fhirc, we welcome the opportunity to field any questions and with your concurrence, i'll direct them to the appropriate team member that's present. >> thank you, mr. swecker. does that complete then the presentation of your panel? >> it does. >> all right. so we'll move on to questions. let me start off by talking about drugs. in the report, you indicated that the highest drug test failure rate per test taken was at ft. hood. you also said that the drug crime rates for fiscal years 2015 to 2020 were almost 31% higher than force com. and it appears that in one case in april 2020, a soldier overdosed on methamphetamine and fetynal. there was no attempt to investigate the soldier's history of drug use or identify the identity of associates. can you speak to why that is so wrong? >> yes, ma'am. i mean, all we had to work with was what was contained in the investigative file in the four corners of the file. we felt like consistent with the cid mission of gathering proactive internal intelligence harvested from the cases that were worked that meaningful information could be provided to the commanders to engage in mitigation and prevention. we just didn't see that happening. and i think by their own admission, cid said they didn't have the experience and resources to do proactive criminal intelligence. we felt like death cases, particularly the one you're talking about, whether it was a drug-related overdose, ought to be fully investigated to determine if there were lifestyle issues. where did the drugs come from, who supplied the drugs? how did they get on the base? in order to engage in proactive measures to prevent them happening if possible. it certainly would have helped the commanders to be armed with that kind of information as to their responsibility to conduct mitigation and look out for the health and safety of their charges. do you have anything you want to add to that? >> no. i -- sorry. no, that was basically what we found. i agree completely. >> so, for instance, on another setting, deficiencies and failing to pursue all logical investigative leads were also noted by the committee in another high profile case, a soldier that went missing and ultimately committed suicide. absent in the file was search for the soldier nor was there any indication that a key witness contacted or interviewed. the totality of the facts contained in the file led fhirc to conclude that the initial underpinnings of what might be a motive on the part of another to engineer the soldier's disappearance existed, which is a pretty profound statement. i'm assuming this is the hernandez case. is it not? >> i'm going to try to be careful about specific cases, because some of them are ongoing and i have been told there's issues associated with releasing information on a pending file. the more complex a case was, the more striking it was, the leads that weren't followed in many cases and the incompleteness of the file. we're not saying that these investigative steps weren't taken. they just weren't in the file so we couldn't see it. andy bland conducted a couple of relevant file reviews you're talking about, as well as myself and mary counts. i would like andy to address the specific case you're mentioning. andy, i think you're on mute. >> okay. can you hear me now? >> yes, we can. >> thank you for allowing me some time this morning. it's a pleasure to be here. and specifically as it relates to the inquiry. yes, i had the opportunity to review what essentially was probably the top five most complex cases that cid has under taken here of late. and this particular case really represents a microcosm of all those things, all those observations that chris enumerated at the strategic level. what it really underscores, as i looked at the file, is not being prescriptive or critical of the investigation and how it ensued, but what it really underscores and really illustrates is that those of us who have spent decades involved with, leading and supervising investigations can look at a file retro expectatively and were able to ascertain quite quickly the steps that could have been taken to run these leads to ground. and a person like myself, mary or others can extrapolate just by reviewing a black and white file months after the fact goes to the heart of what chris described as there has to be a mix of level of agents. to be able to provide optics and conduct an investigation of this complexity or this ilk, it doesn't happen by the way of osmosis or overnight. those instints, that sort of visceral, experiential review, the ability to know which way to go, it happens with review, mentoring, making mistakes and having supervisors who have been there and done that and have the credibility necessary to understand what needs to be done when they review the files. hopefully, that answers the question. >> mr. swecker, let me answer one final question. if you had the vanessa guillen case file and you were reviewing that as a 24-year veteran of the fbi, what would you do to the individual who provided you that particular file? you referenced a number of times during the investigation where it was perfunctory or box checking. >> i will maintain, it's not the fault of the inexperienced agents. they have two and three years of experience, are assigned a very complex investigation. that's a difficult question to answer in terms if you're asking was anybody accountable or should be held accountable for some of the shortcomings in the investigation. it's just a gross -- i shouldn't say grossly but vastly inexperienced staff there. you can tell from the interviews, there were two or three-question interviews. they were mostly done by phone. particularly some of the key interviews. some of the key follow-up questions either weren't asked or they just weren't documented in the file, and the dots just weren't connected. there was an absence of what i would call a master case agent coordinating everything, looking at forensics, looking at prioritization of leads, looking at allocation of resources and the hot spot areas instead of sort of running, you know, that checklist-driven investigation. i wouldn't lay the blame on the veg individual special agents. i think it's more the system. they, themselves, are victims of a system that it would be -- again, i mentioned it would be analagous to a busy fbi field office, like the new york field office being staffed 80% new agents. you don't hit your stride as an investigator five, six years into it. and they don't have a cadre of veteran agents. many of them leave, i'm told, by the time they get some level of experience. >> thank you. ranking member banks? >> thank you, madam chair. my question is, what stood out to all of you most about cid's overuse of novice agents? >> so, let me -- i'll take a stab at that and then pass it on to the other three members. 93% apprentice special agents in 2019, among the enlisted ranks, 63% apprentice as special agents in the warren office ranks, and the supervisors that were on scene were occupied with administrative duties and things that took up a lot of their time, that takes away from mentoring. it just jumped out at me. i don't think any investigative agency i know of would staff their offices that way, when they have complexes cases on the table. death cases, suicide cases, very complicated case involving all kinds of electronic evidence, forensic evidence, begging for coordination from some centralized case agent, having to get warrants. warrants are complicated, writing and articulating affidavits to get -- to communicate the probable cause to obtain a warrant is difficult. we just -- i just don't know of any other model out there that staffs offices that are that busy with such inexperienced agents. and let me pitch it to the next -- to carrie. >> i'll just add that the judge advocate general is in the middle of a military justice redesign that focuses greater expertise and experience where it's needed. what struck me as the jag offices are in the middle of this redesign was that the investigators are not. and that type of redesign is needed as well, among the investigative force. >> anybody else? >> andy? >> i think probably appropriate to defer to mary at this point, chris. >> okay. mary? you may be on mute. >> you're muted. >> mary, i think you're still muted. >> let me move on. i don't have a lot of time. for both of you who are here, what are the most effective ways for us to blend and integrate junior and senior investigators? >> i think first and foremost it's a staffing issue. it's a resource allocation issue that comes from higher up. there have to be incentives for agents to stay and some areas where they can actually promote up and develop their careers as investigators. we don't see that. i mean, this is anecdotal, but what we hear is that when agents get to a certain level of experience, they go somewhere else. they go to an ig office, one of the federal investigative agencies. i would go back to this issue of staffing and resource allocation. that is a fundamental duty of those higher up the food chain. i talked about a business model. i don't think there's any business out there where you would staff a critical business function with primarily overwhelming number of inexperienced agents or agents that are not credentialed or just haven't hit that experience level where they can be competent to act alone. >> ma'am, any other thoughts on how to integrate junior and more seasoned investigators? >> i would just say that training and mentorship is critical in any profession, and so it's no different here, having that mentorship and that ability to bring along the junior agents is critical. >> okay. my last question, throughout your review, what are the three skills that appear to be lacking among the cid agents? >> primarily investigative acumen. the kind of knowledge and skill that comes from having at least five years of experience, knowing what leads to prioritize. knowing how to deal with get your -- knowing what evidence is most relevant, where the hot spots are in a special investigation, where you devote more resources, for example, if you have a particular suspect, devoting and allocating your most experienced agents to that particular suspect and that line of inquiry, if you will. obtaining warrants for forensic, for electronic evidence, which is ever present in every investigation these days. cell phones. cell phone tracking, pinging cell phones. collection of forensic evidence takes a certain skill and then interpreting the forensic evidence. knowing where to go and what to look for. >> thank you. my time has expired. >> the gentlewoman from texas is recognize for the record five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair. thank you so much to our experts who devoted so much time and their expertise in helping us in this moment. this issue obviously stretches far beyond vanessa guillen and ft. hood. in my zrirkts ft. bliss, we have seen some really alarming stories, heartbreaking stories. not just those that have made the headlines and made the news, but individuals who have reached out to me to share their own personal experiences. and the knowledge that this is just the tip of the iceberg, these are just folks who are willing to tell their stories, who have reached out to me personally is really deeply alarming. thankfully at ft. bliss, the general has really -- he's fairly new to the installation and has made some great changes, but we have so much work to do. just a couple of cases that have shined a light for me. private asia graham, a young woman who was found deceased. she had accused someone of sexual assault and later two other women came forward and alleged that this perpetrator had also assaulted them. so there was a pattern there that leaders missed. there were things that were happening there repeatedly that leadership did not see. another one of our military personnel at ft. bliss, richard halladay, private richard halladay disappeared. he was regarded as awol until finally the others were sounding the alarm about him having gone missing for so long. so there's a number of different things that we've got to change. some things, obviously, are more challenging than others. but as we think about a transition that cid needs to make and everything you all have brought to light about cid, the inefficiencies, the lack of resources. if we are to transition to something that is a better functioning investigative arm, how do we make that transition? if we are able to civilize certain positions or civilize the whole thing, how would you recommend we begin to make that transition? how quickly can we do it? what are some initial steps that you might recommend? i'm trying to think about what should be done internally, what needs to be done legislative, which is what a lot of your insights are on. how do we get to where we need to be as quickly as possible? what does that transition look like, from today into the future? >> thank you for that question. just to follow up on your early theme about serial offenders, one of the most disturbing things we came across was within two days, interviewers had already identified two or three serial offenders, which goes to one of the main cid missions, was to convey intelligence out of those files and get that to command so they could act on it. again, they didn't have enough experienced agents on hand. there ought to be more 1811 investigators. there's several advantages to that. one, they don't transfer around too much. two, they have powers off the base. less -- fewer issues with posse and being able to work joint investigations and actually have authority outside the military installation, especially work joint investigations. so much happens off the base that involves soldiers and what we saw was a big gap there in terms of working true joint investigations where they could actually, elbow to elbow, work cases together and share information real time. nothing drew that out more than the interviews. i don't know if mary is off mute but mary, you made some observations that were quite poignant as far as gathering intelligence and getting that information to the command. >> that's true. i hope everyone can hear me now. >> yes, we can. >> thank you. during interviews, we heard textbook grooming, serial offender, repeat offender, predator, over and over again. so, as mr. swecker said, we were able to put together a list and almost know when that person came in to be interviewed what case they were talking about. and i think whatever model cid goes to, there needs to be an emphasis on focus and they need to be able to prioritize their investigations, and it can't be one size fits all. a gang rape and a physical assault cannot be investigated as opposed to another case. you have to be able to go after those people that are not only victimizing soldiers, but could possibly victimize others in the future. and i think they have to be able to transition to those cases pretty rapidly. >> the gentle lady's time has expired. the gentleman is recognized for five minutes. mr. carl. mr. carl, are you available? you need to unmute yourself. >> you don't have any idea -- >> mr. carl? mr. carl, you're recognized. and you're muted. let's see if we can unmute you. miss jacobs, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair. thank you for all our witnesses for being here. finding number nine in the report was that the command climate at ft. hood has been permissive of sexual harassment and sexual assault. how is ft. hood different from other bases, since we know this is a problem elsewhere? what was unique about ft. hood in particular? how worry rudd that there are similar cultures of impunity at other bases? >> it's hard to talk about other bases because we were focused on ft. hood but anecdotally we heard of other bases where accountability was more strict and there was quicker action when an incident took place and a report was received and more aggressive steps were taken to protect the victim, pending the case as it wound through the criminal justice or military justice system. what we saw at ft. hood, we don't think it was an aberration, was a flawed, sharp structure itself, which we addressed in the report. we also saw priority placed on brigade readiness for deployment as opposed to the health and welfare of the soldiers, which we discuss at length in the first hearing. so we don't know if that's an outlier, but anecdotally, we got stories during our 700 interviews and the group interviews that encompassed 1800 soldiers, from soldiers who had been stationed at other bases that in many cases ft. hood was an outlier. we commissioned 49 research projects by a research group at west point. their comment to us was they had never seen a situation where one base stood out as an outlier in terms of awol, deserters, in terms of drug usage, drug arrests and positive drug tess, felony cases. of the 49, it was striking, they said, to see that one base had -- was such an outlier in terms all the 49 areas we had them look at. >> sorry, i don't have anything to add. >> mary, do you have anything you would want to add to that from the interviews? >> i would, chris. many of those we attributed to a lack of leadership. what's important to the leaders is going to be important to subordinate leaders and the troops themselves. when you look at what they call special interest programs like sharp, neeo and things of that nature, those were tools that were available to the commanders to be able to emphasize those areas that ended up being deficient in these types of cases. again, troops were going to go where they're led. it's necessary to have the requisite leadership in place from the top down. they're going to make sure that the priorities are in place to ensure our soldiers are taken care of. >> thank you. and i guess my follow up and, mr. bland, since you talked about this a bit, is, you know, i heard you say this was an issue of leadership. and i guess what i'm just trying to figure out was how much was the sexual assault climate problem a result of poor command leadership or the problem with cid being untrained, as you all have highlighted in your previous answers? and, you know, i just wondered if you could expand on that and talk about how the leadership issue bleeds into the cid problems. >> if i may, chris, i think it's sshlly the manifestation of all of those things in the aggregate, right? chris had indicated in the report that only 3% of the cases that are worked by the mps or cid involved these types of cases. that 3% ended up being, you know, a bee's nest, hornet's nest for army. if you look at the totality of what we looked at and the recommendations that were made, leaders have to be held accountable in some tangible, palpable way that it will make it part of their review, make it part of their report card, you know, those types of things, so you can emphasize at the very top that those things are absolutely categorically important. it all starts from leaders. >> may i add that the leadership issue was an issue of omission, not commission. it was not placing emphasis on the sharp program in general, placing emphasis in priority and other areas, which you would expect an army of combat brigade and command to place, which is readiness. but during the course of that, they completely, utterly neglected the emphasis on the sharp program. it never got down to the troop level, enlisted ranks where 80% of the victims and subjects resided. i'm not -- i personally, and i think the other members of the committee share this. we're not placing all this at the foot of cid. we just made a note. that's one of nine findings that cid is not responsible for all of the issues at ft. hood. what we were saying was in the course of the review, we saw that in the case of complex cases that there was a lot of inexperience, and we just felt like -- and it wasn't even a close call that addressing complex cases was a problem. and without that deterrent and without all that good intelligence being be harvested and provided to the commanders to take mitigating action, then that sort of added to the mix, as andy described it as a perfect storm. that all came together. >> thank you. >> the gentle woman's time has expired and she yields back. the gentleman from texas, mr. fallon, is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair couple of the hear me? >> we can hear you. >> wonderful, thank you. mr. swecker, i noticed what my colleague just mentioned, and i saw the same thick, finding number nine was alarming, that it was a problem with the command. and i also noticed that on the chart we were given that ft. hood pretty much literally every single category for violent fel onies, rapes, all the way down to drunk and disorder and awol, there were higher incidence on average across the board, which really illustrates it's rather obvious it's a command problem. i believe ft. hood is the largest base in terms of troops. just like a large city, do you think that because it's a larger base it plays into the fact that they have larger incidents of crimes. >> that's part of it, but we were looking at crime rates not raw numbers. per capita crime. most of the things we were looking at were on a per capita basis. it wasn't the raw numbers. but we founded an aggregaing factor, if you will, that there were known risks of all of these things, because of all these reports that had been done over the years. the fact that these were combat brigades that 80% of the victims and perpetrators were in the enlisted ranks, that was well known that these are 18 to 23-year-old soldiers where women were the minority in these brigades. the introduce born that out, that there was a serious risk there that was known or should have been known from the leadership from the top down and unfortunately because of the lack of emphasis, the lack of addressing these known risks, ncos where the rubber meets the road became blockers. they did not facilitate reporting, encourage reporting. many of them were the perpetrators and many of them were part of the ostracie and were deterred in filing sexual harassment, sexual assault, et cetera. anything you want to add to that, carrie? >> i would add there were regular reports such as ig reports, command climate surveys, that type of information that was available to commanders, but that just wasn't acted on. >> i mentioned in the first hearing that the climate surveys, there were red flags throughout in all of the key commands. >> yeah. it's very -- it's incredibly troubling. as far as cid, you know, obviously you mentioned that it was lack of training and mentorship and experience, resources, staffing, that sort of thing. instead of a tour, would there be a value instead of a typical tour being three years and then a pcs, maybe making the army given the option or mandating it's a five-year tour and then also coupled with, as you said, some 1811 investigators? do you think that would add some value to extend the tours for the military investigators? >> well, anything that allows a particular busy office like ft. hood to develop a cadre of experienced agents would be a good thing. whether it's more 1811s, slowing down the transfers, restricting them from going off and doing protective detail, which seemed to us to be a distraction for special agents that could have been spent doing investigations. we felt like the mps could handle that kind of detail as opposed to pulling from the special agent ranks. anything that provides continuity in the office, experience. what jumped out, as i said earlier, to all of us was simply the lack of a group of trained, experienced agents, even in the five to eight-year range. there were very few of them. if there were, most of them were supervisors. >> uh-huh. yeah, i was shocked when you said 12 out of 76 had one year experience or more. i can't even believe that. >> it was actually -- i think somewhere around 90% of the enlisted agents were apprentice agents and 63% of the special agents were apprentice. that didn't leave many to actually mentor any of these inexperienced agents. and then a number of them were diverted for other duties, evidence custodians, cyber, et cetera. and they were chronically understaffed, somewhere around 60 %, throughout the time period we looked at. understaffing, inexperience. and we talked about underresourcing in terms of forensic exploitation of cell phones and other electronic evidence. they only had one license to exploit a cell phone. those are proprietary software licenses that you have to have to extract evidence from a cell phone. during the guillen investigation, two of them expired. so they had one left and that was a key avenue of inquiry for that investigation. >> thank you. my time has expired. >> the gentleman's time has expired. the gentlewoman from texas, miss garcia, is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair. thank you for holding this very crucial hearing, and for allowing me to participate. it has been almost a year since the family of vanessa guillen first contacted my office for help. in the very first meeting i listened to their concerns about the handing of the case by the cid and could not believe what i was hearing. throughout our work together and many meetings at ft. hood, i was consistently disturbed of the actions cid and the negative impact it had on the vanessa guillen case, failing to look into claims of sexual harassment as a motive, not interviewing vanessa's family members and friends and reassignment of a cid investigator in the middle of the investigation. i've seen firsthand the problems that plague ft. hood. i appreciate the work of this committee and the special review independent committee. findings and recommendations align with my experiences with cid, and i will continue to fight for a change to ensure that what happened to specialist guillen and her family never happens again. with that in mind, mr. chairman, i wanted to ask you, during my visit to ft. hood, cid agents said while they were currently investigating the murder of specialist guillen, they were not looking further into the claims of sexual harassment as that role would fall to her command. what can be done to ensure that cid is allowed to fully investigate a crime, including possible motives, just as any other law enforcement agency would? >> that's a very good question. andy and i discussed the narrow, and mary, had discussed the narrow scope of some of these investigations when there were other issues that were relevant to the investigation. one of them being sexual harassment in that case. and we often were looking for that sort of thing in the file and couldn't find it. i don't think that's something you have to -- it may be something you have to address through army regulations, but it seems to me to be a logical, investigative avenue to pursue. >> it seemed logical to me and i raised the issue when i was there june 23rd, my first visit, and they started to give me a lecture between the difference between a cid investigation and sexual harassment claim and i had to stop them and remind them i was a former judge and lawyer and i knew a little bit about that. but let's go on. one of your findings was a concern that the guillen family brought up that the lead investigator was transferred. is that common practice, or did you find any evidence of this happening other -- at other investigations? i mean, it seems like he could have gotten a waiver or permission to stay on until the end of the investigation. it just doesn't make sense to me. so, is this the practice in the armed services to do this? >> that was puzzling. given the severity and importance and the gravity of the investigation, it was just puzzling that the special agent in charge transferred out, particularly in the absence of what we thought was the role of a case agent. so it looked like the supervisors, asac, special agent in charge and assistant special agent in charge, coordinating all the investigation. supervisors would be above that, looking at strategy and resources and things like that. so, that made it even more puzzling. >> but is it common practice? >> we only -- we don't know. we saw it happen at ft. hood. we also know that transfers in general, pcs's in general are a major factor in the lack of experience and continuity, at least at ft. hood, and we suspect at other offices that are busy. >> you also said that there were resources were nonexistent from the battalion, no guidance was given and it was almost nonexistent until mg, which i guess is major general inquired into whether cid had sufficient resources and expertise. do you recall when that happened? >> it was about midway through the investigation. >> would you say it was june, july? >> i would say june, somewhere about mid-june. it was really perplexing. >> the major general even asked? >> right. the lieutenant colonel over the 11th mp battalion. >> which was colonel overland? >> no. this was someone else. overland was the third calvary regiment commander. responsible for the cid detachment there as well as other cid detachments. unfortunately that lieutenant colonel did not step in. first of all, we think that there should have been a recognition that they needed more resources, more people on the ground, more help with affidavits, more help with forensics, more help with evidence extraction and that sort of thing, and analysis. and that didn't come from the chain of command within the cid detachment there, which would have been the 11th mp battalion. it came from major general efland who walked over and said do you need anything to sac neff. that's when they got more resources, is what we're told. it came when major general walked over, had a meeting and asked if they needed any help and after that help came. >> that seems to coincide with the call i made to white house chief of staff meadows and secretary mccarthy. that's the first question i -- my first concern was did they have the resources and capacity to handle all that. >> gentle woman's time has expired. >> thank you, madam chair. i yield back. thank you, sir. >> gentleman from alabama, mr. clark? no, mr. carl. excuse me. >> yeah. it's easy to get confused. madam chair, can you hear me now? >> i certainly can, and i'll never make that mistake again. >> no, that's fine. don't worry about that. that's simple. i've got a real -- i'm not an attorney. i'm not a judge. i'm a businessperson. so my question is, is this spike -- i'm going to call it a spike in the drugs and all these different crimes, is there any way we can link that to management, when new management of the base may have come on board? i know there would be a time lag there, but to me, from a leadership sand point, the buck stops here. it sounds like, to me, we're trying to identify the criminals ourselves instead of trying to encourage the management, whatever rank that may be, to actually take responsibility for what's going on. so my question is, is there any way or has anybody thought about trying to link the time line with the people that are supposed to be responsible for the welfare of these soldiers? >> i addressed one of the more important things, we felt like, that were part of these reports but they were compartmentalized. there was a monthly crime report but it didn't really analyze the crime, identify hot spots, identify establishments, trends, patterns, and that sort of thing. there were reports on crime rates and felony crime rates, all the different crime categories. they were high in some areas. drugs were one of them. those of us that have worked investigations over the years know that any kind of black market drives crime, whether it's drugs or something else. drug suppression efforts -- drugs themselves, usage and selling of drugs is not conducive to good order in them military. talk about legalization, and legalization is all around us. but it's not conducive to military readiness. we felt that that was an area that should have been addressed by cid, department of emergency services and provost marshall, to arm the command with information about all of that. we were told drug suppression was a lost art, at least at ft. hood. let me open this up. i've been doing a lot of talking. i would like to open it up to the other panel members to see if they would like to address the question. >> no, i don't have anything further. >> my follow-up question would be, do we not have an established drug testing program at ft. hood? >> there is, and there is at every military installation. the drug tests are reported. i don't know that anybody was watching or highlighting those reports and interpreting what they really meant. nor were they harvesting any intelligence from the positive drug tests or trying to develop, as we mentioned in the report, sources of information. you could interview every single person that tested positive and try to find out where they got the drugs, what do they know about drugs, try to develop some live sources of information and actively engage in drug suppression efforts but, again i was told that is a, quote, lost art. andy, mary? >> i just think briefly, chris, not only do icon occur with everything you said, but it goes back to the fundamental aspects of what an investigator does. being able to understand, you need to go that extra yard to do those types of things, to connect dots, to develop informants, to be able to drive some sort of analysis that will take you to where you may have criminal activity taking place. it's those things that your grassroots investigator does, as part of their responsibilities and, frankly, tbd be part of their passion for the job. mary? >> thank you. i would like to concur with my colleagues, but i would add from the sexual assault standpoint, we also interviewed sharp representatives and every one of them told me three out of four female soldiers within eight months of being there, ages 18 to 23, it was almost an initiation to be either sexually assaulted or sexually harassed. that was unbelievable to me. one, that this was happening but, two, that this was known. by people in the program that's supposed to prevent this kind of behavior. and, again, it goes to leadership. if you know this is happening, you have the responsibility to stop it. and we did not see that. >> thank you so much for that. madam chair, i'll give my time back to you. >> i thank the gentleman. to follow up on the congressman's question, it wasn't -- if i recall correctly, your report said this was not an issue of leadership just in this narrow period of time. you suggested it dated back to 2013, if i'm not mistaken. is that correct? >> that's correct. >> so, it was the leadership under a number of generals or colonels that basically had their eye off the ball. so this has been going on for some time at ft. hood. is that correct? >> i think that's correct. malaise as it relates to the sexual assault program or sharp program and just pushing it aside because there were other priorities. >> and then there were 64 sexual assault cases per special agent at ft. hood. how does a special agent handle 64 cases? >> so, let me clear that up a little bit. that was per special victim investigator, which is a higher category, with more training, and because there was such a low number, the ratio was huge. that's not to mean that they were individually working, or working 60 cases. those were mainly the 1811s. there were three, i think, or varying numbers of 1811s in that category. they were there to mentor and to sort of oversee all the sexual assault cases. but it just seemed like a very low number. you couldn't possibly, even if you were just overseeing and mentoring these inexperienced agents, we actually felt like they should have been working the investigations, but they weren't really working them. as we understood it, they were simply overseeing them and trying to create some direction and oversee the cases. >> so the leadership at ft. hood has changed? they've pulled out the entire team and replaced them. we had made a commitment in six months to return to ft. hood and see what had transpired. what should we be looking for when we return? >> i would be looking for active use of the tool in the sharp program. are they look at the life cycle of a sexual assault, sexual harassment complaint and tracking it from cradle to grave, if you will, from start to finish, which nobody was doing. and i'm not sure they're doing it now. it seems like somebody should be monitoring these cases closely. is there emphasis from the nco level? if we were to do a survey today, would we get the same responses we got when we did our survey and we did our interviews? i still think there ought to be periodic -- if the climate surveys show something as a red flag, action ought to be taken on the climate surveys, which we did not see happen during the course of that. i would keep a close eye on the climate surveys because they're designed to identify red flags, particularly one of the areas is in the area of sharp components, sexual assault reporting, fear of reporting, retaliation and that sort of thing. i'm probably running out of -- there's a number of things that i think can be done. we haven't heard -- we know that the missing soldier protocol has changed. we know that monthly crime analysis reports are being provided to the command. that started. we think those are two effective remedies or mitigations that have taken place. i'm not sure what else has taken place since we left there. >> following the metrics, the army is good at developing metrics and following them. the judge advocate general, for example, reported last year that half of all criminal cases involved a specification of sexual assault. ten years ago that was only 18%. those metrics tell you where you need to focus your resources. so in the same manner, commanders should be focusing on where the metrics are taking them. >> anyone else on the panel want to convey final words to us? all right. once again, mr. swecker, miss ricci, thank you for your extraordinary contribution to the soldiers at ft. hood and, frankly, our service members throughout the military. i think this has been a very soul searching moment for many and has caused many of our vthive units around the country to look deeply into whether or not they're doing a good job. so, again, our gratitude for all that you've done. >> madam chair, can we thank you as well for keeping the focus on these important issues? we appreciate that. >> thank you. >> ditto here. >> thank you. we'll now have the second panel and we'll take a five-minute recess. >> all right. we now welcome our second panel, major general donna martin, commanding general of the u.s. army investigator command. brigadier general bullard, and mr. omar lopez, director of naval criminal investigative services. we welcome you all. you'll each have an opportunity to provide a statement for five minutes and then we will accept your other comments as written comments. and we thank you all for being here. major general martin, would you like to begin? >> good afternoon, chairwoman speier, ranking member banks and distinguished members of the subcommittee. thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. i'm here to discuss the cripple investigation command known as cid, mission, structure, ongoing initiatives and our efforts to address the findings and recommendations of the ft. hood independent review committee. i serve the united states army in two capacities, as the provost marshall general of the army and commanding general of cid. as the provost marshall general i'm the principle military adviser to the secretary general of the army and all army policing and law enforcement matters. this includes law enforcement policy, criminal investigations, criminal intelligence, army corrections and confinement, anti-terrorism matters and detention operations. as the commanding general of cid, i am responsible for overseeing the u.s. army's primary criminal investigative organization, cid is responsible for conducting felony level criminal investigations in which the army is or may be a party of interest. for context, my special agents conduct criminal investigations that range from murder to organized crime, and they often partner with local, state and other federal law enforcement agencies, including the fbi and u.s. marshal service. i am also here to address the ft. hood independent review committee findings regarding cid. the secretary and chief of staff of the army accepted the committee's findings in whole and based on the committee's findings and recommendations, i am working with key stake holders to reform, restructure and modernize cid to address the shortcomings identified in the report and to organize cid to better meet today's law enforcement challenges. while cid remains the army's premier law enforcement organization providing professional felony level investigations and simultaneously prepared to support large-scale contingency operations, we are seizing this moment to reform and strengthen cid. we can and we will do better. since the report was released, ft. hood has taken immediate actions on several of the ft. hood independent reviews committee recommendations. some of these efforts include creating a female mentorship program and several improvements aimed to support crime prevention and enhanced communication between ft. hood law enforcement and local law enforcement. ft. hood has also recently stood up the supporting warrior action team or s.w.a.t. s.w.a.t. is a knewly designed sexual assault prevention training program with the goal to train soldiers on how to recognize signs and early warnings of sexual misconduct. how to intervene in incidents of sexual misconduct and how to advocate for vulnerable service members and the survivors of sexual misconduct. additionally, we have collaborated with osi and ncis to look at their organizations and consider some of their best practices, and how they could benefit cid. our efforts extend beyond just the ft. hood independent review committee's findings. they incorporate a holistic and collective approach with input from across the law enforcement enterprise. and, finally, i would like to address recent media reports, discussing proposed courses of action that are being considered to restructure the cid. the courses of action reported in the media have not yet been decided and i am preparing to brief army leaders in the coming weeks. the report prematurely addresses draft planning documents that include addressing cid capabilities. ultimately, any decision made by army senior leadership will lead to an organization with enhanced capabilities, organized and led by law enforcement professionals. in closing, the findings of the ft. hood independent review committee were eye opening to our army but particularly to the law enforcement enterprise. i do not take this report lightly. and reforping cid is my top priority. i acknowledge the necessity of the task ahead, and i am dedicated to the cid's time-honored commitment to do what happens to be done in order to protect our soldiers, civilians and family members. i, along with the army's leadership, look forward to the opportunity to work with this committee to strengthen the army's law enforcement effort. and i welcome the opportunity to answer your questions. thank you. >> general bullard? >> madam chairwoman speier, ranking member banks and members of the subcommittee, i appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. as commander of the department of air force, office of special investigations or osi i join my colleagues here to discuss law enforcement mission and our continuous improvement processes, especially as they relate to the ft. hood independent review committee's report. i'm very proud to represent the civilian in uniformed men and women of osi, who are supporting our united states air force and space force from 303 units located across the globe. as our criminal investigations division colleagues have learned from the ft. hood report, we, too, leverage the report to assess our own policies and practices to identify all applicable areas for review and possible improvement. in line with our review, i would like to briefly cover the highlights of our observations in the areas of resourcing, training, currency, experience, collaboration and the overall timeliness and sufficiency of our investigations. an overall resourcing of osi to execute our mission, the department has sufficiently resourced the command to execute. over the last two to three years, the department has significantly enhanced the resourcing of osi to help mitigate preidentified significant shortfalls with more capacity projected to come online soon, specific to the areas of sexual assault, criminal analysis and digital forensics. on the training of our osi agent, all new agents attend our osi angd at the federal law enforcement training center for their initial training, along with other 90 other federal partners. along with our initial training, agents pursue additional training during probationary period. additionally we provide advanced, specialized training in a number of areas, such as sexual-based offenses and complex case management. while we believe our training programs are effective, we can always improve and we plan to. specifically, while covid has set us back on advanced training like our advanced sexual assault course, we're using those lessons learned by offering more courses virtually and on demand to afford more access. on the currency of our air men to execute the mission, osi has executed over 3,000 law enforcement tied investigations annually over the past five years. this operations tempo, teamed with field commands, staffed with senior agent leadership and suggest matter experts, as well as specialist squadrants with on-call expertise for traditional and physical forensics helps keep our agency currency levels high. on the issue of experience levels of our force to conduct highly complicated cases, in october 2020, osi launched a study to examine experience levels and slor ways to better posture our less experienced members across the command. recommendations from this review will better distribute probationary agents and will be augmented with newly established field training agents. our field leadership, region commanders, colonels who, themselves, are special agents, average 23 years of experience, subordinate, captain through lieutenant colonel who are also special agents average 13 years. specific to collaboration, the ft. hood report reinforced three osi partner-based initiatives with departmental entities to institutionalize best practices in criminal and fraud-related matters. these initiatives are designed to drive deeper partnership with our judge advocate and teammates on investigations as well as foster closer ties to agencies best placed to detect fraud. every month osi reviews measures of sufficiency and timeliness of our investigations. overall, we feel our timeliness is solid but are full further reviewing to make sure we assess the efficiency of our investigations, both bimonthly oversight program and independent reviews, like those done by the d.o.d. inspector general and the defense advisory committee on investigations, prosecution and defense of sexual assault in the armed forces. these reviews routinely report osi cases are overall sufficiently run. we fully realize there's always room for betterment and we are dedicated to that continuous improvement. i recently requested a review of our oversight program to make sure it meets our needs for rigor and efficiency. thank you for the opportunity to provide insight into some of the exceptional work our members do every day to protect the department. aan organization, osi has never been satisfied with the status quo and has always sought to pursue improvement. i look forward to your questions and the dialogue they will drive among the panel as we all work to improve our processes to best support the d.o.d. thank you. >> thank you. mr. lopez? >> good afternoon, chairwoman speier rg ranking member banks, and distinguished subcommittee members. thank you for the opportunity to discuss the scourge of sexual assaults in the department of the navy. i'm honored to be representing the dedicated men and women of ncis stationed throughout the world supporting our war fighters on the navy and marine corps team. as director of ncis, i'm a career civilian special agent and member of the senior executive service who reports directly to the secretary of the navy. this historical alignment continues to ensure ncis' independence from perceived or actual undue command influence over investigative decisions. i'm proud to lead a comparatively small but elite workforce located around the world in 19 field offices of 191 satellite locations and 41 different countries. ncis special agents are deployed in conflict areas around the world and serve aboard all carrier strike and amphibious ready groups. ncis has conducted itself in a manner similar to the fbi, with a civilian director who leads both a criminal investigative and national security mission. ncis special agents also possess civil authority, and are able to operate effectively on and off military installations. current ncis manpower structure evolved in the early 2000s, after the attack on the u.s.s. cole, supporting expeditionary forces and covering 100% of navy visits in ports. later focusing efforts on protecting critical navy and marine corps technology and significantly expanded efforts in cyber space and now in combating the threat of domestic terrorism. over the last eight years, sexual assault cases have doubled. ncis, in coordination with department and service leadership, has worked to surge resources from other nonintelligent funded programs to ensure that all allegations of sexual assault are fully investigated in a timely and thorough manner. in maintaining the surge, ncis has focused heavily on two key issues. improving the quality of investigations and reducing investigative timelines. this has resulted in a very robust case oversight system and significant reductions in time lines over the same period. due to the expeditionary nature of ncis support to navy and marine corps forces around the world, ncis now requires all special agents receive mandatory d.o.d. sexual assault training at the add-on academy for law enforcement training center. this allows us to leverage the full versatility of the criminal investigator job series, ensuring immediate response to allegations of sexual assault anywhere in the world at any time, both at sea and ashore. this great agility comes with long-term risks associated with this unrelenting operational tempo. the degradation of support to other critical missionaries and highly experienced investigators. departmental and service leadership is well aware of this and is carefully working with ncis to manage this risk. following the release of the ft. hood independent commission report, ncis undertook careful review. while this review is ongoing the majority of the report did not speak to ncis structure, we did determine there were many recommendations and areas for our improvement and focus. members of this committee, i thank you for the opportunity to provide some insight into the exceptional work our members do every day. our solemn commitment to justice for all sexual assault survivors continues to be one of my highest priorities as director. through strong partnerships with sapro and service leadership, ncis will continue to seek the technology and manpower investments needed to maintain its unwavering focus on thorough and timely criminal investigations particularly those of sexual assault and violence. i welcome your questions and feedback, which will enable us to continue making positive strides toward addressing reforms within the military, criminal, investigative enterprise. thank you. >> thank you, mr. lopez. let me go to you first. how many civilians do you have within ncis? >> for inside of the special agent core, 1811s for doing criminal investigations we have 753. >> what percentage is that? >> of the whole agency? >> of civilian versus military. >> they're all civilian, ma'am. >> they're all civilian. and you, at one point, had a structure that was very similar to the army. what triggered your change? >> back in 1991 there was an incident. as a result of that, there were legislative actions as well as department of defense actions that resulted in separating ncis as being -- we went from being the nis to the naval criminal service and a civilian director was appointed to lead it and civilize the entire structure. >> and tail hook dealt with sexual assault of sailors, correct? >> that is correct, ma'am. >> representative speier, we have approximately 475 civilians. my enlisted airman are 1,053 agents and my special officers are 290. >> all right. thank you. general martin, what experience do you have conducting criminal investigations? >> chairwoman speier, i am a military police officer by trade. i have 32 years of military service in the criminal military police role. >> all right. so, general, you indicating two specifics in your opening remarks that you have taken as a result of the ft. hood report. one to create a mentoring program for female soldiers and a new sexual assault training program called s.w.a.t. i must tell you, i'm truly disappointed that that is the extent of what you have gleaned from from the report. let me ask you this. have you established a system to track the progress of specific and measurable goals, objective s and metrics as it relates to timely investigations, drug crime suspension, investigative activities, staffing and training? >> chairwoman speier, first, let me correct the record. those initiatives were taken by ft. hood in the ft. hood leadership. as a result of the ft. hood independent findings, my command started a bottom-up assessment of the entire command, looking at the findings and making an assessment of those capacities and capability weiss needed in order to build -- >> what percentage of the special agents at ft. hood have less than two years experience right now? >> as i look at those demographics, at ft. hood currently, the number of agents with zero to one years is 12. >> how about zero to 2? >> zero to 3 years, the category i have is 21. >> 21% or -- >> 21 total number. >> how does that relate to the 92%? what i would like for you to do is provide us separately a breakdown of what steps you have taken to respond to the report's request that no more than 50% be journeymen or apprentices. what you have done to reduce the number of apprentices providing special agent services, what percentage are more than three years, what have you done to have you furnished licenses and equipments specifically to that base? >> chairwoman speier, yes, that is complete. >> there are now three licenses there? >> there are a total of seven licenses at ft. hood. >> and they've been renewed? >> all of them were not expired. >> according to mr. swecker, all of the three, only one was operational at the time of the disappearance of specialist guillen. >> chairwoman, the difference was the capability at the battalion level and the digital forensic cell and that cell was not used by the detachment. >> that is no longer the case then? >> no, it is not. >> have you established an mou and begun embedding special agents? >> chairwoman, there's no -- the requirement for mou is really not necessary. it is an inherent business practice that we have those partnerships with local, state and federal law enforcement. >> with all due respect, general, the caleen sheriff, i believe, said he presented a power point to the leadership at ft. hood, wanting to do more work together and they receive nod response to that. there are 100 soldier cases that caleen has presently or at the time of this particular report, and many more who are victims who are outside the base but are soldiers at ft. hood and there was no work being done together. >> and so, congresswoman, i'm happy to report that is being addressed currently. with the new commander on the ground now, he has established those cells. cid is part of those cells. criminal intelligence fusion is being done with state and local law enforcement and with the law enforcement on the installation. >> all right. thank you. ranking member banks? >> thank you, madam chair. general martin, good to see you again. you talked about the bottom of review. tell us about the scope of the bottom-up review. >> thank you for the question, congressman. we wanted to look at experience of our agents rg how long our agents were staying on station. some of the very immediate things we did was extend our agents' time on station. agents can stay up to five, six years on station. we also looked at those capabilities that our agents needed in order to execute these crimes. one of our options and courses of actions had not been briefed yet to our senior leaders but one of it would add up to 300 1811s across our command to help fill those capability gaps we do not have. >> was the bottom-up review just for hood, other posts, whole of army? what was the scope of it? >> the scope is the entire army. >> okay. ft. hood's open number of sex crime cases were three times more. what is the army doing to make sure caseloads are allocated in the future? >> for all of those cases in our assessment, we found that those requirements for investigators were much higher. as part of that assessment, we will grant those offices more 1811 investigators to execute those criminal investigations. >> okay. tell me, in your opinion, what is being done or what effort is there to rebuild relationships with the ft. hood community and improve the cooperation with local law enforcement? >> provost marshall general, i am charge of policy across the army. one of the initiatives we're doing right now is a community policing initiative. what that does is strengthens the bond between the community and the policing force. and so we have done things like bicycle patrol to put police in presence, daily contact with the public and using those initiatives to help build trust. >> at ft. hood? >> at ft. hood and many installations across the army. >> anything at ft. hood that you can tell us about that you've done to repair the relationships locally there? >> at ft. hood one of the things our agents is doing is participating in this criminal fusion initiative. we are improving our relationship with local, state law enforcement every single day. we're working hard to rebuild those relationships and we're working hard to ensure that the community feels that they are safe. >> okay. that all sounds good. and those are things that i would hope we would be doing everywhere anyway. but i'm not hearing a specific answer about a specific effort at ft. hood to repair damaged relationships that there should be an extra effort or strategy to -- i hope you'll take that back and give us more of a specific answer to that question. doubling tools like the disciplinary board are effective? >> yes, and i use that specifically for that purpose. >> what has been done to systematically improve case tracking specifically for sex crimes? >> i'll have to take that one back for the record as well, congressman. >> okay. then a last question for all of three of you. what are the most useful field skills thought in each of your training curriculums and what is something you wish you could do more of that you aren't resourced to do right now? mr. lopez, we'll start with you. >> thank you, rampging member banks. i think one of the biggest, or most useful capabilities we have is our ability to direct higher. that gives us a very critical capability to really look for diversity in our with workforce. we're able to go out and higher, for instance, expert investigators. we brought people over from different agencies, local sheriff's and bring over people from the secret service, from fbi, other locations. when they come from ncis after they go through our academy they can hit the ground, be more seasoned and experienced investigator because often times the way in which we support the services we may be alone. there may only be an agent afloat on a carrier and they have to be able to do everything. that's one piece that is really helpful for us. the other in terms of resourcing, the threats are becoming more and more asymmetric and i think it's hard to define threats in the computer cyber space, whether it's terrorism, as being one type of threat or another. and i think we need to really continue to look at things in a very multidisciplinary way and approaching it from a holistic government. task forces and working on different environments, on the jttf or other task forces is really the key to combating the threats to the navy and the marine corps. >> my time has expired. both the army and air force could respond on the record, we would appreciate it very much. the chairwoman has given me the liberty of allowing you to answer that question on the record. >> absolutely. thank you for the question, representative banks. i would say our strength is in the diversity of our competition. i look at our civilian agents, officer agents, enlisted agents, what they bring each day to the competition at the detachment level, squadron level and up through the command level and the various ways, the background that they bring in to look at a particular investigation. that is absolutely one of the things that i've cherished as a detachment commander, two times where i've had that composition, mix of civilian agents to look at specific investigations and then i would absolutely transition to our military set where that composition within our team gives us the ability to look at some things through differ perspectives and. problem solving is at the base of what we do. from a challenge standpoint, i would absolutely agree with director lopez that the cyber environment prevents a very unique, complicated challenge as we look at the authorities that we have, as we look at the talent we have on hand and how we tackle that problem with agents who have that cyber experience and some of the unique ways we're looking to get after that in partnership with the air force, in bringing in our cyber operators to partner with our agents. that's one way we're tackling that, but it's definitely something in the future we'll have to keep our eye on. >> thank you. general martin? >> yes, congressman. i believe our strength lies in our people as well. their desire to execute crimes and to give our family members, our soldiers a safe environment for which to work. i believe that desire and that passion is there. the strength is definitery our people. we have not had significant structural change inside cid since pre-9/11. yet we've had quadrupling cases of sexual assault. we've had challenges in mission increase with the number of years it is required to maintain and retain evidence. we've also had a demise and degradation of our military police structure. that effort to prevent crime has been degraded over time. >> just a very brief question. should cid, osi or ncis be providing the protective services as part of their function or should that be an mp function? >> i will tell you from our perspective the way that osi is built with our 1811s, federal law enforcement mandate, our engagement off base, our level of training, i believe that the mission set is properly set for us. however, what we have done is transition our model to osi agent led security force members providing most of the manpower. the air force recently approved 54 security force member billets in order to allow us to flush out those details, still have agents in charge of the details themselves. that allowed us to recoup agent back to the command in order to put them back against investigative duties. >> mr. lopez? >> thank you, chairwoman speier. similar to general bullard's comments, we've been doing it a long time just as he described. we have 1811 special agents in charge of the details for whether it's in theater or domestic and then we use navy and marine corps security forces, ma's, police officers we train to do support to those details. >> general martin, my pulled away at fort hood from the investigation in the vanessa gehan case to do a protective role for a period of a month. maybe i'm confusing the cases. maybe it was another one. are you changing that? >> chairwoman, it is absolutely an option that we will look at and will ensure that once inve gators start on a case, they are in that case from cradle to grave. >> all right. thank you. >> mr. escobar? >> thank you, madame chair. general martin, i want to thank you for the work that's been done, but i agree with our chairwoman. there needs to be in my view, a really robust effort because as i mentioned in the first panel, what we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg. this is just what we are -- what is being made visible to us, these cases. and i think that we are in a state of crisis in many regards. i'm curious, did you in your fact finding role, did you review fort bliss? >> congresswoman, we reviewed every military installation. >> can you share with me what you discovered about fort bliss, what your thoughts are, and anything that you can share? >> so as we looked at those installations that were division or core, or had a division or a core and fort bliss has a division, we recognize that they also need additional resources. and so our options would lead to additional 1811s civilian investigators. also additional assistance special agents in charge are those asacs at division installation level. we also looked at additional drug investigators at our division installations, and then we also want to look at the prosecution and how we support prosecutions and so one of the options that we're looking at is actually building prosecutorial teams that consist of dedicated agents that work with trial council to bring cases to trial. also across the board we looked at we needed about 30 civilian support agents personnel to take care of the administrative and the logistics functions and the technology functions that happen at the core and division installations. and as well, to take away some of those administrative burdens. we're going to put captains, military police officers, in charge of our offices to lead those administrative type functions to free up our investigators to do investigations. >> did you find -- i mean, this is definitely the case at fort bliss, but did you find -- or actually, what did you find with regard to backlogs? backlog of cases? so cases that are ready to go but just, they are languishing? >> so i don't have that data, congresswoman. we would be happy to provide that to you. >> okay. i really would like to better understand how quickly those cases are moving. you know, part of as the ranking member mentioned, the feeling that justice delayed, it absolutely is justice denied, especially when the women that i've been hearing from who feel like the inaction is a signal. it's a signal that their leadership doesn't care. it's a signal that the system doesn't care, and it's a signal that they remain vulnerable, and i feel almost as though the backlog issue is a major red flag, because as we heard with the prior panel, one of the issues also is those serial offenders. those offenders that continue to prey upon our service members and i have a suspicion that a part of that, part of why they feel that they are able to do that is because they feel that there's no accountability. and so if you could please share that information about the backlog with us, i really do feel like that is one of those areas where we need to do a deep dive and understand the consequences of it in addition to how we address it and how we prevent the backlog. i do believe that's an issue at fort bliss. and in my remaining 30 seconds, if you could just tell us a little bit more about the female mentorship program. every time i visit an installation or talk to female soldiers, they are hungry for this, but will it be a meaningful, sustained resourced program? >> and so the female mentorship program that is currently being worked at fort hood is the brain child, started, actually, at fort lee. and so a group of female officers developed a program called the fmmp. t the female mentorship morale program. and that program gave women a form in which they could get together and talk about some of these concerns. it also focussed on professional development and other things that were of concern to women. it was a safe space for them to talk, and so that brain child at fort lee has now graduated and is actually spreading across the army. and it will start at fort blis as well, first ad. >> thank you, madame chair. i'm out of time. i yield back. >> the gentle woman from california is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you so much, madame chair. in light of the criticism of cid, what would you tell a young soldier looking to become an mp or cid agent? >> thank you for the question. i would tell a young soldier that if you have an inquisitive mind. if you want to solve crime or if you think that you want to make a difference, then being a part of cid or being a part of the military police regiment is for you. >> can you tell us why military agents play such a critical role in the cid. >> military agents play a critical role, especially in our deployed role. part of our mission is sensitive site exploitation. we also do logistics security and logistics security ensures that equipment that is critical on the battlefield moves from port to theater and is safely transported for our war fighters, and then we also execute wartime crimes, the criminal crimes during wartime. so military agents help us and give us the ability to execute that role. >> thank you. could you talk a little bit more about how your agents gain experience and what some recent cid success stories are? >> i would love to. so our agents about 45% of our agents have bachelor's degrees already before they come in. but our cid agents go to the united states army military police school for a 14-week course there. and the military police school is also accredited by the same board that accredits the federal law enforcement training center. and they train agents in the subjects of criminal law, crime scene processing, testimony wall evidence, fraud, investigative reports, special investigative techniques, crimes against persons, and then our agents as they progress in their careers much like my fellow mcios, they also go to those advanced training skills at fletsiy as well as over to the canadian law enforcement agency and we do other training in other schools. and are your agents trained to handle same sex sexual assault investigations? >> absolutely. our agents are trained, and they are absolutely capablen of investigating crimes against same sex persons. >> thank you. and my last question is just if the fort hood independent review committee sought your perspective or that of anyone in senior cid positions as they were working on their report. >> there were members of my agency that were attached for providing records to the fort hood independent review. but as far as an interview with me, no, there was no interview. thank you. okay. thank you so much, and madame chair, i yield back the reminder of my time. >> the gentlewoman yields back. the gentlewoman from texas. >> thank you. i'll start with major general martin. major general, i want to be clear. i know that i asked the question of the chairman of the previous panel the question about the continuity of investigation when the agent was pulled away, and i think it says that he -- he left his duties pursuant to his permanent change of station in the middle of an investigation. in response to the chairwoman's question you said it would be an option for them not to do that, to follow it from cradle to grave. i mean, that doesn't sound like a commitment to change that to me when you're saying it will be an option. wasn't it an option before? i mean, can you commit to us today that that will change and an investigator starts an investigation, especially one as complex and critical as this case, that they will finish it through? >> chairwoman, i will make that commitment to you that yes, when an agent is involved in a complex criminal investigation, they will remain on station. >> they will. all right. and i want to ask the same question. does the air force have the same policy and, of course, ncis also. >> representative garcia, i think it's a very individual question by each unit having been a detachment commander two times and looking at turnover and what we do in projecting for investigations. how they're going to be handled. is there going to be a transition? do we stop that agent from initiating new cases? >> but do you have a policy or practice in place that covers that? >> we do not have a policy. it is a leadership-driven -- >> is there a policy or practice that if they ask for waivers that they can stay that it would be granted. >> representative garcia, absolutely. >> thank you. ncis? >> thank you for the question. there isn't a specific policy, but they would stay and work the case. >> thank you. the other thing that really troubled me was the case file reveals that suicides and deaths were not fully investigated by cid. i mean, it's awful to think that cid would not look at off site suicides. as we learned during our last visit with some of the sheriffs in law enforcement locally as the chairwoman again pointed out, there didn't seem to be a lot of cooperation. is that normal? >> no, that is not. that is not typical. so that relationship is a jurisdiction issue. so if a suicide or a case happens off the installation, we do a collaborative investigation with the local law enforcement in every case. our 1811s have that authority to conduct those cases. but our military -- >> i'm sorry. i don't know what an 1811 is. >> our civilian investigators. >> all right. >> so they have those authorities off post. our military investigators do not. >> i know about jurisdiction, but you still would not go out there and work together with the sheriff or the constable or the police chief of that area? >> that's correct. we would go out and work with them, and then we would fulfill any requirements that they have on the installation. and for example, to conduct any interviews with any service members at that time. that's our -- what we would do to help an investigation on the installation. >> is it normal in the air force? >> representative garcia, we have policy in place that we investigate all active duty deaths regardless of where they occur. >> regardless, and you work together with the law enforcement in the community if it's off base? >> absolutely. >> ncis? >> we have the same policy as the air force. >> that is a new policy or is it long-standing? it seems odd that the army just was not completely aligned with that. >> it's a long-standing, ma'am. >> long standing? well, that brings me to my last question. do you all ever get together to compare notes, best practices to make sure that whether it's a post or a base or -- that no matter where the soldier is, that they're safe? it just troubled us, again, when we visited ford hood when we asked people when we had the town hall with spouses and family members, how many felt safe. nobody felt safe. remember chairwoman? nobody rose their hand. >> will the gentle lady yield? >> yes, ma'am. >> one case in particular, a mother talked about keeping a gun on a shelf in the kitchen because she was afraid on base, and needed it to protect herself. >> i mean, is that normal? all three of you. i mean, there are families that have to feel safe. the soldiers have to feel safe. our families have to have a level of trust and confidence that they are safe. >> no, that is not normal for a family to feel unsafe -- >> a whole room full of families felt unsafe, ma'am, at fort hood. >> i understand, and we're going to work really hard to ensure that our families feel safe on the installation. >> air force? >> representative garcia, that is not what i would expect to hear from a military family on an air force installation. and we certainly work with base leadership, with our security partners to make sure that's not the case. >> thank you. ncis? >> yes, ma'am, the same for ncis. we work closely with base leadership and, in fact, we partner often with the air force and army in locations where they have a facility and we'll work out of their facility. so we're in close contact with each other in terms of working together. that would not be something normal on a navy base. >> gentlewoman's time is expired. >> thank you, madame chair. i yield back. >> the gentleman from massachusetts is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, madame chair. i do really appreciate the courtesy of you allows me to participate in this hearing and thank you for all your great work. i really do appreciate it. i thank the witnesses for their willingness to help the community with its work. i represent brockton, massachusetts and specifically the family of elder fernandez, sergeant fernandez. he met an untimely death by suicide at fort hood. his remains were found on august 25th, 2020. and cid was involved in an investigation prior to that surrounding sergeant fernandez's claims of sexual assault on the base, and obviously remains involved in the overall case surrounding sergeant fernandez's death. i want to tell you, so sergeant fernandez filed a complaint against a superior officer for sexual assault. and when sergeant fernandez went missing, i contacted the family and expressed the willingness to travel to fort hood to help them find their son. however, by the time i got there, his body had been recovered, and so even though i wasn't able to help them in that respect, i tried to help them get answers from cid. and the day that i arrived, the day that i arrived, it was only a matter of days really from when sergeant fernandez had made the complaint of the sexual assault, but in that short period of time, it might have been over a week, but not two weeks, cid had conducted an investigation of all relevant witnesses, all relevant testimony. they had conducted a poly graph of the accused officer, and the day that i arrived they rendered a decision that they did not sustain the complaint. they dismissed the complaint against that superior officer. but to this day, to this day, we haven't received the report of what happened to sergeant fernandez from cid. we've got the report from the temple police department because that's where he expired. and we have the investigation results from kalim texas, but to this day, his body was discovered an august 17th, 2020, and we don't have the report. so madame chair, if i could, i would like to enter into the record a letter from the attorney for the honorable -- excuse me. this is to the honorable johnny whitly, the acting secretary of the army, and it is from attorney lenny keston representing the family. and they have some attorney questions there that i think need to be answered. so my question to you is why, why -- >> without objection, it's admitted to the record. >> thank you, madame chair. so the investigation to exonerate the officer was completed in days, days. including polygraph which i question the integrity of that process. we don't even allow that in federal court. but relying on a polygraph, you were in a rush to determine that the superior officer was not held to account. but when the family is looking for information about the disappearance of their son, it's taking forever. even though the local police have submitted their investigation in their report. temple, klim, texas both forthcoming. it's taking forever for cid to get the family the information regarding the death of their son. and i don't know if you're just trying to outwait us. i don't understand the pace of discovery here. it's been a long, long time for that family to be suffering and looking for answers for their son. we got to do better than this. so why has it taken so long to give the family the information regarding their son's death? >> representative, i don't believe that there's been a request for those records, and if there has, i would happily assist the family in receiving the report from cid. >> wait a minute. wait a minute. when i was there, we asked for information in person. i believe you were on one of the panels. i asked for the information, and then the family requested it in writing. do you think that a family should have to -- i mean, let's set aside the fact that we asked for the information. and i brought the family into the hearing, into the meeting with cid at the time. they had nine officers working on this from cid. we asked for all that information. but to suggest that the army didn't know the family wanted to know the details of their son's disappearance and death? really? is that a legitimate -- >> representative, i will personally look into that. >> the army didn't know or didn't imagine that the family would want information regarding their son's death and disappearance? i mean, think about that. >> gentleman's time has expired. we'll allow general martin to respond. >> representative lynch, i will personally take that and i will ensure that the family gets the cid report. >> thank you, general. i appreciate that. thank you. >> all right. each of you has referenced the fact that the case load for sexual assaults has doubled, quadrupled, the numbers are skyrocketing. do you have enough revenue or resources to provide the services necessary? and as the report had indicated, special victims counsel which has been a huge success throughout the military, their case load is at 60 cases which is far too many for a special victim's counsel to handle. so my question is what resources do you need with the exponential increase in sexual assault cases? and have you also requested additional funding for svcs? general martin? >> madame chair, so our assessment would tell thaus we need 20 additional special victims investigators inside of cid. we also are requesting in our reform effort to look at eight major case response teams, and these teams would be positioned at both of our groups at fort lewis and at fort hunter army airfield. so that would give us an additional capability to surge capability on a major case with the expertise that's required. so that major case response team would not only have special victims investigators. it would also include digital forensics experts and forensics science officers. >> special victims counsels are a different function? >> that is correct, and they are controlled by the t-jag of the army. >> and so have you requested additional sbc snz. >> i know currently there's a bottom up assessment of those capabilities as well. >> all right. general va lard? >> representative spear, we've identified the need for additional agents, additional analysts and support individuals to be able to cover this increase in reporting that we have seen. we are in dialogue with our department now about obtaining those resources, so that process is underway. i cannot speak to the status of our special victims counsels within the united states air force. but i know that it's -- we have a great partnership with them, but just as general martin pointed out, they fall within the span of control of the judge advocate general of the air force. >> okay. mr. lopez? >> thank you, chairwoman spear. to echo the air force, we've asked for man power as well as technology investments. there's technology that we can utilize that would make some of these timelines even shorter. a lot of digital forensic evidence capabilities that continue to increase that i think would also help shorten timelines. tools that could be used to get into phones and other things faster than current technology. so we're looking at that and exploring those investments, because we think those could have direct correlation to timelines as well as investing in additional man power to get after the problem. >> so for each of you, would you make this sub committee aware of what your requests are up the chain of command? because our role is slightly different, but we want to make sure that these cases are promptly handled, that the resources are not an impediment in you doing your jobs and if you need additional forensic tools, we need to know what they are so we can make sure you're able to ascertain them. ranking member banks, any other questions? >> none? all right. we want to thank you for your service. thank you for being here today. what you do is incredibly important to the safety of our service members. if they don't feel safe, if they don't feel that there's the talent necessary to do the investigations, then we have failed them. so i thank you all for being here and for your participation. this meeting is adjourned weeknights we're featuring american tv programs as a feature of what's available every weekend on c-span3. march is women's history month. tonight we show programs from the lectures in history series which takes viewers in college classrooms inside the country. wesley college professor debunking myths surrounding rosa parks and the montgomery bus boycott. the professor explains that rosa parks was not the first african american woman that refused to give up her seat and the boycott had planning and precedent. she explains why a simplified version has been so widespread. enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. today we're brought to you by these television companies who provide c-span3 to viewers as a public service.

Related Keywords

New York , United States , El Paso , Texas , Alabama , Brockton , Massachusetts , North Carolina , Washington , Honolulu , Hawaii , Fort Hood , Togo , Canada , Wesley College , Pennsylvania , Houston , Canadian , American , Hood Cid , Asia Graham , Omar Lopez , Ford Hood , Vanessa Guillen , Donna Martin ,