adherence of religion play a big role in this whole problem as it has develop ed does the department have any particular section of focus into this area whether both domestically and internationally? >> and one more right here. >> i'm mark rockwell with federal computer week. how is the nature of cyber changes the last qhsr? >> let me take those in order. it's interesting. the statement that during the cold war that the public didn't have much of a role in deterrence, in a sense, though, the entire civil defense mechanism in which individuals were taught what to do and what to act was both for a dprsh a prospective perspective but also to create a deterrent effect. so there were efforts to engage the public in civil defense efforts during the cold war. today with the distributed nature of threats and challenges, the pervasiveness of communications technology, every person has a role and an opportunity to make decisions about actions that can impact the security and resilience of the united states. so efforts like the -- if you see something say something campaign that originated with the new york city transit administration and that has been used by the department of homeland security and brought to a number of different partnerships with jurisdictions around the country are important ways that we engage the public on specific challenges, but i think the underlying point is the important one is that the public must be engaged in all of these activities. one of the key ways that we do that is to share information, to provide ways of acting and also to engage in activities like that review. we wanted to make sure we didn't conduct a review? a vacuum that was for a small set of decision makers but rather could we do a review of the strategic environment, of the risk environment of challenges, vat geez, and make that as public as we can. provide that information to people across the nation so that they can understand the challenges that we face the opportunities that exist in the strategic environment and the ways for individuals to be involved whether that's through organized activities, volunteering, becoming part of civic organizations, non-governmental organizations, or just the actions we take each day either through structured processes like in you see something say something or just individually on their own in their communities with respect to motivations, there's a wide variety of motivations that motivate people to engage in violent acts. obviously ideology is one of those and it's a focus not just for the department but for the u.s. government as a whole. one of the thing we do not note in the review and it's an important finding and something that we want to learn from and help jurisdictions around the country learn from is that there are certain aspects of this challenge that depend on the ideology or what'dology is motivating violence. but acts of mass violence present themselves in similar ways. they present similar challenges to communities and law enforcement and emergency response organizations and they present similar indicators and stressors. and so what can we learn from events of mass violence, those that are motivated by particular ideologies and those that are not motivated by other means or nothing at all to look for common indicators, common intervention points and common ways that we can prepare to most effectively respond. in terms of the cyber risk landscape, i think changes have been dramatic since the last quadrennial review and they'll be dramatic between now and the next quadrennial review. going back to the pervasiveness of education technology, connecting people, the nature of that has changed remarkably over the last four years. and the connection of -- and the use of those technologies to drive the way we conduct our daily lives or business, operate our infrastructure has created huge opportunities but it has led to an increased threat as greater greater numbers of malicious actors seek to exploit that mechanism. it's led to increasing numbers of vulnerabilities. you can't go a week without opening the paper and seeing perhaps previously unknoll vulnerability emerge that needs to be addressed and the interconnected nature of our populations and our infrastructure have increased conditions questions. both direct consequences and the potential for cascading consequences. as we begin to move to an industrial internet and to an internet of things connected to things, machines connected to machine machines doing work, that will only increase. vast opportunities but also increasing vulnerabilities and increasing potential for conditions questions. it will continue to be a top challenge and a source of strategically significant risk going forward. >> secretary cohn you've been more than generous with your time. i want to thank you for coming out to csis this morning and i want to congratulate you on getting ood quadrennial review out. i know the feeling and as i joked with alan beforehand, often when you finish one of these reviews people say "what are you going to work on now?" i know very well that all the challenges, the big challenges remain ahead in the execution and that's a daunting challenge. so please give him a round of applause. [ applause ] if you'll excuse the informality i'm going to introduce our panel moderator from my chair here. we're fortunate to have former assistant secretary paul so stockton here to moderate our panel. he was the assistant secretary for homeland defense and america's security affairs in the department of defense. he also led importantly in september, 2013, he was asked by secretary hagel to co-chair the inspect review of the washington navy yard shootings. he began his career with senator dan ideal patrick moynihan which is one of my favorite facts about him. he's inyesterdaybly accomplish ed -- he's very accomplished and he's going to introduce the panel today. so join me in welcoming paul. >> thank you, kat, for that generous introduction and to csis for hosting this very important event. it's true as asses tonight secretary of defense i had the privilege of bring dod capabilities to bear in support of the homeland security. in superstorm sandy, on the southwest border, many other occasions. i'll be candid with you -- in many cases when we provided by support to the department of homeland security we found that sometimes the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. one component of the department of homeland security was not well integrated with another. it made not only support to the department more difficult but it reflected a broader lack of cohesion across an absolutely vital part of the federal government. that's why secretary johnson's unity of effort initiative is so vital, historic. it's transformational. uni of effort is going to enable department decision making to be much more transparent and much more cohesive, better integrated across planning, programming and budget execution in the department of homeland security. that's an absolutely vital enterprise and the quadrennial homeland security review is going to provide the analytic and strategic foundations that's going to help turn the vision of the unity of effort initiative into reality. and in a moment i'm going to introduce my colleagues and they'll take on particularly important issues that the qhsr illuminates. but before i do that i want to leave you with one thought and that is although secretary johnson's unity of effort initiative is absolutely vital. and just what the department needs it's also insufficient. let me talk about the distinction between unity of effort and what we need in the department which is unity of command. unity of effort is great when no one is in charge. let me give you a prime example from the homeland security enterprise and that is disaster response. governors don't work for the president. governors are sovereign. they're the independently elected chief executives of their states. and so when there's a catastrophe like superstorm sandy, the challenge is how do you bring cohesion together between state capabilities and federal capabilities? for example, state and national guard forces under the command of governors and federal military forces under the command of the president. you do it through unity of effort. i have to say unity of effort is precisely what the department of homeland security feeds today when cohesion is so lacking and when such great opportunities for progress are now under way thanks to the leadership of secretary johnson. necessary but not sufficient because ultimately one person really is in charge of the department of homeland security, that is the secretary of the department. i look forward to the day when unity of effort has been accomplished, when thanks to qhsr we've made progress in the next few years towards unity of effort. i look forward to the day and i look forward to engaging all of you in helping to make this happen. someday there will be unity of command in the department of homeland security and the secretary of the department will exercise the kind of authority that routinely the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and the heads of other federal departments routinely exercise. now let me tour the introduction of the panel. first, david, it's wonder to feel see you again. david is the senior vice president and director of the csis national security program on industry and resources. he's also an adjunct professor at georgetown university and at the lyndon b. johnson school of public affairs and served in the department of defense under four secretaries. geez. you'd think you'd wise up at some point. it's an honor to sit on the panel together with you. >> thank you, paul, for that very kind introduction. you get to serve under a lot of secretaries if you choose those who turn over rapidly in cycles, if you will. i want to look at three things in my comment this is morning. one is how this qhsr is a step -- or whether it's a step in the right direction in maturing and strengthening the department's risk-assessment and planning capabilities if you will and in look at the resources that are aligned with thatn't i want to compare it a bit to other quadrennial reviews because we seem to have a lot of them and whether they're convenient and i want to talk about the unity of effort you made since its inception, the department has had challenges that included a lot of what i would refer to as boundary struggles. this is not border issues, this is bureaucratic boundaries, if you will. it's use to feel remember that somewhere between a fourth and a third of the department of homeland security spending is not on homeland security, it's on government functions that existed long before dhs was created and that just came with those entities when they moved into dhs. so there's an automatic tension, if you will, on that boundary inside dhs himself. more than a third of u.s. government spending on homeland security is not inside the department of homeland security. a big chunk is in dod, some is in the state department, a big chunk is in health and human services and other agencies across the federal government. finally, of course, as has been mentioned by s.e.c. tash cohn and by secretary stockton is large parts of homeland security don't belong to the federal government at all. they're part of state, local, tribal, et cetera. and they never let you forget that because that's the first responder part of it, if you will. forgetting that the real first responders generally are actually members of the general public who happen to be first on the scene. so each of those requires attention to boundary issues, if you will. and is this support for resources or funding or personnel in or out of dhs as well as where inside dhs it fits. so even unity of command inside the department of homeland security is still going to leave you with a host of boundary condition issues with which you have to deal. and the qhsr, i think, has to fit inside that. one of the things we do in my program 1 we look at dhs spending and in particular we look at dhs spending on contracts and grants. i would refer you to a report we released on that just a couple of weeks ago somewhere around 40% to 45% of all of the department of homeland security spending is on contracts or grants so it penetrates into those boundary conditions if you will. so i think this qhsr does a reasonably good job of thinking inside those contexts, if you will. it's also useful, i think, to reflect back on history. many of you were around when the department was first stood up and when the administration proposed creating a department, actually congress, of course, proposed creating it first but the administration had a better idea so it put its own proposals on the table and it was compared to the department the largest reorganization in the u.s. government since the creation of dod. well, keep in mind it took 11 years between the original national security act of 1947 and the department evolving to the structure that it basically has today with combat and commands in charge of forces and the military services in charge of training and equipping and providing those forces. it took nearly 40 years before the structure many place today resulting from the goldwater nichols defense reorganization act of 1986 was passed and took root. so it's useful when you're reviewing dhs to keep that time frame in mind, if you will, in terms of assessments. in comparing the qhsr, both this one and the previous one, to other quadrennial reviews and there's been five inside dod, six if you look at the one that was called the bottom up review and we've had one in the state department and other agencies are picking up the idea it's use to feel do this. one of the basic tensions in place here is how much attention to do you pay to funding constraints? in fact, you will have the department will say that their qdr was informed by budgetary constraints but not constrained by budgetary numbers. now this becomes difficult for some. one of my favorite quotes is pa wall street analyst who says i can't read this report -- referring to the 2014 qhsr, it doesn't have any numbers in it. i'm an english major so i'm used to reading things without number but there's a grain of truth to that. if it doesn't connect to the budget then you have to ask what's the impact, if you will. but the important question is not whether the review or the report is constrained by the budget but in fact what's the important -- the important question is how do the budgets and programs and resources take the tradeoffs that are either explicit or implicit inside the qhsr and reflect those tradeoffs in the budget? and we for that will have to wait until ify-16 budget is submitted next february or march. the good news is that this qhsr, whether be design or result of inertia doesn't matter is perfectly timed to affect that 2016 budget. the omb guidance has already been issued, dhs is assembling that budget. they'll submit it for the office of management and budget review in the next few months and ultimately the president will submit it. that budget, by the way, i would point out is the only one that secretary johnson in his tenure as secretary of homeland security, assuming it only goes to tend of this administration, jan 20, 2017, it's the only budget he will build, defend before the office of management and budget in the congress and actually get to execute. the only one. if he's there for the full two, three years of his term that's the only budget he'll get to do end to end if you will. the timing is perfect and the capability the qhsr provides is useful inout if that. so the value will be how this helps shape the tradeoffs and arrange the priorities in those budgets. and maybe potentially even in ify-15 appropriations the house has marked up there, homeland security appropriations bill, the senate is marking up there this week. they'll reach some kind of agreement and we'll have an appropriation if you will so it's possible some of the priority tradeoffs implicit or explicit in the qhsr will be reflected in the' 15 budget but the place where the department really has to bring to bear is in the '16 budget. i would note, though, it's not good enough guidance. you can read this qhsr and it doesn't tell you all you need to know to make the tradeoffs. there will be additional guidance required inside dhs to reflect that in the budgets. i would also note one of the things i look for in this qhsr and did not find much of is testing those priorities and tradeoffs and all of the risks that were highlighted in sectarian cohn's remarks against the real world through exercises and what we call in the military war games. although they're not -- they're much more than a game there was not much attention to that. and what the implementation shows there. but i think here is where that unity of effort approach becomes critical. it provides a structure in which that kind of guidance if issued and those kinds of exercise test fgs applied can be done appropriately in a timely way to be reflected in the 2016 budget. i was on a study group that looked at how each part of dhs did its own planning and used the results of ma that planning to translate into expenditures of resources to develop capabilities and we did a very nice report, i brought it as a prop here. it sort of meets the bulk requirement. this is printed both sides, about 200 pages here as input to the qhsr. i believe that the final 2010 qhsr itself had maybe one paragraph it was still worthwhile because what it did for the first time was you got all the different parts of dhs to talk to one another about how they turn planning into capabilities if you will. so i thought it was worth while even then. then i picked up the new qhsr and what i saw was this did not just sit ietd l for four years. dhs was using the input from the previous qhsr not just in planning and capabilities, development, but in management issues and a host of other areas and flowed those into the 2014 qhsr. i frankly was first of all -- i tend to be a cynic when it comes to government taking advantage of prior work i'm not sure i've seen this in any other quadrennial review. so the bottom line is this this that this qhsr is a step in the right direction. its real value will be tested by how it translates into budgets and plans and implementation and i think the unity of effort approach offers positive opportunity in that regard but we'll see when the fy-16 budget goes to the congress. i would submit dhs being able to use the risk approach that was outlined in the qhsr as part of its defense of that budget so i can't wait until tify-16 budget comes out. >> thanks, david. now matt fleming. matt is a fellow with the homeland security studies analysis institute and one of the nation's leading scholars, experts on cyber security great to have you on the panel. he worked on cyber issues in the united states department of defense, directed a number of cyber security programs in the past. he's an adjunct professor at georgetown university and has a terrific background. matt, take it away. >> thanks, paul. that's extremely kind of you to say and governor romney. i suppose we're still governor romney i'd like to thank csis for the kind invitation to be here and say that it's a pleasure to see so many faces on the panel here. before i begin i should say my views here today are mine alone and don't represent dhs and my employers. but i'm here to talk about cyber and signer in the qhsr and so i should say that for those of don't follow cyber, these continue to be exciting times in the field of cyber we've had interesting developments with executive order 13636, presidential policy directive 21, both relating to critical infrastructure and cyber security. we've seen the cyber security framework developed byist es an. we've seen an update of the national infrastructure protection plan and all of these things somehow mention or touch on cyber directly or indirectly. certainly there have been many high-profile events. many of us may have been victims of such events, perhaps target, the target breach, any other breach. there seemed to be breaches everyday. the heart bleed issue which may mean something to something people but it was certainly seen as one of the most significant events in recent history. snowden, of course, still hangs around, the implications of edward snowden and his release of information. and i think we live a world and alan touched on many of these things, we live a world in which the internet of things is herish, is certainly coming in which we will have sensors and actuators deployed everywhere, in our fridge, we'll talk to our toaster and our jet engines already talk to the front of the plane but they'll talk to the mother ship and tell the guys on the ground that the star board engine number two is hot and maybe you need a new part in flight. so that means rapid expansion of the attack surface and then we've seen this indictment of five chinese pla operators, whether this goes anywhere is -- you know, we'll see. it's a very exciting time in cyber. i suppose that's a a good thing and a bad thing. so i'm here to talk a little bit about what i see as -- what does a qhsr say about cyber? where do i think we've seen the biggest changes since the last qhsr? and i do have a couple mild criticism which is i may leave until questions. i'd like to start, though, by saying that i'd like to congratulate dhs and what i think is a thoughtful document. and it's the kind of document that at least i know i will be using and digesting and reading and rereading over the course of the next several years as i do my own research for dhs and on homeland security issues. some of you may know chris belavita from the naval post-grad school and he's posted comments on this version essentially throwing praise to dhs and i'd like to align myself with his view s views but in te cyber, alan put up the four main goes of this qhsr on cyber and they're about things like strengthening the security and resilience of critical infrastructure,e ing ting the dot-gov domain and strengthening the ecosystem. now, none of this is necessarily new, these are issues that the department has been working on for several years but it certainly is a perhaps more detailed overview of what the department is doing so in this -- just in thinking about strengthening critical infrastructure, we're talking about increasing information sharing, a very popular phrase but extremely important idea in cyber. increasing situational awareness. and there's discussion some of you may have seen about the idea of a weather map, sort of a real-time weather map for cyber security that dhs talks about. we hear about the -- ensuring the provision of essential service services and this is the point. we don't label something critical infrastructure because that makes us feel good. we have a need in our society for electricity, telecommunications, various other things and what we care about and the reason that we protect critical infrastructure is so that we continue the provision of these essential services. so i think the qhsr brings out this importance in cyber of continuing the provision of essential services. and there's discussion of interdependencies and cascading effects. very important in cyber. you know, we live in a world in which we have very obvious interdependencies but also quite non-obvious interdependencies and so much attention needs to be paid to understanding these things better and their cascading effects and i think this was also highlights in the national infrastructure protection plan, the new version so i think this is a positive. also coordinating purchasing across the federal government. that seems like a good idea perhaps to our budgeting earlier mention of budgeting this will save us some money. deploying cyber tools if you follow cyber at all and dhs you will have heard things like -- words like "einstein" or phrases like "continuous diagnostics and mitigation. requests these are fairly important programs if not extremely important programs to the department and so of course they're called out in this qhsr. we see a little bit more in this version about advancing law enforcement and incident response and reporting capabilities. deterring and disrupting cyber crime and then, of course, this idea of strengthening the cyber ecosystem. how dhs can perhaps work to drive innovation and cost effective solutions throughout the cyber ecosystem, conducting research and development and transitioning the findings of r&d efforts into practice obviously quite important. i would say that in this in this version of the qhsr we see perhaps a clear articulation of the cyber mission. a lot of this stuff was in the last version but it just seems to be a bit more direct in this version. that's a great thing. then we see, of course, as alan mentioned this discussion of public/private partnerships, very important in information sharing and other aspects of cyber. to draw out a little bit more the differences between this and the last qhsr i think one of the most welcome developments is this greater emphasis, more explicit emphasis on critical infrastructure and perhaps this is not surprising given the policy environment with these executive orders and presidential directives but certainly i for one and i work in this field so perhaps i would say this but i for one applaud this focus on critical infrastructure and understanding interdependencies and this idea of cyber physical convergence. this physical harm can be caused through cyber vector. of course cyber harm can be caused through physical vector. all very important. there's a greater discussion of rules and responsibility, particularly with dhs, doj and the department of defense. i eluded to greater emphasis on law enforcement and i would think there's -- i find it as i read it a clearer and deeper articulation of the threat and vulnerability. in the interest of time i have a couple criticisms but i'll leave those to questions. thanks. >> next we have dr. mark fray. mark is a senior associate with the csis homeland security and counterterrorism program. he's also a senior director in the washington office of steptoe and johnson llp. previously dr. frey held senior positions at dhs including chief of staff for the office of policy development and most notably director of the visa waiver program. that's -- that was really something. great achievements, mark, and welcome this morning. >> thanks, paul. it's a pleasure to be here, particularly on this distinguished panel. i'll note before i start i may the b the only person on the panel who's actually an alumnus of dhs and not dod. so at some point you may find me rising to defend the honor of my former organization as we go. i was also involved, at least to a relatively small degree, in the formation of the formation of the first qhsr so i'm going to talk a bit about that and how this new one differs much the way that matt did. my focus will be on the border flows issue that alan highlighted and in some ways that's the easy one in that -- and this is where i go back to the qhsr process. that's one of the areas perhaps in opposition to cyber and then to counterterrorism that ozzie will be talking about where that's a pretty core dhs mission that doesn't have a lot of other players in the space that they have to fight some of these boundary battles with that dave mentioned -- border security, managing the flow of people and goods into another country. that's dhs and it was components of dhs before dhs was established. so a lot of the time we spent in the first qhsr was fighting with some of the -- fighting probably isn't the right word. discussions with our interagency partners on proper roles and responsibilities for things like counterterrorism and cyber security and the debates are still ongoing so border is a little bit easier. it's also worth saying before getting into what this document says that that's also an area where dhs has had a tremendous amount of success. there is now a unified face at the border. there are now programs, particularly the traveller programs that do what alan noted the qhsr is supposed to do which is risk segmentation. so called shrinking the haystack. it's very difficult to find one bad guy or one bad cargo container in the flow of millions upon millions of people or goods. so based on information sharing, international cooperation, that's good. trusted traveller programs like global entry and relatedly pre-check and on the cargo side ct pat, also all very much to the good so operationally dhs has had a lot of success in doing this work. so to transition the current qhsr and whether it can continue success or build upon this success i think the good news is that a lot of that role-setting debate is over and dhs has five core missions and a key role to play in them and in particular it's god the lead role in this border security issue. but i also think that it's become more complicated is not the right word but it's -- one of the things the qhsr does not touch on enough but i think that dhs needs to do more of in practice is this -- what alan talked about. it's providing lip service but how that happens and how dhs leverages its large international footprint and some of its programs. whether it's offering global entry membership to partner countries, whether it's establishing pre-clearance facilities in countries, there hand been to my view as much rhyme or reason as to how those things are established. if you look, for example, at the list of global entry member countries, i defy anyone to find a pattern as to why these countries were chosen. why is panama a member? well, i'm not sure. does germany make sense? the uk make sense? i can see that. but some of these other things don't make sense and why some countries aren't included also doesn't make sense. so i think to the extent that the qhsr can help drive a more coherent and wholistic look at how dhs provides partnerships that would be a good thing and that's one of my main criticisms about how the border section and the flow section is addressed. i also want to follow up a bit on the point that david made in that the proof will be in the pudding. the document sets out a very interesting and useful analytical framework, particularly with respect to borders, dividing the different flows into these three categories, the market driven, the non-market driven, the ideological and the lawful is very useful way of thinking about it and will help drive responses. on one hand the proof will be in how these budgetary decisions are made and it's -- it won't surprise anyone that if you look at the record of the previous qhsr the budget decisions and spending decisions did not track very closely that document. now maybe we've learned from that and hopefully with that under our belt we'll have better success this time but that's where this matters. if not it's a document. it's actually a fairly compelling document, it's a well-written document, particularly for a government document that was the process of god knows how many interagency processes and revisions so it will always be useful but it will only really be effective if it drives these budgetary decision decisions that david mentioned. it will also only be useful if it drives operational decision making and to that point i wanted to touch a little bit on a followon memo that i think was up there when alan was concluding waving his presentation but it's about dhsy campaign plan for u.s. southern borders so this was a follow on memo issued in may. so just a couple months ago following the secretary's unit of effort memo which has gotten quite a bit of attention during the talk and during this panel which i agree is a good start. i think dhs certainly needs more cohesion though i'm not sure, maybe i'm too mess mistic they'll get to unity of command or maybe even need to get to unit of command. that's a separate discussion. the key part about this memo on the dhs-wide intercom poent campaign plan for the southern border is that it explicitly ties this plan to the qhsr and the an lilt i cans and the themes addressed in qhsr and it assigns alan as the assistant secretary for -- as colead for the development of the border plan and how to set outcomes and targets for the border flows as they map back to the qhsr and i also note and i'm sorry alan left because it would great to ask them. that review is supposed to be approved by june 30 so it would be great to know if that's taking place but the broader point is that we will not only see budgetarily but hopefully we will see operationally if the way the qhsr starts talking about -- is talking about thinking about these issues is put into practice by the various component agencies in dhs. i'll make two quick other points and then i will turn it over to ozzie to conclude. and this harkens back to a previous csis discussion on border metrics and technology. i also think of a potential value of the framework established by the qhsr and the border sense is that if it's done right it can help provide us with the metrix thcs we needs the border debate. one of the things bedevilling the entire community forever is how do we measure control of the boarder? what is operational control of the border? what does border security mean? and that has implications operationally and implications legislatively for this immigration debate that we're involved in and all sorts of other reasons. so if you think about the way the qhsr directs us to, that can lead us to coming up with better metrics with respect to these different border flows and that would be a good thing for the wider dhs enterprise. and then the final comment i'll make and maybe this will be something we can talk about during the discussion is is that obviously the qhsr is looking strategically. it's not down in the weeds on these issues and it's not easily applied to issues that pop up that you don't expect or that you haven't prepared for but i would be interested -- i would have asked alan this as well how you would apply the qhsr principles to the current unaccompanied minor issue we're experiencing on the southern border and the way the qhsr analytical framework would inform what is now a crisis on the border and what policy and operational decisions and budgetary decisions should be put forward to solve that. and with that i'll happily take questions when we're done. thanks. >> thank you, marc. now it's my pleasure to introduce ozzie nelson, the excellence of the csis program and homeland security. ozzie, you're responsible for much of that, congratulations and ozzie is now vice president for business development at cross match technologies which you've accomplished so much in your distinguished career. ozzie, welcome today. >> thanks, paul, i appreciate it. it's good to be back. so battle cleanup usually you have bases loaded or nobody's on so i think my colleagues here have cleaned the bases already so i'll try to keep this short. i appreciate the opportunity to be here. the document, i think, secretary cohn accurately pointed out is a demonstration of the maturation of the department and after only ten years it's quite remarkable it's a pretty impressive document. when i sat down the read it i thought it would be underwhelmed, it was the opposite. however there's still a lot to be done and often these documents are the target pinatas for the media and for pundits to talk about how fluffy they are and what hay don't accomplish by they are table stakes to have a coordinated unity of effort. it's the point from which all other actions can take place i'm here to focus on the counterterrorism section and i was thrilled to see that counterterrorism will remain the cornerstone of homeland security. very important. with the killing of bin laden there has been a desire by many to put this nuisance of terrorism behind us and press forward on to the large herb issues of national security. but terrorism unfortunately is here for us to stay. in 2007 the u.s. spend more on its military than the next 13 nations combined. building and maintaining conventional military force is no longer viable for nations or entities that want to have power in this space. they're going to do it asymmetrically. it's a greater return on your investment and asymmetrically means terrorism and militancy, it means cyber and it means wmd which happens to be three of dhs's core missions they've identified. so put on top of that, dhs's mandate of going across 22 departments and agencies from the frool the state and local and then having to protect an infrastructure which they don't own and then do it under the auspices of you're the departments and you're the agencies that interact with the american public more closely than any other department or agency in the u.s. government. it's an incredibly difficult mission. what has made this more difficult in the realm of terrorism is that we've kind of been a victim of our sux says. in many ways the dismantling of the al qaeda core which we all agree has occurred has pushed this threat down to the regional and local levels, which is where we want it. the brilliance of bin laden was that he was able to bring those entities together and into a formulated strategy. now we've pushed it back down. negative of that is it makes it much more difficult. the analogy i use is it's like breaking a glass on the floor. you can pick up the big pieces, you see where the general breaks are but are where are the other pieces you missed and they're difficult to see until you step on them. that's what dhs has with a counterterrorism perspective. the threat remains with regional groups in africa and the issue of lone offenders as dhs calls them inside the united states. the question was what motivates these individuals? it doesn't matter. it can be today, it can be a radical interpretation of a religion and tomorrow it could be a domestic group or it could be something else. we just don't know and you can't single those types of things out. not when you have dhs. you have to be able to protect and prepare for how the threat may unfold that's one of the things i think is good about this document is they talk about how these terrorists are going to potentially attack the united states or how can they threaten us? they talk about the issue of active shooters, ieds. hay talk about the importance of the transportation sector and bring up the forefront of an ind. an improvised nuclear device. if you think 9/11 changed our view of the world, you can only imagine what a nuclear device in washington, d.c. or new york city would change our view of the world. so they have a difficult mission. i'll talk a little bit about risk security. i think lisk risk based security approach is brilliant. we've done it in our lives. dhs is trying to codify it and as documents said they are leaving the u.s. government in this field. we can not protect all people from all things all the time. we have to figure out how the do that. and dhs has implemented a bunch of programs recently to get that done one thing with risk-based security that we have to understand is the american people, one risk-based security mean we eel assume risk. we won't get it all. it mean we eel have priorities which means in the budget psych there will will bes have and have notes. the highest priorities will get the money, lower ones aren't. just a couple -- so i was very happy to see the document take that on one as a former pilot i like lists. so i'm going to wrap up and point out five things i liked about the qhsr and five things i didn't like about it. i love the thoughtfulness and the complexity of the document. i like the fact that they took on the hard issues. they mentioned community policing and things like diffusion centers. those are hard issues and they didn't shy away from them. i like the fact they tried to put definition behind their taxonomy which has been some would say sbi lech chili lazy in the past. we'll have partnerships and information sharing. now they're defining what a partnership means and what are both sides going to get out of that. i think it's forward thinking. they mention things they don't know. they realize they don't have it right and this is only a map is shot in time. i love the document in the back that talks about basic rules of responsibilities. i think we should start every interagency in d.c. with that on the table. and it talks about consolidation, things like diffusion centers and screening centers. they say we need to make internal changes. thing i didn't like, the document is too complex in many ways. they covered everything, it was so thorough and there's still lingering dhs language in ladge there. from a counterterrorism perspective i do not like the term loeb offenders. they are terrorists, they're not offenders. offenders are people that don't pay their parking tickets. they don't answer the questions about how and my panelists have talked about that. lastly, the biggest issue of keeping the department to be the department we want it to be is congressional oversight and they didn't mention that in the document. thank you for the opportunity to be on the panel. >> thank you, ozzie. i promise11:00. all of you are busy, important people, but that does leave us with some time for questions. i had one in my back pocket, but i'm going to defer to all of you. we can start right up in front. >> good morning. i'm a deputy secretary of public security for the commonwealth of virginia. i appreciate and perhaps exemplify the mention of state and local government as part of the homeland security enterprise. i'm interested in concrete suggestions for how we can strengthen unity of effort for those of us occupying the middle and bottom of the space, depending on how one's perspective is calibrated? >> thanks for your leadership in virginia, too. who would like to answer that? >> i'm going to turn to the mission framework in depth, which is this chart towards the back of the ghsr that essentially takes the missions and breaks them down into subgoals, if you will. this is the place where i was particularly saying we need additional guidance on how this is going to translate into resource decisions. i was focusing in terms of the federal budget, but i think the same thing is true, what i would do if i were you is look for the places where that goal aligns, virginia, for instance, needs better interface or resources and go from the bottom up inside the mission framework. that's how i would take this document and turn it into what you do. >> very quickly. >> really quickly, so i think that i have four criticisms of the document, i may or may not get to them. one is this issue is there's a discussion of roles and responsibilities, but cyber, as mark noted, is a team sport. perhaps less so than border security, and i think that that thread could have been pulled a little more to expand on what is it we want state and local, even private citizens, to do. i really would have liked to see more of that. >> thanks. who else has a question? >> jess, could you introduce yourself? >> i'm jesse ionaughty. i'm working with homeland security. i worked previously in the pentagon. i share the perspective of one of the panelists on there are some tremendous successes dhs has had in the years since its creation, yet i think we all acknowledge there are challenges. as i was hearing the commentary, i jotted down a few of the challenges i neated, being a little behind the scenes now, everything from the logistical to multiple different sites, disbursed real estate, we don't have a cadre of homeland security professionals yet. we don't have a gold water nickel that has encouraged the jointness and structure the dod has had the advantage of or a culture of the born purple sort of approach. as well as some guidance documents the dod has had, things like the gas and the j-scap that direct components. that was a long lead-up to my question to the distinguished panel, which is of those and others you note, what do you see as the biggest challenge and were you in the department of homeland security right now, what would you be focus for improving? >> thanks. who would like to take that on? >> this is where being the dhs comes back and bites me. well, i think -- i think it is easy to talk about the problems. i think it's worth, as maybe it was david or paul who said we have to keep perspective on the problems, particularly in the timeline. we are a little over ten years into this reorganization, and in the beginning, it was pitiful. it took years for people to stop saying i'm legacy customs, legacy ims, and even when those issues were solved, you have interagency issues on what is the proper cyber role or the proper chs role or with international programs. so those things are all here as is the fact you can go, you can spend your entire day meeting between the tsa and nak and everywhere else. so all that being said, i actually think that the biggest problem that dhs is facing is not this cohesion, but i think it's getting there, particularly if you put it in historical conte context. i think the problem is there hasn't yet been enough of the internal institution building. thinks that dhs, a lot of things that are successful are successful because senior leadership is focused on it. if they're not focused on them, they tend to sort of happen or not happen, and there's not a strong institutional framework that perhaps had of the more mature departments have to make things run on auto pilot, in a sense, when senior leadership is not asking for daily updates on those issues. >> thanks, dave. we have time for one more question. who's got one? yes, ma'am. >> yes, thank you again for your time. i'm with the center for the study of the presidency in congress. my name is summer fields. i had a question. you used the phrase, wi have sort of less specific interdependencies. i was wondering what you were thinking when you were saying that and if you could go more into that when it comes to cyber. >> i might have said we have obvious and nonobvious democraciys. we know that -- i mean, we all have iphones, like an apple convention here. i need power. i know i need power. but there may be times when i don't realize that actually there is something going on in the background, a connection i haven't thought about or as we see services roll out, for example, that ride the internet, have an internet protocol, the internet of things, i'm focusing on the internet of things right now. lots of services, you can have your home locks and your nest thermostat. well, do we realize that actually, so that means we need comes, perhaps, to turn on the thermostat. in ways we haven't perhaps thought about. and others who are doing the planning haven't thought about. as we move to buy up the devices that are part of this internet of things, are we thinking somebody's glucose monitor or some pacemaker might just require not just a battery on its own but connectivity in some ways. we need to think about the nonobvious. they're more important than critical infrastructure. i hope that helps. >> well, thanks to the distinguished members of the panel. and thanks for all of you. you're citizens, partners in homeland security. thanks for everything you're going to do to drive forward the rezsilience of the united state. on the next washington journal, a look at the major cases before the supreme court this term, with wall street journal reporter gesbraven. brian brown, president of the national organization for marriage, and sarah warbelow from the human rights campaign will debate rulings on same-sex marriage, and we're going to talk to the washington bureau chief of detroit news about the auto industry's record number of vehicle recalls this year. washington journal begins live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. now you can keep in touch with current erents from the nation's capitals using any phone, any time. call for your congressional coverage, public affairs programs and today's washington journal program, and listen to a recap of the day's events at 5:00 p.m. you can also hear audio of the public affairs programs on sundays at noon eastern. 202-626-8888. long distance or phone charges may apply. >> on monday, irs commissioner john koskinen was on capitol hill to answer questions about missing e-mails relating to former irs official lois lerner and his agency's record keeping procedures. the house oversight committee had sought lois lerner's e-mails its in investigation of allegations the irs targeted conservative nonprofit groups. california republican darrell issa chairs the house oversight and government reform committee. if everyone could take their seats please. the committee will come to order. the oversight committee exists to secure two fundamental principles. first, americans have a right to know that the money washington through the irs takes from them is well spent. and second, americans deserve an efficient, effective government that works for them. our duty on the oversight and government reform committee is in fact to protect these rights. our solemn responsibility is to hold government accountable to taxpayers because taxpayers have a right to know what they get from their government. our job is to work tirelessly in partnership with citizen watch dogs to deliver the facts to the american people and bring genuine reform to the federal bureaucracy. would you go ahead -- hold on. i'll do it this way. thank you. without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the committee at any time without objection, so ordered. the committee meets today as we continue our effort to get the truth and the full truth on the obstruction by the irs and the targeting of americans because of their conservative political beliefs. when the irs commissioner john koskinen appeared before this committee in march, he promised that he would produce what this committee had made its top priority, all of lois lerner's e-mails. the commissioner made these promises without any qualification or limitation. he even reiterated that statement to the ranking member when asked. would you please go ahead and play the video for reflection and memory. >> i requested that you produce all of lois lerner's e-mails to this committee. she won't talk to us, so these e-mails are the next best substitute. >> all we're asking is give us the e-mails. >> our subpoena says all of lois lerner's e-mails. >> when we say all, we want every single e-mail in the time period in the subpoena that was sent to you. >> we're talking about lois lerner, all of her e-mails. how long will it take you to produce lois lerner's e-mails that don't involve 6103 material from january of 2010? >> since lois lerner didn't comply with our questions, we need all of those e-mails. >> when you have people in positions of authority and responsibility that are expressing commentary on government e-mail, i think we ought to be entitled to all of them. >> will you commit to provide all of the e-mails. >> yes, as i said, we never said we wouldn't produce the e-mails. >> if you want to provide all, and i take you at your word, that you want to provide all, this would be something you would get off the table as quickly as possible. >> are you or are you not going to provide this committee all of lois lerner's e-mails? >> we are already -- >> yes -- >> yes, we will do that. >> for the record, on behalf of people on both sides who have spoken, lois lerner's e-mails, all of lois lerner's e-mails is the highest current priority of this committee. it will remain so as long as i'm chairman. >> the gentleman, the commission has said, he's willing to produce the documents. we've got almost every member now asking for the documents. >> february subpoena asks for all e-mails. >> you understand the committee views lerner's e-mails as the highest priority. >> are you going to provide the documents for lois lerner? >> yes. >> that were subpoenas? >> yes. >> the committee requested all of lois lerner's e-mails. commissioner told us he would provide all of lois lerner's e-mails. we requested them over a year ago. we in fact subpoenaed them in august in order to make it clear that we were not being complied with. and again, a new one when you became commissioner in february of 2014. transparency cleary did not compel the irs to tell the truth about lois lerner's lost e-mails. you worked to cover up the fact that there were missing e-mails. and came forward to fess up only on friday afternoon after you had effectively been caught red handed. i'm struck that your acknowledgment of missing lois lerner e-mails came just two weeks after we had found some of them at the justice department. when you were looking for e-mails, one of the questions today will be, did you look at the justice department, where she had sent over 1.1 million documents, including some that were 6103? in other words, prohibited to be released documents? did you ever give the committee the courtesy of a direct communication about missing e-mails after your false or misleading testimony? instead, your staff shared a communication you made to a senate committee controlled by the president's party. in your previous testimony, you said it might take years, where believe two years, to deliver all of these e-mails. welcome back. it hasn't been two years. did you hope you could run out the clock on this scandal? another question. perhaps you thought congress would never realize that there were missing e-mails until we found them at the justice department, perhaps. commissioner, i called you to testify tonight because the american people deserve answers about what happened to lois lerner's e-mails and why the irs hid this for years. this hiding did not begin, and i repeat, did not begin on your watch. clearly, the missing documents were known by many people who have jobs at the irs today, under your predecessor and your predecessor's predecessor. the fact that lois lerner's e-mails were ever transferred out of the exclusive custody of the irs so that they could be lost or destroyed by lois lerner should concern all of us. the federal records act, and we'll meet tomorrow with the archivists, the federal records act envisions that important documents will be maintained, not just for investigations of congress, but in fact, perpetuity for the benefit of the american people. this event in history, like watergate, like teapot dome, and like many other historic events, will be studied by future generations without the benefit of many of the thoughts and actions of lois lerner and others at the irs as a result of your organization's failure. i subpoenaed you here tonight because frankly i'm sick and tired of your game playing in response to congressional oversight. you, commissioner, are the president's hand picked man to restore trust and accountability at the irs. you testified under oath in march that you would produce all of lois lerner's e-mails before the committee. before you testified, you took an oath you'll take again tonight, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. mr. commissioner, at a minimum, you did not tell the whole truth that you knew on that day. you gave your commitment to produce all e-mails to the committee. you gave your word, sir. and we are just a little questioning what your word is worth if in fact you can not enlightening about what you know that is germane to our inquiry, whether or not it is explicitly asked. do we have to grill you for days or weeks or months with every possible question, every possible way something could be asked, or will the meaning of a question mean you will to the best of your ability give us a true and complete answer? the american people have no trust in the irs by comparison to just a few years ago. the american people have never loved the irs. no one does love the organization that takes your taxes and if they don't feel you treated them -- they don't feel they got the right amount, they come back and have huge power over your lives. it's hard to love the irs, but it should not be hard to trust the irs. the american people deserve this agency, which was previously believed to be nonpartisan, they need to be able to trust that it will once again become nonpartisan, nonpolitical. your agency has a set of rules for taxpayers and apparently another set of rules for themselves. the american people understand if they cannot prove that they did the right thing on their tax return five, six, and seven years ago, they will be disallowed and pay taxes with penalty. in fact, you maintain only six months of record and then apparently count on people, good and bad, to maintain documents they think are important beyond that, and you do so without safeguards to protect the american people from the loss of those documents. commissioner, tonight you will say you have produced thousands of documents. it will be an impressive number. quite frankly, that production is pushing a button and printing documents out and then having people scratch out almost everything of value in many cases. it is not producing the documents that you don't want to produce. the documents that embarrass you. the fact is it's the last documents, not the first documents that do us good. the documents we receive the night before we're going to depose somebody that often tell us something we have waited months or years for. i know tonight will be difficult, and it deserves to be difficult for both sides. we have a problem with you, and you have a problem with maintaining your credibility. again, you promised to produce the documents. you did not. you promised to be forthcoming and candid, you were not. in our first meeting, my subcommittee chairman who also will be making an opening statement, mr. jordan, irritated you because you felt he questioned your integrity. i defended you at that time. and i quite frankly gave you a bit of an apology that he meant no harm. it was just his style. tonight, quite frankly, i wish i could take that back, and i wish i could say what i'll say to you tonight. you believe you earn trust before you came here. and it was yours to lose. i believe you needed to earn our trust and you failed at that task. either way, the american people do not believe the irs is dealing fairly with them in this investigation. with that, i recognize the ranking member for his opening statement. >> i want to get right down to the heart of the accusation republicans have been making for the past week. it is interesting that you have been accused of false testimony or misleading testimony. and been accused actually of a crime. what are we really saying? and what is it the public entity is saying? they're saying lois lerner essentially, essentially destroyed her e-mails, and that irs officials helped her cover it up. chairman issa has been leading the charge. here are some of the accusations he's made. june 13th, issa suggested this was, quote, a nefarious conduct that went much higher than lois lerner. end of quote. on june 18th, he said, quote, the e-mails of a prominent official don't just disappear without a trace unless that was the intension. end of quote. on june 19th, he said mr mr. lerner, quote, made the decision not to have this drive recovered, end of quote. and just this morning he said, quote, the justice department, the irs, and the white house are interested in her succeeding in hiding what she's hiding, end of quote. chairman issa has made these accusations on national television, without first obtaining a briefing from i.t. officials at the irs who could have explained what really happened. he made them before a hearing for the irs commissioner. mr. ckoskinen testified last friday before the ways and means committee. now that we have the facts, they tell a vastly different story. truth, whole truth, nothing but the truth. our committee has obtained no evidence to support chairman issa's claim that lois lerner intentionally destroyed her e-mails. to the contrary, we have now obtained contemporaneous evidence from 2011 showing the exact opposite. this was a technological problem with her computer. truth, whole truth, nothing but the truth. and mr. koskinen's testimony last friday, he walked through e-mail after e-mail for 2011, during which ms. lerner sought help from the i.t. staff at the irs and they went to great lengths to recover her data, but at the end of the process, they could not do so. mr. koskinen also testified last week that the irs took extraordinary steps, the extraordinary step of sending ms. lerner's hard drive to experts in the forensic lab at the irs criminal investigation division, but even they could not recover her data. the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. on august 5th, 2011, ms. lerner received an e-mail with the bad news. and it said this, and i quote. unfortunately, the news is not good. it was bad, which made your data unrecoverable. i'm very sorry. everyone involved tried their best, end of quote. if anyone wants the actual evidence of what happened in this case, now we have it. i ask unanimous consent of all these e-mails from july 19th, july 20th, august 1st and august 5th be entered into the record. >> without objection, any lois lerner e-mails any member wants to be placed in the record, be placed in the record in the next seven days. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> these e-mails are all from 2011. well before any congressional investigation began. and they show that ms. lerner's computer crashed before she was informed that irs employees in cincinnati were using inappropriate search terms, according to the inspector general. i didn't say that, inspector general. now, we can take at issue why the irs did not have back-up for the data, as mr. koskinen testified last week, irs policy in 2011 was to recycle back-up tapes after six months to save money. he also explained that the policy was changed in 2013 to save all back-up tapes. the fact is that there are lo long-standing problems with electronic record keeping at federal agencies. the bush administration lost millions, millions of e-mails. relating to the u.s. attorney firings, the outing of covert cia agent valerie plame, and other investigations. millions. in 2007, the white house spokeswoman dana perino admitted they lost 5 million e-mails. 5 million. and she said at the time, quote, we screwed up. and we're trying to fix it. end of quote. there's been some progress since then, but i have always believed we need to do more. i have always believed we could do better. that why nearly a year and a half ago, i introduced the electronic message act. it would require federal agencies to preserve e-mails electronically. although the committee voted on a bipartisan basis to approve my legislation, it is language that said, the house republicans have declined to bring it to the floor for a vote. i believe our committee's work should be a responsible effort to obtain the facts, and a responsibility effort to find the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. it should not be an unseeming race against other republican to hold the hearing in front of cameras and it should not be a ludicrous competition but some sound bite based on the least amount of evidence. in this case, republicans have been trying desperately and unsuccessfully for more than a year to link this scand the white house. i sincerely hope we'll turn to constructionive legislation with concrete resolutions to help federal agencies run more effectively and efficiently. with that, mr. chairman, i yield back. >> i thank the gentleman. i make note for the record in today's briefing, a briefing we asked for a week ago and were denied repeatedly. in today's briefing, after we sent interrogatory questions to the commission, they said they were answer orally, which they did not. however, in today's briefing when asked, can you assure us that lois lerner did not intentionally crash her hard drive, they could not verify that she did or didn't. can you assure us that there was nothing nefarious in the loss by lois lerner of her e-mails, and your cio could not answer definiti definitively, so we still have a lot of facts to do. of course. >> just before today's hearing, both the democratic and republican -- at a briefing from the officer, a career i.t. professional. while he was not involved in the original 2011 examination of ms. lerner's hard drive, he has reviewed the documents and the response to it. he was asked, do you have any reason to believe that ms. lerner intentionally crashed her hard drive. he responded, and this is a quote. i have no reason to believe it and haven't seen anything that would say that she did that, no, end of kwoes. he also told the committee, ms. lerner was insistent in trying to recover whatever documents she could. high further stated, i have no indication there was anything nefarious about the loss of ms. lerner's e-mails and when asked if he was, quote, aware of anyone at the irs intentionally destroying documents that are relevant to an investigation, he said, quote, absolutely not. end of quote. thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> thank you. i might note for the record as i go to the chairman of the subcommit athat we sent you those interrogatories 48 hours plus ago so we would not need to have an extensive long hearing. it's likely we'll have you back after those are fully answered since the briefing today in no way addressed those interrogatories. i go to mr. jordan. >> first they denied it, mr. chairman. two years ago, she met with staff and said there's no targeting going on. doug schulman said there's no targeting, i can assure you there's no targeting. then they tried to spin it, may 10th, in an unprecedented fashion. lois lerner at a bar association speech with a planted question tried to put her spin on the story. then they tried to blame someone else. wasn't us. two rogue agents in cincinnati. then they said the ig's report is plaued. and now, mr. chairman, and now, they hide the evidence. this is as old as the hills. any third rate b-actor crime drama follows the same script. the bad guys denies it, fibs, blames something else, tells the police you have the wrong guy, and he said officer, i didn't throw the gun in the river. i don't know what happened to the murder weapon. this would be laughable if it weren't so serious. here's one big difference. the common criminal on the street and this scandal, one huge, important difference. the fat guy on the street doesn't get to have his friends run the investigation. i will talk about this until we get to the truth. the fact that barbara boxerman, a max out contributor of the president's campaign is running the investigation is a joke. it is wrong. the fact that the fbi leaks to the wall street journal than no one is going to be prosecuted is wrong, and the fact that the president of the united states goes on national television and says there's no corruption, not even a smidgen, is wrong. the bad guy doesn't get to have his friends run the investigation like we see here. here's the important point, mr. chairman. i have been hoping that someone in this administration would have the courage to step up and say it's time for a special prosecutor. dallas morning news said it today. it's time for one. five weeks ago, 26 republicans had time to vote. i would hope if nothing else happened in tonight's hearing, i would hope the guy who heads the agency where the targeting of people for exercising their first amendment rights took place, i would hope at a minimum that guy, to show his independence, to show he really wants to establish some credibility back to the agency, would have to courage to do what 26 republicans did five weeks ago, say it's time for a special prosecutor so we can get to the truth and past the sham of investigation the dejustice department is doing. i yield back. >> would the gentleman yield to mr. turner? >> i'd be happy to yield. >> okay. we go to the gentleman from virginia, mr. connelly. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. koskinen, you and those watching this hearing now understand that the stage is set. this is about theater. there's a presumption of innocence, civility, respect for an honored public servant serving his country once again are out the window because there's an agenda that presupposes some guilt that is based in part on supposition, on paranoia, on conspiracy theory, all of which fires up the base of the other party and plays well on right-wing media outlets. at the expense, of course, of the truth. at the expense of any semblance of bipartisan coop rag. at the pence of trying to fix problems. you don't think for a minute, mr. koskinen, part of the solution here is to provide the irs is more resources to address its i.t. problem? you don't think for a minute that the solution contemplated might volve more resources from more irs agents to try to deal with the backlog of tax exempt locations, or money laid on the table by the government. because for idealogical reasons, those are beyond the pale. then we come to your honor, mr. koskinen. i first met you when we were worried about something called y-2k in 1999, 1998, 2000. it was an i.t. problem. we were worried at the stroke of midnight 2000, our banking systems would collapse. red lights would go off, all of our computers went awry. we took measurement to make sure that didn't happen. you were the y2k czar. i saw then and i see now an honorable public servant who cared about the country. he served republican as well as democratic administrations and was cited explicitly, including in the bush administration, for his exemplary service and for his integrity and personal honor. the fact that you would be subjected tonight to the barrage of an innuendo and accusation backed up by nothing, for the purpose of political theater, is to me reckless and disgraceful and brings enormous dishonor on this committee. i want you to know personally, mr. koskinen, there are a number of us who still honor your public service, who still respect your integrity and who understand this dynamic and are willing to call it out for what it is. so i hope none of that shakes your faith and your values and in your years of service. i hope you will continual your tenure at irs to clean up what problems there are and try to make the irs more accessible, accountable and effective agency on behalf of the taxpayers of the country. that's why you undertook a thankless assignment. thank you for your service, mr. koskinen, and thank you for being here. i yield back. >> thank the gentleman. i ask unanimous consent that hr-24 be placed in the record at this time. we go to our one and only witness for this evening. john ckoskinen. all members are to be sworn. will you please rise and take the oath. raise your right hand. a little higher. thank you. do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you will give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? >> i do. >> thank you. please be seated. let the report reflect the witness answered in the affirmative. you're the only witness. you certainly have some explaining to do. take such time as you need. >> thank you. chairman issa, ranking member cummings and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this evening to provide you with an update on recent irs document production to congress. the irs over the past year made a massive document production and response to inquiries from congress relating to the investigation of the processing and review of applications for tax exempt status as described in the may 2013 report from the treasury inspector general for tax administration. this committee has received as noted over 600,000 pages of material, redacted to protect taxpayer information. the tax writing committees have received over 535,000 pages of unredacted material. as of last friday, the tax writing committee has had more than 27,000 e-mails from ms. lerner's computer account and more than 18,000 e-mails from other custoedian's accounts for which she was an author or recipient. i understand this committee and the other investigators were provided beginning last fall with copies of e-mails indicating that ms. lerner had experienced difficulties with her computer three years ago. it should be clear no one keeping this information from congress. the irs expected to complete its collection of e-mails by the end of the month. we will complete redaction of the e-mails and produce them to the committee. at that time, this committee will have all the e-mails, 43,000 of them, we have from ms. lerner's account from a period january 2009 to may 2013. in addition, this commission will have 24,000 lerner e-mails from other custoedian accounts. in the course of responding to congressional accounts, the irs in february reviewed the e-mail available from her custodial e-mail account that was limited to search terms and identified the possibility of an issue because of the date distribution of the e-mail was not easy. it's not clear if it was overlooked or had other issues involved. they have identified documents that indicated ms. lerner had experienced a computer failure in 2011. in mid-march 2014, the irs focused on redacting materials for the nontax writers and processing the rest of ms. lerner's e-mails. the review team learned additional facts regarding ms. lerner's computer crash in 2011 which occurred long before the investigations opened. we learned as noted in 2011, the irs information technology division had tried using multiple processes at ms. lerner's request to recover the information stored on her company's harddrive. a series of e-mails resounds the sequence of events in 2011. a front line manager in it. reported i have checked with the technician and he still has your drive. he wanted to exhaust all avenues to get the data. unfortunately, after receiving assistance from several highly skilled technicians including hp experts, he still cannot uncover the data. this was august 1st, 2011, as a last resort, we sent your hard drive to the ci forensic lab to get dita recovery. >> ms. lerner said unfortunately, the news is not good. it made your data unrecoverable. i'm very sorry. everybody involved tried their best. end quote. a lot of the issue, the irs took muptple steps to insure nose e-mails had been lost in the investigation is producing as much e-mail they have for which ms. lerner was an author or a recipient. as the search was concluding i asked those working on the system if any other users had reported any difficulty. the congress and treasury inspector general for tax administration, it was determined last week that several additional custodians may have experienced hard drive failures in the search period. it's not unusual for computers anywhere to fail, and in light of the age of the kwumpt they have to use and the budget cuts in the last four years. since january 1, over 2,000 employees have suffered hard drive crashes. it's important to remember that a hard drive failure does not automatically mean that all or any e-mails have been lost or cannot be reconstituted. we're still assessing what affect if any they had on a computers of any custodians although some apparently lost no e-mails alt all. the question is what e-mails outside the agency prior to april 11, 2011, are not in the 24,000 lois lerner e-mails send to other employees in that period. last week, i understand the white house and the department of treasury stated they were providing all their lois lerner e-mails which should help fill the gaps and answer the question. the general for the tax investigation has begun an investigation into the matter and it will provide an independent review of the matter. we're committed to working cooperatively and transparently with this committee and six other investigations going on and we'll continue to provide you with updates. this concludes my testimony. i'll be happy to take your questions. >> thank you. commissioner, do you remember the name broelio cosealio? >> i do not. >> do you ever hear the name gregory roseman? >> no. >> well, caselio is now on trial for murdering his wife. but before that, this committee discovered he had wrongfully received $500 million in contracts, i.t. contracts from the irs. and gregory roseman took the fifth. he was one of your employees who helped get him that contract. when you go home tomorrow, the next day, you might want to see congressman duckworth asking how his ankle, that he hurt at the prep school, feels because in fact, he claimed to be a disabled veteran some 27 years later and his old college buddy, a life-long friend, helped him get that contract. at that time and now, we rely on the ability to recover e-mails as part of the chain of discovery. tig daw, russell george, your i.t. relies on that. tomorrow, we'll hear from the head of the national archives, he relied on your federal law. the question i have for you is how can we expect you have servers that run microsoft exchange. it captures every e-mail in and out. how can we sit here and expect to trust an organization in the c drive, the local hard drive of lois lerner, is supposed to be the only place that e-mail existed? >> it is not the only place e-mail existed. there's e-mail on her e-mail system on the server that has been found and produced. any hard copy has been or will be provided to this committee. >> right, so in 2011 when her hard drive failed, if you were properly backing up all information under the federal information action, which would include information she had selected, you would have had all those e-mails in your backup, wouldn't you? >> they're not official records under any official records act. >> would you put your mike pointed toward you so we can hear? >> sorry about that. >> no problem. >> the bottom line is that you apparently were not capturing all e-mails. you were allowing her to delete e-mails but retain e-mails on her c drive -- i want to make sure we get it straight. six months later, she moved them and you were no longer in possession of those, is that correct? >> no. >> what is correct? >> each employee is limited to 6,000 e-mails they can hold on their e-mail account which is stored on the agency's server. the reason there's a limitation is the agency does not have servers large enough to sustain the retention of all e-mails. a decision was made two years ago when people looked at that and it was determined it would cost from $10 million to $30 million so all e-mails on the server would be conserved. because of the agency restraints -- >> $1.18 billion in i.t. is your budget. $1.18 billion. on $1.18 billion, isn't the retention of key documents that the american people need to count on, like whether or not they're being honestly treated by your employees and especially somebody at such a high level, isn't that in fact a priority that should allow for retention. >> the american people should believe if they don't have the resources to pay their taxes they shouldn't pay their taxes because if the irs doesn't have the resources they won't keep records. they're a question of whether or not you have maintained key documents. let me go into one thing in my limited time. you came here and you said, put it on the board, as you did today, you were going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. you saw that montage in the opening. you knew there was a problem with some of lois lerner's e-mails when you came to testify in march. isn't that true? >> i knew i had been told there was an issue no one knew the ramifications of. >> did you reasonably believe at least one e-mail might have been lost? >> no, i did not know the basis. >> you knoo there was a problem. >> somebody said there's an odd development in the way the e-mails are showing up. we're going to pull all of her e-mails and investigate it. the first time i knew e-mails had been lost from her account was in april. >> when you knew in april you said you were going to give us all of it, you went and told political appointees, the treasury, didn't you -- >> i did not. >> you did not? who did you tell in april that you knew? >> i didn't tell anybody. i had no one i was going to tell. >> you didn't tell your ig some of the documents weren't going to be provided? or did you cause someone to find out alt the white house, at treasury, or at your ig. >> i kdid not. if you have evidence, i would be happy to see. >> i asked a question. >> i answered it. you told us all e-mails you provided when we discovered all e-mails would not be provided, you did not come back and inform us, is that correct? >> all the e-mails we have will be provided. i did not say i would provide you with e-mails that disappeared. i said i would provide all the e-mails. we are providing all the e-mails. the fact that three years ago, some of them, not all, but some were not available, i never said i would provide you e-mails we didn't have. in fact, we are going to provide you 24,000 e-mails -- >> my time has expired and i have lost my patience with you. we now go to the ranking member. i want you to talk about resources. you started to say something about resources. >> we have a wide -- >> how does that affect what you do? >> what it affects is we have a wide range of responsibilities. the i.t. budget has been cut by over $100 million over the last four years. this year's budget for 2014 required $300 million just for the implementation of the affordable care act. congress provided us zero. that meant that $300 million to implement a statutory mandate had to be taken from other i.t. programs. that's been our challenge for the last three or four years. >> commissioner koskinen, last week, many members of congress including our own chairman suggested that lois lerner intentionally crashed her computer to destroy e-mails, but last friday, you testified about the facts. you provided congress with evidence from 2011, contemporaneous, by the way, e-mails showing exactly the opposite, that this was a technological problem. since some members of congress are still pushing this accusation, i want to walk through these e-mails and let me ask to put up the slides. on july 19th, 2011, lois lerner e-mailed associate chief information officer and asked for help in recovering her hard drive. quote, taking advantage of your offer to try to recapture my lost personal files. my computer skills are pretty basic. nothing fancy. but there were some documents in the file that are irreplaceable. whatever you can do to help is greatly appreciated, end of quote. commissioner koskinen, is that right? is that accurate? >> that's an e-mail that has been found and been produced, yes. >> next slide. later that day, that i.t. employee sought help from the field director of the customer support division. he wrote, quote, if she can't fix it, nobody can. is that a document that you -- part of a document you produced. >> yes. >> the field director e-mails ms. lerner and said i checked with the technician and he still has your drive. he wanted to exhaust all avenues to recover the data before sending it to the hard drive cemetery. unfortunately, after receiving assistance from several highly skilled technicians including hp experts, he still cannot recover the data. is that a part of a document that you provided -- >> yes. >> next slide, with argue 21st 2011, the field director wrote again to ms. lerner and informed her as a last resort, we sent your hard drive to the forensic lab to attempt recovery. mr. koskinen, ci stands for criminal investigation division in irs, and what do they do in the forensic lab in that division? >> they're an expert in that lab taking hard drives in computers that have been seized by criminals, tax evaders and others and reconstituting e-mails wherever necessary. >> is this step necessary when an employee computer crashes, do you do that? >> no, it's extraordinary that the irs would send the hard drive to ci for help. >> why did you do that? >> ms. lerner, i'm advised insisted all possible efforts be made. >> despite these efforts, a field director e-mails ms. lerner with the results. next slide, please. quote, unfortunately, the news is not good. these scratches on the hard drive were bad which made the data unrecoverable. i'm sorry, everyone involved tried their best. the technical experts concluded three years ago that the specters on the hard drive were bad. is that accurate. >> that's what the e-mail says. you have contreat evidence of what happened in 2011. my republican colleagues just want to ignore them. they want to pretend they don't exist. those stubborn facts. but they do exist. and they show this was not intentional. this was not nefarnefarious. are you aware of any evidence, documents, e-mails, i remind you you're under oath. i also remind you you have been accused of false statements. are you aware of any evidence, documents, e-mail, or other information from i.t. professionals that calls into question the accuracy and leg legitmousty of the e-mails. >> no. >> and finally, just so everyone is clear. when you testified before this committee on march 26th, did you know about this e-mail claim? did you know ms. lerner's e-mails were lost forever? >> no. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. we now go to the gentleman from florida, mr. mica. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i have known the commissioner for many years. and i know him to be a good public servant. i'm a little bit baffled. i note, john, i think that you're probably in a position of the guy at the end of the parade with a broom and shovel here. and in a very difficult situati situation. let me, if i can, take people back to the history of this. as for you commissioner, this targeting began somewhere in march or april of 2010. in june of 2010, chairman issa alerted irs, and it made an inquiry. in february of 2011, lois lerner sent an e-mail to irs employees stating that the tea party is a very dangerous matter. matter. then the chairman of the committee with jurisdiction in june of 2011, june 3rd, dave camp, who you have spent time with recently, sent a letter to the irs saying that the heat really started to come on at that point. now, the entire administration and one of the biggest scandals in government was back during water gate when 18 minutes of tape was lost and somehow between june 3rd and june 13th, lois lerner's hard drive crashes and is on in ten days. it's not just a couple of days or 18 minutes like rose mary wood's had the misfortune of moving but 27 months, is that correct, of hard drive that's lost. >> all of e-mails -- >> from june of '09 to april of 2011. so it raises many questions. now you came on in december, right, john? >> yes, the end of december. >> and they briefed you -- you were briefed about this whole situation the beginning, i guess, of january. in february, you testified too that you learned that there was a problem recovering the e-mails. >> what i learned was that there was an issue with her e-mails. that there was a problem with the dates. >> but then in march what troubles me is that you came to us and you said last week we informed this committee and others that we believe we've completed our production to the ways and means committee and all the documents that we asked for. in light of all the documents i hope the investigations can now be concluded in the very near future. you went through and told us how much money you spent and how many documents did you produce but nowhere did we hear until just a few days ago that the hard drive crashed and all of this was unrecoverable. again, the information we have is that they briefed you in february. you gave us this testimony in march and never spoke to this. >> right. in february as i said they briefed me with the e-mails that they pulled suggest to the search terms that there was an issue with the date issues. i did not know that there was a hard drive crash. >> john, i gave you the benefit of the doubt. i gave you all what you gave us in march. this is your testimony and even what you gave us today conflicts. so it raises questions because it appears you knew and others knew. >> others knew. >> and congress wasn't informed until just recently. i don't have much time. i understand i just learned a little bit about this sonasoft back up contractor. they were retained -- are you familiar with them to back up e-mails? >> i was not familiar with them but i do the information that was provided to me today. >> well, i have the same information. i understand that they were dismissed in 2011 and they had started in 2005 and actually, in their advertisements bragged about how they could retain e-mails. do you know if they have a back-up is that exists? >> they were under the contract of the chief of the irs in an interternal recovery program that would allow you to move e-mails from one system to another as a back up. that contract was terminated when the irs chief counsel upgraded to outlook 2010 and that ualternate system was no longer needed. >> but they were in place. they had the responsibility for back-up between i think, 2005 to 2011. >> that was for the chief counsel. for 3,000 employees and the chief counsel. >> and that might exist. >> if that exists it's already been searched for. >> did you ask that company for that information? >> the company didn't have any data on their servers. the data was all inside the irs. >> and that was gone, too. everything we had. that was a disaster recovery system for the chief counsel. any data that the chief counsel has or that the irs has has been searched. >> mr. chairman -- we now go to the gentlelady. >> thank you mr. chairman. like mr. mica, i have known you before coming to congress. since coming to congress, i have been impressed, not a little bit by the confidence you have conspired in republican and democratic presidents alike. it's as if they saved you for jobs that others couldn't do, didn't have the guts to do, or didn't have the integrity to do. you are well known on both sides of the aisle as the government's most versatile turn around artists on agencies that are in trouble turn to john koskinen, therefore, i began my series of questions simply by offering you an apology. i believe you deserve one. you deserve one because of accusations designed to sacrifice the representation of a public service with a plotless representation for political advantage without a centilla and i use my words advise iedly, without evidence. it's vile enough to look a man in the face and accuse him of perjury without submitting any evidence. it is much worse when all of the evidence supports the version of the facts of the man you are facing. whether it is the lerner crash occurred well before this investigation began, whether it's been confirmed by the criminalization lab, all the evidence is on your side. i want to point out for the record that the line of conspiracy hunting has shifted with the lerner crash. for the longest time, the line of questioning was about one subject alone. so we've moved from one scapegoat to another. we've just moved off of the notion that this was all a conspiracy directed on behalf of the house. that also, without a crumb of evidence. lacking evidence, the crash provides new fodder. just for the record mr. koskinen, have you identified any evidence since you have been commissioner that irs employees before you came or now were apart of a conspiracy to intentionally target the president's political enemies? no. i have done no indications. i have read the ig's record that said inappropriate criteria were used to identify organizations were review and the ig had nine recommendations. we've accepted all of these recommendations. i think it's important for the public to know whoever they are will be treated fairly be it republicans, democrats, they should understand they should be treated fairly. if there's an issue it's because something in their tax return. if somebody else had that issue they would get the same response from the irs. i think it's critical that the public have that confidence. we are doing everything to restore that confidence. >> 41 individuals have testified that there's no evidence. now we are onto the second conspiracy. so did the ig. do you recall that the id also testified and i will quote the inspecton general when asked by the ways and means committee was there any evidence of political motivation by the white house, he said -- did you have any evidence, he said we did not, sir. so i just want to say that your strong representation, your character should hold you in good stead as you face baseless accusations. when a man faces accusations and no evidence is put before him i think he's got nothing to worry about. thank you very much for your extraordinary service to the people of the united states. would the gentlelady field. >> i appreciate it. i just wonder if that quote from march we can find lois lerner's e-mails. would the commissioner stand behind that statement or would he have to qualify it by we will have to find some of lois lerner's i mails. >> i'm sure he was trying to find all of lower learner's e-mails. before the crash began before it began. >> her crash came after we began investigating. >> therefore, what, mr. chairman? >> there foredocuments disappeared after. >> and therefore she did what or he did what. >> that's what we're here to learn. i repeat. there's no evidence that this man had nothing to do withy

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