.. >> we're going to talk and stretch out in future dialogues, eventually to be reflected in the national strategy. then i'm going to outline for you some really hard questions that i need help answering. these are the questions that gao gave us a while ago. [laughter] >> just kidding.

a big hello. some colleagues in the gao. there you are. back there. [laughter] >> now they are hard questions. they are not the onlies that i'm going to present today. there's a different wet. in the remaining time, we'll move to questions and answers. you'll find us in dark offices, on the whiteboards, or out in the field working to understand the customer requirements and solutions. >> as an engineer, diving head first into the details of the challenge, and lifting up to solve the problem. this is the approach that i'm bringing to building beyond the foundation, accelerating the delivery of the information sharing environment.

it's useful to sent them in a model. i'd like to think about concrete examples. i'm going to give you four examples to help process what's here today. number one, the law enforcement officer is part of the routine traffic stop. and it's notified to contact the terrorists greening center to evaluate a potential match against the terrorists watch list. number two, an intelligence analyst using the national library of intelligence or the platform to develop new counterterrorism intelligence products with fellow analyst across the ic. three, coast guard personnel, using department of homeland security homeland security information network, and fema's web emergency operating center. the same assets in both. manmade and natural disasters. finally, the local law enforcement analyst, and fbi intelligence analyst,

co-located. both developing finished intelligence products as well as supporting specific fbi terrorism task force investigations. back to the main part of my remarks. first up is the outline of how we got here. as an engineer, i make an effort to stay away from authorities discussions. after five years in washington, and three months as pm, i've learned to start with authorities and mandate. in 2004, the 9/11 commission delivered their report. the commission prescribed the need to transform government and brought to light multiple challenges around connecting the dots. i'm not a big fan of that term. because it over simplifies the challenges that face us as a community. it does not provide a good frame through the problems that we are facing and the information overload problem. the 9/11 commission provised

that information be shared horizontally across networks that transcend individual agencies. they called for a decentralized network model which they will own their database but allow to be searchable across the lines. it will move to a data centric model, the new framework would control access to the data, not the network, system, or database. it called for a government-wide effort to address the local, policy, and technical issues that would arise from this time of system. the idea was to have someone looking across the agencies, creating the trusted information network to facilitate the shares of terrorism-related information. excuse me. this information of the adopted from the 2004 marco port, -- marco report. i know because i reread the report for the third time this

summer at the beach. we have some folks from arco in the audience, many of you participated in the task force. it's a very good piece of work. this concept, as well as the management, decentralize information, privacy protections, extensibility to private partners and a focus on prevention into the terrorism prevention act of 2004. or irtpa. they called it -- can you give me a drum roll please? [laughter] >> the information sharing environment. yeah. the congress agreed with the 9/11 commission that horizontal information required government-wide authority. they created the program manager to plan for, over see the build out, and manage the information sharing environment, and granted that rule to the government wide authority. the pmi was told to walk across

five core communities, intelligence, defense, foreign affairs, law enforcement, and homeland security. to enable the effective sharing of terrorism-related information. the recognition that this effort had to have horizontal capabilities lay as much in the understanding of the technical challenges which are substantial, not the main event. it's the legal, policy, and organizational hurdles which need to be overcome for process. the implementing the recommendations of 2007 included the homeland security and wmd information. the 9/11 act also enhanced the authorities in two important ways. first it enhanced the ability to issue government-wide standards, procedures, guidelines, instructions, and functional standards. second, it mandated that we identify, resolve with the information partners disputes.

many people refer to this as the honest broker function. okay. i'm done channeling my inner policy. let's pause for a second. [laughter] >> now for the second part of the as is. what's been done today? a strong foundation has been built. i'm going to describe a number of steps we've taken together as a government. in 2005, the presidential guidelines directed the ise to leverage existing systems to the maximum extent possible and directed the common information sharing standards be developed. i need to pause here and emphasize the implications of these requirements. it's essential to understand that the ise is owned and operated by mission partners, federal, state, local, tribal, and territory agencies. they are partners in the private sector and internationally. we at the pmise, we don't build

anything. we are not operational. we are to find common and help them implement standards and drive resolution of the policy issues. the actual point of implementation, the heavy lift, is with the agencyies. they are the engines that deliver the ise. they are the stars of the show. the guidelines also directed us to address the proliferation of sensitive, but unclassified markings, develop the framework for privacy, civil rights, protections, and develop the approach to share with state, local, and tribal partners. much of this work was captured in the 2007 national strategy for information sharing. and in subsequent ise annual reports. you can find them on the web site, www.ise.gov. i want to highlight four areas. first up, privacy and civil liberties. the ise is a trust partnership

between all levels of government and the private sector. in order to participate in the ise, the law requires the federal departments and agencies and our nonfederal partners have privacy protections as the ise guidelines. next, unclassified information. it will standardize more than 100 unique markings used for sensitive and classified information. these are the marks that you see on top of documents. foy, for official use only, and others. of course, you'd only see those markings if you were an government employee. the standardization is a critical step. that wasn't a joke, ozzie. [laughter] next we developed the ise architecture that connected the diverse systems and distributed

systems across the ise. i'm not going to get into that. i am available for command performances. finally, common information sharing standards that document the rules, conditions, guidelines, and characteristics of production methods and products supporting information sharing. the program was successfully used to standardize the activity reporting, more on that later. there are so many other critical foundation blocks to the ise. some examples are performance measures, identity management, access controls, information assurance, performance measures, culture, training, you can find the rest of the story at the community web site. beyond the ise foundational enableers, much work has been done in areas of the sharing with state, local, territorial partners. we work closely, and i'd like to

acknowledge the stake holders in the nonfederal arena. we worked with a lot of individuals and organizations. i'm going to miss someone. i want to try to highlight our partners. we work with the criminal intelligence coordinating counsel, great organization. was foundational to our work with fusion centers and activity reports. the global justice sharing information. just as i saw five years ago, i was partnering with the state and locals through the global. national governor association, governors homeland security, international associations chiefs of police, major city chiefs association, national sheriffs association, national association of state cios, chief information officers, national association of counties, owners and operators of critical infrastructure, and many, many, many others. open government in action. the result was a series of recommendation to enhance the sharing of terrorism information

across all levels of government in the private sector. one highlight of the work is the establishment of robust network of state and major urban area fusion centers. dhs, the department of homeland security is the executive agent with the lead on this part of the framework. fusion centers are the critical notes that connect, state, local, tribal, and territorial partners with the information sharing environment. through these fusion centers, state and major urban areas will be able to 1) receive classified and unclassified federal information, including alerts, warnings, notifications, 2) conduct risk assessments, understanding the consequences based on their specific areas of operation, 3) further deseminate information to state, local, and private sector entities within their jurisdiction, and 4) gather state and local information to other localities,

states, and the federal government. more about this later. it's best manifested through the suspicious activity reporting initiative. the fusion centers will operate these capables within the scope of privacy policies. currently, they have approveed privacy up from 22 last month. they are at least as comprehensive as the guidelines. with dhs's leadership we have solid lines to get the rest done. the framework has described as laid out in the useful detail in the 2007 national strategy for information sharing, the appendix of the strategies defines the roles and responsibilities, it's in the process of being implemented. bart johnson, dhs principal undersecretary for intelligence and analysis is leading the

efforts under secretary napolitano. having spent most of his career with the new york state police in the regional fusion center. just as he was getting it humming, the feds hired him away. he participating in the panel immediately following my talk. we have also seen significant information sharing improvements with an individual agencies. many of these are documented, many more are out there waiting to be celebrated. i'd like to highlight two examples from the intelligence community that incidentally, my office had a little direct involvement in accomplishing. that's the nice thing about government wide; right? seriously, a core part of any responsibility is identifying, grading, and extenting the practices across the ise. this is the soft power. there's no authority that's specific to this. actually, it's very, very powerful. i learned that lesson when i was at the department of justice

working at the national information exchange for omb as the chief architect. the most significant change in terrorism-related sharing was the establishment of the nctc, russ is a respected leader in our community. he was recognized as a galileo award finalist for information sharing. further, the intelligence community has let information integration by implementing intelligence community, or acd501, the retrieval of information. this policy promotes responsible information sharing by distinguishing between discovery and dissemination or atravel. it's good best practice and something that has potential to look at mbus more broadly. before we turn our attention to

the future, there's one last element of the ise strategy to round out the as is. and it's important to highlight, because it helps make the ise that much more real and that much more meaningful. in response to the 2007 national strategy, we convened several federal agencies, law enforcement organization, local police departments and others to develop a unified activity around unified process around suspicious authority reporting to our czar. this unified process builds on what law enforcement has been doing for years, gathering information, regarding behaviors and incident associated with criminal activity, and it establishes a standardized process whereby that information can be shared among agencies to help protect and prevent terrorism-related activity. tom o'reilly who reported talked

about nsi. tom is a friend and someone i'm privileged to call a mentor. in march of this year, the attorney general announced the establishment of a office at bureau of justice assistant to facilitate the implementation across all levels of government and named tom the director. tom's charge is to roll out the nsi nationwide to make sure that privacy and civil rights are strengthened. you maybe federal due to secretary napolitano's "see something, say something" campaign. this is the public awareness of nsi. the nsi is one of our most significant accomplishments today and an example of the ise in action. the interrelated set of policies, mission processes and missions, which engage the enablers to power the women and men on the frontline to share

the information that they need to keep our country safe. and i have late breaking news. so i'm going to make a little news today. a little news. it's important and it's good. the fbi is already well integrated. last week the fbi extended their integration to improve sharing of czar, suspicious activity reporters with the generated work. while unclass if id, they are being worked and contained in fbi's classified systems and database. it's a great example of being data centric in our sharing and sharing federal data with over levels of government. these czars are being shared with the fusion centers, state and local fusion centers through the nsi. which brings us to the 2b part of my presentation, and the purpose of this forum. my office is leading the process with mission partners of

developing the national information sharing environment strategy. this includes assuming the 2007 national strategy for information sharing and bringing forward the foundational pieces of the document as it relates to information sharing and tribal and territorial partners. we are working with the mission partners to conduct the conversations. that's where we are hear today and endangering in a process to do that. the discovery process will assist us in developing a target vision and reporting strategies to build beyond the foundation and accelerate the delivery of the information sharing environment. to set the stage for the speakers and dialogue we'll be having for the rest of the day, i'd like to briefly describe three ideas. the first idea, the president's national security strategy calls for a whole government approach to build national capacity based

on applying and integrating the efforts of all agencies with the national security mission. to affectively support the whole of government, our working hypothesis is the ise must one, empower the front line with the information that they need to do their jobs. two, deliver data centric capabilities that support reuse. third, strengthen privacy, civil liberties, and civil rights protection. fourth, align with technology and information management trends. and finally, leverage standards-based innovation. to make the ise work, we need to focus on data, sharing it, discoverying with protecting it, fusing it, and reusing it. we need an approach in line with the mandate for the ise. i also highlighted standards base innovation. we can dramatically improve price performance, increase

agility, decrease risk, and accelerate the deployment by effectively working with our partners in industry. this is such a critical aspect. i'm anxious to have the conversation. we have the technology panel today, i'm looking forward to that. >> the second idea. the opening panel is focused on opening to the totality of terrorism-related sharing as the directed by law. there are several aspects of the idea. in the past, we've advanced initiatives in the federal to state and local information sharing space. the 2007 national strategy was an excellent job laying out roles and responsibilities in this regard. building from our foundation, we want to enhance and extent partnerships across all five communities, defense, intelligence, law enforcement, homeland security, foreign affairs. i'm looking forward to hearing from today's speakers as well as members of the audience on this

topic. also, the ise mission's partners rarely have the ability to segregate the activities or the terrorists-related information. mission partners ask us for complete solutions. it's reasonable and right request. such needs need to be factored into the strategy going forward. finally, the third idea is the role of sourcing, integrating, and sharing best practices on the road to transformation. for example, our core standard framework, the national information exchange model is used well beyond the national security space. another example of the potential of the scale ise 501 type of the discovery schemes more broadly. we're looking for feedback and discussion. are these the right ideas? what refinements are necessary? and what's the best way to clarify the target vision and enable incremental process? we need to be working in an

incremental way and need to make changes that deliver value every day. this brings us to the last part of my remarks today. we're in the home stretch. stay with me. we need your help to better understand the landscape so the ise assists our mission partners in the comprehensive and inclusive solutions to the issue they face daily. in addition to reacting to the ideas i just highlighted, here are a few questions for the speakers in today's conference to consider. so this is -- get out your pens. there will be a test. we'll collect the papers at the end; right, ozzie? >> id grade -- i'll grade them. >> what are the best practices? what should we be looking at? what's the best way to enable discovery? how do we balance dataing a base

-- data aggregation? is it impossible to have a single plan for the ise? or do we need to take a heterogeneous approach? it's the variability and expressing those policies. how do we get past that issue? are there successful models to build from around the legal restrictions and policies across the mains? how do we leverage open government type ideas to accelerate planning and delivery of the ise? how do we celebrate the progress in spreading adoption of best practices? is there a role for challenges? what are the concrete immediate steps that can be taken to accelerate change this year? finally, what are the measures and metrics we should adopt

across the ise to measure the value that we create together. well, thank you for listening to my remarks. i hope i kept my inner geek in check. i've set the scene to allow us to talk about the future. what the ise needs to be to support the counterterrorism mission, and building beyond the foundation, how do we accelerate delivery of the information sharing environment. i welcome your questions, remarks, and commentary. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> well, thank you kshemendra. we appreciate your remarks, my reflection is a change of pace having been in the policy world for probably a bit too long in my naval career. getting remarks, there was

substance in there. and i'm not used to that. >> too much? >> no, it was great. i was like wow. we are getting facts, details, and a plan. how refreshing. then you also gave us homework. those of you who thought you were going to get a free lunch -- >> yeah, that's open government in action. >> we are going to take those questions and try to address those for you. another reminder to everyone here, in addition to c-span here, we also are live web casting this on our web site, there's at link at www.ise.gov. this will be available for download on itunes if you want to go over kshemendra's very -- i mean this -- substantive remarks. it's refreshing -- i think people like to roll up their sleeves and tackle problems as opposed in the theory of things. we appreciate that. we are going to go ahead and go into questions and answers.

we have -- because this is web cast we ask that you please -- we'll have microphones coming around. please state your name and affiliation if you have one, so we can under the context. and kshemendra is going to answer it. i get to ask the first one. that's the big thing that i get out of this is the first question. you know, just reading your speech and some of the information that you sent in advance and just some of the stuff that we have done with ise, i'm struck by your charter. in many ways, it's similar to our good friend russ. similar to the charter where you had control of nothing but responsible for a lot. responsibility for coordination, and sometimes limited ability to compel. to i guess i would ask you kshemendra, what do you see as maybe your one or two dislimits to greatest challenges facing you in this new position that you have as pmise? >> thank, ozzie. can folks here me?

do i need to pull it up closer? here we go. you are right about the nature of the challenge of the information sharing environment. it's inheritly a horizontal problem. it reminds me of my time at omb. i was in the office of the government of it there. internally, we call it the office of horizon call government. it's working horizontally in a vertical world. i think that's where the greatest opportunity for innovation and government services and a lot of our charges in counterterrorism is a core example. counterterrorism is a cross boundary. it's national in scope. lots of folks have to come together out of different disciplines, different organizations. how do you work across boundaries? that's really the cutting edge, you know, i think of public service and, you know i'm just honored to be in a place to work on that problem. >> yeah, and i found my time

rewarding at nctc because of what you just described. that's great. i look forward to it. okay. we'll go ahead and go to the questions. who wants to go with the second question? audience? gentleman in the blue shirt back there please. >> i'm harbert. my question is very simple. do you see any particular laws that have to be changed in order for you to be successful? >> so that's a great question. do i see any laws that need to be changed? i can answer that a couple of ways. one in in terms of the authorities of my office and the mandate that the law gives to the pmise and the authorities, i think we're all set that way. from my perspective, it's a matter of mainly execution, of bringing together mission partners, finding the common

mission and execution is the, you know, the core challenge of that phrase. there are gating policy issue that is are out there; right? there is almost like the old analogy. you are draining the swamp and you see stumps. you see some more. you got to work those issues. so i think, you know, in terms of that side of the equation. there's always opportunities, perhaps, to look at the legal and policy frameworks. that's not where i'm at right now. you know, in terms of the authorities of the office we are all fine. >> for those of you who are going to stay for just a couple of panels and leave, i would encourage you to stay for the last panel. that's the civil liberties and civil rights, which is sure to be an exciting and interesting discussion. one the,s why we stuck it near the end. okay. next question. next question? gentleman up here in the blue suit. >> i can say that in d.c.;

right? gentleman in the blue suit? >> steve cartrell, director of national intelligence. we're a partner with you. but one the more interesting things that i've found is recently out on a trip, other than being asked why i followed you to the same location, it was another location where the comment was made as we tackle the problemset and look at the interagency, state, tribal, local, and other partners, one the individuals that i was discussing this with compared it to the nato of america, he said. because we all speak different languages, we come from different cultures, for example, you made reference to the significant activity report, and, of course, if we take that acronym of czar, search and rescue, special access required. again, using the same terms, but meaning completely different things.

i was wondering if you can relate on what you've seen in the short time. >> sure, thanks, steve. steve is a partner. working on the airspace domain awareness and other domain awareness types of issue. this is what we -- the term that we use is semantic interoperaability. it's where we started, frankly, when going back and rewinding the clock five years ago. the ise was standing up. i was over at the department of justice with the national information exchange model, the heart of which was creating the rosetta stone between the different functional domains. somebody is working here, and have a certain definition, or the financial domain looking at financial czar. we use the same for bank secrecy act and suspicious activity

reports. there's a way to map those terms so you could translate. you wouldn't use the same. two people communicating in different domains and organization, the message meant the same thing on both sides of the communication. we've come a far way in terms of the theory and the practice of how to do that. you know, and by using more formal methods as we've done, and then actually functioning those and i'd even go a step further, working with our partners in industry. one the examples is the suspicious activity reporting. it's got the standards that are based on the rosetta stone-type concept in the information exchange, and now industry is implementing it. a couple of major vendors sell the box offering that's compliance. getting the benefits of standardization in the terms of acquisition. really, that's critical. think about the front line. a first responder has a radio. they want to be able to press the button. they want don't to worry about

the complexity; right? that's the challenge. one reason is we have to drive it in the front line where we mask that complexity. yeah, it's a core challenge. it's one we've been working on for some time. >> next question. gentleman in the blue shirt in the middle. please. >> hi, scott gleick with the senate judiciary committee. i want to follow up on harvey's question. have you and anyone else in the government asked the agency to compile a risk or identify the specific privacy law that is are impacted on the environments. do we have a baseline for which we can assess there are any laws that need to be changed. do we have it compiled across the agency? >> i have some colleagues in the office and the audience here on the specifics. so if one of you wants to help

out, that's great. let me answer the question this way. we have been working on privacy guidelines for quite some time. the information sharing and the privacy guidelines. through that process, we've been working with chief privacy officers across the ise participating agent sis. through that process, we have developed the guidelines and agencies are implementing privacy policies that are as comprehensive as our privacy guidelines. so i can maybe follow up with you. okay, alex. do you want to? >> yeah, i'm alex joel. i'm the civil liberties protection officer for the director of national intelligence. i work very closely with kshemendra, i care a privacy committee that overseeing the implementation. one the provisions is for the

officers if they identify particular laws or policies that might need to be changed to float those up. we have a process in place to identify them. we have not yet though, gathered a list of any kind like that. but we have a process in place to do so. >> it's very difficult at times in that's not only in this panel, but the government about crcl. it's a very challenging thing to do. but good point on the panel as well. we'll take that for future reference. next question. any more questions? well, i have another question, you know, kshemendra again, in substance in your speech, you talked about some things for the future. you asked us some questions and gave us some homework to do today. but i guess i would ask back to you, what in your vision was ise look like one year, five years, and twenty years from now?

what do you want to accomplish? what do you see? >> so that's a good question. we have several initiatives under way that are bearing fruit. let me describe those. you know, i see bart johnson in the back. he's on the panel. immediately following, he's leading a process where we are doing the baseline capability assessment across the 72 fusion centers. and that report should be coming up shortly. we've identified certain critical operating capabilities, and we expect those operating capabilities will get mitigated. we have a robust measured infrastructure of the state and local fusion centers looking across things like privacy, or the ability to receive classified information or some of the other critical operating capabilities that i described earlier. that's one thing in the next year is substantial process on the network of state and major urban area fusion centers. the nationwide czar initiative, earlier this summer, secretary

napolitano kicked off the see something, say something campaign. it's well received. we are ramping up the czar initiative across the country. we'll have, i believe, the majority of states actually integrated into the initiative and there's lots of and anecdotl evidence. a big is interconnection of the so-called sbu, sensitive and unclassified networks. this has been a core refrain from law enforcement, homeland security, first responder, state and local types. that the different federal networks don't operate as well as as they should. we are seeing that. we have delivered a lot of capabilities over the last little while, documented in the annual report. you don't have all of the different passwords. it's easier to get access. they can get the databases on.

the homeland security network and so on. those are just some examples of incremental progress that we are driving. longer term, i think i'm going to defer that. i'll come back to answer that question if you will have me. i want to defer that. because i'm hoping to hear from the audience about where we think we want to go. i would say that i -- i think within five yearsing with the idea that we are data centric is, i think, a real estate more than it's kind of a future. >> speaking of data ken -- data centric, i'd love to address the terms megatagging and other things that me as an engineer don't understand and the nsi architecture. i think we had a good question right here though. >> good morning, christina from the homeland security and defense business council. i don't admire your job.

i think you have a tremendous amount of work to do just to figure out how we can share information currently. but to follow on to your question about the future, how is social mapping or almost offensive data collection playing into the future of the circumstances -- of the ise. i think we are collecting information, we collect a tremendous amount. sorting that and sharing that is our first priority. going forward to face tomorrow's battles, how are we using the social networking and mapping tool that is are being developed? >> so a great example of using the web 2.0 technology is the a-space application inside the intelligence community. it's a wiki collaboration platform that's very useful for different intelligence analyst to be able to collaborate and share information. you know, our charge is yes, the information sharing is

collaboration around information. you know, there's the unstructured information and the social sort of thing. i think that's a critical part of the information sharing that is effective social media information. and, you know, the a-space is a great example of that. >> great. any additional questions? anyone else? yes, sir. right in front here. wait for the microphone. i'm sorry. >> peter sharman, minor corporation. one perception of the problem faced by the international security generally is that there is a very high ratio of noise to signal in all of this data that we are collecting. could you address a little bit how the various initiatives that will promote interoperaability both at the vice level and at the semantic level would also

help the problem of extracting the necessary signals from the abundant noise? >> yeah, that's a great question. the question is how do we raise the signal and decrease the noise? and this is part of the reason why the connecting the dots metaphor is not so useful. because it doesn't get to the quality of the dots; right? and, you know, and establish best practice around information management as working up stream. trying to, you know, at the point of collection getting the data in it's clean as possible format. also the different tagging. see how you describe the data. megataging is distributors around the data. so the extent that that tagging is well designed. it supports downstream comparison and so a great example is with the suspicious activity reporting initiative that i talked about earlier. a key part of the work was getting all of the different communities to degree on standard code lists for

describing behavior-based activity or you call it a car, you call it a vehicle; right? no, no, we're going to call it a car. right. things like that. those are some of the examples for how we think about that issue. but it's the core issue. you know, it's about sharing and discovery of information, but discovery only works if the information is described in consistent ways from the point of view in the person that's trying to discover; right? there's the standardization issue. fusion only works if you are able to correlate data. that implies the high level of quality. the data quality issue is a core issue and needs to be engineered into the solution. it can't be dealt with as an after thought. >> yes, ma'am. right in front here. >> hi, adrian lapoint. at one point at least, in 2007,

when i was more familiar with what your office was doing, attribute-based access was the mechanism to determine who would be able to discover, as opposed to access information. is that still the approach and if so, how's it going? if not, what approach are you taking? >> so the question is attribute-based access control. how do we, you know, make sure that somebody that's accessing the data has the proper authorization, you know, to access the data. some refer to that has as authorized use. it's the right idea. attribute-based access control. the challenge coming in that the policies to describe do you have access -- the right to access this information. some of the policies and reinsurance policies, some might be a u.s. persons rule, some might be, you know, a variety of other rule that is are coming out of different domains and

agencies that are described in different ways that would make it difficult to automate the evaluation of those rules to make a judgment, you know, in real time. let's go to the issue of looking across the different policies. there's a degree of harmonization. those policies can be automated in a consistent way across the ise. technology, it works, it's established. doing it at scale and across the different domains, that becomes the hard issue. we actually did a pilot with nist over the last year. i think we described it in our annual report. the hard part wasn't the technology. that's all -- you know, that all works pretty well. it was the effort taken to take, you know, text-based policies that weren't written with an eye towards automation and turning them into, you know, rules. is that actually a valid

expression of that policy that will satisfy, you know, legal and decision makers; right? and in some ways, this is similar to the journey that we went through as the country. now we accept digital significants. it look a long time for, you know, the legal and cultural to catch with up the technology. it was ready well in advance of the wide-based market support. i see it as an analogy. our challenge is to try to accelerate that by working with our partners in the policy community and else where. >> yes. right. >> hi, i'm wendy walsh, you mentioned cultural and talked about it. what are you finding as far as looking at the issues of trust and culture, and how can we built that in our information exchange environment?

>> thank you so much for asking about culture and trust. these are core issues. one the things i've found refreshing in my time at public service, there's a commitment to sharing. i've seen that commitment grow in the last five years that i've been working in the federal government. and looking across mission partners, you know, there's a commitment to sharing. it becomes dealing with the legitimate policy issues; right that sort of get in the way sometimes. or the need to express the policy issues and negotiate them because we are coming up with the different domains and things like that. i see a lot of sharing. from a cultural perspective, we are ready to take the next step from need to share well right and this comes to the ideas like establishing a learning culture,

having metrics around how we share to help inform operational and management activity. so one the ideas that we are trying to pursue is part of the national strategy here. what does it mean to have a learning culture around sharing? how do we make sure we have more cross cutting metrics that are shared on similar capabilities, technical, or mission processes. you know, simple example is i talked about the spu networks, interoperaability network. we want to count the users in the network. whether it's dni link, or the state-owned risk net in a consistent way. how many users? it gets complex to make sure you are counting. you want to be precise about it. you got to do the deflection of duplicates. then you have to say, okay, i

want to measure how often the networks are used? how many of the uses are accessed? these are simple but slightly complicated when you want to have the same precise measure coming from operations and entities. collecting those kinds of measures gives feedback; right? feedback that can derive changes in a data-driven way. that helps you with the idea of a learning culture. we are looking at other activities to explore the learning culture idea. >> sir? >> hi, i'm bruce walker from northop. there's another use for the word discovery in the legal community. i just wonder whether this horizontal integration that you talk about is potentially

subject to a court order or some other change in our legal system that pieces the vail so to speak and open it is all up for examination and discovery for support of somebody's defense. and i don't know if y'all have thought through the unintended consequences of the application of the technology at that level. but it seems to me, we maybe exposed here in a way that would be very hard to fix once the doors open. >> yeah, so the question is about discovery. yeah, that's a really good question. people are aware of that issue. so there's an awareness of the issue and, you know, it manifests itself in a lot of different ways. there is an awareness of that issue. you know, one of the aspects of the information sharing environment that was called for in law and it is important to providing confidence to people that policies, whether they are policies around strengthening privacy, civil liberties, civil

rights, or policies around information assurance, or other information sharing policies, are effectively implemented is the auditing capabilities. making sure that different activity across the information sharing environment is logged in a high integrity way that is consistent across different participates in the ise so that you can look across and understand what's going on and understand the policies and stuff are being followed. >> now we are starting to get to the good questions. any other questions from the audience? good questions. kshemendra again, the really why we are doing this, again, these are great questions. these are the questions that ise wants us to address. instead of building the strategy and the vacuum in their government offices, they are coming to the -- to us, the public, you know, the industry, the government, the people that have to work in the different

department agencies, the professional organizations, state and local governments, and saying give us -- what are the questions that we need to answer this in strategy, and what are some of the concern that is we need to take into account. i think it's critical. i think it's very important. so again we need to keep that in mind that we are doing a good job here today for the ise team and trying to help them out and get the very, very critical issues addressed in there. any additional questions? all right. dan? >> the pm is an enlabeller, you talked about getting to the point where you have best practices. can you envision getting to the point where the pm gets to the best practices and actually gets to the how, it starts recommending best practices, for example, for encryption, or for

ano, -- when does it get to the point, if ever, doing a little bit more of the how in terms of how it tells groups to do things? >> the question is when we get to the how. we are doing that today, actually. we do that at the business process level. you used the functioning at the business process exchange. there's a certain business process that's mandated and sharing it. we're doing it in terms of the segments. there are a set of standards around for the sbu networks and for our other initiatives in similar kinds of things. so i think we are doing it now. and i see us being more prescriptive in the future. right, that's the powers of

standard-based innovation. one the core challenges that we have, when you look across the ise, it's a huge space. lots of participates, federal agencies, state, local, private, and territorial, it's a huge space. to the extent that we can help standardize some, at exchange; right? not the internal processes. so people can mesh what they are doing and we can work with our partners in industry, here's a standard. there's the business process, the technical level. it allows the mariners -- allows the mariner -- partner to make them more accessible. there's 18,000 police departments. we have very decentralized from the law enforcement perspective. you get past the major cities, the very big forces, it gets to be very challenging for small,

mid-sized police departments to effectively integrate. because they can't invest in customized institution solutions. they need to have solutions that are standard spaced. that's part of what we want to do is become increasingly proscriptive. not in a vacuum, but with our mission partners. we are not out in front. we are bringing them together. coming to agreement and leverages industry. so that, you know, and working with industry so that we can bring those kinds of solutions, you know, to bear. >> okay. great. any other questions? okay. we'll take a short break and we'll reconvene here at 9:45. i'd like to note this is the first major speak at the pmise. i think you set a high bar with the substantive speech. i hope it continues in that

trend. it's very useful for those of us that are trying to help get our arms around this. let's give kshemendra a warm round of applause please. [applause] [applause] >> the center for strategic and international studies for washington, d.c. continuing hosting this discussion on the new information sharing environment. it facilitates informal information sharing between state, local, and federal governments. state represents, homeland security, the state department, and the information sharing department are included. >> wow. that's fast. go ahead, take your time. get your last bagel, coffee,

orange juice. while you are headed back, we'll get into the substantive remarks. i'll highlight a couple of points. one the things that kshemendra asked me to point out, he currently has this massive charter. and he has -- anyone want to guess how many people work in ise, less than or greater than 50. >> less than. >> less than or greater than 20. >> less than. >> less than or greater than 10. less. they are hiring. if you are looking for a government job, contracting job, kshemendra, only qualified applicants, please, that leaves me out. please contract the ise folks. second, we also -- the great irony of life learned that the streaming, live streaming of this on the csi web site and

pmise web site is not accessible by the intelligence community. [laughter] >> so we would encourage all of you from the intelligence community to use your home computers to download the podcast later and look at it in format. lastly, i want to point out one individual, a couple of individual that is we have here. they'll probably hate me. some folks have been working the information sharing for a long, long time. one of them has been very instructal and been working overtime since 12/25. mike from the staff. they are not speaking. it's important that they have here and to recognize the efforts they are doing at this level. we have so many people and the star-studded panel to talk about the issue. thank you both for your efforts. [applause] [applause]

>> this is a phenomenal panel. it really is. some of these individuals has been here before at csis. they are each keynote panelist, speakers in and of themselves. the fact that we have four of them together is just quite a testament to their commitment to this issue. and we're very fortunate to have them here. we organize the international to domestic. if it doesn't make sense, i'm sorry. everyone, you would have received a packet. it has the details bio. i'm going to give a brief introduction and then we'll start off with russ' remarks. first ever, russ travers. he manages nctc sharing initiatives. he's been there since the beginning. to the right of him is kirit amin.

he's the director of the counselors at the state department. he managed all of the information technology systems, no small task. next up is gil kerlikowske, director of the drug control policy. we know what the drug czar does. we are honored to have him back. also for repeat performance, is bart johnson. he's principal deputy undersecretary at the department of homeland security. :

>> some like to talk about pipes. some like to talk about business culture, and some like to talk about all three. i'll try to be concrete and focus on nect's role specifically and address what i believe to be the current state of information sharing across the community. i think it's an important question because if you go back to the attempted bombing of northwest flight 253 on christmas day, there was talk of information sharing, but frankly, i think it was pretty muddled and that information sharing was worse now than it was before 9/11, and i flat out

disagree with that. i'll give you a practitioner practitioners' per specifickive. -- perspective. fact number one. 12/25 was not a 9/11-like information sharing problem at all. there were two key pieces of information regarding this and those two pieces of information were broadly shared across the entire counterterrorism community. they both could have been found with a properly constructed google-like search, but they were not because the community didn't address either document. they didn't find them important in the overall mass of information. that's a big problem, but it's not in information sharing problem. fact two. by any octoberive standard, there is more information being shared with more people in a

timely manner than in any point in our history. that is a fact. if you look at every major plot disrupted over the last six or seven or eight years, the information sharing played a dramatic role. in some cases it was federal to federal, federal to nonfederal, or u.s. government to allied. we are getting pretty good at this. fact number three, despite relatively positive trends, there is still clearly work to be done. you'll hear from my colleague on a number of different aspects we need to improve on, and there's always room for improvement. i would say, however, as a result of the good work that has been done over the last 7 or 8 years across the united states government and our partners, the low-hanging fruit is gone, and i think what we have is some very difficult issues to address. i want to build on those three facts and attempt to address two

follow-up questions. first, why is this so hard? you will often hear, why can't we just give all the analysts the information? i think the answer to that question is really pretty easy. is there anyone in this room that would advocate complete unfedderred sharing of u.s. person's information? i kind of doubt it. secondly, do we believe that we should abide by the law? the question came up earlier. court restrictions on information or privacy act or bank secrecy act or systems of record notice, there are many legitimate legal restrictions on information flow, and that will always be the case. thirdly, our foreign partners, our critical foreign partners give us information. they may well put restrictions on how that information is shared within the united states government.

if we want their information, we abide by their restrictions. lastly, suggested by the discovery question in a talk, what is information sharing with prejudice hearings or prejudice ongoing operations? you may have a good cause to share some of that information with some people, but there are distinct limitations on how broadly it goes. it seems to be self-evident there's always going to be impediments on the sharing of information. if that's the case, that takes me to the second question. how do we best proceed on the implementation of the ise with the restraints? i think the answer is not to flood the system with more information, and i think frankly, we have a little bit of the car before the horse. i think we need to focus first on mission, roles and responsibilities, who does what should guide who gets what.

in general, i think that means that we need to focus on a more sophisticateed definition of what analysis is that covers a range of speedometers within the government -- responsibilities within the government. frips, it would -- for instance, it would seem to me those charging for finding relationships need the broadest form of access to promote discovery. on the other hand, some analysts are responsible for largely a situational awareness function. they don't need raw data. what they need is the all-source finished judgments to form their own equation and decide what actions need to be taken. in general, it seems to me if you decide between and among the analysis, you have a reason basis for who should get what information. in closing, i think what i'll do is take a page and pose a few

additional questions i think we all need to address. given the nature of the threat, how do we think about privacy when the foreign and domestic divide doesn't mean very much anymore? extraordinary difficult question. secondly, what do we mean by domestic intelligence, and how do we share it? it's going to be the subject of a conference tomorrow as you probably know. thirdly, my personal thing, how do we go about discovering those relationships when we have that sea of the data, and that was the 12/25 problem. those are the kinds of question bedenverring all of us in looking for an improved goal of the information sharing environment. thanks very much. >> thank you, russ, we appreciate that. over to you.

>> i don't know how many of you understand the bureau of counsel of affairs within the state department. it's unique which is really foreign affairs and deep relations. what we do in the bureau of consulate affairs is a three-fold mission which i'll break it down into two. we provide services. under the cities and services, we are empowered to issue results all over the world, okay, and under the cities and services, we have a two-fold mission. one is we issue passports domestically. second which is really an awesome responsibility is serving the americans overseas, and that normally plays the gamet. we never know what's coming at us on a given day as far as what happens overseas from a miner

mugging -- minor mugging in a city and they lost all documents and show up saying i'm an american. okay. two, a disaster like haiti or mumbai two years ago. okay, and we come into action. lebanon evacuation, that's our responsibility. having said that, that's an awesome responsibility. from the issue of issuing the travel documents whether it be passports or visas, we are the first line of defense when it comes to the border security. if we screw up, they are legally coming in. okay. which to us is really daunting. every single day when we are issuing close to 2 million travel documents a month between the passports and the visas,

okay? every single day our officers all over the world, 270 locations worldwide internationally and 30 domestic, okay, that's close to 300 locations worldwide that we serve on a given day. we are a 24/7/365 operation. today, we use biometrics and we cannot issue a single visa today without -- same thing with facial recognition. we are piloting right now pirates out of baghdad for special immigrant visas in collaboration with information sharing with the department of defense. we cannot do our jobs if it wasn't for information sharing. both ways, we share information

and we need information from other agencies. today, if i talk about our data bases, some of the loudest in the federal government, our consolidated data base today is over 100terabytes. going at the rate at 5 to 6tera bytes a month. that is challenging. from an information standpoint, we have 11,000 plus state department users, however, we also have close to 20,000 nonstate department users, mostly dhs and intell. okay, some says you have users, so what? what if i told you we get 120 million hits on the data base a month? okay? having said that, it's an

awesome task, and we are as good as the information we have in terms of our officers to process. you go to a place like shanghai today or mumbai when they are processing 1500 to 1600 people a day, interviewing and processing them, okay, it's a very, very challenging and difficult task, and to us, information sharing is the ultimate way we can do this. we built our systems today to be able to share the information easily to those 20,000 plus nonstate department users. the way we have done this is built a centric system where we can have a book on any person that we know about whether it's a citizen other noncitizen, and as russ says, what are the

difficulties; right? you talk about private responsibilities for the people and you know what happened two and a half years ago when the presidential candidate passport was. that's legal policy issues that we face every day. the other difficulty we face is every time we say we need data to be shared, we are told, but, yeah, you are not law enforcement. technically, that is correct. we are not a law enforcement agency; right? we are trying to know work with the hill to designate us as law enforcement only from data sharing stand point. we're not going to go arm our officers overseas. these, again, are the legal and other as pegs of that -- aspects of that. the other thing we have done is built our infrastructure today which is basically so

architecture that is near compliant. why? again, to make it easier for the omb standards to share data, easier, faster, to protect, really, our borders. we are the first line of defense. that's all i have. >> gil? >> thanks, and good morning to everyone. i was intrigued and i'll veer off course for a minute when issues around privacy and civil liberties because i don't think it gets talked about or focused on enough at times and having worked at the local level for a really long career, i think it's important. i served on the national academies panel for about a year and a half, and i'd refer you to the book that came out from them

last year on data mining and privacy. i think that was an incredibly powerful piece that secretary perry and the president and mit, check vest, chaired. it was very helpful, and i came away with a conclusion that citizens had nothing to fear from government, but that the private sector was so much more sophisticated based on your safeway card or your visa transactions, ect. on information. the other part that i think was lost and now is reemerging is right after 9/11, everything was fed-centric all the time. it was all fed all the time. i imagine bart can share some of this also, but an incredible amount of expertise, experience, knowledge, ect., ect., at the state and local level that unfortunately i think was

overlooked not out of bad reasons, but out of reasons of people just overly pushing the issue of what is this country going to do to protect itself in the future, and i really feel that particularly in the last couple years that we're looking back at an area of expertise and an area of sophistication at the state and local level that can be actually quite helpful. the other part that has been done at the state and local level with a lot of, i think, success is balancing the privacy in the civil liberties area with the agreement in new york and even though changes were made, the intelligence audit and the changes in the seattle police department where i served for nine years as chief. we were able to certainly work within those existing laws and still feel comfortable in gathering information, sharing

information, and actually protecting the people of seattle. the other part that i want to stress now because of the new role that i have or it's not so new, about a year and a half, is we have the height, the height intensity drug trafficking areas, and they have been around for a long time, and i truly believe they are an incredible and very successful model for information sharing at the federal, state, and local level. information sharing that has gone on for quite awhile, that is some of the most sensitive information, truly life threatening information with ongoing nare car ticks that if the information was inappropriately released or not properly used, it could not just result or would not just result probably in the loss of the case or the loss of the load, but it

could result in the loss of an undercover officer or detective or trooper's life, and these have been around sharing the most sensitive information in a really timely and a really timely way. the 28 regional are in 15% of all the counties in the united states. they cover 58% of the united states population. they are in 45 states, puerto rico, the u.s. virgin islands, and the district of columbia, and they have an intelligence and investigative support center so it results not only in information sharing, but also analysis. they have a long history of working with the national guard and others as you can tell, the focus has been -- up until the last few years in particular, but the focus has been on drug trafficking

organizations. now i tell you particularly at the state and local level, the issue is about all crimes, and an all-crimes approach. the other part is not just the issues that are brought forward as far as the cost st development and -- cost of the development and the architecture, but the computers, software, and hardware and on and on, and i think anyone who manages the budget knows where the money goes to, and that's in the personnel cost. when you look at these organizations after you purchased this equipment and leased these buildings, ect., the real cost is in the bodies, who is going to staff them? who are going to be the analysts? who follows up on the leads and on and on? a lot of times that comes from the local level. that's why the focus is an all-crimes approach. the other smart start is what i

think is a good template of information sharing that has occurred for a very long time is that trying to have artificial distinctions among transnational crime groups, counterterrorism issues, and drug trafficking organizations. it becomes murky, and if you try to put them into silos, you find they don't fit into silos very easily. in looking at the all-crimes approach whether it's cigarette smuggling in north carolina that was funding amas or fraud that was partially funding another terrorist organization, it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to have these things in different venues. it makes an awful lot of sense to consider them in other ways.

i think that working closely with federal agencies and now being a fed for the last year and a half and having a number of people that have been brought into this administration from with a lot of experience at the state and local level has meshed very well to move us forward in a way that makes a lot of sense, not only from the technical difficulties, but the importance of privacy, the importance of civil liberties, and also the importance of relationships, and it really is about relationships and it is about location among the question that was asked about culture and trust, and there is nothing that breeds the improvement of culture and trust than the location of these individuals, so i've been -- i couldn't agree more with also

what russ has said in my career to see the amount of information that is shared, but we have to be careful about the information overload issue also. >> thank you, gil. mark? >> good morning, everybody. thank you for in opportunity, and this conversation that we're having today, you know, it couldn't be more relevant and more timely considering the threat environment that we're living in, the travel advisory that just went out over the weekend. thank you for that. and in my position with the office of analysis, i believe we have a true role and responsibility to work with the state and local tribal components to advocate for the information and get that information into the hands of the people that really need it the most. i think it should be pretty clear, you know, to everybody that we are doing that very much in partnership with those entities, you know, to include

the fbi, ondcp, dod, and ntct and many others. it was interesting to hear the talk about the national strategy. i reminisced as he was talking, and i was in the room, you know, when that was released in the white house back in october of 2007, and a lot of time and effort and hard work, you know, went into that my many of you in this room, and also the criminal intelligence coordinating counsel that was spoke about before that they've really been pushing and leading 5 lot of these -- a lot of these niche titches that -- initiatives that rallied around and that needs to continue. in fact, the global advisory committee did the national exchange model, i see donna roy here, and other things that are underway. as we build that refresh, i'm sure, confident, you already spoke to ron brookes, the chair

of the ccic and it's good to see that integration is continuing. i think the secretary is forward-leaning towards information sharing, and she spoke about it within one week of her taking office, and she's been pushing a very focused every step of the way and bringing over in the department the next level of maturity relating to a one dhs, and when you bring the assets of the components together, it's formidable whether it's in the ntct or the field or the line of defense, they're also the line of defense in trying to identify the gnomes and identify the unknowns and operating within a country. we've done a lot, and we need to do, you know, much more, and we're certainly going to work with all of you, you know, to do that. i just really want to touch upon the threat just very briefly. i've been with the department for 16 months now.

it's been extremely busy. i got there on may 16, and this activity started may 18th of 2009, two successful attacks here domestically. we had two near misses and fisal and shows that we need to pay attention to our borders because they could attack with little to no morning. we can't always rely on the intelligence community that we need to focus on the first responders in the form of state, local, tribal, sheriffs, troopers in the field and give them the information they need to do their job, and like director kerilkowske, i spent two years with the department, and they are interacted every

day with traffic stops, lawful sources, indicators and warning, and they have the best opportunity to possibly identify something that could be a miss, so the jjts do a wonderful job relating to investigating something, but what about the unknowns, and who is going to be in the best position to identify the stores, requiring, the mixing, the interactions with other conspirators to carry out a terrorist attack within the country. what we're striving to do with our partners is certainly get a better understanding of the threat, of the environment, analyze it and share it with our partners in the field so they are better informed to do, protect, and support the homeland, so getting back to the national strategy for information sharing, i've read it numerous times. i have it book bookmarked and it resinates with me as it did in 2007.

having said that, we have matured and grown and there are other things we need to address to move on. there are things relating to the home and security information coming from a number of sours and it needs to be shared with the appropriate individuals, you know, that we need to share. what do we do about it? within the department in partnership with the fbi, the nctc, and our other federal counterparts also. we established a dhs threat task force that brings to bear the assets of the components and all the information sharings they hold to really support the fbi and the nctc in the pursuit of these individuals. as it relates to the national network of fugs centers of which -- fusion centers of which there's 72 now, it's evolving and maturing. we're providing them secret

connectivity and secret is very important because that allows, you know, further con tech chiewlization of the information they are looking at in an unclassified world, and they are trusted, federally cleared individuals within our state and local and tribal environments that know how to handle the information and know how that treat it. we referenced this is the baseline capabilities with partnership with the fbi. if you look at the capabilities that came out in the fall of 2008, we already completed a short two years later an overview of where the gaps are and filling the gaps and laying against the ability to receive, analyze, and the return flow for this suspicious activity reporting. working with the fbi, we provided, you know, threat briefs to the field. we have new products, new product lines. i believe we're doing a much better job in getting that information out. the secretary has been very

forward leaning working with tom o o'ryely about seeing something, say something. we have to inform the public, and once again you only have to look at the vendor on may 1st on times square who said something about a smoking vehicle that could have cricketed to that attempted attack. we're working closely with the private sector and interacting with the private sector, getting them the information. they own a majority of the private sector out there, and how do we better share with them and really what do we need to do? where do we go from here? i think we need to build that trust and collaboration. i believe everybody does, you know, want to work together and share the information, but i still think, you know, that we need to, you know, better inform and make the intelligence

community aware of the information needs and requirements of a trooper out on patrol and why something, you know, that occurred over in afghanistan or pakistan regarding an ied, how that could help them do their better job at not only a tactical level, but also at a strategic level. i believe fully, you know, within the fusion centers, that is plan a. that is something we've been building. there is no plan b, nor should there be a plan b because i believe that's the solution given the proper support, and i believe we're doing that, and they also work very closely, they being the fusion centers, with the joint terrorism task forces in their role to investigate and pursue the individuals operating within the country. in conclusion, you know, i appreciate the opportunity to be here today. a lot has occurred. we have a lot more to do, and i look forward to all of your questions. thank you very much. >> thank you.

>> well, thank you all of those remarks. any of you could serve as a keynote in your own. i love this panel. i really do. this is an amazing panel here between gil and bart at the end, 70 years of law enforcement experience, 24 at the state trooper level, 9 as a chief of police from a major u.s. city, state department and that wasn't part of information sharing until 12/25. i had no idea the amount of data they are processing on a monthly basis, and of course, you know, russ showing up at ntct in 2005, your comments are very appropriate, and we can't forget the progress we have made. i know where we are now, and a lot of that is because of russ and his team and their initiatives. we have made progress, and it's

important not to forget how far we have come. with that, i'd like to turn it over to the audience for some questions. who would like to go first? i can't believe there would not be one question. thank you for bailing me out. i have a burchg of questions, -- bunch. >> i'm with the aclu, mike german. one of the sort of -- it seems to be almost accepted that information sharing is a good no matter what where i think all of us agree is it's only good if the information being shared is relevant and accurate, and what we have seen siewfn with these information collection in sharing program is that the information isn't with the recipient of information from the maryland police spying scandal where 53 political activists were put into the data

base with no terrorist connections and labeled as terrorists. we have a number of fusion center reports that target political groups in their intelligence analysis, and most recently we have the case in pennsylvania where a private company was hired by a state department and it was involved with inappropriate spying on protesters. my question is who is it within the network that has the speedometer to make sure that the -- responsibility to make sure that the information collected is collected appropriately, analyzed correctly, and being district the only -- distributed only to people who need to have it and have a right to have it? >> starting off with an easy question. bart, and then gil. >> thanks, mike, for that question. first and foremost, you know, i really believe that those are the exception, not the rule. having spent 32 years in law

enforcement, you're very much trained about reasonable suspicion, you know, proximate cause that i just can't walk up to an individual and start asking questions. i need to have reasonable suspicion that criminal activity, you know, could be afoot, and if i don't have that level of intervention, i regard it, you know, and document it and forward it in where it's accountable to a supervisor and finds its way into the system. those checks and balances are there. as to who's the lead, i say dhs has a lead as a result of the directive of the white house, but having said that, we do it in partnership with the office, the fbi, the nudi, and i'm very happen to say, you know, working with tom o'riley that finally, you know, all those activities are being trained to accountable to documented to so as it gets into the shared space that it's

more likely to be accurate to prevent what you, you know, described has occurred, and additionally the fusion center policies. we're well on our way, and in fact i think we just cracked a third, and it's greatly accelerated to have those policies in place, the training, the accountability, the officers in place. although there's a risk, and i hope it's a small risk, we're defaulting on the side that, you know, hey, we have the systems in place, and we're working towards, you know, mitigating, you know, any activity innocent or no fair yows which could be accountable as we move forward. >> the question really is it's a great question and it's important. a couple things i think are important. one is they are locally controlled. you look at the most recent gallop poll on who is trusted in the country by the american public, it's the united states

military, locally own small business, and it is local law enforcement. the high toc are locally managed and run. when i was in seattle, i got to sit on that board. i don't think there's any better accountability than at that level than prap -- perhaps when you're inside and the accountability level is more diffused. the other part is anyone who spent this length of time in law enforcement knows, and i think we've seen a lot of success particularly in the last decade on crime in this country even though a lot of people thought, well, the economy isn't doing so well, therefore crime is going to go up. crime, not in every city, not every year, but crime has continued to decreased. i'd love to tell you it's because the great police chiefs, but that's a bit self-serving. it's because, i think, of the trust in information and the work ha has been done to gain

the trust of the people who give you the information, and who are willing to come forward. people from all walks of life and all languages and all ethnic and racial backgrounds. i think it's improved, so to damage that trust is incredibly hurtful in many ways, so i think we have made mistakes. i think we need to be accountable for those mistakes, but i think, i think we've made a lot of improvements, and i welcome the partnership with the aclu in seattle. >> maybe one final point. on the issue of who is responsible, frankly all of us are. in my case at nctc, i got responsibility for terrorist identity work and sport watch listing and large scale data obligation, and alex joel is a constant partner with us to make sure what we're doing a correct and any data set we bring in

from any agency, we spend time with civil rights and civil liberties of individuals, our attorneys, and i think it's fair to say that everyone takes this exceptionally seriously. things do go wrong, but i think we're all responsible. >> do you want to add anything in >> yeah, i mean, we take this very seriously as far as the privacy information is concerned. obviously, we deal with lots of information from the americans, 90 million americans own passports today. as i said earlier in my opening remarks that if you remember two years ago there was the bridge from within about the presidential candidates. today we do have very stringent checks and balances in place to

avoid that. if they need to know, and we track your footprints everywhere you've been right to the last key stroke so if somebody does compromise, there are pements -- penalties to be paid. we have a lot of data, and know it's a bigger issue for us because an immigrant coming in who gets naturalized along the way and becomes a u.s. citizen, okay, could go on and said if the previous visa data was compromised, he or she is an american now. we take that very seriously. also, the outside users that are nonstate department, all road-based, and we control that to the nth degree. do things go wrong?

yes. we have the verified program. they go into our data. somebody had somehow got an in to the data that they shouldn't have, but we caught them before he got out and we app hennedded them and -- app prehennedded them. we want to be protected ourselves; right? >> great, thank you for that. the next question in the back to the gentleman on the wall, please. sorry, go ahead, get the microphone. >> i'm james marino, president of software. he verified they got into the information. wasn't that information encrypted? right, but it was encontributed? okay. the reason i say this because

i'll plug our company a little bit here. >> no statements, just questions. >> it's a question at the end. we take encrypted data used for investigations, and we don't need to decrypt the files for information. we have taken this this dhs and it's a curiosity that you don't know about this. i don't understand where the information goes because if you could use this information every day in your world, i think it would be very useful. again it's wwn software, and let me just say as a question, if you had that kind of tool and by the way, that tool gives you a report, and that report kicks out the person that actually accessed the investigation in the encrypted format. it gives you all the information. why wouldn't you want to use

that? >> that's the question? >> i don't think there's a panelist up here who wouldn't want the data. i appreciate where the point's coming from. i don't think they would turn away -- >> why don't they know it? somebody should be telling these gentleman about technology that exists that they could be using to help them, i think, greatly. >> right. we do. we play in the private-public partnerships to the nth degree. >> why aren't you using my software? >> okay. somebody help me out here and ask a question. in the orange tie there, thank you, sir. give that guy an extra danish. >> it's ken with the "l.a. times". you mentioned legal impediments to information sharing. is there any thought that these

laws need to be tweaked? is there anything that these to be done on the privacy act that would make your life and mission easier? >> there are any number of initiatives to look at legal impediments. the nrk tic has restrictions now on what information we can get, and we're approaching the court with our ability to get that information. as the impediments are recognized and there's and established need to have a particular kind of information, then we work it through the system. i would associate myself with whoever asked the question in the first panel, has there been an a-z of accounting legal imitations on data? i doubt it. we focus on the data set that's

most effective to the analysts, and then go through the range of tech technical and privacy issues that impede our ability to get that data and then go through them. >> i think i mentioned to you earlier, we are not a designated law enforcement. we have a lot of difficulty as a result because it's a legal impediment to us. like i said, we're working with the hill to hopefully change that. >> great. next question, yes, ma'am, behind the camera there, blond hair. >> ashley, migration policy institute. my question is for mr., amin. it's about creating greater efficiencies in the system specifically when it comes to processing visas. obviously, we want a successful system for law enforcement, but what about the consumers, the

services that the government is providing specifically those seeking to enter the u.s. and having to go through greater security cleanses that may -- clearances that may take months or longer. i'm wondering what the potential is for creating an information sharing system that makes it easier to differentiate between the troublemakers and those who want to enter the u.s. under honest pretenses. >> excellent question. we have embarked on several fronts to address that issue. it's an economic reason. we get help by mr. marriot who shows up every few months from the tourism industry. every chinese in the united states spends about $300 plus at the shops. okay, and an average of $7,000

for the chinese visiting to the united states. okay. brazil right now is soring and it's amazing that we were working with disney and the brazillians in the growing middle class want to visit disney world. what have we have done? today all of our nonimmigrant visas are online. you can apply from anywhere in the world on a web-based system. okay. for a number of reasons now, it's easier for the people who apply, but bigger than that, you are right, if i look add china that is soring now at about 27% increase over last year, our physical facilities, the embassies and consulates have so much capacity, okay, so what are we doing? by going online, it's not the reduction of the paper, it's the awe automatic prescreening we

can do so the officers can faster analyze that. we are in the first line of defense with the information we have. to clear the people who are trusted travelers and mean no harm to us, the more information we have, the faster we can online clear them in the system so our officers processing 1500 to 1600 people a day have more information to process them faster and better and with secure information, so we are doing lots of things right now. we have gone totally on line, okay. i don't know if you remember several years ago, people used to be lined up and camping out around our embassy walls overnight. those days are gone. use it at your home on web base, make an application, make an appointment and show up strictly

for your appointment and we process you. if the information is available, we can process you. there is no way the brick and moo tar is going to cut it in the big ones that are soring big time on us, and you're right, it's a global economy now as well. it's not just about people wanting to come here for whatever reasons, but they are coming here and we have to in terms of the economics as well. >> thank you for that question. next, yes, sir, in the front. more caffeine for the interns. pick it up. thank you. >> peter sharpman, minor corporation. as i understand as mr. travers was suggesting, if we distinguish among different roles that intelligence analysts

may have, some roles call for more information than other roles or different kinds of information than other roles, and this might help solve the problem that there is some information that shouldn't be made available to anybody, but nevertheless has to get to somebody. i'd really appreciate hearing from bart johnson how that concept might work in actual fusion center. >> thanks, peter. you know, coming from a state and local background, often times, you know, the analysts are overwhelmed with information overload let alone the systems out there whether it's every other thing you need a password for. i agree whole heartedly with role-based access to information. yon if we're -- i don't know if we're there yet. i know we're working towards that, but i would say an analyst needs information passing from

dhs or fbi or whomever that is relevant to their area of responsibility to impact on them to receive the information, look at the information, and really overlay it against, you know, what that information is telling you relating to a risk associated with a cikr or a potential threat resident in your area of responsibility, and then really contextualizing it and making sure it resinates with with the community you're serving to have a law enforcement officer to respond to that and get it back in the some to compare. i think we have a ways to go, but working with our partners here, many of whom are in the room, i think we recognize, you know, what the issues are, and we really need to focus on that and solve that aspect of it. thank you, peter. >> for instance, if before 9/11,

the federal government had issued reports on jihaddist interests in airplanes, and that could have been put out at any level of information and if it made it to phoenix or minneapoliss, and then the local law enforcement would have had a context for a dot they uncovered, and the current analog would be things like putting out a report from fbi or dhs that there are individuals interested in hydrogen prox per roux side and then they can say it seems to me a far better answer than just flooding the system with information and overwhelming people. >> suzanne, did you have a question? >> you talk about the value, obviously, of the state and

local folks as tactical collectors and making sure analysts at that level get what they need, but i'm concerned about governments at that level. local accountability also, but if you're operating in a context in which only a couple of folks with a couple police officers for example or a couple folks in the sheriff's office have clearances, how does that affect the ability of the mayor, the chief of police, the sheriff, the city counsel to conduct that important oversight and ensure accountability at that local level that we're so dependent upon, and does this, perhaps this notion of role-based access to information which we apply to governors, for example, as opposed to giving clearances to everybody. is that a potential solution, and how did that work out in seattle? >> i think the thing that was

most helpful was that for instance the length system has a series of checks and balances as to who can access that system and when it's been accessed, and actually there's several disciplinary cases within that seattle region. for inappropriate access or inappropriate use of information, we had lived with an intelligence auditor, an outside independent acquainted individual who reviewed all intelligence gathering within the seattle police department. right after 9/11, we looked very carefully at whether we should actually move forward in an attempt to change that, and after some pretty careful analysis, we came to the realization that we could both do our job and protect the people in seattle and protect privacy and civil liberties with the law as it existed. this was an ordnance written before the internet which in

seattle is kind of pretty interesting. i think it's kind of a wired area, that's a rumor. [laughter] i think the other part is though that you have and i think there's something like well over 300,000 clearances now granted. the federal government has moved much more swiftly to grant clearances to people who need them because whether it was mayor in seattle or myself, you actually needed those clearances not only for information that you needed for the city, but you needed it so that you could instill and install the systems for the checks and balances, and i think it worked pretty well. >> and also relating to the fusion centers, if you vice president looked at the -- haven't looked at the baseline capabilities, i encourage you to do that. it speaks to the government and the process of understanding,

the expectation of the fusion centers, what am i going to support, what the fbi supports, and what to expect. you look also at the 2010 grant guidance for for the first time information sharing is highlighted as a priority, and coupled with that is the man date that within six -- mandate that within six months of that grant award, that fusion center has to have a privacy policy in place, and if not, you can only use that grant guidance for that policy. anything this day forward relating to mitigating the political operational facilities will be lined up through supporting gap mitigation to fill those things like privacy, mou's to make sure the governor and chiefs and troopers have a full view of that, so we're here. we've come a long way, but we need to get here, and we have a path and a plan to do exactly that. >> gentleman right here in the

front. >> brian weir with digital sand box. i just wanted to ask you, where do you see this going? if we look the implementation of information sharing all the way to the ultimate extension, that means having access the right way to all the information that's available, and just reading the secretary's testimony before congress recently she was talking about the increase of u.s. citizens who are becoming radicalized, and, you know, i think it would be so vent if those were living in a compound in waco, but recently a guy was on canadian idol, so much a part of the fabric of society, so how do you see, you know, where do you see this going over the next five

years both a threat and the role of information sharing, and if we had the information, how do we find these guys no so separate from what we're looking at? >> a great question to end with. bart, we're end with you. russ, we'll start with you. you can say i don't want to answer too, russ. >> frankly, i don't know where it's going to end. where i hope we get started is on a far more sophisticate the debate about domestic intelligence and privacy and so forth. i think we've tended towards bumper stickers on issues that are incredibly complex. i give all the credit in the world to the marco foundation who foresaw this six years ago, i think, and try to engender the debate and didn't get traction really. to some degree that was okay. we were largely dealing with

plots that were overseas and people radicalized overseas, and most of the activity was overseas, and now as i mentioned with the foreign and domestic divide not meaning much anymore, and now u.s. citizens, u.s. persons being directly involved, how much of that information do you want people like me, 30 years intelligence community to have access to, and i don't think there's any,not an obvious answer. i mean, there does need to be a sophisticated debate in the country involving the congress, executive branch, and the body of politics, and i think we're not there yet. >> i would put it two ways. do we have enough information, or is information leading to information fatigue if you will. it goes both ways. too much information is not going to give you that, it gives you information fatigue. you have to find a balance

somewhere. the privacy issue also. one of the ways we protect that is a red light green light issue. if you need further information, now you have to go higher up or however you do that so you avoid that information fatigue so to speak. you can say, as far as we know it's a green light and not an issue here or it's a red light and watch out. something here, pass it on to another authority if you will because of the sheer numbers that we deal with. how do you go about doing that and also protect the privacy of others? where does this lead to? sometimes, you know, too much information might not be doing you any good. okay, so focusing on the right information and how you go about balancing that. ..

>> here on the terrorism issue, we seem to have led this country to a belief that we are going to -- government -- is going to prevent all bad things from happening. and it's not going to happen, it didn't happen in the uk over 30 years of the terrorists issue. i think that one theme that has been central is that we've all

talked about the complexity of the problem, the difficulty of the problem, and the fact that a bumper sticker, like connect the dots, doesn't work. connect the dots should probably be cast aside along with war on drugs and frankly, secure the border. because i'm not sure exactly what it means and how it works. and i actually truly believe that the american public is ready to understand that you have really smart, dedicated, honest people working very hard every single day, often times many hours to try and protect them. you know what, this is a big country with a lot of borders. there are people that want to hurt us. frankly, try as we might, some bad things are going to happen in the future. >> brian, just, you know, to give you nuts and bolts answer to that one, i've been doing this since 9/11/2001, you know, i was a new york state trooper. i've see the maturations, the

ebbs and flows, and the people that have preceded me, what has evolve second-degree -- evolved is a much better situation. to be a state trooper in new york, you need to know people in your area that you need to be concerned about and support the bureau in those investigations. you need the tools and training and situational awareness about tactics, techniques, and procedures to identify the unknowns that maybe operating within your area of responsibility, like zazi, or fazad, if they were detected by the fbi, working with community-orienting policing, everything that law enforcement has been doing for centuries as it relates to working the community, knowing the community, and understanding and recognizing a person that maybe going down the wrong road and

encourage them through civic, church, school, sports, or family to get on the proper road. that's what the secretary spoke about by trying to identify the bad guys who were already bad, and the extremism about the good people who maybe going down the wrong road and make sure they stay that way. with the nctc and the information within the intelligence community and how do you shift through it all and get the information into the young trooper out on the road. that's the thing that we need to accomplish. i think we are well on our way in that construct. thank you. >> great, let's give the wonderful panel a round of applause. [applause] [applause] >> thank you very of. [applause] [applause] >> we're going to move to our off of the record portion and reconvene at 11:05. so thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> congress is not in session this week, but returns monday. work is expected on the bush era tax cuts, as well as federal spending for the next budget year. watch the senate live here on c-span2 and the house on c-span. when the senate reconvenes for business on monday, possible legislative work includes bills on natural gas and electric vehicles, as well as the quality and food safety issues. and january will be the opening of the 112th congress with republicans in charge of the house. before that, there will be party leadership elections. in the house, republicans will nominate the next speaker of the house on november 17th while democrats select a minority leader the next day. in the senate, both republicans

and democrats will choose their leaders on november 16th. republicans picked up a net gain of five governorships in the recent elections. and now hold a majority of the state houses in the nation. officials from the republican and democratic governors associations discuss those results today at a forum in washington, d.c. here's a portion of what they had to say. >> biggest surprises, because every election you've got some shockers. i was certainly surprised by some of the governors races in particular, nathan, what was the biggest surprise for you on election day? >> biggest surprise for me, probably that we were able to poll illinois. >> you told me you thought it was almost over a few months before. >> yeah, that was between you and me. [laughter] >> yeah. he was trailing for most of this election.

you know, and, you know, in several points behind brady. and in fact, he was out polling him. the fact that he could out poll julius and close was gap was amazing and just a testament to him. we do have one person on our staff who insisted for months that he was going to win the race. the undecided voters were by and large democrats who hadn't made up their mind. they would eventually come home for pat quinn. he was right. just enough of a margin to win. >> is there a larger lesson? bill brady ran as a very outspoken conservative republican. is there a lesson for some of these other states in the future and is there a campaign strategy that quinn used to pull up the outfit? >> yeah, i think what that ratios is that there's still even right now when we have a

greater tolerance, there's still a breaking point. particularly the state haves a history of moderate republicans or moderate democrats. in illinois, you have a history of electing moderate republicans for the northern part of the state. bill brady is not one of those. even though we had a greater tolerance, we still had a breaking point. >> you got to think that illinois was an unpleasant surprise. i think i would agree with nathan, we thought we had a really good shot coming down the stretch the last couple of weeks there. that's a state where, you know, the partnership that you see in a lot of cases between the dj and unions really paid off. where they literally had based on reports at 4,000 paid workers on the ground in cook county. leading up to election day. and cook county, i think, the turnout was higher in cook county over the senate race. and really, i think, at the end of the day, that was the story. just in a better, better turnout

operation based on union support. i think the other surprise that was a pleasant surprise for me personally is one of the states that i was dealing with every day was florida. we came through a -- just a bruising nomination contest where we had over $70 million spent. 95% which was on negative advertisements. and thus our nominee, rick scott, had a negative image going into the general election. late primary, august 24 primary. you know, he was upsidedown. and, you know, we sort of thought alex sink had the makings to be a good candidate. didn't turn out that way. i think the scott team ran one the best campaigns that i saw in the country in what is a critically important state, the rga spent over $9 million in

florida. i know dga was heavily involved. it was incredibly important to win florida. >> you mentioned florida. rick scott spent tens of millions of his own fortunate. meg whitman spent an insane amount of our own money and loss by eight or nine points. is there a lesson, do you want self-funded candidates? is that a good or does it backfire? >> i think it does easily backfire. but it can. in california it backfired. if i were meg whitman, this is all in hindsight. there are smarter people on the campaign. i think she should have taken a break. she should have let the electorate cool off, after she won the primary, she went right back up on tv. she had dominated the air waves for six months. she came her own worst enemy. they built on the narrative that she was trying to buy the

election, rather than earn it. the smartest thing is have the budget. take the summer off and start up again on labor day. >> yeah, brown was somewhere unconventional that he waited. i think california is an example. that's a state where we ran a number of these races where we had incumbent, democratic governor who's are retiring, doyle is a good example who were in the 30s or 40s in java approval rating, rendell in pennsylvania. in this case, you know, we have schwartz anythinger. there was the ad, same thing. they did a good job linking meg to schwarzenegger. also look at the housekeeper

issue, kind of when it came up, sort of parked itself right in the middle of the last 60 days of the election certainly did not help. we played the price with hispanics, you know, i think the over all exit polling showed that we got 13 to 14% hispanics. >> and you can watch this program in it's entirety here on c-span2 tonight. starting in less than an hour at 8 eastern. a discussion now on u.s. military policy. this "washington journal" piece is about 45 minutes. >> throughout much of the iraq war, duncan hunter was chairman of the house armed services committee. former congressman hunter has now written a book "victory in iraq: how america won." congressman, in the first page of the book, you write first the ending. we won. when you say we won, what do you mean by that? >> guest: well, the reason

that i wrote that, and the reason that i wrote the book, victory in iraq, how american won is well illustrated by the driver that dropped off the first load of books, the first several thousand books after they left the books. dropped them off and he asked me as i was there at receiving station, he said what's in the box? it's a book i wrote. what's it about, the title. i said "victory in iraq: how we won." he said we did? i went into a conversation with him. i wrote the book because we did win in iraq. we had massive gunfights in 2004, 2005, 2006, the sunni insurgency. we made friends with the sunni tribes. they joined us and turned against the al qaeda. together with the united states marines and the united states army wiped out al qaeda in the

anbar providence. in eastern iraq, the surge supported a counterinsurgency where we went into baghdad. instead of staying back at bases, went into the neighborhoods and provided security for the population. that was the thrust of the surge in early 2007. because of that, we brought down violence by 90% in baghdad. and we stabilized baghdad and pretty soon businesses started to operate, people started to go about their daily routine in life. the government stood up. we now have a government that america built. and lastly, the army stood up. and the last impediment to victory in iraq was mal la al sather. he had a very strategic location. mr. maliki came down.

they same up to sadr city, and swept them out, and in the last election, al-s.a.t. -- al-sadr, they were so successful, they captured tons of ironnian arms shipped in to fight the americans. but in the next election, he got 25.9% of the vote. any times the "washington post" declares they are going to win a huge victory, it's usually a kiss in death. this was the last impediment with the free standing nation with the government that would hold and the army that would hold. so we've left iraq, which is an imperfect country and neighborhood, and dangerous world. we have definitely won that war. there's no doubt about it. > host: besided militarily,

what about people called the hearts and minds? >> guest: let me give you an example. one the real factors that came out of the iraq war that people don't appreciate enough is that al qaeda was destroyed in iraq and the long war that we have, the war of the -- the worldwide war against terrorism is directed at al qaeda. they made common cause against the americans. we turned the sunni and and -- e sunni tribes against al qaeda. we brought them over on our side. they turned against al qaeda. and al qaeda was wiped out. if al qaeda goes into a sunni neighborhood now in anbar providence, they will have a quick death and early barrier. if they go into the shiite, which is eastern iraq, the baghdad and areas south.

they will be met with hostilities and wiped out. al qaeda was a huge loser in iraq. the critics of the war was right when they said he was not there when we first went into iraq. osama bin laden determined that iraq would be a battle ground between us, between the americans and al qaeda. al qaeda came in this numbers. they were very manifest in the first and second battle of fallujah. sarkozy was formidable. al qaeda was wiped out in iraq. they weren't wiped out by just americans, they were wiped out an american-iraqi force. not only was iraq a victory and we have established a country which is a friend, not an enemy of the u.s., which is a modcome

of representative government and will not be a state based for terrorism. they have an attitude of animosity. we have an ally against al qaeda in iraq. >> host: duncan, in your book, you look back and talk about 20/20 vision that people could have or would have had. we are going to put the numbers up. if you want to participate in the conversation with duncan hunter. our fourth line this morning is set aside for iraq and afghan veterans. if you want to call in and talk with the former chairman of the house armed chairman services and author of "victory in iraq" 202-628-01 shell the the -- 018s the number for you to call.

you talk about hindsight. if you could do it all over again, would you support going into iraq knows what we know now? > guest: yes, i would. one reason is i often look at the picture of the kurdish mothers holding their babies killed in mid stride on the hills of northern iraq by the poison gas from saddam hussein's aircraft. i also look and have reviewed in some depth the massive graves which tony blair estimated at holding some 300 southern shiites. where saddam hussein's people executed huge numbers of shiite and bulldozed them into open graves. nazi style. in fact, at one time, when they ran out, according to the farmers who's homes and farms were located at. when the military firing squad didn't get their in time to kill all of the men, women, and children before they were bulldozed into the graves, when

they didn't get there in time, they simply bulldozed the men alive and covered them up. we took out a regime which was in many ways had many of the same dimensions at the nazi regime. they used poison gas from your own people. they exterminated and killed thousands of people. so we now have a government which is a friend, not an enemy of the u.s., which has a representative government, which has a military, incidentally, the military that the u.s. built in iraq, the first iraqi division, when they made their last battlefield deployments, they followed with humanitarian water, food, and medicine. they followed the rules of war. they didn't abuse prisoners, they took care of people. they had discipline. the american model has largely been transferred to a lot of people who are in the military and iraq. and i think that's accrude to the benefit of that government

and to americas security interest in that part of the world. >> and according to the congressional budget office and the defense department, the iraq war over its course cast $709 billion. 1.2 american soldiers were rotated in and out of iraq at one point. and 4421 american deaths. you are on first with duncan hunter. please go ahead. >> caller: yes, i've always wanted to ask, during the months that president bush was giving saddam time to comply with the u.n., and i was watching many mornings the trucks moving across iraq, could those trucks not have taken some of weapons of mass destruction or whatever type into syria or into surrounding countries? >> guest: well, sure, they could have. but as i said, i looked at the humanitarian abuses. that is the mass murders and

executions and gases of civilians, in my own mind, as a -- both of my sons incidentally served in iraq. volunteered for iraq. one in the marines, one in the army, i think that's justification in and of itselfs. absolutely. saddam hussein according to the united nations inventory had over 6,000 liters of anthrax. you could put that, that's enough to kill over a million people. you could put that in one pickup truck with a stake bed and high sides. so you had a lot of trucks leaveing dodge, so to speak, getting out of dodge, syria, iran, who knows what was in those vehicles. and i represented for many years the entire california-mexican border. we had massive loads of cocaine, marijuana, and other things going across the border on a nightly basis. sure, lots of stuff could move across. i think -- it's one reason that

i wrote the book is a testimony to these guys. these folks that fought in iraq, the 1.2 million people that peter just talked about. because they won. their mission was successful. this is veterans day. and you know one of the best things you can tell a veteran is thanks. and thanks for a successful mission. and the one thing that american society has been reluctant to give to any military since world war ii is the acknowledgment that their mission is successful. they won. in fact, we did win in iraq. we left a government that we built and put in place, which is formed by representatives that were voted on, we left the military which is like the first iraqi division is a military that is holding now which has a monocome of discipline and what i would call the american model of professionalism and humanitarian dimension. and so we are leaveing a country which was much better than when

we came in. i think over the next several decades, having a friend in that strategic location in the world is going to accrue to the benefit of america from a foreign policy basis, but also from a moral basis. the idea that we've gone in and taken out a regime which murdered thousands and thousands of people, some 300,000 people put in mass graves, according to tony blair. these guys did it. i call the 1.2 million americans that serve. they are guys like sergeant first class who went into a burning bradley while he himself was on fire. his uniform was on fire. he continued to rescue his fellow soldiers until she was so badly turned that he died. medics like j.a. who went up and performed literally a tracheotomy.

and they finally got him medevaced. and the thousands of people that just did their jobs who were separated for months and years from their loved ones, serving in this place called iraq, those are the best people america has. and they were successful in their mission. i thought it was time that somebody acknowledged that they had won the war in iraq. >> host: on our vets line, texas. go ahead, mike. mike, are you with us? >> caller: hello. >> host: hey, mike. >> caller: you know, i'm so happy to finally get to talk to a republican neocon. >> host: how are you veteran of iraq or afghanistan wars? > caller: iraq. i was a navy corpsman. mr. hunter, you have a real problem. the reason it worked, we paid them not to fight. we didn't join up and be buddies. why don't you people tell the

truth? i was there. i saw what happened. you have a real problem. >> guest: well, tech sergeant, you got a problem. both of my sons served in iraq also. and they tell a different story than the one that you've told. in fact, my son, sam, just came back with the force striker brigade, he was the last combat brigade to leave iraq. look at what happened, al qaeda came in. let's go over in detail. al qaeda came in. they were not there originally. a lot of foreign fighters came in. they are sunnies. they joined with a sunni tribe to fight the americans initially. al qaeda worn think. they set up their own system. they tacked the tribes 40%. they took their women, they abused them, and they killed some of the tribal leaders like

jaseem, who tried to recruit for his police force. every time you had an recruitment effort, al qaeda would murder the leaders to keep anybody from coming and joining our side. then in september of 2006, a sheik named cetar, later murdered by al qaeda, got together the leaders, we are making our stand against al qaeda. both of his brothers and fathers had been murder by the al qaeda. there were a lot of tribal leaders that said the same, they have murdered our people, taken our women, and forced marriages. the point is the tribes are join now. no, they aren't raising their own money. let me tell you something, if you are al qaeda and you go into anbar providence, your life

expectancy is very low because the tribes remember the al qaeda that came in that in some cases killed people for the sin of smoking because smoking was against their strict version of muslim law, took their women, taxed them, abused them, i had one marine tell me that in parts of anbar providence, the family would tell their children if al qaeda puts you in a burning fire, breathe quickly. you will die quickly and suffer less pain. it was the abuse of al qaeda. al qaeda, unwhittingly, was part of the reason is that the anbar tribes came over. they helped to forge the american victory by being so abusive to the tribes, the tribes came over to our side. with no money going to anbar providence. general kelly left in 2009, he was the top marine.

he stopped giving out the money for things like water lines, sewer lines, and he put together a budget summit to come up with their own way to fund their projects. that's 2009. if you go into anbar providence today, they are not going back to al qaeda. if you are al qaeda and you go to anbar providence, you have a short life expectancy. >> host: marie, democrat, hi. >> caller: good morning. i have a brief statement. then i'll let you speak, mr. hunter. you and the people around you are the reason that we are in the mess that we are. your tunnel vision sent us into a country that had nothing to do with our attack on 9/11. you took saddam hussein out in the middle of the night, popped his head off with no trial in a country that had no government. you mention the kurdish mothers. where did he get the gas? we gave it to him to fight the iranians.

how does osama get his money? we give it to him. you are our friend as long as we are killing the people that you want us to kill. when you do that, then you become our enemy. people like you, this debt in this country and the suffering that people are going on, trucking business, going out of business, our debt is caused by the immoral wars. >> guest: thank you. if you look at the chemical stockpiles, most of those were put together by europeans countries. we have a law in place. i'm trying to enforce law. some things got through. we have a law in place, several laws to keep things like poison gas from going to other countries that might use them in the ways that saddam used them. no, i would just tell you this. if you check with any humanitarian organization in the

world, they will not agree with you somehow that saddam hussein didn't do the gassing of thousands of kurds that he didn't shoot by firing squad and in some cases just plain bulldozed civilians, men, women, end children in the massive open graves. in fact, several of the history channels have showed our people in the graves and finding the skulls of mothers with 45 holes in the backs of their head, and the babies, similarly executed before they were put in the graves. we could be having the same discussion that we did in 1939 about what hitler was doing when gassing lots of people. the question has always been would the west have responded in a moral way if they aren't been invaded and threatened. i would like to hope that they would. i think the moral justification

that was going in. the last thing is i want to let you know about this book. the book has 120 instances of heroism, mr. mr. cash, and jage, and they fought for us, corporals who believed in the mission. ma'am, i don't think you do a justice to america's fighting forces when you have a part that will never acknowledge to our military people when they won. when they are succeeded. when the mission was successful. we talk about treating the veterans, one way to treat the person well, it's to say, you know, you did the job. this book acknowledged that the wonderful people that wear the uniform, more than 1 million people who served in iraq did the job. >> who's on the cover?

>> guest: this is kip jager. this is a picture after he'd been in fire fighting for four straight weeks in fallujah. the first one, his point man lost his leg. he went in a room, had a machine gun battle, ended up with the knife fight, wifed -- survived that, and got into massive fire fights. he's the grandson of the chuck jager, breaking the speed of sound and being an ace, and his dad served. it's a story about families. kip joined the machines when he was 17 years old. ended up he came out of the high country of colorado, and a couple of my pictures i have him when he's elk hunting at the 10,000 level. there you go, hunter, you got to have a hunting picture in any

book that you write. he's the representatives of americans that answer the call to arms and protect our country. and these families where you have -- it's like the kelly family. which is also in this book. while general john kelly was the deputy division commander for the first machine division, during the first battle of fallujah, his son, one of his sons, robert, was a pfc and rifle squad fighting door to door. his other son, john, was a captain also in the machines and also in iraq. you have american families, which for generations answer the call when we have a war. one mistake that america has made as a people is that since world war ii, we've been very reluctant to tell our soldiers, not just thanks for serving. but when they win, thanks for winning. this book says thanks for winning. next call for duncan hunter.

boise, idaho, paul, republican line. >> caller: hi. >> host: how are you doing? >> caller: good. the question is can't you really consider the chemicals that he used as weapons of mass destruction? and -- >> guest: yes. is that -- yes. the facts are we all acknowledge that saddam hussein used weapons of mass destruction, that is the chemical poison gas to kill those kurds in huge numbers in northern iraq. that was chemical ali, who was tried and executed for gassing jewish people. and he used poison gas. the question was did he still have supplies of poison gas. when we got to iraq, we didn't find supplies of poison gas. there's a question of finding

weapons of mass destruction. and we didn't find them. and that's true. from my position, the things that saddam hussein did to his people, you know, debby lee who's in the book, and her son mark lee was the first s.e.a.l. killed in iraq, you know what she said, she said saddam haw -- hussein is a weapons of mass destruction himself. he bulldozed them into graves. yes, he was a weapons of mass destruction. from my perspective, from the american interest, it's in our interest to have from the strategic location a nation which is a friend, not an enemy of the united states, a nation which has a representative government. we built a model where people go and vote for their leaders. they solve their problems with balance and not bullets. and a nation which will not be a stronghold of al qaeda. in fact, as i said, al qaeda who

go into either the sunni part of iraq, or the shiite part of iraq, today, the terrorists have a short life expectancy. one thing the iraqis learned to do was to understand the terror that al qaeda brings and to hate them for it. they had their men, women, and children killed by al qaeda. that's one thing that turned them against al qaeda. that was a major strike by the united states and by freedom loving people in the war against terror. what i called the long war. >> host: duncan hunter in "the new york times" this morning. i want to move on to afghanistan. the obama administration is emphasizes the idea that the u.s. will have forces in afghanistan until at least the end of 2014, a change in tone aimed at purr -- persuading the afghan and taliban there will be

no troop withdrawals. >> guest: yeah, this goes to the problem that america has. when you set a deadline. the problem is always that your allies, the people that you are trying to persuade to be on your side said wait a minute. the support of the americans is going to be gone. i'm going to have to face the bad guys by myself. i'm not going to come help you. also the affect that it has on the bad guys. if we out wait the americans, we can take over in four years. having that dynamic at work is always a danger. because american politicians and all of us who want to get re-elected. that's a common thread across republican and democrat lines. we always want to put a get out date on a conflict. because we want to assure those families back home and the american people that we are not going to be in a war forever. so you have that tug of war. the administration did set a day -- a date certain to get out.

that was criticized strongly by our leaders of our lighting forces who say you are sending the wrong message. one reason that we won in iraq in anbar is because all the way up from a private and pfc who was fighting on the ground and trying to get a tribal member to come over on our side, all the way up to the president who some people said was just stubborn, george bush, we refused to say we were going to quit and leave. at one point, we gave enough confidence to the sunni tribe. the americans are with us. we watched the americans that will die on the machine guns. we watched americans on the 10 feet until they were the only guy standing. we wanted americans that will never leave a soldier. these guys are tough. the americans want to stick with us. the tribe has enough confidence that they rose up and they declare our independence. we are going to fight them. and we won. now in afghanistan, you've had the statement, the position by

the administration early on that we were going to have a deadline to get out. that was criticized by military leaders. i think the commandant of the machine corps, general conway said this is not the right message. we are not going to set a deadline. we are going to be there for the long haul, so to speak. hopefully that gives some confidence to the afghanistan people who are fighting the insurgency to stick with it. let me tell you what i think one problem is in afghanistan. it's our allies. i look at the casualty count this morning, 1361 americans have died. our soldiers, our corporals, our lieutenants, our sergeants. the british have lost, we've lost 1361. you have 26 other nation that is are there on a varying basis. some of them in force, some with a few people. 26 other nations who are our allies. they've only lost about half as

many as we've lost combined. so all 20 -- we have more battlefield casualties, almost twice as many as the rest of the free world combined that's present in iraq. the british have about 300 and some. so they have about 1/4 of the casualties that we have. and the rest of the 26 nato allies, and other allies, only have about 300, 400 casualties, that's kia in battle. that means they are not going to the dangerous places. there's a game, it's called let the americans do the tough stuff. the british war in helmand providence. helmand is a tough town. they have down the switch. the marines are down there fighting in heal hand, -- fighting in helmand, and the europeans have pulled out. we need to sit with france and britain and other countries, you

have an interest in afghanistan that will hurt you in five years, ten years, twenty years, you can't be germany, you can't have the rule that says your soldiers can't leave the fort at night. you can't be france saying all we are going to do it guard airports. you have to go to the battlefield and stand side by side with the americans. the american hasn't said that in a forceful way. president obama needs to say it to our allies. >> host: one other policy issue. >> guest: that maybe two people who are familiar with the report that i'm sure was worded in a way that will play out in a way that they hope. which i take it the people that gave the report to "the

washington post" are lifting the gay ban. i'm very strongly against it. you go out to a combat platoon of 30 machines in afghanistan. you give them each a secret ballot. are you for lifting the ban on practicing homosexuals being injected into your ranks? the answer will come back nearly 100% no or very close to it. i can guarantee that. i'll be happy to go back to any combat unit. we've had the homosexual issue, gay marriage, for example, raised in 31 states and in each state. you had reports like this that says looks like everything is a go. the only people who end up being against it, because in every one of those 31 states who was voted down by the people of this country. now people in uniform can't vote down the gay ban. can't vote to maintain the gay ban. we have to speak for them. i think we'll have a very

erosive effect. the idea of practices homosexuality is repugnant. that's their values. they have a right to have a value that's derived from their traditions and their christian background. and, you know, they don't have a vote on who's in the fox hole with them. they don't have a vote on who's in the tight compartment that they maybe on the navy ship. they don't have a vote on that. they don't have a vote on this. we have to stand in the gap and have a little courage and stand up to this effort that's an annual effort and it goes on -- and has gone on for the last decade, by the same group that gave 3 million to bill clinton and got the promise from him. he would put homosexuals into the military is more active than ever. they are very active.

they have lots of levels. if you ask the people who are in the platoons and company, it will be close to 90% rejection of the idea, just as every one the 31 states that had gay marriage opposed it. >> host: next call from duncan hunter, and author of "victory in iraq" how americans run. thanks for holding your own. >> caller: thank you. i want to take this opportunity to thank you for writing this book. and for us, i served in iraq during the invasion. i also did a stateside tour on the army reserve after 9/11 to help defend our nation. i have a question about the link to al qaeda. i was uestion about the link to al qaeda. i was serving with coalition services. i saw someone who was in moll

tear. -- solitary. they said that's al qaeda. this was in the may 2003. and another time, as far as wmds, i was going through tents looking for somebody. there was a gas mask there. i inquired where did that come from. they said that was taken from iraqi soldiers who were captured on the battlefield. they had to take their chemical equipment away from them. and i thought, hmm. that's funny. we're not going to gas them. why are they caring chemical equipment? i was wondering if you could address those two observations. >> guest: first. first on the al qaeda, i think they watched and tried to make a decision. they ultimately made it to try to fight the americans in iraq. paul kennedy's battalion, 24, i asked lieutenant colonel

kennedy, if any of the men that they killed in the fire fights were al qaeda. he said, no, that was part of the sunni insurgencies. it parteded -- the al qaeda started to come in heavy into iraq and the time frame, april 2004 onward that they weren't there in numbers in 2003. i think that's probably so. so you may have seen a person that was designated as al qaeda. he might have been a soul person. maybe somebody coming in to get some intelligence on how the war was going. al qaeda by all accounts were not there in force until early 2004. and, you know, saddam hussein on the poison gas thing. saddam hussein kept everybody off balance. because he had used it. he did kill thousands of mothers and children with poisoned gas at one time. nobody was sure how much, and in the end we didn't find anything.

>> host: next from anthony on the democratic line. go ahead. >> caller: yeah, hi, duncan. my question has to do with regarding the saddam hussein invading the kurds. it was a result of our initially supporting the kurds to uprise against saddam hussein. and as a result of that, we we - therefore, next thing we abandoned the kurds. and saddam hussein game on and punished him for that. so, you have to admit the fact that we encouraged the kurds to revolt against saddam. and they did. and when he had an opportunity to punish them, that's what happened. that's what happened. >> guest: yeah, well, first i would argue with anybody's right to gas women with their little babies as a result of any foreign policy mandate or any foreign policy position that was taken by those persons. but actually, the kurds inhabit, and have for time and memorial,

the northern part of iraq. and so they haven't -- they haven't tried to overthrow saddam hussein. what they have done is tried to hold on to their position in northern iraq. at the edges at places like kurdcouth. you have the friction. you have saddam move in and he displaced kurdish people and moved in arab families. that's why they have the disputes now over who has a piece of land. because you'll have a kurd with a deed to a piece of land saying this comes down through my fathers for centuries. you'll have an arab says this is my deed that i got from the saddam hussein government only a couple of years ago. so we have to work those disputes out. the kurds have been trying to hold on to their place, rather than over throw saddam hussein and take down baghdad. they have never tried to do that.

i would say this about america, you know, we try to do as much as we can to foster freedom in the world. the kurds just want to be left alone. they've got their own piece of the world in northern iraq. they want to be left alone. they don't want to have planes fly over them and drop poison gas on them. we did the no fly zone for years as you know to try to keep saddam hussein to be able to project air power into northern iraq. as a result of those gassings, i don't think we were wrong there. i certainly don't think that's somebody who gases and doesn't like the united states. i don't think that's a valid proposition that we're at fault for what he did to those mothers and their babyies. we have about seven minutes left with our guest, duncan hunter. sherry, on the republican line.

>> caller: hello. how are you? >> guest: good. >> caller: thank you for writing this book. i appreciate you and i appreciate our military personnel so very much. thank god for them. they keep us free and going every day. i have a couple of questions about iraq. first of all, do you think that the terror groups, hamas and hezbollah are in iraq. and if they are, are they the ones who are currently helping to murder and slaughter iraqi christians? and the other question that i have is in afghanistan is it not true that pakistan and india are kind of doing a pseudowar against each other in afghanistan and we are getting caught between them. because i think india is very sneakily sneaking in their little terrorist instigators in afghanistan. >> host: all right. sherry, we got it. we have to leave it there.

you have to keep your answers short. >> guest: let me do the hezbollah, the hezbollah model from iran when iran fostered hezbollah, the terrorists group, was subjected to some degree in the training and army of the special groups of iraqi, shiite extremist who were fighting the united states and fighting the iraqi government and the sunnies. but we defeated them when we -- when the first iraqi division went down and took out the army in basra. they were defeated. but there were hezbollah elements in the training and arming of the special groups. the second question that i haven't seen personally, a strong presence of indian espionage, if you will, in the afghanistan theater. thanks for bringing it back to the troops. this book is a tribute to the folks that 1.2 million americans who fought in iraq. that's why i wrote this book.

>> host: self-published. where can people get it? >> guest: it's published by gwen sis. you can get it at amazon or victoryiniraqbook.com. or from genesis publishing. >> host: what is genesis publishing? >> guest: pretty major house in mississippi. will cologne started it. he looked up and said i read the instances of courage and bravery. the american republic will never know, jessica lynch being captured, and the bad things that happened. but the tails of heroism has been been related to the

american public. he said, i'll publish it. i'm grateful that he did that. >> host: the book is laid out chronologically. it profiles several of the generals. as congressman was saying, it profiles different soldiers who participated. two more phone calls left. new york, liz, independent line. go ahead. >> caller: good morning. first i'd like to say thank you to all of our veterans. they have kept our safe for hundreds of years and continue to do so today. my father was a veteran of world war ii, my husband vietnam. i have waited years to talk to you about this. i live in upstate new york. i was down in new york city at a meeting three weeks after 9/11. i'm well aware of the devastation that was caused. i've always considered the afghan area a legitimate war. my question, i guess, is why did you turn your back on it and go

to iraq? there's plenties of countries in this world that we don't agree with, that massacre their people. we don't invade them all. you started two wars, you let both of them languish. and the reason we are victorious or can say we are, is not because of our leadership, by simply because of our soldiers. the ones that you write about in the book. my second point is why did you never bring this country to war? why did you never fund the war on anything but supplemental and why did you not reinstitute the draft? >> host: all right. we got the point, liz. on the second point? >> guest: yeah, why did we fund the war? wars have always been funded on supplement. the point that peter made, he said almost $1 trillion spent in iraq. that's real money. that's a little less than the full impact of the bank bailout

that we paid for. i think it's a more valid, a more valid program and a more valid american interest in the massive bank bailout which was going to have an impact somewhere around $1 trillion. the facts are you fund wars on supplements. that doesn't mean the money is not real. it means when you go into a war, you don't know how much you are going to spend that year. so you do it on a supplement. thatthat is you do it on a basi. you pay for it, and then you go to the next several months or the next six or several months and you pay for that. and you do what you have to do to win. we went in and had a very successful stand up in afghanistan early on. we voted, we went in, we knocked al qaeda out of afghanistan, as you know, they went into pakistan. we stood up the government, constitution, court system, and that government has trouble

working. it's got a lot of corruption. a lot of problems right now. you are always going to have massive problems in that part of the world standing up. a government that's similar to the model of united states. and that's a model that is based on honesty, on fairness, on having a system that works without corruption. and that's always a difficulty. but actually, afghanistan in the 2003, 2004, 2005 was looked on as a model of success. we had very low american casualties. we've had more american casualties in the last year ten times as many american casualties than we had six years ago. so this is an injection of fighters and forces largely coming out of pakistan, out of what i call the pakistan strip that 1500 mile strip between pakistan and afghanistan. coming in to fight the americans and fight the existing government in afghanistan.

it's tough sledding. there's a lot of things that i have to do. i think it's beyond the program. we had a successful stand up of the afghanistan government early on. it's gotten worse over the last year or so. >> host: curt in quantico, virginia. quick. >> caller: good morning. thank you for your son's service. i served in iraq in 2006-2007, and 2008-2009. right war. not always the right way. it was the right war. i dispute your characterization that we won this war. i left in the spring of '07 very optimistic about the direction that we were heading. i left in the fall of '09 very despondent. because i see it more akin to korea. we are still at a stalemate. the war is still ongoing. there's still ha -- still a lot of shooting. in fact, the governor of the

lambar providence was shoot in '09. i think we pulled back before the government was ready, before the ia was ready, before the ips were ready. it's just also bit of an unstable situation. it could turn our way. it hasn't turned our way yet. >> host: congressman, 30 seconds. >> guest: okay. 30 seconds. look at the statistics, 2009, i know you saw that. you are always going to have some bombs going off in every country in the middle east. we lost -- more americans were killed. twice as many americans were killed in chicago in 2009 that were killed in the entire country of iraq. my son came back with the fourth striker brigade. been there a year. they just came back in september. not a single kia. you are never going to have a country that is totally free of

gunfire. but with respect to a strong government, having a military that is now mature and a country that has democracy, iraq has this. it's never going to be iowa. but we have won in iraq, decisively. take a look at the book. call me back, let me know what you think. >> host: chairman duncan hunter "victory in iraq: how america won." >> in booktv, 43 president george w. bush on his memoir, decision points. :