[inaudible] i like to call this to the order. Id like to talk about our nominee chris, congratulations on your nomination. I like to start by recognizing the family you brought with you here today understand your wife kimberly is here. As well as your son and eight stefan, aiding in your daughter jillian and her husband james. And of course, your mother joyce, welcome. Our goal is to look at the qualifications and to allow for a thoughtful deliberation. Chris is provided substance written responses to 85 questions by the committee and its members. Members will be able to ask questions and hear from mr. Sharpley in the open session. He earned his ba entered his masters degree from the postgraduate degree school. He received commission for the u. S. Air force where he trained with a Counterintelligence Office for special investigation. Chris continue to serve in the air force and post including is director of security until he retired from the air force in 2002. Following the retirement as a civilian special agent. Since then he worked as a deputy ig for the department of energy and help build the offices at the tarp program and the federal housing authority. In 2010 he received the president ial rank award for service. In 2012 he retired as a federal civilian lawenforcement officer has started his career at the Central Intelligence agency. If you dont mind me saying, i dont think youre very good at retiring. From 2012 into 2015 he served as deputy general of the cia. He then served as both deputy and acting ig of the cia. Chris is independent power Inspector General is critical and efficient management of the intelligent community. I trust you will leave the office with integrity and ensure the officers operate lawfully, ethically, morally. As i mentioned other nominees, i can assure you this committee will continue to faithfully follow its charter and conduct realtime oversight over the intelligence community. Will less difficult and probing questions of you, your staff, i will expect honest, complete and timely responses. I look forward to supporting your nomination. I want to thank you for being here for years of service to your country both in lawenforcement and our military. I look forward to your testimony. I recognize the vicechairman for any Opening Statement. Thank you and welcome. Its good to see again and welcome to family. Congratulations is your nomination to serve. I believe the job is critical to the effective operation of any agency. The committee relies on the Inspector General to ensure the organizations are using taxpayer dollars wisely, conducting their activities within the rules spirit of the law and supporting and protecting whistleblowers. Whistleblowers who report fraud, waste, and abuse. These functions are more important than an organization like the caa which by necessity does not operate in the public. I appreciate your the third nominee to come to us this year. I hope we this position has been vacant since february. A very concerned about the number of changes occurring there. As i mentioned we appreciate the meeting earlier this month. We talked about issues that you will face. I want to reiterate some of our discussion and ask you some of the same questions we had in private. One, we supported protecting whistleblowers. Today we want to make sure all cia employees know their rights and responsibilities as well as the processes for them to report waste, fraud, and abuse. I would like to hear a greater commitment from you on this issue. Your job is to be hard hitting. Define problems, uncover abuses, and recommend fixes. You must guard your independence fiercely. I like you to reaffirm that thats also your role in this important position. As you know the committee completed a report and specifically shared it with the executive branch to ensure such abuses are not reported in the future. We discussed how the office both lost and then found a copy of the report and how you decided to return it to the committee. Today and in public, please explain how came to be lost and why you made a decision to return it to the committee. Finally i want your reassurances that you support the investigation into russian interference into the president ial election. Something that i think we have done good work on. Thank you for your service to our country, thank you for being here today and agreeing to accept an opportunity to continue to serve our country. Thank you. Would you stand and please raise your right hand. To swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you god . Please be seated. Before we moved to your statement, it is practice of this committee that i ask you five standard question that the committee poses to each nominee who appears before us. A simple yes or no. Do you agree to appear before the committee here or in any other venue when invited . Yes. If confirmed please send officials to appear before the committee and designates staff when invited . Yes. We provide documents or materials requested in order for it to carry out its oversight of legislative responsibilities . Yes. We ensure your office and staff provide such materials to the committee. Yes. Do agree to inform and brief all members of the committee of intelligence activities and covert actions rather than limit that only to the chair and vice chair . Yes. Thank you. Well proceed to your Opening Statement that all recognize members by seniority for fiveminute question times. Thank you chairman. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear today as you consider my nomination to be the Inspector General. Im honored and humbled the President Trump has placed his confidence in me to tackle the challenges of this position. My main at the risk of being redundant i like to speak to my background and experience a qualify me to serve as a cia Inspector General. Grateful to have served our nation over the past 36 years. A journey that began shortly after receiving a commission in the air force in 1981. My training and the skills i required to prepare me for challenging assignments during my ten years of active duty service. And also prepared me for my service of another ten years in the air force reserves. Assignments include a commander and director of security and support highly classified special Access Programs. I retired honorably from the reserves in 2002. Upon transitioning i began a fulltime employment as a civilian special agent at the department of Office Energy and respect in general. I became the deputy general with Program Leadership responsibilities covering the Nuclear Weapons complex. I was privileged to have been asked by two new inspectors general the federal Housing Finance agency to assist in building new offices of Inspector General focuses on detecting fraud to stabilize u. S. Banking, securities and Financial Markets during the economic crisis. In 2010 i received the president ial rank award for my leadership in building programs that identified billions in fraud and supported prosecutions. In 2012 i retired as a civilian special agent lawenforcement officer. Thats when my experience began. I was asked by David Buckley to compete for his position. He informed me that he hoped ill bring the best practices from other leadership roles to be applied. I answered that call on entry back into service in 2012 rice served as the deputy until retirement in january 2015 and where i have served until now. I strongly believe in the cia mission to preempt threats to our nation i believe the mission of the Inspector General is essential. I have installed stand firmly behind the work of the team of auditors, inspectors, investigators and support staff. Ive issued over 100 classified reports ma nearly 350 recommendations to leadership to strengthen key programs and operations. I have strengthen the processes and procedures within the office by incorporating standards and best practices utilized throughout the community. I have endeavored to establish reputation as an independent objective and honest acting Inspector General doesnt hesitate to tackle the issues speaks truth to power. Its my hope as it has been my objective to gain the trust of this committee. If confirmed will continue to keep the Committee Informed and keep them responsive. As i observe world events the mission of the cias never been more important than now. National Security Risks associated with north korea, iran, russia, china require key attention. As the risk increase cia appropriately respond and i believe independent robust and objective oversight becomes vital. Ive observed that classified highrisk missions to not receive the same level of scrutiny and feedback that unclassified activities received. Theres good reason for that. This is why capable Inspector General is needed one whole independent and investigate. Im confident the experiences and skills are required in particular acting as Inspector General have prepared me to fulfill the responsibilities. Thank you for this opportunity to testify before you in the committee. Ill be pleased to answer questions. Thank you. It is my intention to move to Committee Vote early next week for planning purposes i would encourage members if they have additional questions after todays hearing that they be submitted by the close of business tonight. I would remind members that we are in open session. Therefore questions should reflect that fact. The chair recognizes himself or five minutes. Cia Inspector General year responsible for racine a Large Organization in his work must be done in secret. But the work of the igs office can provide a critical point of transparency for employees and for this committee. How do you plan to continue art your efforts to ensure that they are fully aware of the function . Within cia theres an awareness program. People are required to takes training on an annual basis. The procedures and processes for making a complaint are incorporated in the training. We have significant outreach effort that we speak with all incoming employees and give briefings on whistleblower appraisal when that arises. Beyond that, we have an extensive amateur whistleblower Hotline Program the retaliation program. Ive had the opportunity to build to whistleblower Hotline Programs from the ground up. And to make improvements to two others. One energy, and the one at cia. Im proud of the practices we put in place they give officers and contractors access to systems the ability to make a confidential, anonymous, or open complaint at any given time. The processes i put in play and ensure that every complaint received is given a review by the senior staff of the office of Inspector General so that skill sets such as audits, expections are able to look at an issue differently with a different perspective as if they think that particular complaint or concern should be handled. What you see is the biggest challenge . The biggest challenge is one of recruitment and retention. We use systems in place by the cia, the recruiting and on boarding processes to also recruit our folks. In my opinion theres an efficient process of on boarding people at cia. Thats what i feel strongly about and i initiated a review to extent examine. For every person i want to bring on, if i identify an individual who meets a certain requirement i have to give three conditional offers of employment. So, no statistically two out of the three i will lose from the time i give the conditional offer to the time they onboard. For every conditional offer i have to conduct five interviews. To fill ten slots in an organization that receives turnover because were highly trained in the Mission Areas so if i want to fill ten slots, have to offer 30 conditional offers and that i need to do hundred 50 interviews. Thats an onerous process and statistical outlay. Our biggest challenge is on boarding folks. Thus most prominent challenge. Thank you. I want to go back to the discussion we had in the office and following up about protecting whistleblowers. I like you to talk a little bit about what you could do particularly the unique nature of the cia what you could do not only on the hotline also programs in terms of preventing retaliation and specifically answers to written questions you said you try to beef up the programs and you talked about bringing in outside experts help advisee. Could you describe what kind of outside that would be and take us through your commitment to the whistleblower protections and particularly since weve seen increase retaliation and how we can prevent them from Going Forward . Thank you senator. Whistleblowing and the programs that they put in place are essential to the success of any office of Inspector General. Every program i have built need to build it where theres confidence by whistleblowers or those raising concerns about an issue that they feel and are comfortable providing information. If theyre not comfortable providing information they will come to. Then you cant fulfill your mission. Its critical to the success and particularly at cia because of the nature of the mission meaning everything is compartmented and people are doing missions. The first thing i did to improve the Whistleblowing Program at cia is ensure that we had a robust Outreach Program. I described a little bit today about what that program was about. But the main thrust of that outreach is to ensure no matter where a cia officer or contractor with access to your system is located around the world, they can make a confidential, anonymous, or open complaint or sharing of concern with our office and they are guaranteed confidentiality of basic it. You said you look at outside. A very comfortable with the program we have thats effective. But, we know from the work that were in which is independent assessments and evaluation of the effectiveness of programs, even though comfortable with the program i have it would be appropriate and prudent for me to invite others in. Theres other individuals within the ig community that are known to have very solid and large programs. When i refer to this my prehearing questionnaire ive asked my chief of staff to reach out to these individuals and asked for an independent assessment of the programs i put in place, not just the Outreach Program but the education effort in our ability to assess subjectively an independent each complaint to make sure its handled in a timely fashion. If individuals are concerned about retaliation we need to move promptly so any potential wrongdoing can be prevented promptly and quickly. I know some members will ask some in depth about the study and i will allow them to get into your reason for returning it. One thing that came up was how the report was lost in the refound. I think iou the opportunity to give that explanation. And the fact that it was lost and found, was anybody held accountable for losing that as well . Thank you. Ill be happy to discuss those issues. I know thats on the mind of a number of members. Its an important issue an important report. If i can briefly go through the explanation, we received a copy of the committees study, 6000 page, highly classified in december of 2014. Was provided on the disk. Then Inspector General ordered it be uploaded to a classified office of Inspector General system. That was done. Shortly thereafter, we receive guidance that the report should not be placed in any system because of an ongoing foia litigation in the d. C. Circuit. So, an email was sent back to the organization that had Investigative Organization with a classified system is held to delete the report and take the disk containing the study and place it in a classified safe. The report was deleted from the system, but the it administrator responsible for the uploading of the report and handling the disk did not receive that email. The processes in place at cia and at cia oig when we take a report of the media we place it on to the classified system is to destroy the diskette. So, sometime later, several months when requested if we had the disk and where was it, i asked where it was. Nobody could find the disk. I informed the committee we cannot find the desk. Then i initiated an internal investigation to ensure and to find out what happened. Testimony given to us by it administrator was the disk had been shredded in this particular administrator was unaware of the deletion of the document from our system and had shredded the disk. Several months later, during the course of an individual to party retiring there going through their classified safe from the disk. Coincidentally the bit embarrassing it was an embarrassing meant to me. The litigation from the foyer issue had ceased, it was done in part of the conclusion was that the document was a congressional document. I informed the committee that we had found the desk. I also opened another investigation to find out what happened. How can we find testimony that this was shredded when it had not been shredded . We found the individual with sense left employment from the office of the cia that person told us that it was essentially a guess. They dont remember shredding the disk but they felt because they had shredded other media they shredded that as well. Its embarrassing and i apologize. As around that time a request from the chair of the committee that produced the study to return that study on the disk that i made an independent judgment to return the disk. I stand by that judgment, the judgment and decision to return the disk is not reflection on what i feel the quality of the report was. It was a fiveyear effort and 6000 page report. I understand its value. I do have an unclassified copy of the exe