Think the islamic people who are not terrorists do not condemn them . They dont openly condemn them . Why is that . You have not heard any examples of that . There are stories in the paper that areut groups forming, muslim groups that are forming International Groups to criticize and denounce what isis is doing. Georgia, democrat, good morning. Caller good morning to you. I think the president s speech was on point. We are not going to militarily be able to destroy terrorism. We can slow them down, stop them from coming here, but we are not going to destroy terrorism altogether. Host i have to leave it there. Sorry for the abrupt stop. That brings in and to todays washington journal. We will be back tomorrow at 7 00 a. M. And now i want to bring it to the Wilson Center discussing the Government Security clearance process with a group who worked for previous administrations. I am very excited that we are doing something truly useful as host a panel is to discussion on security clearance, a next gen overhaul and if you dont know what next gen means, you should probably leave the hall. Todays problems are digital but our policies and politicians are analog. Anyone who has held a secret or topsecret clearance knows what i mean. Parts of our system fit the 19th century like the paper timecards we are stuck with at the Wilson Center, not kidding. Bottom line, if we want to work toward security, our approach to security clearance needs an overhaul asap. The way we do business right now has at least three serious problems. First, we are not getting the right people in the door. More than ever, we need individuals with Language Skills and cultural savvy working in National Security. Its too hard for a native arabic speaker to make it to the fbi. We also need folks another way around a keyboard. James komi has pointed out, its hard to attract that talent when you have zero tolerance for past marijuana use. Second, we are not catching the people who really do pose an insider threat. Whatever you think of edward snowden, and i dont think well of him, everyone can agree that it was too easy for him to get the access he got. We have to get smarter about using big data, open source collection, and behavioral analytics to flag possible security risks. We are getting smarter but are we smart enough . Third, after people make it into the system, we are not securing their information. That is a disservice to our dedicated Public Servants including some who are under deep cover as we speak. We must do better. And thehe rightech right approach, we can. We have a phenomenal panel here to suggest some 21stcentury solutions. Is aducing our speakers close friend of the Wilson Center, chris c who recently chair the nationalojum Security Council and now serves as a at the georgessor washington Elliott School for national affairs. He also contributed to a fabulous book on intelligence oversight that we are putting together with the nyu center on law and security and it will be released soon. From Oxford University press. Years,that, chris had 25 a quarter of a century with the vaunted lee hamilton, my predecessor here for 12 years. Before that, he was the chairman ofalued the House Foreign Affairs committee and recently received the president ial medal of honor. Chris was on the House Foreign Affairs committee for 15 years. And worked on the Iraq Study Group and was Deputy Director of the 9 11 commission with lee hamilton. Please join in welcoming him now. [applause] thank you. With profound thanks to the Wilson Center and president sponsoringpop for todays discussion, i believe that if we have a national on thisn the vegan issue that the views today will prevail. The case is compelling. Its my honor and pleasure to introduce the members of the panel. First a want to start with direct the honorable Charles E Allen who currently serves as the Security PolicyReform Council chair at the intelligence and National Security alliance and for the past six or so years, a principal at the chertoff group. It would be remiss for me to stop there. Mr. Allen has over 50 years of government service. He served as an undersecretary at the department of Homeland Security and assistant secretary before that and was the assistant director of Central Intelligence for collection. Tni worked closely and i have the highest regard for him. Further, to my left is the demps thejoan executive Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton and served as theey, executive director of Central Intelligence for Community Management under president clinton and the executive director of the president s foreign intelligence advisory board. Given her responsibility for Community Management, her direct successor in that function is the director of National Intelligence. Right here,o my immediately to my right is the fort who isndall the director of Program Security in Cyber Security at raytheon and formerly, he was the assistant secretary of state and the bureau of intelligence and research at the department of state, a very fine organization. Right isay to my Douglas Thomas who is the director for counterintelligence operations and Corporate Investigations at Lockheed Martin. He is the principle that he director he served as the Deputy Director for counterintelligence and the u. S. Government. He has 35 years of Service Working on counterintelligence issues. He chaired the National Counterintelligence operations board. The case i would put to all of you is that the experience and the depth of perspective of those represented on this panel i think deserve attention. With that, why dont we begin with the first question. The question is, why do we need security clearance reform . Its simple and straightforward. I will ask everyone to speak for roughly three minutes to the question. I will begin with randy fort. Thank you very much and thank you for posting this event which i think is an important dialogue to have. People in the audience how many of you drive a 1950s automobile today . Anybody . Does anybody have a 1950s telephone you use . Is there anybody whose Television Set is a 1950s model . Anyone . When you go to the dentist, you or are1950s dentistry you looking for a little bit more advanced . 1950s as a Business Model is pretty much over except in the security clearance business area which is still mired in that decade in terms of the fundamental processing and mindset of how security is done. Hand toolhis bespoke we will go around and knock on doors and talk to people who dont know who you are and check those boxes and assume somehow that is yielding something. When it does not. For many years, that process has been all but oblivious to the changes in technology. Its not surprising that federal government was slow to recognize and respond to the pc revolution in the 1980s. They were slow to recognize and respond to the World Wide Web developments of the 90s, they were slow to recognize and respond to the social media revolution taking place in the early 2000s and we are seeing the same pattern today when it comes to mobility. Not a lot of ability to grasp and understand the impact and influences of these technologies which continue to double relentlessly in their capacity ands in speed and effectively. Ishave a system today that old, inefficient, ineffective, obsolete, slow, inaccurate, and, as weve learned with the opm announcements of the last several months, it is corrupt. We cannot even trust the information which is held in the various databases. Foreign powers have allegedly had access to that, not just taking it, but whatever they have been able to do to manipulate it. We are looking at a broken system. Its fundamentally broken and unreliable. This should be the opportunity 2015 andize that it is in a few weeks, it will be 2016. We are 15 of the way through the 21st century and yet we still are relying on the system which is mired in the middle of the last century. I think there is a good case to be made that its time to start looking to the future and these new technologies and figure out a better way to do business. Thank you. I want to mention that we are live on cspan. Next, i would like to turn to Charlie Allen. Thank you very much. Its a pleasure to be here at the Wilson Center again. I think what randy just outlined kind of sets the stage for the rest of the discussion. Its the broad framework we have to use with better technologies. That agencyt cia, worked reasonably well, not totally efficiently, trying to transfer nsa cleared officers get them assigned to my staff. An intervention by the executive director or by joan dempsey to make things happen. When i went to the department of Homeland Security where i would be undersecretary chertoff, i found the process slow and difficult. When i left government in 2009, it was my view that it was vital that the intelligence and National Security alliance through ellen mccarthy, i said i really want to form a task force. , ahas turned into a council more permanent body because we found the problems were really very difficult. We found there were great inefficiencies in the way we did costs werehat the truly high, whether you are in government because the and reform in terrorism prevention act, the office of Personnel Management in 2005, took over on the department of defense. Most of the responsibility for security clearances, the process in government improved because we did mandate some expedited processes on the government side. On the contractor side, and we have tens of thousands of contractors, we would not have weapon systems or payloads in space we do not have contractors with great specialties. Slowund that was extremely and very difficult and that the government really was moving at glacial speed. Is peoplee problem who had clearances, it was mandated they had periodic investigations every five years. We had a huge backlog when the office of Personnel Management took over the responsibility. It had been worked on hard by jim clapper was the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. It improved on the government side but not at the contractor side rate we published a paper in december, 2011 which said contractors who were to be put on a contract could not work because their pr ironic their periodic re investigations were out of date and i caused billions of dollars in you think of the vastness of the Intelligence Community and Homeland Security. I found that very staggering. I had one experience where we had a topsecret seicleared officer from dia had relatives in vietnam. He had been polygraph for counterintelligence. I wanted to transfer him from dia to the department of Homeland Security. Months to get approvedrance past and by the director of security and Homeland Security. When i arrived at these National Security alliance, and is burning issue and it has now turned into a council, a Permanent Council of subcommittees. Im greatly honored we have randy ford here who has worked on the Technology Subcommittee and talk thomas who was working today on a new subcommittee on the insider threat. It has expanded and become permanent, improvements have been made, but we have oceans and oceans of places to go before we have this efficient. Policy and security do not align. Acquisition and security do not align. The way we do our business and government as well. That is the background. I wanted to give a little history before we move on in our discussion. Thank you. I would like to turn to joan, please. Thank you. I agree with the way randy put the challenges today in context. He is absolutely right, we need a new approach to personnel security inside the government. I also want to give a couple examples of what Charlie Allen was talking about. Like most successful organizations, the government has to Pay Attention to cost which is a big driver. The cost to personal security is normally hidden. The government does not know what personal security costs. I have a couple of specific examples i want to give you. While this story is true, the name was changed to protect me. Its privacy information. Everything else in the story is true. John smith is a technical ask expert in quantum computing, hard to find american citizens are willing to subject themselves to security clearances and work for the government who have these kind of skills. Hes in expert in quantum computing cleared at the qs level within the department of defense. To be billed to the government at 195,000 ,nnually, very specialized skilled individual with a very high clearance. That number breaks down to 15,000 per month, 3750 per week, and 93 . 75 per hour. John is scheduled to move from one Intelligence CommunityOrganization Contract to a different Organization Contract. , remember he is fully cleared, his clearance has been submitted to the gaining agency so that he can be crossed over to work on the new contract. His company will carry the cost of employing john, roughly 15,000 per month for this highly skilled, highly educated individual for the duration of the cross over time. Who ultimately pays that bill . Its the u. S. Government because that cost is embedded in the rate that the government pays for those individuals. The agency to which he is moving needs only to execute a polygraph to move him. We estimated six months for that crossover. Unfortunately, it took 10 months. We paid the bill, 150,000 to keep john on what we called the bench while we waited for his polygraph to be scheduled, which it was, but we did not know whether it would be. That is a huge cost of one individual. That was a fairly simple process. The second one is harder. We had an individual who is also for the department of information with a polygraph but who was married to a foreign national. His wife was indian. Technologydvanced office in dod and wanted to move him to an it advanced office. Phd ina degree and Engineering Physics from cornell. There are not a lot of american citizens that have those qualifications. He was also the author of more than 40 technical papers with over 5000 citations. His clearance, he was fully cleared, took 294 days to cross over because he had an indian board wife. She got american citizenship before his clearance crossed over and she started the process after we submitted his paperwork. These are two individuals out of whothousands of contractors do highly specialized, highly skilled information for the Intelligence Community. We have to fix this problem. With that, i will turn it back over. Thank you. Doug . Morning, one thing we are going to see is a common theme from this panel and that is that we need to start leveraging technology. One of the things that has changed dramatically in 50 years someone mentioned the opm breach, that is a big deal and it sent shivers up my spine because thats about sophisticated systems and the bad guys have more information at their fingertips than they ever had before. It will make our job harder. And noat this panel offense but its decades of experience in the government. Looking at this problem set, i think all of us could probably be embarrassed with why we are and where we are today. As randy said and joan said and charlie said, we have been approaching this problem for 50 years now. It is time to start leveraging technology on the front and when you get clearance and throughout the whole process of having clearance. Thank you. I will finish up with a few points as to why we need reform. Costset clearance 400,000. A topsecret security clearance costs 5,000. The direct cost of security clearance im any given year are 1. 6 billion. Thats a lot of money. We do hundreds of thousands of clearances each year. Technology, yes, there will be a cost upfront but the cost of doing those clearances and monitoring people going , what is the cost of a Bank Transaction . Its a fraction of a cent. Thats the model we need to move to. Ok, lets start the next round and i want to turn it back to doug. What changes to have to make . Doug is the middle of making them so he is our speaker to start. I am trying to remain optimistic. [laughter] breach, thereopm was a 90 day review study set up in the principles are being briefed on that this week. That theyre going to stand up a new agency call the National Investigative service agency. Im not sure where it will land yet. It will have a