To be learned from that event or is that just the way that system works . Are there lessons to be drawn . Rep. Mccaul they were all on such high alert, they came out with their van and they were automatically taken down. They were kind of waiting for them. If there was any breakdown i could analyze, it is that, typically, the argument is that they would share information. In this case, the fbi did. It would be an issue of locals sharing it with their counterparts. The model, when it works well, works well. Sometimes you have breakdowns. I went say it broke down in that case, but if there was, it was on the part of the locals. Is there any reason to think that these guys were activated ordered it to do this . Or was itself inspired . Rep. Mccaul it is a matter of semantics. What they were trying to do was activate through calls to arms over the internet. They identified the contest, and they went to their followers on twitter, and this is the do age of terrorism, where they send out a directive, and hope that out of those thousand people they will get one person to sign up. Mr. Cook we are about halfway through. Paul, aaron, anna, shawn daniel. Can you talk a little bit about your business in iraq . Was he the Prime Minister acknowledging how bad the situation there was . Giving assistance to the kurds . Was he asking for more time . Rep. Mccaul he is a shia. He asked the administration for more military assistance, and my judgment was not given that so he had an issue. In our state department, we were over there. We were very much against the idea of bypassing baghdad and funding, arming the peshmerga and city tribes, because they thought that goes around baghdad and undermines the central government, therefore undermines the unity of government, therefore splits up the three different kurds, shia, sunni state. That was a state department line. The speaker, a sunni, the speaker of the parliament, had a different version. They would like to see more direct funding. With the kurds and peshmerga mosul they want what they see is these weapons we are sending go through baghdad, not given to the peshmerga, the kurds, or to the sunni tribes, but rather the shia militias. From their perspective, they see the Prime Minister as a proxy of the militia. The militias are a proxy of iran. They completely inflame and disenfranchise, which is very contrary to what we did, where we would bring these tribes over to fight al qaeda and iraq. Right now, the strategy is now working that way. It is pushing them away. Just two days ago, they were saying with the shia militias here, we have leaders staying out of the fight. I see that as a real political disaster. There is a diplomatic peace to this piece to this, that is a failure of the administration. They dont have a choice. Is the Prime Minister in denial about that . Rep. Mccaul they are incapable now of defeating isis. He feels like he has to bring in the shia militia, but they are not getting that the kurds and peshmerga are not helping as much as they should. There is a greater issue here the arab nations have a responsibility. They are never going to go into syria and iraq to fight isis, as long as they know they are helping assad. As long as assad look at yemen. Operating freely in yemen, that is all right. They are al qaeda, but they are sunni. Been saudi arabia wakes up we have a problem. Until we find a safe exile for mr. Assad that can bring in a more stable form of government i dont know if we will ever get the Arab League Nations in. They could put a fighting force in there, a ground force, but they will never commit to that if they think they are helping assad. There is growing concern about terrorist threats to the talking about backing up the system with transformers and an expensive process. Do you think it is threatened in any way and what should be done . Rep. Mccaul it is always vulnerable. This on the internet, you can be completely safe if you disconnect yourself from the internet. Cyber is an ever evolving threat. I think the legislation it passed in my Community Gives us another issue. That has bipartisan support. The president would sign it. What it does is we make homeland the lead civilian portal to the private sector. 80 of it is the private sector, making sure across private sector lines. Only then can you patch or networks and have the keys to lock the door. That is not happening right now. In particular, the private sector is not happy. The only thing that can make it happen is to provide protection. They are not incentivized to share with dhs. If they dont know they would be protected. We provide that. It had broadbased support from private sector and the chamber of commerce, and also privacy groups. We think it is the right place for this information sharing. Dhs cant prosecute you and it can spy on you. It is the outreach to state, local, and private sector infrastructure. We feel that will go a long way to help protect our power grids, our financial institutions. Every day, russia and china with the sony attack, it happens on a monthly basis. Sudden warfare is a serious concern. They could shut down the power grid. Now even the cyber jihadists are getting in. Mr. Cook erin kelly. What is happening with your lawyer security is that something you want to come to the floor soon . Rep. Mccaul i still wanted to go to the floor. The criticisms were that it didnt have interior forcing. My committee was comprised of a political compromise, isis within dhs has jurisdiction over that. There were criticisms judiciary has no marked out and passed their bill, so mr. Gimlet and i had a discussion. They want the homeland approach bill out of the way because that is creating problems. The bogeyman, so to speak, is not in the room anymore. I think the number one issue is when are you going to get Border Security . I think we are to the American People being done. I see an opportunity i talked to the speaker about it. They are trying to galvanize members, a countermovement to at least start the process where lets put the Border Security bill on the floor and get that passed out of the house. Mr. Cook maria. I was going to ask about security i have texas questions. I wanted to follow up on what senator sessions, one of your problems last time, i know he is in the other chamber. Since this is my one shot, i want to ask you about the five texans running for president and if you are supporting them. [laughter] rep. Mccaul there are five of them now . [laughter] jeb bush, native texan, carly fiorina. Rep. Mccaul i will take the first question. He runs the christian movie studio or something. [indiscernible] rep. Mccaul first of all yeah. I set down with him in good faith and explained it wasnt what was in my bill, it was what wasnt in my bill. I explained to him what wasnt in my bill was in judiciarys jurisdiction and i explained jurisdiction to him. I hope he understands that now. Now with goodlattes bill out there, it would resolve the issues that he had with the bill. But i know that there people want this done. Every day i have members on the floor coming up to me, saying we need to get that bill on the floor. It is not easy. To think it would be an easy thing to do, but people raise all sorts of issues. You can never pass a board of security bill. My concern is not immigration, it is a security bill, first and foremost, to protect americans from the threat. Back when i was at counterterrorism prosecutor, even back then. I saw the potential threats. Terrorists today are always on the road. You have a lot of bad elements coming in drug cartels, a lot of bad actors. The people down there, coming to work, they will be on the violent side. The president is right it is way too early. I will tell you what i would like to see someone who can unite and not divide. There is a lot of Division Going on. I like more of a reagan type person, not being a polarizing divisive figure. I would also love to see someone with experience. I am not going to go through the litany of names, but someone with experience. The number one issue today is National Security and Foreign Policy, and that will be the issue front and center in front of clinton, who will tout turk credentials as a foreignpolicy expert, but if we dont have a guy who was nominated who has little to no experience in foreignpolicy, how can we possibly take her on . You spoke about the iraq about iraq and the Forward Operating bases to the syrian border. You have become a student of this war, given your expertise on the committee, and i would love for you to paint a picture of that. We have been at this war for 10 years should it be another 10 years . Just as long as it takes to get this done, because it is such a priority . How much blood and treasure is worth that . I would also like to ask you about the jade helm exercise. It was last month rep. Mccaul taking over texas right . [laughter] the government was worried about those troops. Rep. Mccaul it is a great question. There was an isolationist movement from even in my party prior to isis. If they hadnt be headed the american journalists, im not sure the American People would even be paying attention. But that is the demise. It is hard to sit back and watch a force like that grow. Intent on killing jews christians, latin americans, jordanian pilots that type of barbarism, and the potential for it cant be left to fester. I am not an isolationist. As a nation, we have gotten into trouble and i think churchill was right. You have a policy of appeasement, weakness invites aggression. I think it is a mess. We want the problem to go away and the question would you do anything differently had you known today . The right question is would you have pulled out precipitously, not negotiating status of forces, if you knew what you know today . By doing that germany, japan, korea, we didnt have that in iraq, which i think was responsible. Was the responsible. Yeah, we should not have done that. If we had a residual force in iraq i dont think we would be talking about this. We beat al qaeda in iraq, and all the constituents died over there, we beat them, and we left the stable country. It became destabilized because of a lack of engagement, by withdrawing completely, by not engaging maliki. Clinton went to baghdad one time in her tenure as secretary of state, for three hours. That shows you the level of disengagement in iraq. And that, i think, created isis. Do you think would you say another tenure, that we should just stay there as long as it takes . Rep. Mccaul we are not some monolithic giant. Ramani was pretty scary. If we came up with a military strategy, a political one that was aggressive and serious about destroying and defeating them, not containing them, that we could do this in short order. We did it with al qaeda in iraq. Isis is very similar to what we saw with al qaeda. The problem is destabilization of that region not only matters in the middle east, but also in northern africa. In places like saudi, they dont understand the foreignpolicy, why are you letting the Muslim Brotherhood they think it is my decision and it is not. There is no certainty and foreignpolicy. With that, there is a lot of confusion, a lot of destabilization going on. You have failed states destabilized, becoming power vacuums. I agree that will be a Great National debate, probably in the 2016 election. I do think most americans see isis for what it is one of the most evil forms of barbarism we have seen in our lifetime. Mr. Cook im sorry did you talk to the pentagon . Rep. Mccaul i am a big supporter of the u. S. Military. [laughter] what does that mean . Rep. Mccaul our United States military is not our threat, isis is our threat. Senator cornyn, your former colleague, proposed a deal where it would transition more slowly. The data would go back to the Foreign Countries more slowly over two years, and there would be safeguards built in to ensure that that is working, that Law Enforcement can still get that data quickly. Perhaps a requirement that phone Companies Hold onto data. It sounded like a pretty reasonable offer, given senators prior positions. Do you think a deal can be reached around that fairly quickly, so if there is any expiration rep. Mccaul i think that worked for john for four years. He was always very thoughtful, rational. I think that puzzle is sound that proposal is sound. You were not giving them enough time to make the transition, and i think that is a creative proposal that could bring the house and senate together. I just dont know what will happen. And that is an idea that i would support in the house. Mr. Cook mr. Strauss . I wanted to ask you jeb bush and all the attention last week to whether we should have gone into iraq or not. You talked about being interested in someone, supporting a candidate with Foreign Policy leadership. Was the former governors response a sign of political acumen on foreignpolicy . What would your answer have been to the question if we know now what we didnt know, would you have authorized rep. Mccaul you think you would be prepared for that question, but i would have answered it differently. We are already in. My goal was to make sure that we stabilize, then responsibly get out. Mistakes have been made all throughout the conflict, in the post invasion of iraq was not handled well. They made a lot of mistakes. All these people wouldnt have joined, because they were thrown out on the street. Some of them are still in isis. How would you have answered that question . Rep. Mccaul the question is you cant change the past. You can learn from it but you cant change it. The question is how do you deal with iraq in the present. I would have had the status forces agreement. That was a mistake, too. Dealing with it today, how are you going to stabilize that region again . Can we afford to leave a destabilized . Can we allow isis to flourish . It is going to take one big attack and people say why werent you there to stop it . I would not allow the safe haven to flourish, so how do you deal with it in the present . There are things we could be doing tactically, but we are not being aggressive. Whether it is airstrikes, in betting special operations with the iraqi armed training, arming the peshmerga, trying to get assad so we can galvanize the forces that we know are in our backyard. Societies dont like isis. We know that qatar and kuwait are funding a lot of the operations, and that is a weird phenomenon. That is a whole other issue. I just wanted to ask you about major companies, including apple, google, cisco, protesting in cricketing backdoors to getting secrets to data. Where do you stand on this issue, and where do you think that congress will ultimately go . Rep. Mccaul it is called dark space. Its what i referenced earlier. It is a tricky issue and it is controversial on some levels. It is controversial when you talk about encryption and the ability to backdoor into that. Where i dont think it is controversial are the platforms the terrorists used to communicate and dark space, and that is primarily these platform servers. I have seen the communications between the terrorists and who they are trying to radicalize. What they say is lets go into dm, and that is the message box. Then they go into that box. If we dont have coverage, we cant view that content. But if we do, and in many cases we do, but they are smart. They start communicating there but then they jump into another platform, platforms that we cant get access to, and that is dark space. They can communicate freely freely in securecom to launch an attack against the United States. There is no way our Law Enforcement and intelligence communities are completely incapable of picking up those communications that is a threat. Foreign fighters are a threat, but i would argue that is one of the biggest threats to the homeland. It is what needs to be fixed. The only way it can be fixed is legislatively. Mr. Cook i want to thank you for being here. We appreciate it. Here is some of what we are covering on cspan tomorrow. At 10 00 a. M. Eastern tomorrow, joe biden delivers the commencement address at the Naval Academy in annapolis. Later, the Cato Institute hosts a forum on Community Policing and Law Enforcement of baltimore. Have a look at the role of federal jobs programs and whether Police Body Cameras can help regain public trust. Live coverage at noon eastern on cspan. The new congressional directory is a handy guide to the 114th congress, with color photos of every senator and house member, plus bio and Contact Information and twitter handles, also district maps, a folder map of capitol hill, and a look at congressional committees, the president s cabinet, federal agencies, and state government. Order your copy today it is 13. 95 through the cspan online store at cspan. Org. At a senate hearing, to retired generals say that isis is failing. They were part of the panel of military analysts testifying before the Senate Armed Services committee. Isis fighters recently captured ramadi, the capital of the racks largest province. John mccain chairs this two and a half hour meeting. The Committee Meets today to receive testimony on u. S. Policy in iraq and syria. I want to thank each of our expert witnesses for appearing before us today on this critical and complex topic. Senator mccain before i go any further, the secretary of defense and chairman of the joint chiefs were invited to appear is over depending on whether the bill is on the floor or not, but we certainly would like to hear from the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs. Today we have general jack keane, former vice chief of staff for the army and chairman of the institute for the study of war, and general keane, we are pleased you could take time from your duties on fox news to being with us today. Dr. Fred kagan, who is thats a joke. Dr. Fred kagan, director of the critical threats project at the American Enterprise institutes. Colonel derek harvey, u. S. Army retired, director of the Global Initiative for