Presence particularly inside the eastern part of afghanistan. They continue continue to work with the taliban as well as with the and they present a threat to the Afghan Government as well as to our u. S. Personnel inside of afghanistan. Thank you. Thank you very much gentleman. My view is you cannot have passionate debates in this room without the great work that the men and women of the Intelligent Community do to preserve our freedom. I just want to start by saying we are very grateful for that. Director brennan, and 2014 the cia conduct an unauthorized search of a senate file including the emails of senate staff investigating the cias use of torture. The cia Inspector General later stated that the search involved improper agency and access to senate files and a review board that you appointed concluded that the search resulted in inappropriate access to the committees work. You initially denied the search took place but the reports of both your Inspector General and the review board show that this denial was the fact. After it was expose the cia wrote an apology letter that you do not send. His senior senior official from the nsa, the fda, fbi all testify that you would be inappropriate is certainly search files without external operation. We still have not gone an acknowledgment from you. So i think it would be important, i would like to hear from you, id like to set the records great that this would never happen again. Would you agree that the cia 2014 search of senate files was improper . This is the annual threat assessment is it not . I think senator as you know there were unique circumstances with that. These were cia computers at a cia police facility, with, with a cia network that was shared between Senate Staffers conducting that investigation for your report as well as cia personnel. When it became quite obvious for cia personnel that staffers had unauthorized access to an internal draft document of cia, it was an obligation on the part of cia officers who had responsibility for the security of that network to investigate to see what might have been the reason for that access that the Senate Staffers had for that document. They conducted that investigation, i spoke to the chairman and vice chairman about it. I try to make sure they understood exactly what the challenge was that we had. We conducted an investigation, i then referred them to the ig, when the Senate Leadership was concerned about the action of cia officers. I also subsequently convene an accountability board. I think if you were to read those reports, including the accountability board you would see that it was determined that the actions of the cia were reasonable given the very unclear and on written or on specific understanding between the committee and cia at the time. In terms of. Mr. Director my time is short but that is not what the Inspector General. I respectfully disagree. I would like to read the exact words of the review board were. It resulted in inappropriate access to the work product. The Inspector General reached the same conclusion. So the question here is, is when youre talking about spying on a committee, responsible for overseeing your agency, and my view that undermines the very checks and balances that protect our democracy and it is unacceptable in a free society and your compatriots in all of the sister agencies agreed with that. Now you disagree. Yes, i think he was characterized by their comments as well as what is in the reports. I apologize to the chairman and vice vice chairman about the access the made to five emails during that investigation. I apologize to them for that very specific, inappropriate action i was taken as part of a very reasonable investigative action. I do not say we spied on Senate Computers or files. We did not do that. We are fulfilling our responsibilities. I read the exact words of the Inspector General and the exact words of the review board, you appointed the review board. They said nobody ought to be punished but they said there was improper access. My point is, in our system of government we have responsibility to do vigorous oversight and we cant do vigorous oversight if there is improper procedures used to access our files. My time is up. Senator i would not agree with that there is improper access Senate Staffers had to cia documents. Was that not inappropriate. I can tell you having talked at length to our staff, everything that we determined they did was appropriate but i asked about cia conduct into reviews, Inspector General and your review board said it was improper. Yes, im still waiting to review what was done by the senate to take a look at what the staffers actions were. Separation of powers goes both ways. As i said i apologize to the chairman and vice chairman for the very specific, inappropriate access that Agency Officers that were investigating this incident made to those emails. Very limited, inappropriate actions. Overall that investigation was done consistent with our obligations, consistent with obligations, consistent with the law, consistent with our responsibilities. I do think youre mischaracterizing the full tenure of both the accountability board emmy Inspector Generals report. Pretty hard to mischaracterized word for word quote. I will exercise something here and recognize senator. I want to start by thanking our panelists were being here for the continued excellence work for their respective agencies do every day and providing worldclass strategic analysis and keeping our country safe. The world and growing and complex threats that have been laid out today the work that is done by your agency is critical and i want to thank the men and women of those agencies to continue to do excellent work. I want to think the chairman for holding this hearing. Its been two years since we have had one. I hope we dont like that longneck sign. I think its important the American People have a chance chance to hear from these officials directly. Especially since many of our actions with these threats take lace behind closed doors. While that certainly appropriate most circumstances, public debate benefits tremendously from transparency. I appreciate the opportunity today. I. I want to start with admiral rogers. As you know the world has seen a truly alarming increase in attacks on Critical Infrastructure. For example, in december dhs reported a 20 increase of Cyber Incidents between fy 14 and fy 15. While critical manufacturing was the most targeted sector and that, energy rank second, and the number of incidents with water and wastewater systems coming in third. On top of that, we we have seen recent attacks against turkish banks can ukrainian electricity providers and recently revealed that iranian packers infiltrated dam just north of new york city. My question for you is this, particularly an essay did they have sufficient insight into Cyber Threats into u. S. Critical infrastructure that we are seen by porn actors and what can we do to better position ourselves because those threats specifically to Critical Infrastructure question what. You never have all the site you like. I dont think youre going to hear an intel professional say look i could use more. I think the biggest challenge in some ways is not so much the level of insight but it is how do we generate action and make the changes that i think we believe is necessary given the dynamics of the world that you outlined that i do not think our shortterm trends. I dont see this changing the future. I see this as a nature of the world where living in and will be likely to be living in percent. Of time. The challenge is how to take the insights and generate action. Thats the biggest challenge. Have you thought about particularly given the focus of those Something Like electrical generation and water and wastewater systems, the ramifications of some of the changes within those fields of distributed approaches and resiliency as opposed to the very traditional approaches of sort of oneway generation and largescale transmission . You are watching most of the sectors in the area trying to go that way. How can you build resiliency, ive talked to several moments of power of water over the last few years and you can see them trying to go that way. Just given the breath of infrastructure, the amount of time it is going to take to do that it crossed the in tire nation, that is not an insignificant challenge. Would you agree that some of the Movement Towards more distributed purchase per particularly in electrical generation, things like micro grids, island microgrids, distributed storage and are helpful. Yes, i think that should be a foundation an element of a broader strategy. I try to remind people there is no critical goal. Is a smart senator said sometimes theres a silver buckshot when you dont have a silver bullet. While the United States is obviously not addressing the isil issue alone in syria and iraq, the reality is that many of our foreign partners in the region right times heavily distracted by unrelated conflicts that are sometimes counterproductive to that fight. For example, example, as you are aware turkey is targeting the kurds have been some of the most engaged fighters in the battle against isis. Saudi arabia putting money into equipment in the fight in yemen instead of focusing on isil and syria. You spent time in the middle east over the years, what has the cia done and what might else be done to get a regional partners more focused on confronting the threat. As you point out in the middle east right now its wracked by instability and violence than we have seen in the past 50 years. The amount of bloodshed and humanitarian suffering is unprecedented. We work very closely with our partners throughout the regions to make sure the Intelligent Services are fulfilling the responsibility professionally as far as making sure that we can share information with them about the flow for fighters in particular, given there is such a difference among these countries and individuals who might go to syria, iraq and onto libya or egypt. I tried to make sure we give them the intelligence they need, the training they need, and also give them the professional training that is required. There is a tremendous application on them to make sure they can carry out the responsibility want the same time respecting human rights rights obligation they have a security services. Trying to do a serve as a interwith one of them and enhance their relationship. Sometimes we have intramural conflicts among some of these countries. Building these services up and making sure they carry out the responsibility professionally is very important. Thank you. The chair would also make a note that the senators correct we did not have an open threat last year we had a close one. Last year we had open hearings with directors from the fbi, and and others and we had one scheduled with doctor brennan and were blitzed by a snowstorm. Baby had we had him and he would not have fallen and wrecked his knee. It is the intent of the chair to continue to allow every agency the opportunity not just to be here for worldwide threat here hearing about to come in and share about what you do and why you do it and why the American People should care about your success. Todays drinking out of a fire hose tried to address the entire globe at one time. The rest of of it is good to be more constructive. I think the committee has attempted to increase the amount of open exposure with a degree of specificity that we havent had in the past. Thank you mr. Chairman. I note on the very first page of the statement for the record you say the order of topics presented in the state that there is not necessarily indicate the magnitude of the threat of the Intelligence Community. My my question is is this because were dealing with such a complex and everexpanding level of threads and is difficult to prioritize or is it because we ought to be talking about this in a closed session. If thats thats the case please tell me. If you had to prioritize, we have to make decisions here we have budget limitations, your budget limitations, we want to try to address all of these threats equally. That equally. That is not always possible. It seems to me that as a Committee Member and is a member of congress we need to know how to best allocate our budget toward what you mean. I know this can be everchanging but wanted to response to that how should we best address that. The more i spend doing this the harder it becomes to write threats. Any of them can leap up and bite us. So we dont have the luxury i dont like to mislead people that this one threat is the one that were going to focus on at the expense of others. So thats why the statement there. What does that that mean from a resource standpoint . In terms of funding and resources we are to do our job. Weve taken what i those resources that enable resilience and agility so that we can respond and hopefully anticipate and then respond to a variety of threats. That is one thing that i have said this before an answer to a question this morning, again in my time i do not recall a time when we have been confronted with a more diverse array of threat. Whether it is the nationstate threats posed by russia and china, particularly their Nuclear Capabilities or nonnationstates of the likes of isil, al qaeda and et cetera. All of these threats are serious whether it be terrorism, cyber, or others. As pointed out we are facing an array of threats one area im concerned about is the increasing concern about vulnerabilities in the Digital Domain is cyber. I think we as a country need to make sure we understand what those liabilities are. I think to jim and other points we need to make sure the Intelligent Security Services in this country have a role to help and protect that environment. Our way of life, our future depends on making sure that a strong. We have adversaries overseas that have capabilities to carry out attacks. The other part of this if i made, just a thought is that mixture, the combination of threats posed to us in the cyber domain and the connection of that with terrorism. So that makes ranking these discrete threats very difficult. Maybe that is why you have Cyber Technology is number one, i just assume and i appreciate the response and i. I would like you to comment on that as well because this is your domain where we stand on the. For me, my counterparts on the panel i tell her team i am always leery about this hierarchal approach of doing business. I watch it. We focus on number one. They would think about number two in the number three. The world around us does not work that way. For me the way i try to bend it with our teams protection of u. S. Persons and u. S. Infrastructure is priority number one. I look at this and i see cyber and counterterrorism world in particular bringing those together in a very concerning way as you heard from director clapper in his Opening Statement. Cyber and his Opening Statement. Cyber remains so foundational to every aspect of our daily lives. In a way that we have not necessarily seen as much in the past. It represents an opportunity for us as a society but also potential for great impact. To follow up on that point, i was a governor in september 11. Shortly afterwards we had our state please go to all of our vulnerable pieces of infrastructure in our stay, electrical, electrical, chemical plants and those type of things. And assess their level of vulnerability and read to them about how they could be attacked. Do we that with our Critical Infrastructure . It seems to me you could create a team to go to our water, gas, utilities, Financial Services and say look this is what could happen to you. Have you you. Have you thought about this . You dont really need legislation to do this, and another was more proactive, trying to alert them to the risk and to some of the protections that may be available. So now youre really talking about outside my lame and more into the department of homeland security. I share your concern. Its one reason why speaking within my lane of the dod we can do just that. We attempt to make sure that we understand our structures and to keep our mission and their vulnerability. We we do Penetration Testing and red teams, we do know notice inspections. Seems to me we are to talk about be more active and not just wait and hope they are doing the proper defensive measures but to alert them to wear their phone and then to help them figure out the defensive measures. The research the subject for a moment to heroin which is an epidemic. Ten or 12,000 people per people per year now die. The number is accelerating astoundingly and tragically. Director clapper talked about mexico and thats what seems to be coming from. Specific question, one of the problems with heroin that we are seeing is its laced with fentanyl. That makes him more potent and dangerous. Where does that come from . Do we know . To have until june sunwear do we have intelligence on was coming from . We have a sense that a lot of it is may be manufactured in china and other places in the developing world. So dea and fbi are spending time trying to understand where the sources are. I think we should know that and should be publicity and we should name and shame those countries. This is entirely unacceptable. I would hope that there be for the analysis of that and also analysis of the trade scheme that allows it to get to mexico or central america. Second question, do we have adequate resources in terms of intelligence also in terms of interdiction in mexico and central america. My understanding is is that we have a small number of people and some of those Central American c