Morning, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for being here today on this icy, rainy morning. I am pleased to introduce jeffrey snow, the new director of the sexual prevention office. He is joined by an expert and a doctor from the defense man power data center. General snow is going to make remarks and we will open the floor to questions. They are happy to answer questions. Please state your name and Media Organization before asking your question and we have 30 minutes. The floor is yours. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am jeff snow and i am the director of the sexual defense response office. I feel lucky to be joined by my esteem esteemed colleagues. We released the report from 20122013. I will take a few minutes to share highlights of the report. This report provides an assessment of the quality program, statistical data and the focus of cadets, faculty and staff. Before i get into the the specifics of the report, i want to make one point clear Sexual Assault is a crime and has no place at the academy or the arms forces. The academy develops the future and we have to foster a climate of respect. Cadets must be empowered with the courage to take action in situations of Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment or inappropriate behavior. Each of the services were found to be compliant for the school year that started in june of 2012 and ended in may of 2013. The academys initiatives enhance training, improve awareness and promote a safe environment for all cadets. The measures are detailed in the report and we can address the specifics if you have follow up questions. Reports of Sexual Assault decreased at 2 of the three academy. Because there is no prevailing rate for the previous year, the department cannot determine if the increase was due to fewer assaults occurring or due to fewer victims opting to report. Rates of unwanted sexual contact and harassment will be updated via survey conducted later this year. Faculty and staff participated in focus groups and during the groups participants believed the reports would be taken seriously and dealt with appropriately. That is good. Cadets also identified peer pressure as a barrier to reporting. That is not good. Both the Academic Year that concluded in may and the intervening period we have seen emergency petraeused on the Sexual Assault and prevention response programs. Placed there is more work to be done. It is critical to embrace respect for all. To continue the important work, secretary hagel has directed the following initiatives. First to insure unit of effort and purpose, the superintendents will have prevention and response and strategic plans aligned with the respected service plans. Second, to improve the affect e effectiveness of policy they will have tools to evaluate and report progress, prevention and response. Third, to increase the victim confidence associated with reporting the superintendents must develop things that cause peers not to fear social retaliation and provide them with the skills and knowledge to strengthen their ongoing mentorship programs. Four, to further increase the impact of the criminal behavior, they will learn the objectives and put them into the curriculum. They will review and expand acadimies. They student on student as well . Or faculty on student . Let me take the first part and i will have the others speak tr the second. In the case of the United States military academy, they decreased from five. There were 15 in 1112. And that went to 10 in Academic Program 1213. In the case of the naval academic they increased by two. They went from 13 to 15. And the air force academy went done to 45. And nate talk on the second problem. The majority of the reports that involved cadets were just between them. We had only one instance of faculty member involved in a case of abusive, sexual contact at the naval academy. Courtney from nbc news. Two questions do you have data for the navy academy since the numbers went up whether there was an increase in female midshipman . Is the percentage up for men versus women . And can you give us a rough idea of how you are defining Sexual Assault for this report . It is it more than rape . Categories, please. The first answer is we know in the case reports that Sexual Assault in an underreported crime. We want to increase the numbers of those reporting. I will let nate talk. The number of women at the academy are about the same as before, but to be accurate you can check with their officer to be exact. The second part of the question . How you are defining Sexual Assault in the report. Reporter Sexual Assault represents a range of crimes between adults. That range involves illegal sexual touching, nonpenetrating crimes and all the way up to penetrati penetrating claims. Not Sexual Harassment . That is correct. Is there anything to suggest why the airports had the most incidents . And is there anything to suggest why this is such a problem with the air force academy . The air force reporting climate is positive and that is what we have heard from numerous visits. One of the things the air force academy does is they have a sexual response coordinator who is wellknown throughout the academy. She and the team work overtime in getting in front of the cadets. As an example of my experience, asking an Academy Cadet at the air force, if you needed to report a Sexual Assault, what would you do and almost every single one of them says i would call 333sarc. They know her by name because she is in front of them. We didnt ask about the numbers, but to echo what was said, we heard at the air force they are more familiar with their sarc, and she has higher visibility. Teresa beasley . I will say one of the benefits of a report and when you look across the service a d acadamies is you can apply to the others that is right. All of the people have hard sarc people. Ms. Beasley has been there the longest and has the a good institutional history. Christina from the hill. Are there trends you can make for the cases . Mostly males and females . And examples of sexual behavior. It is more men on women but i will refer to may colleague. It is male on female largely. Only had to instances of male on male violence. These are folks that are peers or near peers and almost all of them were cadet on cadet. The survey we conducted in 2012 has a few measures with Sexual Harassment being involved and we ask about sexist behaviors and these are verbal and nonverbal behaviors that are assaulting or offensive based on a womans gender. For example, woman dont belong at the academy. The rates for crudeness behavior, the typical locker room talk, and for the sexist behavior on the survey in 2012 about 8090 percent said they experienced that. But we asked if they were right and many said they were right but many are surprised it isnt higher. This is where we sarted seeing the culture we are discussing started no one should believe they best tolerate this has part of their education and learning to be an officer in the u. S. Armed forces and to underscore that why do we look at the experience of Sexual Harassment and behavior and those are in tolerable behavior, but there is a strong correlation between the experience of Sexual Harassment and the Sexual Assault of people in military units. Because the two problems are on the same continuum of harm, getting at the Sexual Harassment is part of the prevention work that knows into Sexual Assault. How do you think you can crackdown on the current behavior . That is something the secretary is directing the super n teinten intendants to ic to take a look at and innovate solutions. I am with the american voice press. It sounds like you want generational change. And i am just wondering if you would comment on that and the second thing i would ask you to comment on is are these people coming in from civilian world . What affect does the civilian society have on these kids as they go to the institutions . First all of, just listen, this is a complex problem. It is going to require a complex set of initiatives, solutions and innovations. It is tough thing. It is going to take time. In terms of the cadets themselves, i think the real key is from day one to impart them with the appropriate values. You are talking about the very c competitive to get in. But the key is from day one what are the values we try to impart on them so they get off on the right foot. And i will open it up to the panel. The departments approach to providing Sexual Assault is we do inspire to lead change. Generational change like we did with ending discrimination and the appeal of dont ask dont tell. We expect standard in behavior and that is how we led change in the other culture things and that is how we will do it here. The environment with Sexual Assault happens in the environment where assaults occur. So we have to start with the low continuum of harm and protect the offenders and conduct investigations and hold the offenders accountable. That is for the end state of this department to prevent the crime by instilling dignity and respect. Sticking your neck out and telling someone to knock it off is hard because it creates social retaliation. John from politico. Can you talk broader about i implementing everything that was in the law that president obama signed. And you have a december deadline to make the changes, what are you benchmarks to achieving that . Very good question. I will defer to alan on this particular question. But the first thing, what am i doing . There have been a number of directives that have been put in place. The first think i am doing is making sure i understand, and we the department are taking the appropriate steps to implement them. You alluded to the report and with regard to that we are making sure we understand the requirements of that. And then working with the whitehouse on insuring we have a clear print to make sure we meet that requirement. Talking about implementation we have taken a strategic strategy and we have very clear benchmarks. And we have 8090 tasks. We get external findings and we are implementing policies and apply them in the lines of effort for the prevention and accountability and oversight lines of effort and we have a robust structure with the secretary of defense. And he is calling them accountab accountable meetings. And we have a bimonthly product team that provides daily oversight. We have had 6 0 provisions tat are tracked and we are working with the whitehouse on metrics. We have prepared the first set of six metrics that have been through the joint chiefs received the approval of boefth both of them and the office of secretary defense will be providing the whitehouse with them. And we will be developing a second set of metrics that get at prevalence and culture change. Thanks, kathy. I wanted to conclude may making a couple points. One, my mission is clear reduce with the plan to eliminate Sexual Assault. It is daunting task. I have lost a lot of sleep in my first week, but i am committed to the mission. As you can see from the folks at this table, i am supported by a dedicated team and a group of professionals that want to do the same thing. There is going to be days when we present bad news to you. There is going to be others when we can demonstrate progress on the problem. Either way, i am committed to giving you the results in a tra tra transparent manner. We will continue to provide support for victims and holding the military accountable for progress on this issue at the Service Academies and at other places. We will continue to implement programs and inishitives that make a difference. For those that have been a victim of this crime, i want you to know we are working hard to establish a climate where these assaults dont happen. Please consider reaching out to your local sark, victim advocate, Health Care Professional or the dot hotline. You mean be treated with the privacy you desire, the sensitivety you deserve and the seriousness this crime demands. Thank you very much. Former defense robert gates on his book duty. We will have live coverage of the secretary gates remarks at the National Constitutional center in philadelphia. It disappointed all of us to see the deteriation inside iraq. I spent a lot of my life over there. From 2006to september of 2010 i was there as we continued to reduce the level of violence and the violence was going on. We left it in a place where it was capable of moving forward. We are seeing now because of political issues that security issue has now devolved into something that is concerning. We have to be aware across the middle east what is going on in syria, laeb lebanon and inside iraq. It is this building of conflict between the two and the instigation of that by al qaeda and other organizations trying to take advantage of this. We will look at the security situation in the middle east and the future of the u. S. Army. And then we will have the love and war relationship at 11 p. M. And then prohibition and the rise of the gangsta sunday morning. Today the Labor Department released the december jobs report showing the Unemployment Rate fell to 6. 7 after the economy added 74,000 jobs. Analyst had anticipated higher job growth. Jay carney was asked about it as his daily briefing. Back to the job numbers, jay, i remember you showing us charts of job growth over the past couple years and the implication of the rate. You are down at a low for almost 40 years. That is where it has been since 2009. Does the whitehouse and the president s policies to blame for the job report . John, as i think you note why when we talk about the monthly job report, we begin with the fact that whether it exceeds expectations or comes in below, that there is more work to do. This report is no different. It represents 46 consecutive months of privatesector job creation. 8. 2 million jobs. That is barely anything in the economy. We need to continue to have job growth, economic security, economic mobility of the priorities and continues the recovery and expands the opportunities that Economic Growth affords. So there is no question when you have periods of the numbers coming in above and below. We have seen consistent privatesector job creation and Labor Participation rate not withstanding is a fall in the Unemployment Rate to 6. 7 percent which is too high. That is why we need to despite the drop it is too high. We have to have this as the focus. And not get hung up over ideals. We need to come together to spur Economic Growth. You see this as an ominous job report . Our economist were saying this is positive data. This isnt anything beyond the latest report, but i would point you to economist to give you a broader picture. We have work to do. We are continuing to grow and create jobs but we have to grow faster and create more jobs. That should be the priority here in washington. That is what folks expect us to do. They dont want us veering off to have debates about issues that dont seem to effect their lives directly. So, president is very focused on these matters. You have heard him talk about them lately and you will hear it in the next couple weeks this hearing is about jobs at the economic joint committee. This is an hour. Good morning and welcome to the new wreyear. This is commissioners gross first appearance. We hope you can bring us better news for the future. I would like to recognize tom nordel who is retiring after 37 years of service. He has been mr. Numbers. We thank you for your dedicated service and wish you the best in your future endeavors. The job growth was weak last month. December saw only 87,000 private sector. The Unemployment Rate did fall to 6. 7 percent but it was due to Labor Force Participation. The precipitation rate is down to 62. 8 tying a 36year low. It sounds impressive 8. 2 million private sector jobs over the last 46 months but Economic Growth during the last half century has been 50 larger than the obama administration. 4. 5 million jobs are missing along main street. The best private report of the obama recovery is lower than the regan recovery. Not a single month matches even the equivalent of the regan recovery. And we all know we have to do better. The Unemployment Rate has decreased and we should be encouraged, but it is nowhere near the 5 percent level the whitehouse promised in the 800 billion stimulus was rushed through congress. The Unemployment Rate is due to falling labor force precipitation. If the rate had not declined since the president took office it would be nearly 11 percent. A smaller percentage of americans are employed today than when the recession ended. The American People are deeply dissatisfied with the president s solution for the economy. We need solutions so mainstream businesses can hire again. Increasing the minimum wage and washington mandating income, extending Unemployment Benefits will not increase the outlook. Emergency Unemployment Program is to be used when the Unemployment Rate is going high. It is the lowest since 2008. So you ask why are the president and senate turning their back on job creation . Why doesnt the senate pick up and pass any of the dozens of jobs bills the house has already approved . Including the keystone xl pipeline which would create thousands of middle class jobs. They continue to deny bipartisan reforms that make it easier for states to match local workers with local drugs and to conduct the drug tests for thos