Transcripts For CSPAN2 US Senate 20151208 : vimarsana.com

Former intelligence officials from the clinton, bush and obama demonstrations spoke monday about the Government Security clearance process and recommendations for moving the system. From the Wilson Center, this is an hour and a half. Good morning welcome bright and early on monday to the Wilson Center. I and jane harman, president ceo recovering politician for many many years, too many for some of my detractors. I spent time in the house of representatives working on security and intelligence issues and numbers of people sitting here are my friends on a bipartisan basis. Im very excited that we are doing something truly useful this morning, which is to host a Panel Discussion on security clearance, and nextgen overhaul. If you dont understand what nextgen means you probably should leave the room. Todays problems are digital. Too many of our policies and politicians are analyzed. Anyone who has held a secret or top secret clearance knows what i mean. Parts of our system fit the 19th century like the paper timecards we are stuck with it. Not kidding. Bottom line if we want a workforce with secure and talented our approach to security clearances needs an overhaul asap. The way we do business right now and 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 staff working in National Security but its too hard for a native arabic speaker to make it to the fbi. We also need folks who know their way around the keyboard as fbi director james comey has said its hard to attract that californias zerotolerance for past where one is. Second we are not catching the people that really deposed insider threat. But every think of Edward Snowden and i dont think well of Edward Snowden, if one can agree that 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 fly possible Security Risks. We are getting smarter but are we getting smart enough . Third come after people make it into the system we are not securing their information. Thats a disservice to her dedicated Public Servants including some who are in deep cover even as we speak. We must do better. But the right approach we can and we have a phone on the panel here to suggest 21st century solutions. Introducing our speakers is a close friend, chris kojm. He recently a visiting professor at George Washingtons Elliott School of international affairs. He also contributed to a fabulous book on intelligence oversight that we are putting together with nyu Centers Center on law and security that will be released in from Oxford University press. Chris, before that had 25 years and he just calculated that, quarter of a century with my predecessor here served here for 12 years and before that all of you know the enormously valued chairman of 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. Please join me in welcoming him now. [applause] thank you. With profound thanks to the Wilson Center and president hartman for sponsoring todays discussion. I believe deeply if we have a National Debate on this question that the views you here today will prevail. The case is compelling. Its my honor and pleasure to introduce the members of the panel. First i want to start directly to my left the honorable charles e. Allen who currently serves as the Security Policy Reform Council chair of the intelligence and National Security alliance and for the past six years has been a principal at the chertoff grew. It would be remiss for me to stop their. Mr. Allen has 50 years of government service. He served as undersecretary at the department of Homeland Security and assistant secretary before that. He was the assistant director of Central Intelligence for collection. He and i worked closely and i have the highest regard for him. Further, to my left is the honorable joan dempsey. Formerly she served as the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management under president clinton and the executive director of the president for intelligence of advisory board. Given her experience is the director of National Intelligence. Moving to my right here immediately to my right is the honorable randall fort in the cyberdomain team at raytheon corp. And assistant secretary of state in the bureau of intelligence and research at the department of state, a very fine organization. All the way to my right is Douglas Thomas who is the director for counterintelligence operations and Corporate Investigations at lockheedmartin. Hes the principle decade deputy, served as the principle Deputy Director for counterintelligence and the u. S. Government. He has 35 years of Service Working on counterintelligence issues in the chair the National Counterintelligence operations force. So the case i put two of you is that the experience and the depth of perspective for those represented on this panel i think deserve attention. With that quietly began with the first question and the question is why do we need security clearance reform . Just as simple and straightforward as that. I will ask everyone to speak for roughly three minutes for the question on i will begin with randy fort. Thank you kristen thank you jane for hosting this event with a the think is an important dialogue to have. Im curious people in the audience here how many of you drive a 1950s automobile today . Anybody . Does anybody in the audience have a 1950s telephone that you use . Is there anybody here whose Television Set is a 1950s model . Anyone . When you go to the dentist do you expect a 1950s dentistry or are you looking for something a little bit more advanced . Okay, so the 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 processes and mindset of how security is done. There is this hand tool, we will go around and knock on doors and talk to people who dont even know who you are an check those boxes and assume that somehow that is yielding something when it does not. And for many many years that process is all but oblivious to the changes in technology. Its not surprising the federal government was slow to recognize and respond to the revolution in the 1980s. They were slow to recognize and respond to the World Wide Web developments in the 1990s. They were slow to recognize and respond to the social media revolution taking place in early 2000 and we are seeing the same pattern today when it comes to mobility so not a lot of ability to grasp and understand the impact of influences of these technologies which continue to double relentlessly in their capacity every 12 to 18 months. So we have a system today that is old, it is an efficient and it is ineffective. It is obsolete. It is slow, it is inaccurate and as we have learned with the opm announcements over the last several months is corrupt. We cannot even trust the information which is held in the various databases at this point because foreign powers have allegedly had access to that, not just thinking about whatever whatever whatever they been able to do to manipulate us so we are looking at a broken system. Its fundamentally broken and unreliable so this should be the opportunity to recognize that it is 2015 and in a few weeks a would 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 last century. I think there theres a pretty good case to be made that its time to start looking toward the future and new technologies and figure out a better way to do business. Thanks randy and i just wanted to mention that we are live on cspan. Next i would like to turn to charlie. Thank you chris. The pleasure to be the Wilson Center again. I think what randy is just outlined sort of sets the stage iv the rest of the discussion here and abroad framework that we have to use new and better technologies. When i was at the cia the security clearance process is worked reasonably well, trying to transfer an essay cleared officers and get them assigned to my staff. Almost took intervention by the executive director or by john dempsey to make things happen. When i went to the department of Homeland Security where is the undersecretary to secretary chertoff i found the process different and very slow and difficult. So when i left government in 2009 it was my view that it was vital to the intelligence and National Security alliance as the Senior Adviser through Ellen Mccarthy was president i really want to form a task force in that task force has turned into a more permanent body. Why . Because we found the problems were very difficult. We found there were greater efficiencies in the way we did business, that the cost for extremely high, bad weather and government because the intelligence and perform in terrorism and prevention at the office of personal management in 2005 took over from the department of Defense Security Services Plus their responsibility for security clearances. The processes in government did improve because it did mandate some really expedited processes for clearing the government site that i found on the contractors side we have tens of thousands of contractors. We would not have Weapons Systems and we would not have payloads in space if we didnt have contractors with great specialties. I found, we found that was extremely slow and very difficult and the government really was moving at glacial speed. Part of the problem was people who had clearances, it was mandated that they have periodic investigations every five years and we have a huge back log when the office of personal management took over the responsibility. It had been worked on hard by jim clapper who at that time was the undersecretary of defense and intelligence but it was improved. The government site in the contractors side. And he given time, he published a paper in december of 2011 that said 10 to 20 of contractors who were to be put on a contract could not work because there are periodic investigations were out of date. That caused literally billions of dollars when you think of the vastness of the department of defense Intelligence Community and Homeland Security. I found it very staggering. I have one experience where we had a topsecret cleared officer from bia who was born, had relatives in vietnam. He had been polygraphed for counterintelligence. I just wanted to transfer him from dia to the department of Homeland Security. We waited nine months to get that clearance past and approved by the director of security over at Homeland Security. That was when i arrived at the intelligence National Security alliance, i had this earning a share in this burning issue now turned into a council. The current a Permanent Council subcommittees and im honored that we have both randy fort hira who has worked on this and doug thomas who is working today on a new subcommittee on the insider threat. So it has expanded in its become permanent and improvements have been made that we have oceans and notions of places to go before we have efficient policy and security do not align. Acquisition and security do not align. So that is sort of the background. I wanted to give a little history before we move on in our discussion. Thank you charlie and i would like to turn to john please. Thanks chris but i want to pick up on a couple of things but i certainly agree with the way randy put the challenges today in context. Hes absolutely right, we need a new approach to personal security inside the government. I also want to pick up and get a couple of examples of what Charlie Allen was talking about. Government like most successful organizations have to Pay Attention to costing cost is a big driver but the cost of personal security for a boy the government doesnt know what personnel security cost us so i have a couple of specific examples or want to give you this morning and while the story is true the name was changed to protect, wellmade because its privacy information but Everything Else in the story is true. John smith is a technical expert in quantum computing. Its very hard to find american citizens who are willing to subject themselves to security clearances and work for the government. He then expert in quantum computing cleared at the information level within the department of defense and he is projected to be built for the government at 195,000 annually, very specialized skills, an individual with a very high clearance. That number breaks down to 15,000 per month, 3750 per weekend 93. 75 per hour. John is scheduled to move from one Intelligence Community Organization Contract to a different Organization Contract. Remember he is fully cleared. His clearance has been submitted to the Gaming Agency so that he could be crossed over to work on a new contract. His company will carry the cost of employing john, roughly 15,000 mothers are set for this highlyskilled highly educated individual for the duration of the crossover. Matt. Who ultimately pays that though . Of the u. S. Government because that caused is embedded in the rate that the government pays for those individuals. The agency to which john is moving is only to execute a polygraph to move him. We estimated six months for the crossover. Unfortunately it took to 10 months and we paid 150,000 to keep john on what we call the bench while we waited for his polygraphed to be scheduled, which it was but we didnt know during that time whether or not it would be so as a huge cost for one individual that was a fairly simple process. The second one is a little harder. We had an individual who is also cleared by the department of information with a they polygraph but who was married to a foreign national. His wife was indian. He was in he was an advanced Technology Office at dod and we wanted to move him to an icy advanced Technology Office. Now he had a bachelors of science in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of technology and a ph. D. In applied and Engineering Physics from cornell university. There arent a lot of american citizens that have those qualifications. He was also the author of more than 40 technical papers with over 5000 citations. He was fully cleared, his clearance took 294 days to crossover because he had an indian born 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 the thousands of contractors who do highly specialized, highlyskilled information for the Intelligence Community. We have to fix this problem. With that i will turn it over to chris. Thank you joan and doug. Thank you chris. Good morning. One thing we are going to see is that we need to start levering levering leveraging technology. I think one of the things that has changed, the threat environment has changed in 50 years. Somebody mentioned earlier that scott is a big deal and ensures up my spine because this is about the bad guys have much more information than they ever have before. Its going to make our job a lot harder. I look at this panel and no offense anybody but its decades of experience in the government. Looking at this problem i think all of us could probably be a little bit embarrassed as to why we are where we are today because as randy said andis jones said andis charlie said we have been approaching this problem for 50 years now. It is time to start leveraging technology on the front end when you get clearance and throughout the whole process of having clearance. Thanks doug and i will just finished up with a few points as to why we need reform. Secret clearance costs 400. Top secret security clearance costs 5000. The direct cost to security clearance in any given year are 1. 6 billion. Thats a lot of money. We do hundreds of thousands of clearances each year. If we use technology guess there will be a cost up front but the cost of doing t