HEAD OF NSA WANTS PUBLIC DEBATE OVER TERRORIST SURVEILLANCE

National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Md.  Photo Credit:  NSA

FROM:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
NSA Chief Urges Public Debate of Terrorist Surveillance
By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, June 13, 2013 - Now that the existence of classified National Security Agency data-gathering efforts have been leaked to the public, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and NSA said yesterday he wants the public to understand the programs "so they can see what we're doing and what the results of it are."

Among the results, Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander told the full Senate Appropriations Committee, is the disruption or contributions to the disruption in the United States and abroad of "dozens of terrorist events."

Alexander testified along with interagency partners from the Homeland Security Department, the FBI and the National Institute of Standards and Technology during a hearing that U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, the committee chair, convened to discuss preparing for and responding to the enduring cyber threat.

But several senators -- given their first chance to question Alexander since NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information to newspapers June 6 about classified surveillance practices -- abruptly asked about the leaks and about legislation authorizing the practices.

In his leaks to the media, Snowden described two NSA surveillance programs authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Congress created in 2008. Section 702 of FISA authorizes access to records and other items of foreign targets located outside the United States under court oversight.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act broadened FISA to allow the FBI director or another high-ranking official there to apply for orders to produce telephone records, books and other materials to help with terrorism investigations.

Revelations about the programs have launched a debate nationwide about privacy, because Section 215 allows NSA to collect something called metadata -- information about call length and connections -- for phone calls that occur inside the United States and between the United States and other countries.

"These authorities complement each other in helping us identify different terrorist actions and ... disrupt them," Alexander told the senators. "If you want to get the content [of the phone calls], you'd have to get a court order. In any of these programs ... we [need] court orders for doing that, with oversight by Congress, by the courts and by the administration."

Some of the senators asked for details about terrorism cases that the NSA surveillance programs have helped, and Alexander named a few but said he intended to bring a classified list of them to today's closed session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

But Alexander said he also wanted to provide an unclassified version -- if he could make that happen, he said -- this week that could be released to the public.

"I think this is an area where we have to give [Congress and the American people] the details. They need to understand it so they can see what we're doing and what the results of it are," he added.

"We all had this concern coming out of 9/11 -- how are we going to protect the nation," the general said, "because we did get intercepts on [Khalid Muhammad Abdallah al-Mihdhar], but we didn't know where he was. We didn't have the data collected to know that he was a bad person."

Mihdhar was one of five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 who flew that aircraft into the Pentagon as part of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Because he was in the United States," Alexander continued, "the way we treated it [then] is that he's a U.S. person, so we had no information on him. If we didn't collect that [information] ahead of time, we couldn't make those connections."

Now through its surveillance programs, the NSA creates a set of telephone metadata from all over the United States, and only under specific circumstances can officials query the data, he said.

"And every time we do, it's auditable by the [congressional] committees, by the Justice Department, by the court and by the administration," Alexander said. "We get oversight from everybody on this."

The collection of U.S. telephone metadata is one of the elements that should be debated nationally, Alexander said, but he described why it was helpful in terrorism cases to do so.

"Let's take Mihdhar," he said. "[Congress] had authorized us to get Mihdhar's phones in California, but Mihdhar was talking to the other four teams [in other parts of the country].

"Today, under the business-record FISA, because we had stored that data in the database, we now have what we call reasonable, articulable suspicion. We could take that [phone] number and go backwards in time and see who he was talking to," the general continued. "And if we saw there were four other groups, we wouldn't know who those people were -- we'd only get the numbers. We'd say, 'This looks of interest,' and pass it to the FBI. We don't look at U.S. identities. We only look at the connections."

Alexander said he would like to see a nationwide debate on such topics for a couple of reasons.

"I think what we're doing to protect American citizens here is the right thing," he said. "Our agency takes great pride in protecting this nation and our civil liberties and privacy, and doing it in partnership with this committee, with this Congress, and with the courts. We aren't trying to hide it. We're trying to protect America, so we need your help in doing that. This isn't something that's just NSA or the administration. ... This is what our nation expects our government to do for us."

Alexander said he's not the only official involved in getting information declassified, but added, that if he can make it happen, he will.

"I do think what we're doing does protect American civil liberties and privacy," he told the Senate panel. "The issue is [that] to date, we've not been able to explain it, because it's classified, so that issue is something we're wrestling with."

"How do we explain this and still keep the nation secure?" he asked. "That's the issue that we have in front of us."

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE HAGEL'S REMARKS ON VA CLAIMS BACKLOG

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Presenter: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel May 22, 2013
Remarks by Secretary Hagel at a Roundtable Discussion on the Veterans Affairs Claims Backlog with the Senate Appropriations Committee

Senator Mikulski, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to address an important issue, and for your strong commitment to our service members, veterans, and their families.

I want to also thank my friend and colleague Secretary Shinseki for his leadership and tireless efforts on behalf of our veterans and their families.

I'm also joined by my DoD colleagues, the Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Jessica Wright, and Jim Neighbors, who directs our DoD/VA Collaboration Office. They have been deeply involved in the issues we will discuss today and have responsibility for the DoD programs and offices which directly relate to DoD's collaboration with VA.

DoD and VA both work to provide continuous, accessible quality health care for America's active duty military and its veterans. At DoD, our responsibility is to ensure that those who are serving the country have quality care throughout their career. When a service member's status changes from active duty to veteran, DoD also has a responsibility to ensure these service members are seamlessly, efficiently, and quickly transitioned to the care of Veterans Affairs – including all of their records.

I have listened carefully to DoD's health care providers – its doctors, nurses, and clinicians at Walter Reed and other DoD health care facilities. I've asked them, what do you need to give our active duty military consistent and accessible quality health care? Their input is essential to ensuring quality care, because they are the providers and we must know what they need to ensure this care.

During the first Reagan administration, I was deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration and led efforts to computerize all claims of our veterans, especially our Vietnam veterans whose claims were often connected to Agent Orange exposure. So I understand and greatly appreciate Secretary Shinseki's leadership in expanding the availability of benefits for Vietnam veterans with service-connected diseases. Under his leadership, the VA has also made it easier for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress to qualify for benefits. He has also expanded the availability of benefits to Gulf War veterans.

As a former VA leader, senator and veteran I have been involved in veterans' issues for many years, and have some understanding and appreciation of the complications and difficulties of this backlog issue. One difficulty is that the majority of the backlog numbers represents veterans who served prior to Iraq and Afghanistan, meaning that veterans' records from as far back as World War II are many times not available, or easily accessible, or have been lost.

The Department of Defense is committed to doing everything it can to continue to work with the VA in processing claims speedily and efficiently to reduce this backlog. To address and help fix this problem, DoD has recently initiated several important actions:
In January, DoD sent a team of experts to work in the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA). This team is working side by side with VBA personnel to analyze the disability claims backlog and assist VA in processing claims.
DoD recently began to provide VBA personnel with the ability to log in directly to our electronic medical records system, AHLTA [Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application], so that VA can process claims more quickly than under the current system for transferring records.
Similarly, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service provides accounts for VBA claims processors to directly access an individual's financial and service information.
Although service members transitioning under the Integrated Disability Evaluation System (IDES) are not counted under the current backlog, in order to speed up the processing of these claims DoD provided 15 soldiers to the VA site in Seattle, Wash. These soldiers are assisting in administrative tasks, freeing up VA adjudicators to focus on evaluating IDES claims.

Because a very large percentage of VA backlog claims are from veterans who served prior to Iraq and Afghanistan, DoD and VA are taking steps to ensure that those currently serving will not face a similar backlog in the future. Specific actions include:
Certifying service treatment records so that claims processors know not to hold up processing to request additional records.
Holding data sharing summits every six weeks to look for ways to improve our practices.
Conducting separation health assessments to establish baseline medical conditions, helping to speed future disability benefits claims.
We are also improving the format of our service treatment records so that they are portable and can be quickly scanned by other users.
While these efforts won't reduce the current backlog, they will ensure that future generations of transitioning service members won't experience these challenges.

The centerpiece of DoD's work is the integrated electronic health record (iEHR) program, which is a priority for President Obama, Secretary Shinseki and me – and I know for the Congress as well. As we work to modernize our electronic health record system, DoD remains committed to our shared goal of achieving full interoperability of health care records. This is a complex and expensive undertaking. It is critical that we get it right.

Yesterday, I directed the department to move ahead with a best value competitive process to select the core applications that DoD will use to modernize our legacy electronic health record system. This will be done using open standards and systems in a way that ensures complete data interoperability with VA.

As you know, VA made a decision to modernize around its legacy VISTA records system. Given the VA's installed base, trained workforce, and in-house expertise, choosing VISTA was a good approach for VA. DoD faces a different situation. As I've said, DoD has a responsibility to ensure that our active duty military receives the best medical care we can provide while they are in the service of our country. And as I've said, we also have a responsibility to ensure that this same quality health care is carried through to the end of service members' active duty careers when their status changes from active duty to veteran.

Our service members and veterans, and their families, expect and deserve a seamless system to administer the benefits they have earned. Secretary Shinseki and I will continue to work closely together, in partnership with Congress, to deliver on that promise.

Thank you.

EPA OFFICIALS TESTIFIES BEFORE SENATE COMMITTEE REGARDING 2014 BUDGET

FROM:  U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY EPA Acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe, Testimony Before the Senate Appropriations Committee

WASHINGTON -- As prepared for delivery.

Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Murkowski , and members of the Committee, thank you once again for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget. I'm joined by the Agency's Acting Chief Financial Officer, Maryann Froehlich.

The President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget demonstrates that we can make critical investments to strengthen the middle class, create jobs, and grow the economy while continuing to cut the deficit in a balanced way. The Budget also incorporates the President’s compromise offer to House Speaker Boehner to achieve another $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction in a balance way. By including this compromise proposal in the Budget, the President is demonstrating his willingness to make tough choices. EPA's budget request of $8.153 billion for the 2014 fiscal year starting October 1, 2013 reflects our ongoing efforts to change the way EPA does business –to invest in more efficient ways for the Agency to operate, to further reduce costs wherever possible all while we preserve and enhance our ability to carry out the Agency’s core mission to protect human health and the environment.

The President’s budget reinforces our firm commitment to keeping American communities clean and healthy, while also taking into consideration the difficult fiscal situation and the declining resources of state, local and tribal programs.

EPA’s requested budget will allow us to continue making progress toward cleaner air, addressing climate change, protecting the nation’s waters, supporting sustainable water infrastructure and protecting lands and assuring the safety of chemicals.

It is the product of long discussions and difficult choices. In the end, we believe this budget will enable us to work toward the Agency’s goals as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Let me run through a few highlights from the President’s FY 2014 budget request.

Despite the fiscal challenges we face, supporting our state and tribal partners, the primary implementers of environmental programs, remains a priority of the EPA. Funding for states and tribes through the State and Tribal Assistance Grants – or STAG – account is once again the largest percentage of the EPA's budget request – at nearly 40 percent in FY 2014. The FY 2014 budget includes a total of $1.14 billion in categorical grants.

We have requested a $60 million investment in an agency-wide initiative to develop new tools and expand systems designed to reduce the regulatory reporting burden on regulated entities, and provide EPA, states, and the public with easier access to environmental data for compliance monitoring and other purposes. This new initiative is fully paid for, so does not add a single dime to the deficit.

This project – what we call "E-Enterprise" – would enable businesses to conduct environmental business transactions with regulators electronically through a single interactive portal, similar to online banking. The paperwork and regulatory reporting burden would be reduced thanks to more efficient collection, reporting, and use of data, in addition to regulatory revisions to eliminate redundant or obsolete information requests. The initiative will encourage greater transparency and compliance.

The result will be widespread savings – for industry and for the states and tribes. For example, E-Enterprise builds on efforts such as the e-manifest system which is projected to reduce reporting costs for regulated businesses by up to a range of $77 - $126 million annually, because it replaces the millions of paper manifests for hazardous waste shipments with a modern tracking and reporting system.

The FY 2014 request also includes $176.5 million to support the agency’s work with partners and stakeholders to address greenhouse gas emissions and its impacts. These funds will help reduce emissions – both domestically and internationally – through careful, cost-effective rulemaking and voluntary programs that focus on the largest entities and encourage businesses and consumers to limit unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions.

Some of this funding will support existing, successful approaches like ENERGY STAR, the Global Methane Initiative, the GHG Reporting Rule, and state and local technical assistance and partnership programs, such as SmartWay. $20 million will go towards research, so we can better understand the impacts of climate change on human health and vulnerable ecosystems. Our requested budget contains $175 million to support our Clean Air Act-mandated work to develop, implement and review air quality standards and guidance. This funding will also allow EPA to enhance our support to our state, local and Tribal partners to implement the programs.

Nutrient pollution is one of the nation’s most widespread and challenging environmental problems. To assist in tackling this challenge, EPA is requesting an increase of $15 million in Clean Water Act Section 106 Water Pollution Control grant funding to support states, interstate agencies and tribes that commit to strengthening their nutrient management efforts.

Ensuring that federal dollars provided through the State Revolving Funds support effective and efficient system-wide planning remains a priority for EPA. The FY 2014 budget request includes $1.1 billion for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and $817 million for the Drinking WaterSRF. This money will also assist EPA efforts to expand and institutionalize the use of up-front planning that considers a full range of infrastructure alternatives like "green" infrastructure, so that the right investments are made at the right time, and at the lowest life-cycle cost. This budget request will allow the SRFs to finance approximately $6 billion in wastewater and drinking water infrastructure projects annually.

In FY 2014, the agency is requesting over $1.34 billion for its land cleanup programs to continue to apply the most effective approaches to preserve and restore our country’s land. This money will go towards developing and implementing prevention programs, improving response capabilities, and maximizing the effectiveness of response and cleanup actions. The agency is also renewing its request to reinstate the Superfund tax in order to provide a stable, dedicated source of revenue for the Superfund Trust Fund and to restore the historic nexus that parties who benefit from the manufacture or sale of substances that commonly contaminate hazardous waste sites should bear the cost of cleanup when viable potentially responsible parties cannot be identified.

Ensuring the safety of new or existing chemicals in commerce to protect the American people is another top priority. Chemicals are used in the production of everything from our homes and cars to the cell phones we carry and the food we eat. The $686.2 million requested in FY 2014 will allow EPA to continue managing the potential risks of new chemicals entering commerce, without impacting progress in assessing and ensuring the safety of existing chemicals. These resources encompass all efforts across the agency associated specifically with ensuring chemical safety and pollution prevention, including research and enforcement.

EPA’s research budget provides $554 million to support critical research in key areas, ranging from chemical safety to water sustainability to climate and energy to human health. This research will help advance the Administration’s commitment to healthy communities and a clean energy future.

Finally, let me discuss some steps we are taking to ensure taxpayer dollars are going as far as they possibly can.

The budget includes $54 million in savings by eliminating several EPA programs that have either completed their goals or can be implemented through other federal or state efforts. Adding to these savings and demonstrating a willingness to make tough choices, more than 20 EPA programs, are being reduced by 10 percent or more in FY 2014.

EPA has also been laying the groundwork to ensure the best use of human resources, which will continue in FY 2014. We will continue to analyze our workforce needs to achieve the Agency’s mission effectively and efficiently. This is reflected in our FTE request for FY 2014, which is our lowest in 20 years.

We also continue to look for opportunities to consolidate physical space and reduce operating costs at our facilities nationwide. On-going improvements in operating efficiency, combined with the use of advanced technologies and energy sources, have reduced energy utilization and saved nearly $6 million annually.

In FY 2014, we are requesting $17 million in the Building &Facilities appropriation to accelerate space consolidation efforts, which will result in long-term savings in rent and operating costs. By consolidating space, we have, since 2006 released approximately 417 thousand square feet of space at headquarters and facilities nationwide, resulting in a cumulative annual rent avoidance of over $14.2 million.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. While my testimony reflects only some of the highlights of EPA's budget request, I look forward answering your questions.