During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing last week, Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX) spoke about internal complains within the Department of Homeland Security.
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NewsTranscript
00:00The gentleman yields. Undersecretary, we'll start our third and final round.
00:06Again, appreciate you being here, and if folks come in then I'll allow them to
00:11to talk, but otherwise it'll be this group here. Now recognize myself for five
00:16minutes of questioning. Last year, Politico reported, and I alluded to this
00:20in my opening statement, the DHS's Office of Intelligence Analysis has a virtually
00:25unknown program gathering domestic intelligence called the Overt Human
00:28Intelligence Collection Program, and the program has raised concerns even from
00:34within DHS, from employees within DHS, that the work that was being done could
00:40be illegal, and according to the Politico report, one unnamed
00:44employee quoted in an April 2021 document stated that INA's Office of
00:49Regional Intelligence is quote shady and quote runs like a corrupt government. I
00:55just want to get your take on not just that quote, but just in general that
01:00program, and are you aware that some DHS INA employees share concern, widespread
01:07internal concerns about legally questionable tactics and political
01:10pressure? No, thank you for that sir, and in fact we, you might remember we sent
01:16you and your fellow members a very lengthy letter that explained everything
01:20we were doing in that space. So just as a quick backdrop, the way this
01:25sort of became known is we put a pause on one aspect of our human interviewing
01:31program, and that was where people, INA people, might go in and interview folks
01:37who are facing charges, and the reason for that, and remember I'm a longtime
01:41federal prosecutor, so I'm sort of sensitive to this, the reason for that is
01:44while it might be perfectly legal and constitutional, it could be seen as sort
01:48of invading the relationship between that person and their criminal attorney
01:52for their criminal case, because they're facing charges. So we put a pause on that.
01:56That's what sort of got in the news and became an issue, and I'm fine with that
02:01because our rules allowed for something that we should have been more
02:05careful about. We came to find out when we did an audit that we actually had
02:08never interviewed anybody in that situation, you know, where we actually
02:13after they'd been arraigned and received counsel and had a six-minute right to
02:16counsel attached, but our procedures allowed for it. So that necessitated us
02:21going back and redoing, relooking at all the different guidance for our human
02:27intelligence program, and part of what I've laid out in detail in this
02:32statement for the record is all the work we've done in that space to redo that
02:36program. New guidance, new training, limitations, and then some of the
02:42limitations that were imposed by Congress last year, which, you know, we
02:45sort of worked back and forth with Congress in a very respectful way to
02:48come up with the NDAA resolution that limited our ability to do that human
02:54intelligence collection. The last thing I'd say is what I said earlier, which is
02:59we're taking those resources, taking that human intelligence focus, and focusing it
03:05on the border now. So most of that work is going to be, you know, special interest
03:09migrants who are detained on the border, working with our CBP colleagues trying
03:14to get information about the threat related to the border. Thank you,
03:17Undersecretary, and I'm glad you brought up products. I think there are a number
03:21of questions via letters and other correspondence that we have to DHS and
03:28INA, and just want to make sure that the department is tracking those, but not
03:33only that, that in a timely manner that you'll commit to responding to those.
03:38I'll look into whatever's pending, sir. Thank you. Thank you. What's
03:42your biggest concern right now? What's the priority for INA to keep the
03:47country safe in the threat environment that we previously discussed today?
03:51Well, to talk like a bureaucrat for a second, one priority for me is
03:59making sure that we can maximize the ability of INA to address these threats,
04:03and that's why we have this review going on. That's why I actually welcome this,
04:08because the more scrutiny, the more guidance, and the more engagement from
04:13Congress, the better we're going to be able to improve and progress. What's INA's
04:18competitive advantage in the IC? Our bread and butter, and just step back for
04:24a second, and you both spoke about challenges that INA has had. One thing
04:28that I think people need to recognize, if you go back and look at the founding
04:32documents, the legislation for INA, it's not clear what the core mandate for
04:38INA is, but when you sort of look at what gap it was intended to fill post 9-11, so
04:46you referred to the 9-11 Commission Report, which is a brilliant piece of
04:49writing, by the way. If you go back and look at that, you see that one of
04:53the concerns that was raised is the disconnect between the hundreds of
04:57thousands of state and local, territorial, tribal, and private sector partners who
05:01have security interests and knowledge, and the federal intelligence and
05:06law enforcement communities. Our job is to be that connection, to be that bridge,
05:11to share information about the threats facing the homeland with those SLTTP
05:17partners, and making sure that we're getting the information from them that
05:21feeds into our intelligence system. So, for example, I mentioned that we do talk
05:25nominations for talk watch listing. A lot of that comes from our state and local
05:29partners who tell us, you know, fusion centers, hey, Ken Weinstein, here's the
05:34information that shows that Ken Weinstein's a cartel member. We then take
05:37that, vet it, and then try and get it into the talk watch list. That's the kind of
05:43information that we need bidirectionally from our state and local partners, and
05:46that's why, as I said, when we talked about the guiding principles,
05:51that our guiding principle is, first one, is our main focus is providing
05:57intelligence to the SLTTP partners. It's not necessarily getting the PDB, right?
06:01It's good to inform our federal decision-makers, but the gap that we fill
06:06in the intelligence enterprise is connecting with those SLTTP partners.
06:10Thank you. My time has expired.