'This Is A Screw-Up Of A Royal Proportion': Mark Warner Decries Conduct Within Intelligence Agencies

last month

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) spoke about oversight and conduct in intelligence agencies.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today, we look forward to your questions.

00:04All right, Senator Rounds, what do you got to say for yourself?

00:07No, no, no, you're not up on the pen. All right, so the mics are working again,

00:11and I'm going to have you all take your place cards, and I'm going to give a little,

00:16you know, there's some really tough questions need to be asked. You guys go ahead, I'm going

00:19to give the, and let me, you know, kind of set the stage because, you know, this is a

00:28a screw-up of a royal proportion, but let me make clear while, you know, Deputy Director Dixon has

00:36been on the PAC, the Oversight Board, she was not directly responsible for, you know, some of the

00:46details of some of this, although I will ask why the PAC didn't catch it. Dr. Plum has been brought

00:51in as one of the experts to help us figure it out, and, you know, Mr. Cattler and Secretary Harris

01:02are, you know, were not there when the screw-ups took place. So while I'm going to be very tough

01:12on them, you know, my hope is that that will be, we can get some answers, but I want to

01:18make clear that for the most part, these were not the individuals, unfortunately,

01:24that were directly responsible, and I will add as well, some of the people who were responsible

01:31have almost all left the government, and they got quite an earful from me in the interim,

01:36and let, just to put this in, again, in a little bit of context, you know, March of 23,

01:44we do our normal update, we're trying to figure out, reciprocity is a huge issue, you know,

01:48you get a clearance at security on DOE, or DHS was one of them, even you got a security clearance

01:55at DHS, and you wanted to move from a contract, from one DHS contract to another, you still had

02:00to go through another process. It was, I remember Dan Coats, who was on this committee for many

02:06years when he became ODNI, had to go through what took to be a much longer process than it should,

02:12having had access to all of the information from this committee. So we've been working this

02:19process, trying to drive the wait time down, trying to make sure that a clearance wouldn't

02:23have to be redone all the time, and to try to do this where we have continuous vetting,

02:29using technology, not sending retired FBI agents out, you know, to check whether somebody's,

02:35they actually went to College X, you know, makes sense and should bring about a more efficient

02:43system. But as we said, for a program that was supposed to be done by 2019, and you can go ahead

02:47and start the clock, I'm not going to go forever on this, you know, this was supposed to be in 2019,

02:54in 2023 we were led to believe that things were going along even though there had been delays.

03:02The amazing thing was, in September of 23, at Invis, there was a sudden deletion of 90 terabytes of information.

03:18That's a lot of information. Now luckily, there were some backups that were able to restore that,

03:25but we asked, if they hadn't had that holy heck moment, would this committee have ever been informed

03:35of how screwed up things were? And to give a framework, at DCSA, 5,400 employees,

03:44roughly about a thousand of them, almost all the time, were working on this project.

03:50The outside contractor had a thousand plus people working on it.

03:57The contractor was, my understanding, was developing a program that would have never scaled to meet the needs.

04:05How did this go on without anybody saying, of a few thousand people, contractors and government

04:11policing, this isn't going to work. Now some of this is due to fixed price contracts, where

04:17I don't believe we've actually set the incentives in the right place to get a

04:21product that's deliverable, but it still begs the question of, my gosh, if there hadn't been

04:28the misplacement of 90 terabytes of data, when would we have been informed? Starting in about

04:35November, December, we had a series of meetings I did and others with former Secretary Moultrie

04:43on these issues, and it went from one story to another, getting worse and worse and worse.

04:51So we've not only wasted, and we don't know, for a project that was supposed to cost, in total,

04:58an initial estimate $700 million, and we're at $1.7 billion now, and we don't even know how much

05:05to finish. For you guys who thought ACA rollout was bad, this may even get close in terms of

05:12cost overruns. We need to know what the expectation would be. I'm going to start

05:22with Secretary Harris and David Yu to give us an update, and I appreciate the 90-day sprint,

05:28and then I am going to ask Stacy or Dr. Dixon, you know, why didn't the PAC catch this,

05:35and how do we have confidence? I mean, we can bring you guys in on a regular base,

05:38but how are we going to have confidence this doesn't happen again? Because at the end of the

05:42day, as Senator Rubio said, we've got to guard our nation's secrets, and if we can't get people

05:46cleared, and people won't come to work for the IC, and we can't get them to move from our contractor

05:53community, if we can't get folks to move from one contractor to another, we're not going to be as

05:55efficient as we should be. So Ms. Harrison and Mr. Catlett, if you could talk, and then Ms. Dixon,

06:02if you could answer. Thank you for the question. So first and foremost, we are focused on doing

06:13this once. So this sprint effort has been focused on diagnosing what has gone on with the program

06:20and focused on moving out on an implementation plan that leads to success. That includes,

06:27as I mentioned, new oversight authority, both for the sponsorship of the program

06:31and for the acquisition. So that will both happen at the undersecretary level

06:37in the Pentagon. This is a cross-functional effort. DCSA needs the full team at its back.

06:43So we are also working on clarity on requirements and a new requirements management process. That

06:48will be in conjunction with our partners in the PAC to ensure that we understand what the system

06:53needs to deliver, how our customers are using it, and what needs to be integrated into the

06:58roadmap for future development. We are also working on, as you referenced, this roadmap for

07:04delivery. So we have some predictability. So we can measure how we are doing against those goals

07:09and that we can better mark where we have delays or other technical problems that are

07:15interrupting the development cycle. And finally, we are working to develop a reliable funding

07:20profile aligned to that new roadmap. As David alluded to in his statement, we are conscious

07:26that we need to, as a department, take the costs of this delay and fund those internally. We are

07:32working through that in our current program's budget review, but we are confident that we can

07:37continue to deliver this program if we align to these goals. Well, I would like brief answers

07:43because I'm chasing away my colleagues because we're going, but I'm going to be here as long

07:46as it takes. So I've got lots of rounds of additional questions, but, you know, and I

07:50appreciate, Mr. Cowery, you coming in and taking this on because it's a mess, and I appreciate

07:57that. But if you could briefly, and then, Secretary Dixon or Director Dixon, could you briefly,

08:02because I want to make sure everybody gets a bite.

08:08Stacy, I'm going to save you for my second round, so you get a reprieve, but I want to make sure,

08:12you know, how do we make sure that we've actually got a plan? And please give as much specificity

08:17as possible, but briefly, and I'll have lots of follow-ups for later.

08:21Well, thank you, Chairman. I just reinforce what the acting undersecretary said first by saying

08:25that I joined literally a week before that 90-day period began for the review and was able to then

08:33plug into that fully, and I'm confident that we brought the right people to bear to take a hard

08:37look at this. From my perspective, we considered personnel, personnel expertise as a first basket.

08:43We looked at procurement as a second, and we looked at oversight as a third,

08:47and we've both made many points already, but happy to amplify on what the specifics were

08:52that we went through as we did that review. But moving forward, we have new oversight

08:57authorities. We will have clarity on program requirements and new requirements management

09:01process, and I think it's important to say here that the trusted workforce requirements,

09:05as well as those of ENVIS as initially conceived, are understood and sound. I think the problem

09:11really was their interpretation and making sure that my agency had what it needed in terms of

09:15its knowledge and capability to actually deliver properly on those requirements. This was a large

09:20part of this discovery process as we went through it. We will also have an updated and good vetting

09:27capability roadmap for delivery and a reliable funding profile aligned to that new roadmap,

09:32and after its approval, we will also get that outside independent cost estimate to be even

09:37more confident and in compliance with policy and statute. We show you the right documents.

09:41So at the end of this 90 days, we will deliver, have delivered, an updated set of acquisition

09:46documents, this revamped requirements governance procedures, agile training and documentation.

09:52As Dr. Plum has also said, we've brought in some new people. We know where our gaps are

09:55and the skill sets that we need to hire on the government side. We're working with the

09:58contractor as well on actions that need to be taken there, and we are also evaluating

10:02the requirements baseline. Sir, I have a lot to say on this point, but again,

10:06in the interest of time, I'll stop. I'll come back around. Senator Rubio.

10:13So this could be

'This Is A Screw-Up Of A Royal Proportion': Mark Warner Decries Conduct Within Intelligence Agencies

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