[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
STATE DEPARTMENT'S
COUNTERTERRORISM BUREAU
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 2, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-75
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
MATT SALMON, Arizona KAREN BASS, California
DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama AMI BERA, California
PAUL COOK, California ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas GRACE MENG, New York
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TED S. YOHO, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
CURT CLAWSON, Florida BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
DANIEL DONOVAN, New York
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade
TED POE, Texas, Chairman
JOE WILSON, South Carolina WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
DARRELL E. ISSA, California BRAD SHERMAN, California
PAUL COOK, California BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Charles Johnson, Jr., Director, International Security
Issues, International Affairs and Trade, Government
Accountability Office.......................................... 4
Mr. Justin Siberell, Deputy Coordinator for Regional Affairs and
Programs, Bureau of Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State. 33
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Mr. Charles Johnson, Jr.: Prepared statement..................... 6
Mr. Justin Siberell: Prepared statement.......................... 36
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 58
Hearing minutes.................................................. 59
Written responses from Mr. Justin Siberell to questions submitted
for the record by the Honorable Ted Poe, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Texas, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade......................... 60
STATE DEPARTMENT'S
COUNTERTERRORISM BUREAU
----------
TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2015
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o'clock
p.m., in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ted Poe
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Poe. This subcommittee will come to order. Without
objection, all members will have 5 days to submit statements,
questions and extraneous materials for the record, subject to
the length limitation in the rules.
Two weeks ago ISIS had one of its most successful weeks, in
Syria took over an ancient city, Palmyra, located in the center
of the country. The city is known for its archeological gems
that date back to the Romans. In Iraq, ISIS took over Ramadi,
the capital of the Anbar Province.
Losing a city in the Sunni heartland caused many to
question the administration's strategy in this part of the
world. Defense Secretary Ash Carter remarked that the Iraqi
troops, quote, deg. ``had lost the will to
fight.''end of quote. deg. The battle for ideas isn't
looking much better. Thousands of foreign fighters continue to
leave their home countries to fight for ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Those who don't go to Iraq and Syria have been happy to pledge
allegiance from afar.
ISIS now has 10 networks outside of Iraq and Syria. Three
in Libya, two in Saudi Arabia, one each in the Sinai, Nigeria,
Yemen, Algeria, in the Khorasan, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
From pulling off two successful suicide bomber attacks in Saudi
Arabia in as many weeks to taking advantage of the fall of the
government in Yemen and the lawlessness in Libya, each of
ISIS's 10 networks are getting stronger, they are not getting
weaker.
Terrorists now control more land than at any time since the
end of World War II. In the midst of this struggle lies the
State Department's Counterterrorism Bureau. Originally set up
as an office back in 1972 in response to the terrorist attack
at the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, it became its own
bureau in 2012. The primary mission of the Bureau for
Counterterrorism is to forge partnerships with non-state
actors, multilateral organizations and foreign governments to
advance the counterterrorism objectives and national security
of the United States.
Under that broad mission it has five principal
responsibilities. One, countering violent extremism; two,
capacity building; three, counterterrorism diplomacy; four,
U.S. counterterrorism strategy and operations; and lastly,
homeland security coordination. Even though the Bureau accepts
the idea that it should be spending 3 to 5 percent of the
program's resources on monitoring and evaluation, it has no way
of tracking how much it actually is spending so it can know if
it is meeting that goal.
Over the last 5 years, the Bureau has only completed four
evaluations. It seems to me it needs to be doing a whole lot
more. Most of the money that the CT Bureau spends is on
capacity building. From 2012 to 2014 it spent $191 million on
building the capacity of 53 partners through antiterrorism
assistance. But of these three partners it has only evaluated
two countries. The CT Bureau is having trouble learning from
the four evaluations it has done in the past. The Bureau has
only implemented half the recommendations made by the
evaluation and has no timetable for when it will implement the
other half. The Bureau has never done or does it have any plans
to do impact evaluation. The only kind of evaluation it can
really tell us, if American money made a difference or not.
While it struggles to properly evaluate its programs, the
CT Bureau is asking for four times more money than it received
in the budget last year. The Bureau wants money for a
counterterrorism partnership fund, but it can't give Congress
any specifics on how it plans to spend the money let alone how
the money will be evaluated that is spent.
There are also problems with how the CT Bureau is spending
the money it already obtains from the taxpayers through
Congress. According to the GAO, every year since 2012, the CT
Bureau has failed to fill staff positions Congress has
authorized it to have. The vacancy rate on unfilled positions
has hovered around 20 percent every year, but every year since
2012, the CT Bureau keeps asking Congress for more money to
authorize more staff positions. Why should Congress grant this
request when the Bureau cannot fill the positions Congress has
already given it?
Recently the administration has started emphasizing the
term ``preventing violent extremism,'' or PVE, more than
``countering violent extremism,'' or in the vernacular, CVE.
PVE says that everything to women's right to education to
health care is important to prevent violent extremism. The
question arises, is this the duty of the Bureau to try to
eliminate poverty, health care issues, create jobs under this
authorization?
The problem with PVE is that could include almost anything
that PVE wants to spend the money on as opposed to strictly
counterterrorism operations. It is difficult to know what the
definition means when it covers so many issues. It is also
unclear what the shift from CVE to PVE means for the Bureau
which used to take the lead on counter or CVE efforts.
So at a time of limited resources and a terroristic threat
that is increasing we cannot afford to have a squabble over who
is in charge or a questionable commitment of evaluating how we
are spending American money, and that is the purpose of this
hearing today so we can get to the bottom of all of this.
And I will yield to the ranking member Mr. Keating.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Chairman Poe, for conducting this
hearing. I would also like to thank our witnesses Mr. Johnson
and Mr. Siberell for being here today to discuss the State
Department's Counterterrorism Bureau. As we know, to degrade
and ultimately defeat a foreign terrorist organization like
ISIL or al-Qaeda we need to cut off its supply of money,
manpower and support. Specifically, we need to improve our
efforts to prevent the flow of foreign fighters to the Middle
East, especially to Iraq and Syria.
We also need to do a better job countering violent
messaging to potential recruits, engaging with at-risk
communities, and working to prevent radicalization. Further, we
need to do more to restrict terrorist financing, whether it is
financing it has obtained through taxes imposes on the
population of occupied territories or through the sale of
contraband such as trafficking in antiquities looted in Iraq
and Syria.
The United States can't do this alone. We have to work with
our allies to reduce terrorist access to resources and support.
The capacity building programs funded and coordinated by the
State Department's Counterterrorism Bureau are the types of
activities our Government needs to engage in. These programs
are aimed at, for example, assisting our partners in
counterterrorism law enforcement, counterterrorism financing,
counter radicalization efforts, border security, and
restricting terrorist travel.
Already the Bureau has been hard at work to seek and
address these critical objectives, and I know we will hear a
lot in greater detail from Mr. Siberell later on. It is vital,
however, that we ensure that funds appropriated to the
Counterterrorism Bureau for these capacity building programs
are being used wisely and the United States is getting a good
return on our investment. To this end I welcome the
participation of Mr. Johnson from GAO, look forward to hearing
both of our witnesses to discuss this program, and I yield
back.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, gentleman. The Chair will yield 2
minutes to the gentleman from California, Mr. Sherman.
Mr. Sherman. I want to focus these 2 minutes on a big gap
in the State Department--its failure to hire people who really
understand Islam and the culture involved of the countries.
There, last time we had these hearings and in subsequent
hearings, the State Department has confirmed they haven't hired
a single person who is hired because of their expertise in
Islamic jurisprudence or scripture.
And so when we go to try to do our counter propaganda, we
are able to show that ISIS kills Yazidi women and children, but
the target audience doesn't regard that as an anathema. We need
pictures of al-Baghdadi eating a bacon sandwich. That, his
target audience would find an anathema. But that is my limited
understanding of his target audience. We need people on staff
who can quote Hadith for Hadith, Sunnah for Sunnah, and we also
need people who have grown up in the relevant countries,
whether they be Muslims by faith or whether they even be
members of the religious minorities who are easier to screen to
be sure that they don't subscribe to the viewpoints of ISIS
since there are very few Iranian Jews and Yazidis, et cetera,
who are Islamic extremists.
So we can still give the State Department 99.9 percent of
the jobs can go to people who study well for the Foreign
Service exam and have all the academic Brownie points and their
Ivy League degrees or their A+s from Cal State, Northridge. But
if \1/10\ of 1 percent were hired because they could have
memorized the Qur'an and could apply it to the situations we
face today, then we would be speaking the language of the
target audiences. I yield back.
Mr. Poe. I thank the gentleman. Without objection, all the
witnesses' prepared statements will be made part of the record,
and I would ask that each of our two witnesses keep their
presentation to no more than 5 minutes inasmuch as we have your
written statement.
Charles Johnson, Jr. is a senior executive with the U.S.
Government Accountability Office. As a director with GAO's
International Affairs and Trade team, his portfolio focuses on
U.S. efforts to counter overseas threats and international
security issues. Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for being here. We
will hear what you have to say.
STATEMENT OF MR. CHARLES JOHNSON, JR., DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL
SECURITY ISSUES, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND TRADE, GOVERNMENT
ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon,
Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Keating, and members of the
subcommittee. I am pleased to be here to discuss preliminary
observations from GAO's ongoing review of the evolution and
management of the State Department's Counterterrorism Bureau.
My statement submitted for the record provides preliminary
information on three issues. First, how the Counterterrorism
Bureau's resources have changed since 2011; second, the extent
to which the Counterterrorism Bureau has assessed its
performance; and third, the Counterterrorism Bureau's
coordination within State and with other government entities on
efforts to counter violent extremism and terrorist financing.
Before I delve into the three issues, I would like to note
that terrorism and violent extremism as demonstrated by the
actions of ISIL, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda and AQ affiliates remain
a top national security priority and continue to pose a threat
to the United States and other nations. In 2010, the results of
the first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, known
as the QDDR, directed by the Secretary of State at the time,
highlighted the global terrorist threat and among other things
recommended that the Office of the Coordinator for
Counterterrorism be elevated to a bureau. According to the
QDDR, elevation of this office to bureau would, among other
things, enhance State's ability to counter violent extremism,
enhance efforts to build foreign partner counterterrorism
capacity, and enable more effective coordination with other
agencies.
As for the first issue, how the Bureau's resources have
changed--and if I can ask if the figure, I have a figure to be
projected. Our preliminary analysis shows that the
Counterterrorism Bureau has received annual increases in
authorized full time equivalent staff levels since Fiscal Year
2011, as the figure shows, but they have continued to face a
staffing gap every year.
As you can see, the number of authorized FTE positions
increased from 66 in Fiscal Year 2011 to a high of 96 in Fiscal
Year 2015, but over that same time period the percentage of
unfilled FTE positions fluctuated slightly. As the chairman
noted, it has averaged about 20 percent a year, and we can say
that the range was 17 to 23 percent with 2015 being the 23
percent. These vacancy gaps have included both staff level as
well as management level positions. I would like to note that
the Bureau recently took some action to close the gap, and they
have told us recently in our preliminary review that they are
down to 10 FTE vacancies as of the end of May 2015.
Next concern, the extent to which the Counterterrorism
Bureau has assessed its performance. Our preliminary analysis
has found that while the Bureau has utilized various means to
assess some progress, it has not established time frames for
addressing open recommendations resulting from completed
program evaluations. Specifically, the Bureau as required has
established indicators and targets for each of its foreign
assistance goals and has reported results achieved toward each
indicator.
Since its elevation to a Bureau in Fiscal Year 2012, as the
chairman noted in his opening remarks, the Bureau has also
completed four evaluations of the counterterrorism related
programs that it oversees. These evaluations resulted in 60
recommendations. Our preliminary analysis shows that the Bureau
has only addressed about half of those recommendations and
lacks time frames for when it will address the remaining
recommendations, which are at about 32. Without specific time
frames for addressing recommendations, we have previously noted
that it may be more difficult, and in particular for this
Bureau, to ensure programmatic improvements are made in a
timely manner, but more importantly that some of the
implementing partners who have been tasked with closing some of
these recommendations are held accountable for doing so.
Finally, with respect to the Bureau's coordination efforts,
our preliminary analysis indicates that the Bureau's
coordination within State and with other Federal agencies on
countering violent extremism and countering terrorist
financing, or those two programs in particular, generally
reflect the key practices for effective collaboration. For
example, coordination on policy and programming has allowed for
the development of joint projects and helped to avoid some
overlap with existing and planned initiatives between the
Counterterrorism Bureau and others.
In closing, Mr. Chairman and members of the panel, I would
like to thank the subcommittee for the opportunity to testify,
as well as the GAO staff who are sitting behind me. Jason Bair,
Andrea Miller, Esther Toledo, David Dayton, Mason Calhoun, and
Lina Khan who worked on this engagement; and second, note that
we anticipate issuing our final report on the evolution and
management of the Counterterrorism Bureau in July of this year.
This concludes my statement. I would be happy to answer any
questions you may have at this time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
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----------
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Johnson, appreciate your testimony.
The Chair recognizes itself for its questions. The
Counterterrorism Bureau, what is it supposed to do? Explain it
to the average American, which I would suspect many Americans
don't even know the Bureau exists. What is it supposed to do?
What is the goal of the Counterterrorism Bureau?
Mr. Johnson. Well, I would ground it in the overall goal
being that the Bureau itself along with the State Department
helps coordinate our overseas efforts to combat terrorist
threats, those who may harm our foreign partners as well as the
U.S., so the primary role is to provide assistance. One of the
things that they emphasize is try to build our foreign
partners' capacity so they can address that threat.
Mr. Poe. So we give money to foreign countries to help them
fight terrorism. Is that what you mean by assistance?
Mr. Johnson. Yes. We give assistance in terms of our
technical assistance or we may provide some training to help
them sort of counter violent extremism. Or, for example, a good
example would be the ATA programs, the Anti-Terrorist
Assistance program where we do fund training programs in some
small types of equipment to allow them to sort of do
investigative law enforcement activities so they can sort of
determine the results of a terrorist attack or things of that
nature. We are trying to build up their skill sets and capacity
to address the issue or to even prevent the issue before it
happens.
Mr. Poe. And then the Bureau is supposed to evaluate that
assistance?
Mr. Johnson. Absolutely. It is critical, and we have said
this before in many of our reports, that State Department and
particularly this Bureau undertake evaluations. The benefit of
doing evaluations is that you can learn from those experiences
in whether, where you put your assistance is that a best
practice? Is that something that you can model in another
region or another country? So definitely evaluations are
critical. They should be done routinely, and you should learn
lessons from those. And you should also take steps to, based on
recommendations that come out of that, timely implement those
recommendations.
Mr. Poe. To see if we are actually helping prevent
terrorism, whether the--just to give an example, hypothetical--
the money, let us use money, we give to a country making sure
it doesn't go into the pockets of corrupt officials but it
actually is working to train somebody to make sure that they
can fight terrorism. And so we want them to evaluate all of
these programs that they start up.
Mr. Johnson. We definitely think it is critical that the
State Department does evaluate these programs, and they
established a policy initially in 2012 in response to some of
our previous recommendations and concerns from the Congress to
do so. They have updated that in 2015. They are expected to do
somewhere from two to four in a 2-year window. This bureau,
actually, I would compare them to other parts of the State
Department, have actually done more than some of the other
bureaus and offices within the State Department.
Mr. Poe. So we partner with 53 countries, correct?
Mr. Johnson. Correct.
Mr. Poe. And how many of those countries has the Bureau
evaluated the program or the assistance to those countries?
Mr. Johnson. Well, I would highlight there were two ATA
evaluations that were done.
Mr. Poe. Now ATA, what does that mean?
Mr. Johnson. The Anti-Terrorism Assistance program where as
I mentioned earlier we are providing assistance for
particularly law enforcement individuals to combat terrorist
threats.
Mr. Poe. Now are those two assistance programs in two
countries or are those two programs that are spread across the
53 countries?
Mr. Johnson. Well, it was not the 53. They have only done
two of the 53. Algeria, I believe, is one, and I believe the
other is Morocco, and Bangladesh. They haven't really done many
in terms of countries.
Mr. Poe. We have done two out of 53?
Mr. Johnson. Correct. Well, they have done four but two of
them were ATA evaluations.
Mr. Poe. Okay, they have done four out of the 53.
Mr. Johnson. Correct.
Mr. Poe. So the other countries, the other 49 that we are
giving some form of assistance to combat terrorism, the Bureau
hasn't evaluated whether we are doing a good job with that
assistance or it is not a good job.
Mr. Johnson. We are not aware of any evaluations since they
have been a bureau.
Mr. Poe. Now why haven't they done that according to your
investigation?
Mr. Johnson. That is something we hope to address in our
final product. We have looked at plans. They have had some
plans underway to do evaluations, they have reset some of those
plans.
One of the other things I would like to point out, given
that countering violent extremism is one of the priorities, one
of the things we have looked at, they have done no evaluation
of the efforts to counter extremism. They have had some
previous plans which they discontinued. We are hopeful that
going forward once they finalize their 2015 plans that we will
get a better indication and be able to provide you with that
information.
Mr. Poe. So the vast majority of the countries that we want
to help fight terrorism overseas, we don't know what they are
doing with the assistance because they haven't been evaluated.
Mr. Johnson. Well, they have not been evaluated----
Mr. Poe. I didn't say that very tactfully, but we don't
know what the assistance is doing because they haven't been
evaluated. But in your study yet from the GAO, you haven't
determined why they haven't done those evaluations which I
agree with you are vital?
Mr. Johnson. Yes, and let me just distinguish a different
point here, because one they have done as I said earlier, with
respect to some of the particular foreign assistance efforts
they have developed indicators and targets for those so they do
have data. Unfortunately I can't disclose that because it is
considered sensitive, but I can classify it in terms like a
number of individuals trained. But independent evaluations they
have only done four.
Mr. Poe. Well, they did three of them in 2012 and they did
one in 2013. They haven't done any in 2014 and haven't done in
any 2015. Is that a fair statement?
Mr. Johnson. That is a fair statement.
Mr. Poe. So the question still lies why haven't the
evaluations been done? And the GAO is going to eventually
address that and get that back to us?
Mr. Johnson. We will hopefully, yes, drill down deeper on
that and provide that in our final report in July, to the
extent that the State Department is in a position to finalize
its plans.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Sure.
Mr. Poe. The Chair will yield to the ranking member, Mr.
Keating from Massachusetts.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You mentioned the GAO
found preliminarily that the Counterterrorism Bureau's, quote,
on coordination with the State and other Federal agencies on
countering violent extremism and counterterrorism finance
programs generally reflects key practices for collaboration.
Could you go a little more into detail on that? Did you
conclude then that the CT Bureau's coordination, for example,
NCTC or Homeland Security or the Treasury Department, was
generally effective?
Mr. Johnson. Well, we did, and there are seven key
practices that you look at in terms of collaboration. It is
outcomes and accountability is one of them. I will just
highlight a few. Having leadership things defined, resources
devoted toward the effort, clear roles and responsibilities,
that is just four of the ones I am highlighting. We looked at
six of the seven and we asked general questions in terms of all
the partners and stakeholders that would be involved including
the ODNI and others, Department of Justice, DHS. No one had any
critical concerns with respect to the coordination with the
Counterterrorism Bureau. Things seem to be working pretty
smoothly or much better in that area.
There was a slight concern with respect to some of the
efforts in terms of the working group that they had established
to deal with terrorist financing. Some concerns were raised
there because that group was disbanded and they are in the
process of reassessing the way forward with that. So they have
been doing that on an ad hoc basis which has given some folks
some concerns, particularly in the----
Mr. Keating. What was the coordination? Where was it
lacking on the financing?
Mr. Johnson. Well, it wasn't that it was lacking. They used
to have a formal mechanism that they would go about in terms of
trying to sort of coordinate with the Treasury and others in
terrorist financing, and that working group was put on hold or
disbanded until they reassess that and decide the way forward
on that. So they are doing it informally right now. We are
looking forward to getting an update on the direction that they
will take and provide that in our final report.
Mr. Keating. Yes, I would be curious to see that because
that is one of the critical areas that we have to key in.
Mr. Johnson. And I would note some of the other work we are
doing particularly for this subcommittee as well, we are
looking at the efforts to coordinate on foreign terrorist
organizations, the designation of them, and our results on that
show that the coordination is going pretty well including with
the intel community, ODNI in particular.
Mr. Keating. I understand that the CT Bureau's own
evaluation of its programs since 2012 resulted in
recommendations, 60 of them I recall.
Mr. Johnson. Correct.
Mr. Keating. And the Counterterrorism Bureau has
implemented about half of those recommendations, 28 out of 60.
What is the status of the other 32 recommendations and is the
CT Bureau in the process of implementing them?
Mr. Johnson. Well, in terms of specific status,
unfortunately, I can't discuss that. I think the next panel may
be able to. We were told the information on the status is
sensitive but unclassified. I would tell you in terms of
numbers there are 32. Four have been put on hold and 28 are
currently still open and have not been closed. But the State
Department panel can probably give you more details if they are
willing to share it.
Mr. Keating. Well, okay. If you can't comment directly on
what those programs are, you could perhaps help us in the fact
that why you think there has been that delay in implementing
them, just generically.
Mr. Johnson. Well, in terms of a delay, I mean, I would say
in terms of, again we are talking about 60 recommendations from
the evaluations that were done, the four independent
evaluations. There was also, I throw out some other things. GAO
has some open recommendations that we have with the State
Department dealing with counterterrorism related issues that
remain open.
There are also recommendations from the IG report that was
done in 2012. There were 13 recommendations made. They actually
have closed 10 of those 13. There are three of those still
open. One in particular, as I talked about earlier, the need to
coordinate on the ATA program. That is an outstanding
recommendation where they were looking for the two entities
that have a memorandum of understanding or agreement that has
yet to be addressed.
So, I mean there are a lot recommendations that the
Counterterrorism Bureau and State Department need to address. I
am not sure of the rationale or the reason why there has been a
delay or why they haven't done it. But best practices as we
model and as we do in GAO, we update the status of all of our
recommendations throughout the year, and more so we have a time
frame that we expect to have them all closed and fully
implemented within 4 years, if possible, and we will take
action routinely to update that. That is sort of a best
practice that we follow that hopefully the State Department, as
it is moving forward in terms of completing evaluations and
followup on recommendations, will model some of those
practices.
Mr. Keating. Great, thank you. You have already addressed
the issue, the third main issue I had for you regarding full
time employees and how that was done. So I thank you for doing
that and I yield back.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Poe. Thank the gentleman from Massachusetts. The Chair
recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Sherman.
Mr. Sherman. You seem to be switching from a combating
violent extremism to preventing violent extremism, so instead
of just hitting somebody who has already got a gun, prevent
somebody from taking up a gun. A natural part of that is our
broadcasting efforts. To what extent does this agency
coordinate with our broadcasting, and does your report focus on
the fact that our broadcasting to the Muslim world is
characterized by weak content, weak language coverage, that is
to say they only broadcast in some languages not others, and
sometimes a weak signal?
Mr. Johnson. Yes, we did not specifically look at in detail
that issue. We would be happy to undertake----
Mr. Sherman. But does the agency coordinate on that or is
it off doing its thing to try to persuade people not to take up
violent extremism while the broadcasting unit is off doing its
thing? What is the level of coordination?
Mr. Johnson. Yes. It is an independent operation within the
State Department. It is not coordinated with the
counterterrorism unit from what I understand. I am aware that
there are efforts by other agencies like the Department of
Defense and others to also counter violent extremism to
coordinate on the propaganda issue.
Mr. Sherman. So the office we created to coordinate our
anti-terrorism efforts is not coordinating, or is not itself
coordinating with other agencies that have similar goals?
Mr. Johnson. Well, again I think the panel that is going to
follow can address that. I do know that they have stood up sort
of a countering violent extremism unit. It is a relatively new
unit and it is part of their new structure based on their
strategic review.
Mr. Sherman. Okay. Well----
Mr. Johnson. And so going forward perhaps maybe that is
something that that unit will focus on.
Mr. Sherman. To your knowledge, and I know we will talk to
the next panel, how many of the employees of the agency are
native speakers of Arabic or Farsi? People who grew up--do you
have any idea?
Mr. Johnson. Congressman Sherman, I don't have that
information either. Maybe----
Mr. Sherman. Ever meet one? To your knowledge do they have
one or----
Mr. Johnson. On the last hearing you guys had where I
understand that there were none at the time.
Mr. Sherman. Okay.
Mr. Johnson. And I don't think that has changed since then.
Mr. Sherman. And so let us say ISIS was trying to recruit
people and they had poisoned wells. Naturally, we would be
appalled by that. We would show a picture of dead Yazidi
civilians. But we are judging things from our standpoint that
it is wrong to poison wells and kill Yazidi civilians. Is there
anybody in this agency that can look at the Qur'an and to see
whether, as it outlines the proper waging of war, poisoning
wells is thought to be a good thing or bad, or there is just no
bother to find out whether what ISIS is doing is a violation of
Islamic law?
Mr. Johnson. Yes, unfortunately we did not in this
particular review take a deep dive on the cultural background
or the language skill sets of the folks. We have done work
years ago in the past on that and perhaps that is something to
look at in the future.
Mr. Sherman. Well, I think to some at the State Department
the war against Islamic extremism is just an excuse to get more
money to hire more of the same kinds of people that they are
comfortable hiring, doing the same thing they have always done,
and then to argue that doing anything different than what they
have always done would be such a clash with their own culture
that we shouldn't consider it.
Mr. Johnson. And to that point, Congressman, I would say
hopefully they will do it better going forward with the new
structure that has been put in place post the strategic review.
There were lessons that they can learn, the key is to follow up
on those evaluations, those recommendations.
Mr. Sherman. But as far as we know they are not
coordinating with broadcasting. As far as we know they have no
native speakers of the relevant languages. And as far as we
know, their meetings to discuss how to explain to potential
terrorists that what ISIS and others are doing is wrong can
make use of only the definitions of right or wrong one gets
from a Western education and cannot explain or even notice
which things ISIS is doing are violative of Sunna and Hadith
and which are not. So we will fund a bureaucracy that has found
an excuse for its own enlargement and will enlarge itself
without changing itself. I yield back.
Mr. Poe. I thank the gentleman. I appreciate your
testimony, Mr. Johnson. You are excused, or you can stay if you
want to.
Mr. Johnson. Will do.
Mr. Poe. Thank you very much.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
Mr. Poe. The committee is ready to proceed with its second
panel. I will introduce the witness for this panel, Mr. Justin
Siberell, who is the Deputy Coordinator for Regional Affairs
and Programs in the Bureau of Counterterrorism at the U.S.
Department of State. He joined the State Department Foreign
Service in March of '93 and assumed the position in July 2012.
Mr. Siberell, you have 5 minutes for your testimony, and
remember we have your testimony already filed so you may
summarize your testimony in 5 minutes or less. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF MR. JUSTIN SIBERELL, DEPUTY COORDINATOR FOR
REGIONAL AFFAIRS AND PROGRAMS, BUREAU OF COUNTERTERRORISM, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Siberell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will make brief
remarks and try to keep them brief. Chairman Poe, Ranking
Member Keating, distinguished members of the committee, thank
you for the opportunity to appear before you today. This
hearing comes at a critical time in our counterterrorism
efforts. Despite the significant blows to al-Qaeda's
leadership, terrorist threats continue to emerge propelled in
particular by weak and in some cases failed governance in key
regions and escalating sectarian conflict globally.
We are deeply concerned about the continued evolution of
the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant, otherwise known as
Daesh, not only in Iraq and Syria, but through the emergence of
self-proclaimed ISIL affiliates in Libya, Egypt, Nigeria and
elsewhere. Although it remains to be seen what these
affiliations really mean--whether representative of command
relationships, commonality of strategic goals or merely
opportunistic branding--we and our many partners in the
international community remain focused on degrading and
defeating ISIL.
We remain troubled by the now more than 20,000 estimated
foreign terrorist fighters who have traveled to the Middle
East, not only for the zeal and unique skills they provide to
groups like ISIL and the Nusra Front, but for the experience
they are gaining and the threat they could pose for many years
to their countries of origin. Over the past year we have seen
an increase in lone offender attacks to include attacks in
Ottawa, Sydney, Paris, and Copenhagen.
ISIL and al-Qaeda are not the only serious threats that
confront the United States and its allies. Iran remains an
active state sponsor of terrorism and continues to use its
Revolutionary Guard Quds Force to train and support terrorist
groups engaged in terrorist acts and working to propel conflict
and instability such as Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, and
Palestinian Islamic jihad. I have submitted a longer statement
as you noted, Mr. Chairman, that includes more detail on these
evolving threats, and I would ask that it be included in the
record at this hearing.
As we look to address these threats and to implement an
effective response to the rapidly changing global terrorism
environment, we must broaden our tools and build upon and
expand our partnerships with key allies. President Obama has
emphasized repeatedly that we need to foster strong and capable
partners who can address and disrupt terrorist threats where
they emerge. The United States needs partners who cannot only
contribute to military operations, but also detect threats,
conduct arrests, and prosecute and incarcerate terrorists and
their facilitation networks. Addressing terrorism in a
comprehensive fashion, utilizing civilian security as well as
military intelligence capabilities within a strong rule of law
framework that respects civil liberties and human rights is
crucial both for ensuring the sustainability of our efforts and
for preventing the rise of new forms of violent extremism.
With the Department of State's Fiscal Year 2016 budget
request, Counterterrorism Bureau seeks funding to sustain our
principal counterterrorism programs that form the basis of that
partnership building. This funding is critical to advance our
multiyear capacity building goals in key partner countries.
Focus areas for these programs include building strong
counterterrorism legal frameworks, improved crisis response,
aviation and border security, anti-money laundering and
financial investigations capabilities, and countering violent
extremist messaging and recruitment.
At the same time, the Department has requested an
additional $390 million in the NADR OCO account for the
Counterterrorism Partnership Fund, CTPF. This would provide the
Department of State with additional flexible resources to
broaden our counterterrorism partnership activities. This
funding would also enable us to develop coordinated capacity
building efforts with the Department of Defense which received
$1.3 billion in CTPF funding in Fiscal Year 2015, thus ensuring
a balanced approach. The additional resources provided by CTPF
would enable us to increase our law enforcement and other
civilian efforts to address foreign terrorist fighters, counter
existing and prevent the emergence of new terrorist safe
havens, and countering Hezbollah's worldwide activities.
Mr. Chairman, as you will recall, the Counterterrorism
Bureau was established 3 years ago upon the recommendations of
the 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Report. We are
playing a leading role in the U.S. Government's efforts to
galvanize international commitment and efforts against existing
and developing terrorist threats.
The Counterterrorism Bureau has itself evolved even since
its inception just a few short years ago. We have implemented a
number of organizational changes over the past year to enable a
more effective integration of our policy planning, diplomacy
and program development. We have elevated the Bureau's policy
efforts on countering terrorist financing and countering
violent extremism and have invested significantly in improved
monitoring and evaluation capabilities.
We believe these changes will enable us to be more
strategic and effective. The terrorism challenges that we face
continues to evolve at a rapid pace and we cannot predict what
the landscape will look like one decade or even 1 year from
now. However, we believe we can best protect the American
people and America's interests over the long term by engaging
in robust diplomacy, expanding partnerships, building bilateral
and regional capabilities, and promoting a holistic and rule of
law based approach to counterterrorism and violent extremism.
The CT Bureau has a critical central role to play in these
efforts. We appreciate Congress' support as we carry out this
mission, and look forward to working with you in the year
ahead. Thank you again for the opportunity to be with you today
and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Siberell follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Mr. Poe. Thank you for your testimony. The Chair recognizes
itself for its questions. Let me try to be succinct here. I
agree with you, terrorism is a bad situation that is taking
place in the world and it is increasing. There are more
terrorists than there used to be, they are doing worse things,
they are hurting more people and the Counterterrorism Bureau is
supposed to fight that. And you have asked for a budget
increase of several million dollars. One concern I have is the
staffing levels of previous budgets, the Bureau is not staffed
completely. Why aren't you staffing with the money you have
already got and you are asking for more money--I am going to
give you all of the questions and then you can answer them. But
you are asking for money for more purposes.
The terrorists are doing an excellent job of doing what
they do. One way is by their use of social media. They raise
money on social media, they raise recruits on social media, and
they use it for propaganda purposes, all social media. What are
we doing to combat that issue specifically? Because social
media, I mean, they know how to use it, and some of it is
unlawful but they are still doing it.
And the other question is, be more specific. What are we
doing to counter terrorism? Not, we have more resources or we
are helping agencies. What are we doing? Give me some examples
of specific things we have done with those 53 countries that
have helped stop terrorism. So you can take those questions and
go wherever you want to.
Mr. Siberell. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I will do
my best to get through each of those. On the first part of your
question with regard to our budget request, and you have just
heard from your GAO colleagues on their report about Bureau
staffing, I would say that we have had a conversation with them
about their estimate of our vacancies and we have continued to
staff up. The Bureau was established just a few years ago. We
were provided additional positions to build out administrative
capabilities to function as a bureau different from where we
were as an office prior to that time.
So there has been a scaling up of personnel in the Bureau,
and I think we have kept pace with the addition of those
resources on an annual basis. The current number of vacancies
is 11 in the Bureau, 10 of those are under either hiring and/or
interviewing. And most of those are related to some of the
reorganizations we have been making that I referred to
specifically with regard to aligning our programmatic efforts
along a regional basis in line with our policy objectives.
So I separate that out from the request you have made with
regard to our programs and getting into your question about
what are we doing, some specific things that we are engaged in,
I will give you one example. The CT Bureau has led the U.S.
Government's efforts not only on behalf of the Department of
State but even within the interagency on pulling together a
strong coalition of countries to address this issue of the
foreign terrorist fighter phenomenon.
And this is a global phenomenon. We have 90 countries that
have contributed foreign fighters to the conflict in Syria and
Iraq. And we have led interagency delegations to countries
across Western Europe, to the Balkans, to North Africa, to the
Gulf States, and engaged in comprehensive diplomacy to push
those governments to undertake stronger legislative steps to
initiate prosecutions and investigations. We have funded the
work of our colleagues at DHS and DOJ to provide assistance in
the building of prosecutions. We have expanded our watch
listing and information sharing, again along with our partners
in the interagency. And those steps have made a real----
Mr. Poe. Excuse me, let me just interrupt you right there.
How many prosecutions have there been based upon your agency's
involvement and with assistance?
Mr. Siberell. Sir, I would be happy to get you that number.
Mr. Poe. You don't know?
Mr. Siberell. I don't have the--we have absolutely had
prosecutions in Albania as a result of our direct cooperation
between the Department of Justice and the Albanian authorities.
And there are other examples of facilitation networks having
been prosecuted and disrupted as a result of our specific
assistance in----
Mr. Poe. So you will furnish the subcommittee the list of
prosecutions?
Mr. Siberell. Yes, happy to do that.
Mr. Poe. Follow-up question while you are finishing up. But
you haven't evaluated this assistance that you are doing?
Mr. Siberell. No, I think we evaluate and we certainly
monitor all of our programs on an ongoing basis. I mean it is
very important to us that any program that we implement is
effective. It is very difficult work to build the capacity of
partners particularly in the counterterrorism field, so we take
very seriously our responsibility to ensure that our programs
are effective. And we have ongoing monitoring in addition to
more extraordinary evaluations that we do through outside third
parties to ensure that our programs are effective.
Mr. Poe. The Chair is out of time. I am still concerned
about the evaluations. According to the GAO you all are not
evaluating. You say you are. I guess we will just wait for the
final report. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts, the
ranking member.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Not long ago the full
committee had a hearing on women in counterterrorism, how they
can better be utilized, mothers, and others there. Any of the
programs you are involved with involve women in those
capacities? And how effective are they, if you are?
Mr. Siberell. Women have a vital role to play in our
counterterrorism effort principally through our countering
violent extremism programs. We have sought to build a networks
of women who are helpful in a couple of different ways, and one
in particular is in the identification of radicalization at the
community and local level.
And so we have engaged in work in Nigeria and in Kenya to
help build networks of women who have the tools. They are often
involved in the community already, have roles in leadership in
their local communities, and are given the tools and the
training to identify the signs of radicalization.
Mr. Keating. I would be curious if you could follow up with
any written material and how they are proceeding as well.
Mr. Siberell. Certainly.
Mr. Keating. On the financing side I am having difficulty
trying to get a handle on the scope of terrorist financing
through so-called conflict antiquities, stolen antiquities and
artifacts and religious artifacts from other countries,
particularly Iraq and Syria. I know in one site there is an
estimated, one site alone of $37 million that was raised that
way. Do you have any estimates what that is in scope and
anything you are doing about that?
Mr. Siberell. Well, it is significant and I can try to get
you an answer on our estimates of the scope of the total amount
of funds, for instance, that ISIL has raised through its
illegal and criminal sale of antiquities, looted antiquities.
They have simultaneously, as you well know, on the one hand
engaged in destruction of priceless antiquities, and also
engaged in the criminal networks that sell those priceless
antiquities on black markets in order to raise funding. So they
are playing both sides of that game.
Mr. Keating. That would be helpful.
Mr. Siberell. Yes.
Mr. Keating. And the chairman of Homeland Security and
myself have a bill to deal with tightening up homeland security
on that, so that information would be helpful as well.
Mr. Siberell. If I could just add that today in Paris,
Under Secretary Stengel, who is with the delegation as part of
the Counter-ISIL Coalition meeting, is doing an event drawing
attention to this issue, the threat to areas of cultural
significance. Of course ISIL having overrun Palmyra recently
brings us into very clear focus, so it is something we are
paying close attention to.
Mr. Keating. Yes, just a couple of weeks ago I came back
from Istanbul and toured the airport there and saw 40 million
people, 40 million trips in that airport alone. And we know
that that is a major pathway for foreign fighters into Syria
and an important transit point for looted antiquities and
smuggling as well. What can we do more, from your perspective,
I asked them, what can we do more to help with Turkey becoming
more engaged and involved in helping to stop this?
Mr. Siberell. Well, the Turks are absolutely vital to our
efforts to detain, degrade and defeat ISIL. They are the
through-point, as you noted, for people traveling to that
region. They are, of course, the through-point and have been
for some time of the smuggled oil, et cetera. We work very
closely with our Turkish partners to try to cut off those
routes. Of course many of them are related to decades old or
even ancient smuggling networks that are themselves already
well established criminal networks.
So it is working with the Turks to provide them information
that we have to enable them to take----
Mr. Keating. Are they utilizing that information? I frankly
didn't see a great deal of implementation.
Mr. Siberell. Well, I can talk a little bit about the
efforts the Turks have made in disrupting the foreign fighter
flow. This has been a very high priority for us and we have
worked to improve the coordination between Turkey and other
partners, some of the source and transit countries, and
particularly European countries, and that has resulted in a
number of people being arrested, stopped and turned around. Of
course we still know that people do slip through there and pass
through, and there have been some very high profile cases
through Turkey. But Turkey remains a key partner and one we
have to work with closely on all of these issues.
If I could just address one thing, sir. One other issue I
didn't get to was on the women in counterterrorism. Women are
often the victims of terrorist crimes. And we work with a
number of groups globally to give capacity to victims'
organizations to give them the tools and the capability to
speak out about the crimes they have suffered. Women provide
very effective voices against terrorism in that regard.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Issa [presiding]. Thank you. We now go to my friend and
gentleman from California, Mr. Sherman, for his questions.
Mr. Sherman. The chair earlier was talking about the
terrorist use of social media. Does your bureau identify
postings on social media that are from the terrorists or
helpful to the terrorists, and do you ask Twitter, Facebook, et
cetera, to take down those postings?
Mr. Siberell. We work very closely with the Center for
Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, which has an entire
staff devoted to identifying postings by terrorists in specific
forums, and then more broadly on open forums and pushing back
against----
Mr. Sherman. Which social media have been better or worse
at acting to take down terrorist postings?
Mr. Siberell. Yes. I think we have found an increased level
of cooperation generally speaking among the companies.
Mr. Sherman. It is time to name names.
Mr. Siberell. Well, we have----
Mr. Sherman. Okay, is Facebook better or is Twitter better?
Mr. Siberell. I think all of the companies have been
attuned to the----
Mr. Sherman. Are you going to answer the question or are
you going to dodge it?
Mr. Siberell. It is hard for me to compare one over the
other. There has been certainly an increase in cooperation.
Mr. Sherman. Let us--Facebook has had a much stronger
policy than Twitter that I don't know whether you didn't say
that because you don't want to name names or because you are
just not as closely related to this effort. Let me shift to
something else. Your bureau has how many employees?
Mr. Siberell. We have currently all employees all told we
have a little over 120.
Mr. Sherman. Okay. How many of them are native speakers of
Arabic and Farsi and grew up in an Arabic or Farsi culture?
Mr. Siberell. I don't have that offhand. We do have Arabic
speakers in our bureau.
Mr. Sherman. Yes, you have people that have got a bunch of
Ivy League degrees and learned Arabic out of a book. That is
not what I asked. To your knowledge you don't have any native
speakers of those languages who have the culture in their
bones?
Mr. Siberell. I think we do.
Mr. Sherman. You think you do?
Mr. Siberell. Yes.
Mr. Sherman. Is it Farsi? Arabic? You want to, you think?
You don't know? Did you actually try to hire anybody who has
that as a background or it is just pure serendipity?
Mr. Siberell. We have a number of employees who do have
cultural backgrounds that have the spoken----
Mr. Sherman. Okay, by serendipity you happened to hire
somebody who may or may not be a native speaker. Is there any--
oh, let us say--and I hope you were listening to the prior
panel. You are faced with the circumstance where ISIS is
poisoning wells and you want to be able to know, I hope you
would care to know, whether that is forbidden or allowed in
warfare by Islamic law. Is there anybody on your staff or any
employee of the U.S. Government that you could call for that
answer?
Mr. Siberell. We do have employees in the Department of
State who are familiar with religious texts. We have an office
of outreach to religious communities.
Mr. Sherman. But I mean, are these people that have really
memorized the Qur'an, people who can tell you the difference
between the Shiite and Sunni Hadith, or are these people hired
for their media skills who have maybe a passing knowledge?
Mr. Siberell. Well, there are many people in the Department
of State who have strong knowledge of the Qur'an, of the
religious text of the Hadith. There may even be----
Mr. Sherman. They just happen to know. I mean, look,
obviously there could be somebody in our Embassy in
Liechtenstein who just happens to be a practicing Muslim and
knowledgeable about his own faith. But who would you call for
that information?
Mr. Siberell. I think what we have found is that the most
effective voices in----
Mr. Sherman. I didn't ask who was the voice. Before you ask
a voice to speak out, before you know to go to the Islamic
voices and saying please issue a fatwa against what is going
on, you have to know which of the activities of ISIS are at
least arguably violative of Islamic jurisprudence. So who do
you go to for that?
Mr. Siberell. Well, I think, we work with partners to
address----
Mr. Sherman. In other words you don't have anybody that you
can name or any office you can name. Is there a single person
paid by the U.S. Government who is hired because of their
expertise in the battle we are fighting which is a battle over
the nature of Islam?
Mr. Siberell. I think there are many people who have
expertise in Syria that are employed by the U.S. Government,
and many at----
Mr. Sherman. Who would you call?
Mr. Siberell. Sorry?
Mr. Sherman. You are on the front line. Who would you call?
You think there are many people, but is there anybody you would
call?
Mr. Siberell. We have----
Mr. Sherman. You think you would find somebody but you
don't know who it would be.
Mr. Siberell. I think, sir, we have resources available to
us that include----
Mr. Sherman. Okay. Others have sat there and testified that
there is not a single person. You are trying to say that there
is but you don't know who it is, which seems to be confirming--
--
Mr. Siberell. Well, there is not a job description or a
board of Islamic scholars.
Mr. Sherman. Okay. If you wanted to call somebody who had
expertise in international jurisprudence you have a whole
office. If you wanted to call somebody who had expertise in
trade law you have a whole office and you know who to call. It
would take you a minute to figure out exactly whether to call
Jack or to call Martha.
But when it comes to whether or not, for example, poisoning
wells is violative of Islam you have no idea who to call. There
is nobody who has been hired because they know the answer to
that question. And I know there are practicing Muslims who work
at the State Department who may on, again it may be somebody in
the Liechtenstein Embassy but nobody whose job it is to answer
that question. And I yield back.
Mr. Issa. I would like to follow up on the gentleman's
question briefly. There are, what, more like 1,000 people that
work both here and abroad in the Near East section of the State
Department?
Mr. Siberell. Perhaps.
Mr. Issa. There are people with tremendous language skills.
But let us talk about if you have a cultural question, if you
want to understand how you combat terrorism by winning over the
hearts and the minds what is your structure for reaching out
both within the broad State Department and what your structure
would be for reaching within civil society here and abroad?
Mr. Siberell. Well, we have very strong relationships with
civil society organizations in the United States.
Mr. Issa. And go ahead and name a couple just anecdotally
as you go by.
Mr. Siberell. Well, we have, and I will give you an example
of where we have worked with Islamic scholars including and
through our public affairs sections at our Embassies abroad. We
have engaged with partners including the United Arab Emirates
Government recently to help to establish a new messaging center
that will counter message against the perversions that ISIL has
committed and is----
Mr. Issa. Using both scholars and imams and the like?
Mr. Siberell. Yes. Yes.
Mr. Issa. But back to the gentleman's question, because I
think Mr. Sherman deserves a full answer. You do have to, at
times, reach well outside this 120 or so employees to find
people who have the technical expertise to know whether there
is a problem and whether you can relate a solution that is
going to resonate in a particular area of the Islamic world; is
that correct?
Mr. Siberell. Yes.
Mr. Issa. And that process you mentioned overseas. But
would you touch base a little bit with the Muslim community and
the community of scholars that exists in the United States?
Where are some of the resources that--I don't want you to
embarrass anyone. I don't want you to unfairly recognize
anyone, but where are some of the places you generally go
within the structure to find people that have native speakers,
as Mr. Sherman said, and people who have real understanding of
what people on the ground think?
Mr. Siberell. Well, first, if I could describe, we have an
effort under the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications which is a staff of people committed to
identifying terrorist use of Internet and then counter
messaging to include messages that challenge ISIS and al-
Qaeda's religious interpretations. And that staff is also an
interagency staff that is linked into our intelligence
community and other scholars and has expertise available to it.
We have, of course, outreach through our office of
religious affairs, and outreach communications ongoing with a
number of Islamic as well as other religious community
organizations throughout the United States. That has been a
priority of Secretary Kerry in particular to expand this
effort. And I could speak to them about who some of their lead
relationships are with and provide that to you.
Mr. Issa. I would appreciate that. I guess, let me ask a
broader question for a moment. Having traveled in the region
for many, many years, one of the worst things you can do is be
seen as a puppet of the CIA, a puppet of the United States
Government. How do you engage communities particularly outside
the U.S. to give their views without their views being
directly, and in this case I hope unfairly, written as our
views rather than their independent views particularly as to
the meaning of the Qur'an?
Mr. Siberell. That is a very important question and how we
build relationships with credible voices abroad is absolutely
vital work. It is sometimes very difficult. The truth of the
matter is that some of those that we consider to be credible
voices, those who we are seeking to win the hearts and minds
of, in other words those who have the potential to be
radicalized, the vulnerable, often not particularly well
educated or exposed broadly and culturally, might not consider
those voices as credible as we have evaluated them to be. So
this is a difficult one.
We often also see that some of those who have influence
with these vulnerable populations, particularly youth, are
people who espouse ideas and values, frankly, that we could not
associate ourselves with. But they do stop short of advocating
terrorism or violence against civilians.
Mr. Issa. And let me just put words in your mouth for a
moment, because it might not be something you would say but as
a member maybe I am freer to say it. You often find yourself
with people who talk ill of the Zionists, who talk ill of
Israel or maybe even of Christians, while at the same time they
are willing to disavow the extremism and the tactics. Is that
paraphrasing what you might say?
Mr. Siberell. Well, those would be examples and I would say
there would be others. I mean there would be views that are
anti-democratic. There are views that sideline the role of
women in society. There are any number of views that----
Mr. Issa. There is a long list, isn't there?
Mr. Siberell. Yes, it is.
Mr. Issa. And I am going to close with this quick question.
You don't get to pick people because they meet all of America's
standards, just the opposite. You have to pick and choose
people on perhaps as few as one issue, the issue of violence
and terrorism, leaving aside that we may disagree on a host of
other values between our two countries.
Mr. Siberell. That is unfortunately often the case, yes.
Mr. Issa. Thank you. And it is now my pleasure to recognize
the gentle lady from Illinois, Ms. Kelly.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All of us here know
that we live in a very dynamic and challenging times with
respect to global security. From Benghazi to Boston we have
been tragically reminded of that truth. As such, our diplomatic
efforts, defense systems and intelligence capabilities must be
as vibrant as the security threats that we face.
As a representative of a major American city, Chicago, that
bad actors and terrorists often seek to target, I know the
importance of counterterrorism and maintaining a secure
homeland. Our best counterterrorism cooperation results in the
gathering and sharing of intelligence and our ability to
swiftly and effectively arrest, thwart and prosecute
terrorists.
My question is what role, if any, does counterterrorism
have with respect to engaging foreign countries and groups
suspected of attempting to illegally access U.S. Government and
private sector computer systems for purposes of intelligence or
economic espionage?
Mr. Siberell. Thank you very much for the question. This is
an emerging threat we face, related to cyber terrorism groups
that systematically seek to undermine and penetrate the U.S.
Government's computer systems in an effort to develop a greater
understanding and intelligence on our own vulnerabilities, and
this is an area that we are working very closely with our
partners in the interagency to defend ourselves against and
ensure we have robust systems in place.
I would also say, however, that the terrorist groups are
also using publicly available information as we know.
Researching, for instance, the protection and security around
infrastructure in the United States, and what I am getting at
is not only are the government systems vulnerable, but other
systems and available information can be exploited by terrorist
groups.
And this is why it is so important that we protect
ourselves in particular against this lone wolf phenomenon,
which we are seeing more and more of, where some of these
groups have more difficulty sending operatives to the United
States or to Western Europe because of enhanced border security
measures that have been put in place since 9/11, but what they
do therefore is they seek out those who are already here to
conduct attacks.
And so there is an active effort underway by a number of
these groups we know to radicalize and to encourage attacks
among individuals in this country, and so we need to be very
careful to protect ourselves against that vulnerability. And
our colleagues in the domestic law enforcement and homeland
security community are seized with particular vulnerability.
Ms. Kelly. Do you feel you have enough resources to do your
job?
Mr. Siberell. Well, as part of our budget request we have
requested an increase for some of our partnering activities.
This gets at building the capacity of partners to address the
threats that they face in their own region, neighborhood, and
country. And this is very difficult work. It does require a lot
of resources. We think we could use more resources, we could
scale up some of that partnering activity.
This, for instance, as an example, we have a very dire
situation in Libya which is emerging more and more as a safe
haven for terrorist activity. We have a very close partner
right next door, Tunisia, which is a country struggling to move
forward in a positive and progressive and democratic way. They
need our help to build up their capacities. Not only their
military and intelligence capacities but their civilian law
enforcement capacities, their ability to strengthen their own
legislation. They need guidance on how to do that. They need
help with investigations and in forensics and applying the
whole of government approach to counterterrorism that we have
taken. So that is one small example where we would seek to
increase our assistance to a particular partner who needs our
help at this moment.
Ms. Kelly. Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr. Siberell. Thank you.
Ms. Kelly. I yield back my time.
Mr. Issa. Thank you. And I am going to close, but I want to
very quickly just run through a couple of things that were on
the committee's ask, and I think it is an open-ended question
so hopefully you are ready for it. The majority of the $300
million going to Counterterrorism Partnership Fund as of right
now are unspent, or at least not fully committed. Can you give
us some specifics of the process for your decision making and
some of the areas you expect those funds to be disbursed into?
Mr. Siberell. Sure. Thank you very much for the opportunity
to lay that out and to be clear that we are requesting this
$390 million in Fiscal Year 2016 funds. The State Department
has not received funds under the CTPF previously, Fiscal Year
2015 included. The DoD did receive a $1.3 billion appropriation
for CT partnership, the State Department did not.
So we are seeking for '16, the $390 million, and we have
broken that down----
Mr. Issa. Okay, and they may be talking about the earlier
money but they parenthesized the 390. So why don't you answer
both sides, the DoD and how some of that is going, briefly, and
then tell us a little bit more about what you would do with the
390, prospectively, because the earlier question, which I
skipped, asked about the $493 million for Fiscal Year 2016.
They had a number of those and I skipped over it and went to
the second question. But please touch on both because I think
it is insightful of what you have spent, where it has been
committed in concert with DoD.
Mr. Siberell. Happy to. The concept here is to build up
partners as I noted in the previous response to have the
capability across a range of civilian capacities so it would
match up against building parallel capacities on the military
and intelligence side, and that is the work, generally
speaking, of our Department of Defense colleagues.
So whereas we would build, let us say, a capability within
a ministry of defense to provide a focused counterterrorism
response capability, we also want to ensure that the civilian
side of the ledger is also addressed in terms of being able to
incarcerate anyone that those forces might detain. The ability
to prosecute those defendants or detainees. The ability to
address shortcomings in border security or counter
radicalization. There is a whole suite of capabilities we would
seek to build on the civilian side.
Now with respect to the $390 million, we break that down
into three principal categories. Sixty million dollars of that
would go toward our efforts building on our current efforts to
strengthen, as I noted earlier, capacities of governments to
deal with the specific phenomenon of foreign terrorist
fighters, those who are traveling to Iraq and Syria and some of
whom are actually on their way back to their home countries.
Another $20 million would go specifically toward activities
against and aimed at dismantling and disrupting Hezbollah's
global network and activity particularly in the criminal sphere
to raise funds that it uses in its activities in Lebanon and
elsewhere, in Syria, et cetera.
Mr. Issa. But again it would be money to government
agencies you are working with?
Mr. Siberell. Some of that money would go to our partners
in the interagency. So with Hezbollah, for instance, we have an
initiative underway to strengthen our work with European law
enforcement agencies to build joint investigations. And so a
lot of that money would go to the FBI, would go to the
Department of Justice, and Homeland Security, as an example.
And then the bulk of the funds, $310 million, would go toward
the addressing current and then working to prevent the
emergence of new terrorist safe havens.
So looking at East Africa as an example, bolstering our
partnerships with countries on the periphery of al-Shabaab in
Somalia, giving them the capability to better address the
threat that is emanating from there; working with the Lake Chad
Basin countries to address the threat coming from Boko Haram
emerging out of northeast Nigeria and with the Nigerian
Government itself; and noting earlier, the work we would like
to do with Tunisia, but also with Libya's other neighbors,
Niger, Egypt, et cetera, to help bolster their capabilities
against those threats. So those would be examples.
Mr. Issa. Okay. And I want to briefly go to one other
thing. Earlier when you were discussing Turkey and their
support late in the Saddam era, 60 Minutes, I believe it was,
just went ahead and showed us an aerial view of thousands of
trucks, tanker trucks, small tanker trucks lined up in a row
for miles and miles taking fuel from Iraq, clandestinely, into
Turkey. The same was happening in Jordan. The same was
happening through a pipeline into Syria. And the government
pretended like we were doing something about it, but in fact if
60 Minutes can get you a video of it obviously it was not a
secret.
Today isn't there a large amount or at least an amount of
oil that are going right through Turkey? Driving right down
those same roads in plain sight of both us and the Turks
delivering oil from the east to the west and could have come
from nowhere legitimately. Isn't that true?
Mr. Siberell. There is oil smuggling that continues. We
have worked to try to disrupt it even at the source. Some of
our coalition air strikes have been against those small oil
refineries and the distribution points, but it is the case that
oil smuggling does continue.
Mr. Issa. And when the trucks are on the road they are off
limits to fire on. We have to get them in other places, and
clearly the Turks are not going to pull over Turkish trucks and
take away their oil even when it clearly comes from a
clandestine source.
Mr. Siberell. Well, as I noted we are trying to work very
closely with the Turks, the Kurds and others to stem that flow
of smuggled oil.
Mr. Issa. Thank you. We now recognize the gentleman from
Pennsylvania, Mr. Perry.
Mr. Siberell. Thank you.
Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sir, I am sorry I
missed most of the meeting but I do have a couple questions
which I think are germane and go to monitoring in particular.
The Bureau has been criticized by some in Congress for the
under funding of the monitoring and evaluation of its programs
and the general guideline is 3 to 5 percent of program
resources. So my question in that vein is how much did the
Bureau spend on monitoring and evaluation in 2013 and '14?
Mr. Siberell. I can get you the specific figure, the amount
of money we spent in those 2 fiscal years. We are monitoring
and evaluation activities, in line with the Department's
guidelines on monitoring and evaluation. I just want to say
that all of our programs are monitored on a constant basis and
we want to get this right. We have no interest in perpetuating
programs that are not seeing results, and this is very
difficult work in capacity building.
What you may be referring in the 3 to 5 percent range are
some of the evaluations we have done which are bigger, in some
cases bringing in outside parties to evaluate larger programs.
And then we can give the list of those evaluations we have
completed and the total cost we have put into this.
Mr. Perry. So if you know the cost then you should know the
amount of each program that has been evaluated, right, or if
you know the cost, I mean, it is a certain percentage. The
program costs X amount, we are spending this much to monitor,
right. So we should know that, right? I mean that should be
readily available if----
Mr. Siberell. We can get you that.
Mr. Perry. You do monitor that, correct?
Mr. Siberell. Yes.
Mr. Perry. Now according to my notes, so correct me if I am
wrong, only two of 53 countries where the Bureau is doing anti-
terrorism assistance have been evaluated since 2010. Is that--
two of 53 seems low. Is there some reason it is low? Is it not
low? Why is that correct or why isn't that correct?
Mr. Siberell. Okay. Well, thank you for the opportunity to
clarify. I think it is both correct and incorrect, if I might.
We have ongoing monitoring of every one of our country ATA
programs, and every 2 to 3 years there is an assessment done of
the results of previous training and what the requirements are
for the coming period.
When you are referring to the two programs, specifically
what we did is we subjected two specific country programs to a
separate outside evaluation. That was in Morocco and in
Bangladesh. And in those two countries we brought in a third-
party evaluator to look at the program, the life span of it,
and I can tell you that we have had very, very important
conclusions from those evaluations.
In Morocco, as an example, we determined that the Moroccan
Government has achieved at such a level of capacity and
capability through that training that we are now working with
the Moroccans to actually train third-party countries. And we
are putting the Moroccans together, for instance, with
countries like Mauritania and other Sahel countries so that the
Moroccans can actually do that training. And that was the
result of the conclusions of that evaluation.
So it is true that two specific country programs----
Mr. Perry. So you are saying that those are two that were
with a third-party evaluation?
Mr. Siberell. But every ATA program has an ongoing process
of monitoring and assessment that is done in combination
between the Counterterrorism and the Diplomatic Security
Bureaus. Every 2 to 3 years every program is evaluated in that
way.
Mr. Perry. So this stuff is expensive, $233 million in
foreign aid to the Counterterrorism Bureau, will all those
dollars be evaluated? I think about the question that the
gentleman, the chairman just asked, and it seems obvious to
Americans, right. Counterterrorism, it has got to be funded.
Terrorism is funded by something.
So if you have got trucks driving across the desert--I have
been to the desert, it is kind of a wide open territory for a
lot of it--and that is the source of income for the terrorists,
it seems obvious. If we are spending $233 million, like you
don't need a whole lot, you don't need to know a lot to know
that right there is a target. I don't know if it has to be
bombed or if it can be serviced with small arms or medium arms.
I don't understand why we let that target continue to exist,
quite honestly.
And it is expensive, $233 million. It seems to me that we
have wasted 233 or a portion of $233 million when the target is
sitting out in the open and you say it is being smuggled.
People hear the term ``smuggling'' they think about something
being stolen away in the night under the cover of darkness and
deception. This is out in the open in the middle of no-man's
land and we let it drive from this point to that point
unfettered. What am I missing?
Mr. Siberell. Well, the amount of money you are referring
to is a global pot and it addresses a number of different
areas. Let me focus in on some of the money we do dedicate
toward counterterrorism finance work, and that is where we
engage our partners in building up their financial intelligence
units, their central bank, their ability to monitor funds that
flow through the banking system. These groups, each of them,
raises money in different ways. ISIL raises the majority of its
money, we believe, through extortion and through criminal
networks ongoing in the places that they control. So in cities
like Mosul or in Raqqah they have the extortion networks and
the ability to raise, effectively, taxes from the local
population.
Mr. Perry. With your indulgence, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
that and I think you are right. It is not genuine to say that
the $233 million were spent counterterrorism operations with
ISIS. But how do you quantify success? So it is my
understanding that ISIS raises about $2 million a day. A
certain amount of that comes from oil revenue, smuggled oil,
illicit oil sales.
How do you connect the--we spent a portion of this $233
million on figuring out their financial network. Once we have
the information, isn't success when we have actualized on that
information and destroyed the funding source, i.e., the truck
driving across the desert full of oil into and through Turkey?
Isn't that, or don't we care? Once we have the information we
don't put the two together?
Mr. Siberell. No, I think cutting off the sources of
funding one by one, whether it comes from oil or antiquity
smuggling or extortion or taxes from ISIL controlled territory,
these are things we have to address each of its own. So it is
very important to get at the source of the funding for the----
Mr. Perry. Do you ever see where the information that you
got, the intelligence you received through the counterterrorism
operations led to the servicing of the target, the destruction
of the target, the destruction of the source of funds; do you
ever see that?
Mr. Siberell. Well, absolutely. We have taken----
Mr. Perry. Where is that listed? Can I see where American
taxpayers spent this much money to find out this information
which led to this action which led to this outcome? How can I
see that as a taxpayer and as a Member of Congress and a
citizen?
Mr. Siberell. Thank you. Specifically that issue probably
is a question for DoD, but we have taken strikes against the
oil installations in Iraq and in Syria controlled by ISIL. We
have taken strikes against distribution points. So there have
been very specific responses to available intelligence in that
sector in particular.
Mr. Perry. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I will yield back. But in
response just to that we will ask DoD, but I will tell you
having served for a fair amount of time of my life, if DoD
wants to hit the target and is allowed to hit the target and is
resourced adequately and missioned appropriately there will be
no target left. If we want to end this target it will be gone,
and my concern is that this actionable intelligence hasn't been
used to the fullest. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Issa. Thank you. This concludes all of our questions.
You have agreed to a number of things you would respond to for
the record.
Mr. Siberell. Yes.
Mr. Issa. Would you mind additional questions if they are
received within the next 3 days to be added to that response
list for members who are not here?
Mr. Siberell. We would welcome them, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Issa. So thank you. With that we stand adjourned.
Mr. Siberell. Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 3:28 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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