The following is an excerpt from the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and a hearing on worldwide threats, January 31, 2012. Specfically, it is a discussion between Senator Mark Udal (D-Colorado) and Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper about the EnhancedView program related to commerical imagery acquisition (Thanks to Mark Brender, GeoEye Foundation for pointing us in the right direction).
See also this video of the proceedings (minutes: 66:08 to 70:07)
CQ CONGRESSIONAL TRANSCRIPTS
Hearing: WORLDWIDE THREATS
Committee: SENATE SELECT INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE
Date: JANUARY 31, 2012
Witnesses:
James R. Clapper, Jr.; Director of National Intelligence
David Petraeus; CIA Director
Robert Mueller; FBI Director
Lieutenant General Ronald L. Burgess, Jr. (USA); Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
Matthew Olsen; Director, National Counterterrorism Center
Philip S. Goldberg; Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State
Caryn A. Wagner; Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis, Department of Homeland Security
Panel Members:
Senator Dianne Feinstein; D-California, Chairman
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV; D-West Virginia
Senator Ron Wyden; D-Oregon
Senator Barbara A. Mikulski; D-Maryland
Senator Bill Nelson; D-Florida
Senator Kent Conrad; D-North Dakota
Senator Mark Warner; D-Virginia
Senator Mark Udall; D-Colorado
Senator Harry Reid; D-Nevada, EX OFFICIO
Senator Carl Levin; D-Michigan, EX OFFICIO
Senator Saxby Chamblis; R-Georgia, Vice Chairman
Senator Olympia J. Snowe; R-Maine
Senator Richard M. Burr; R-North Carolina
Senator Jim Risch; R-Idaho
Senator Dan Coats; R-Indiana
Senator Roy Blunt; R-Missouri
Senator Marco Rubio; R-Florida
Senator Mitch McConnell; R-Kentucky, EX OFFICIO
Senator John McCain; R-Arizona, EX OFFICIO
Hearing Transcript:
UDALL:
Thank you Madam Chairman. Good morning. Thanks to all of you for the important work you do. Let me start by commenting in a follow on way on the topic that Senator Chambliss mentioned, which was the detainee provisions in the NDAA. I want to thank all of you for weighing in, for sharing with the Armed Services Committee and the Senate at large, your concerns about the detainee provisions as they were proposed.
We had a spirited debate on the floor of the Senate for a number of days. Senator McCain was -- was very involved, as were a number of other Senators. I think it was a valuable debate. It was a worthwhile debate. I think it was the Senate at it's best. I'm hopeful that the compromises that were put into the final product will work. I'm going to continue to monitor what's happening. I think the debate as to whether we ought to be prosecuting and delivering justice through the military system versus the Article 3 system is an important one.
Senator Feinstein and I and others have joined to introduce the Due Process Guarantee Act and I think at the heart of our concerns and -- and the center of our mission is to ensure that Americans will not be indefinitely detained. So again I just want to thank everybody for the engagement and -- and the passion they brought to that important debate. General Clapper, if I could focus on a particular topic, commercial imagery. I was glad to see your comments at CSIS last week that you're a big believer in commercial imagery.
You noted that it has the benefit of being unclassified, which is great for sharing among our war-fighters at all levels and with our coalition partners overseas as well as with non military users. In light of those comments, I've become concerned about what I've been hearing about the steep reductions in fiscal year '13 for the Enhanced View Commercial Imagery Program. I understand that the White House has requested a requirements review for commercial imagery consistent with a new defense strategy and that this review may well indicate the need for a shift away from the national technical means given that commercial providers can collect imagery at resolutions that meet virtually all of the military's needs.
So here's my question. Do -- do you believe that fiscal year '13 enhanced view budget will meet the war-fighter's needs for unclassified imagery? How will it affect the safety of our war- fighters and our capacity to work with our allies?
CLAPPER:
Senator, as you eluded, I -- I am a huge believer in commercial imagery, going back to when I served as then director of NIMA and later NGA in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and we used a lot of commercial imagery then. It continues to be of great value for exactly the reasons you cited. It's unclassified, it can be shared in coalition contexts as well as in domestic disaster relief and the like.
That said, though, we are looking at some pretty steep budget cuts across the board in the intelligence community. And as a consequence, commercial imagery will be considered in that broader look at where we have to take -- where we may have to take reductions. And not going to single out commercial imagery as the only one.
It's my view that not only can we satisfy the military requirements, but all the other non-military requirements as well for commercial imagery at the contemplated level of funding.
I think it's incumbent on the industry to perhaps come up with some innovations and business practices and this sort of thing that will help us as we look at a more constrained fiscal environment.
UDALL:
I appreciate your attention to this matter. I know many of the other participants today on the panel depend on this kind of imagery. My concern, I think, and you share it, I hear you implying, is that if you cut too far, you reduce the reach of the commercial sector, you may lose skill sets and experts that have played an important role and you create a downward spiral that may be hard to reverse if it goes too far.
CLAPPER:
Sir, this is a concern we have across the board, not just in the commercial imagery industry, but as we make reductions, particularly in intelligence, obviously that's going to have some impact on the industrial base across the board.
