[Senate Hearing 119-109]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                       S. Hrg. 119-109

                             OPEN HEARING:
                            THE 2025 ANNUAL
                     THREAT ASSESSMENT OF THE U.S.
                         INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                    SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

                                 OF THE

                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             MARCH 25, 2025

                               __________

          Printed for the use of the Committee on Intelligence
          
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]      

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
                               __________
                               
                  U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
60-885                   WASHINGTON : 2026
=======================================================================        
      
                    SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

            [Established by S. Res 400, 94th Cong. 2d Sess.]

                     TOM COTTON, Arkansas, Chairman
                MARK R. WARNER, Virginia, Vice Chairman

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho                RON WYDEN, Oregon
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine              MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
JOHN CORNYN, Texas                   ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine
JERRY MORAN, Kansas                  MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma             KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota            JOHN OSSOFF, Georgia
TODD YOUNG, Indiana                  MARK KELLY, Arizona
TED BUDD, North Carolina
                  JOHN THUNE, South Dakota, Ex Officio
                CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York, Ex Officio
                ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi, Ex Officio
                  JACK REED, Rhode Island, Ex Officio
                              ----------                              

                       RYAN TULLY, Staff Director
                  WILLIAM WU, Minority Staff Director
                     KELSEY S. BAILEY, Chief Clerk
                           
                           C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                             March 25, 2025
                           
                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page
Tom Cotton, U.S. Senator from Arkansas...........................     1
Mark R. Warner, U.S. Senator from Virginia.......................     3

                               WITNESSES

The Honorable Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence; 
  Accompanied by: John Ratcliffe, Director, Central Intelligence 
  Agency (CIA); General Timothy D. Haugh, USAF, Director, 
  National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS); 
  Kashyap P. Patel, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation 
  (FBI); Lieutenant General Jeffrey A. Kruse, USAF, Director, 
  Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)..............................     6
    Prepared Statement...........................................    11

                         SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

AP article dated March 21, 2025..................................    23
Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community 
  Report.........................................................    52

 
      OPEN HEARING: THE 2025 ANNUAL THREAT ASSESSMENT OF THE U.S. 
                         INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

                        TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2025

                                       U.S. Senate,
                          Select Committee on Intelligence,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in 
Room SH-216 in the Hart Senate Office Building, in open 
session, the Honorable Tom Cotton, Chairman of the Committee, 
presiding.
    Members Present: Senators Cotton (presiding), Warner, 
Cornyn, Moran, Lankford, Rounds, Young, Budd, Wyden, Heinrich, 
King, Bennet, Gillibrand, Ossoff, Kelly, and Reed (Ex Officio.)

   OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TOM COTTON, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 
                            ARKANSAS

    Chairman Cotton. The hearing will come to order.
    Good morning. Welcome to the Senate Intelligence 
Committee's annual worldwide threats hearing.
    I would like to begin by welcoming our esteemed panel of 
witnesses: the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi 
Gabbard; the CIA Director, John Ratcliffe; the FBI Director, 
Kash Patel; the Director of the National Security Agency and 
Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, General Tim Haugh; and the 
Defense Intelligence Agency Director, Lieutenant General 
Jeffrey Kruse. Thank you for your appearance and thank you for 
your leadership.
    I also want to recognize the hard work and dedication of 
the thousands of men and women in our intelligence community 
whom you are here to represent today. Their successes are 
seldom celebrated, their accomplishments are often unseen, but 
our Nation is grateful to each one for the vital work they do 
to keep our Nation safe, prosperous and free.
    Our annual worldwide threats hearing allows for the 
American people to receive an unvarnished and unbiased account 
of the real and present dangers that our Nation faces. As we 
will hear from our witnesses, many of the threats we face are 
truly existential. Communist China is actively working to 
replace the United States as the world's dominant superpower. 
China uses coercive military, economic and influence operations 
short of war to shape a world favorable to its interests and 
hostile to ours. These methods include the biggest peacetime 
military build-up in history, rapidly expanding its nuclear 
forces, providing critical assistance to help Russia withstand 
U.S. sanctions, obscuring its role in accelerating the spread 
of COVID-19 beyond Wuhan, turning a blind eye to Chinese 
companies that enable the production of fentanyl flooding into 
the United States, and putting space weapons on orbit among 
other tactics.
    Iran despite setbacks inflicted on its so-called ``axis of 
resistance'' by Israel over the last year still aims to destroy 
what it calls the ``little Satan,'' the State of Israel, and 
what it calls the ``great Satan,'' the United States. It 
continues to arm Yemeni rebels to attack global shipping, 
though these outlaws have suffered terrible losses over the 
last 2 weeks thanks to the decisive action by President Trump 
and our brave troops.
    I commend the President, Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth, and his 
entire national security team for these actions.
    Iran also continues its decades-long effort to develop 
surrogate networks inside the United States to threaten U.S. 
citizens. Furthermore, Iran's nuclear program continues to 
pace. It is actively developing multiple space launch vehicles 
which are little more than flimsy cover for an intercontinental 
ballistic missile program that could hit the United States in a 
matter of years. But all this will soon come to an end. The 
Supreme Leader of Iran now faces a stark choice thanks to 
President Trump. The Supreme Leader can fully dismantle his 
nuclear program or he can have it dismantled for him.
    Finally, today's report also acknowledges that illicit drug 
production endangers the health and safety of millions of 
Americans. For the first time, the Annual Threat Assessment 
lists foreign illicit drug actors as the very first threat to 
our country. As the report highlights, Mexican-based cartels 
using precursors produced in China continue to smuggle fentanyl 
and synthetic opioids into the United States. Last year alone, 
these deadly drugs tragically killed more than 52,000 
Americans--more than the number killed in attacks by foreign 
terrorists or foreign nations.
    Given these threats, we have to ask, are our intelligence 
agencies well postured against these threats?
    I am afraid the answer is no, at least, not yet. As the 
world became more dangerous in recent years, our intelligence 
agencies got more politicized, more bureaucratic, and more 
focused on promulgating opinions rather than gathering facts. 
As a result of these misplaced priorities, we have been caught 
off guard and left in the dark too often.
    I know that all of you agree that the core mission of the 
intelligence community is to steal our adversaries' secrets and 
convey them to policymakers to protect the United States. At 
the same time, it is not the role of intelligence agencies to 
make policy, to justify presidential action, or to operate like 
other Federal agencies. After years of drift, the intelligence 
community must recommit to its core mission of collecting 
clandestine intelligence from adversaries whose main objective 
is to destroy our Nation and our way of life. The reason is not 
that our intelligence community lacks dedicated patriots who 
show up to work every day to protect the American people. On 
the contrary, it has an abundance of them. The reasons are a 
misuse of resources, bureaucratic bloat, a default to play it 
safe, and a past administration that prioritized social 
engineering over espionage. Coupled with recent failures, the 
findings in today's worldwide threat report should be a wake-up 
call to get our house in order. The status quo is proving 
inadequate to provide the President and Congress with the 
intelligence needed to protect the American people. As more 
storms gather, America's intelligence capabilities require 
urgent reform and revitalization.
    As the Chairman of this Committee, I look forward to 
working with each of you to strengthen America's intelligence 
edge and refocus our intelligence community on its core 
mission, stealing secrets. The American people deserve nothing 
less. We have assembled an impressive team to get this done, 
and I look forward to hearing your comments.
    Now I recognize the Vice Chairman for opening remarks.

 OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HON. MARK R. WARNER, A U.S. SENATOR 
                         FROM VIRGINIA

    Vice Chairman Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good 
morning, everybody. I want to thank all the witnesses for being 
here.
    I've got to say, I have been on the Committee now for 14 
years, and this year's assessment is clearly one of the most 
complicated and challenging in my tenure on the Committee.
    Now, I want to get into that in a moment, but I want to 
first of all address a recent story that has broken in the 
news. Yesterday, we stunningly learned that senior members of 
this administration and according to the reports, two of our 
witnesses here today, were members of a group chat that 
discussed highly sensitive and likely classified information 
that supposedly even included weapons packages, targets, and 
timing, and included the name of an active CIA agent. Putting 
aside for a moment that classified information should never be 
discussed over an unclassified system, it is also just mind 
boggling to me that all these senior folks who are on this line 
and nobody even bothered to check security hygiene 101, who are 
all the names? Who are they?
    Well, it apparently included a journalist. And no matter 
how much the Secretary of Defense may want to disparage him, 
this journalist had at least the ethics to not report, I think, 
everything he heard.
    The question I raise is, like, everybody on this Committee 
gets briefed on security protocols. You are told don't make 
calls outside of SCIFs of this kind of classified nature. We 
don't know and we are going to ask, obviously, Director Gabbard 
is the executive in charge of all keeping our secrets safe. 
Were these government devices? Were these personal devices? 
Have the devices been collected to make sure there is no 
malware?
    There is plenty of declassified information that shows that 
our adversaries China and Russia are trying to break into 
encrypted systems like Signals.
    I will just say this. If this was the case of a military 
officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of 
behavior, they would be fired. As I think this is one more 
example of kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior 
particularly towards classified information, that this is not a 
one-off or a first time error.
    Let me take a couple minutes and review some of the other 
reckless choices that this administration has made regarding 
our national security. We all recall, it seems like it wasn't 
that long ago, less than 2 months ago, in the first two weeks 
the administration canceled all U.S. foreign assistance. Now, 
some may say, how bad can that be? It is foreign assistance.
    Well, U.S. foreign assistance paid for the units in Ukraine 
to provide air defense to civilian cities being attacked by 
Russia. Foreign assistance paid for guarding camps in Syria 
where ISIS fighters are detained. Foreign assistance paid for 
programs abroad that ensured that diseases like Ebola don't 
come home. And until recently, it paid for the construction of 
a railway in Africa that would have helped give the United 
States much needed access to critical minerals in Congo. Now 
that project--China is going to try to finance it.
    As well, in the first two weeks, Director Patel, the 
administration fired several of our most experienced FBI 
agents, including the head of the Criminal Investigative 
Division, the head of the Intelligence Division, the head of 
the Counterterrorism Division, the heads of the New York, 
Washington, and Miami field office--all individuals who were 
distinctly and directly responsible for helping to keep America 
safe. The irony of it was the currently and recently dismissed 
head of the Counterterrorism Division was involved in 
disrupting the ISIS attacks planned for Oklahoma City and 
Philadelphia, and helped lead the effort to bring to justice 
the key planner of the Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan that 
killed 13 U.S. servicemen and 150 civilians. That very Abbey 
Gate effort was actually praised by the President in his State 
of the Union Address. Yet, the administration's response to 
these agents', I believe, good works and years of service, was 
to force these folks out.
    It is hard to imagine how that makes our country safer. Nor 
can I understand how Americans are made more secure by firing 
more than 300 staff at the National Nuclear Security 
Administration, including those responsible for overseeing the 
security and safety of the nuclear stockpile; or by ousting 130 
employees at CISA, the agency directly responsible for trying 
to take on China's Salt Typhoon attack. Again, after Salt 
Typhoon, I would have thought folks on that group chat might 
have thought twice.
    Or, how we were made safer by sacking 1,000 employees at 
the CDC and NIH who were actually directly working to keep our 
country safe from disease, and by pushing out hundreds of 
intelligence officers.
    The amazing thing is, our intelligence officers, they are 
not interchangeable like a Twitter Coder. These intelligence 
officers, our country makes twenty to $40,000 of investment 
just in getting a security clearance. It literally goes into 
six figures when you take the training involved. Can anyone 
tell how firing probationary individuals without any 
consideration for merit or expertise is an efficient use of 
taxpayer dollars?
    And just to make clear that yesterday's story in The 
Atlantic was not this rookie one-off, it is a pattern. I want 
to acknowledge that Director Ratcliffe was not here in his 
position when this took place; but again, earlier in the 
administration when a nonclassified network was used, thereby 
exposing literally hundreds of CIA officers' identities--those 
folks can't go into the field now. How does that make our 
government more efficient?
    You know, again, this pattern of an amazing cavalier 
attitude towards classified information is reckless, sloppy, 
and stunning. Perhaps what troubles me most is the way the 
administration has decided we can take on all our problems by 
ourselves without any need for friends or allies.
    I agree that he has got to put America's priorities first, 
but ``America First'' cannot mean America alone. The 
intelligence we gather to keep Americans safe depends on a lot 
of allies around the world who have sole access to sources we 
don't have. That sharing of information saves lives, and it is 
not hypothetical. We all remember because it was declassified 
last year when Austria worked with our community to make sure 
to expose a plot against Taylor Swift in Vienna that could have 
killed literally hundreds of individuals.
    However, these relationships are not built in stone. They 
are not dictated by law. Things like the Five Eyes are based on 
trust, built on decades. But so often that trust is now 
breaking literally overnight. Yet, suddenly, for no reason that 
I can understand, the United States is starting to act like our 
adversaries are our friends. Voting in the U.N. with Russia, 
Belarus, and North Korea--that's a rogues gallery if I ever 
heard of one--treating our allies like adversaries, whether it 
is threats to take over Greenland or the Panama Canal, a 
destructive trade war with Canada, or literally, threatening to 
kick Canada out of the Five Eyes, I feel our credibility is 
being enormously undermined with our allies, who I believe and 
I think most of us on this Committee regardless of party 
believes makes our country safer and stronger. But how can our 
allies ever trust us as the kind of partner we used to be, when 
we without consultation or notice, for example, stop sharing 
information to Ukraine in its war for survival against Russia?
    Or, how can our allies not only not trust our government 
but potentially not our businesses with such arbitrary 
political decisions? Let me give you a few examples.
    As a result of a lot of work in this Committee and others 
in Congress, we made sure America's commercial space industry 
is second to none. From space to launch to commercial sensing 
and communications, the United States has taken a record lead. 
Yet overnight, this administration called into question the 
reliability of American commercial tech industry when Maxar and 
other commercial space companies were directed to stop sharing 
intelligence with Ukraine.
    I am going to tell you--I've been a business guy, I can't 
say longer than being an elected official, but pretty close--
that shockwave across all of commercial space and frankly not 
just commercial space, I've heard it from some of our 
hyperscalers in the tech community has sent an enormous chill. 
Who is going to hire an American commercial space company--
government, or foreign business--with the ability to have that 
taken down so arbitrarily? It is not just in the case of 
commercial space, we see that Canada, Germany, Portugal have 
all been saying they are rethinking buying F-35s. I heard 
directly from Microsoft and Google and Amazon, they have 
questions whether they can still sell their services. We have 
seen foreign adversaries and friends take advantage of this 
riff in our national security areas and our scientists.
    Germany has already put out ads trying to attract some of 
our best scientists who have been riffed. And the Chinese 
intelligence agencies are posting on social media sites in the 
hopes of luring individuals with that national security 
clearance who have been pushed out perhaps arbitrarily to come 
into their service.
    So, no, the Signal fiasco is not a one-off. It is 
unfortunately a pattern we are seeing too often repeated. I 
fear that we feel the erosion of trust from our workplace, from 
our companies and from our allies and partners. It can't be put 
back in the bottle overnight. Make no mistake, these actions 
make America less safe.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Cotton. Before I turn to the witnesses' hearing, I 
want to welcome everyone in our large audience today. I also 
want to note that we will not tolerate any disruptions of the 
witnesses' testimony or Senators' questions and the witnesses' 
answers. You will note that we have a large contingent of 
Capitol Police in the room.
    Any disruptions either opposed or in favor to the witnesses 
will result in prompt removal from the hearing room, and my 
encouragement to the U.S. Attorney to throw the book at the 
person disrupting the hearing. No offense, but we all came to 
hear the witnesses, no one else in the room.
    Director Gabbard, I understand you will make a statement 
for the panel of witnesses.

 STATEMENT OF TULSI GABBARD, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

    Director Gabbard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Vice Chairman, 
Members of the Committee. Thanks for the opportunity for us to 
be here to present you the intelligence community's 2025 Annual 
Threat Assessment.
    I am joined here this morning by my colleagues from the 
CIA, DIA, FBI, and NSA. Our testimony offers the collective 
assessment of the 18 U.S. intelligence elements making up the 
U.S. intel community, and draws on intelligence collection and 
information available to the IC from open source and private 
sector and the expertise of our analysts. This report evaluates 
what the IC assesses most threatens our people and our Nation's 
ability to live in a peaceful, free, secure, and prosperous 
society.
    As you know, we face an increasingly complex threat 
environment that is threatening us here at home and our 
interests abroad.
    I will begin by focusing on what most immediately and 
directly threatens the United States and the well-being of the 
American people--non-State criminal groups and terrorists 
putting American lives and livelihood at risk. Then I will 
focus on the key nation-states who have the capability to 
threaten the interests of the United States.
    In this complex environment, non-State and State actors are 
able to exploit or take advantage of the effects of each 
other's activities. Conventional and asymmetrical capabilities 
even the traditionally weakest of actors are able to acquire 
from available advanced technologies creates an even more 
complex and serious threat landscape.
    First, I will highlight the threats presented by several 
non-State actors. Cartels, gangs, and other transnational 
criminal organizations in our part of the world are engaging in 
a wide array of illicit activity, from narcotics trafficking to 
money laundering to smuggling of illegal immigrants and human 
trafficking which endanger the health, welfare, and safety of 
everyday Americans. Based on the latest reporting available for 
the yearlong period ending October, 2024, cartels were largely 
responsible for the deaths of more than 54,000 U.S. citizens 
from synthetic opioids. Mexico-based transnational criminal 
organizations, or TCOs, are the main suppliers of illicit 
fentanyl to the U.S. market and are adapting to enforcement and 
regulatory pressures by using multiple sources and methods to 
procure precursor chemicals and equipment primarily from China 
and India, many of which are dual-use chemicals used in 
legitimate industries.
    Independent fentanyl producers are also increasingly 
fragmenting the drug trade in Mexico. The availability of 
precursor chemicals and ease of making illicit fentanyl have 
enabled independent actors to increase illicit fentanyl 
production and smuggling operations in Mexico.
    Cartels are profiting from human trafficking and have 
likely facilitated more than 2 million illegal immigrants 
encountered by law enforcement at the U.S. Southwest border in 
2024 alone, straining our vital resources and putting the 
American people at risk. Criminal groups drive much of the 
unrest and lawlessness in the Western hemisphere. They also 
engage in extortion, weapons and human smuggling, and other 
illicit and dangerous revenue-seeking operations including 
kidnappings for ransom, forced labor, and sex trafficking. 
These and other human traffickers exploit vulnerable 
individuals and groups by promising well-paying jobs while 
confiscating their identification documents. They operate in 
the shadows exploiting lawlessness in various areas and using 
coercion and intimidation to control their victims.
    While these key drivers of migrants are expected to 
persist, heightened U.S. border security enforcement and 
deportations under the Trump administration are proving to 
serve as a deterrent for migrants seeking to illegally cross 
U.S. borders. U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the 
Southwest border in January 2025 dropped 85 percent from the 
same period in 2024.
    Transnational Islamist extremists such as ISIS, al-Qaida, 
and affiliated jihadi groups continue to pursue, enable, or 
inspire attacks against the United States and our citizens 
abroad and within the homeland to advance their ultimate 
objective of establishing a global Islamist caliphate. This 
includes heightened efforts to spread their ideology to recruit 
and radicalize individuals in the U.S. and the West. While the 
New Year's Day attacker in New Orleans had no known direct 
contact with ISIS terrorists, he was influenced and radicalized 
by ISIS ideological propaganda, as one example.
    Al-Qaida and its affiliates continue to call for attacks 
against the United States as they conduct attacks overseas. 
These jihadist groups have shown their ability to adapt and 
evolve including using new technologies and tactics to spread 
their ideology and recruit new followers.
    A range of non-State cyber criminals are also targeting our 
economic interests, critical infrastructure, and advanced 
commercial capability for extortion, other coercive pursuits, 
and financial gain. These actors use a variety of tactics 
including phishing, ransomware, and denial of service attacks 
to disrupt our systems and steal sensitive and lucrative 
information, using available technologies and U.S. cyber 
vulnerabilities. Ransomware actors last year, for example, 
attacked the largest payment processor for U.S. healthcare 
institutions. Another set of criminal actors conducted 
cyberattacks against U.S. water utilities. Some of these non-
State cyber actors also operate as proxies for or emulate 
similar activities carried out by major State actors. While 
these non-State cyber actors often seek financial and 
intellectual property gains, they also carry out cyber 
operations for espionage purposes, targeting our critical 
infrastructure.
    Turning to key State actors, the IC sees China, Russia, 
Iran, and North Korea engaging in activities that could 
challenge U.S. capabilities and interests, especially related 
to our security and economy. These actors are in some cases 
working together in different areas to target U.S. interests 
and to protect themselves from U.S. sanctions.
    At this point, the IC assesses that China is our most 
capable strategic competitor. Under the leadership of President 
Xi Jinping, the People's Republic of China seeks to position 
itself as a leading power on the world stage, economically, 
technologically, and militarily. Beijing is driven in part by a 
belief that Washington is pursuing a broad effort to contain 
China's rise and undermine CCP rule. China's most serious 
domestic challenge is probably China's slowing economy and 
potential instability if socioeconomic grievances lead to 
large-scale unrest. Growing economic tensions with the United 
States and other countries could also weigh on China's plans 
for economic growth and domestic job creation.
    China's military is fielding advanced capabilities, 
including hypersonic weapons, stealth aircraft, advanced 
submarines, stronger space and cyber warfare assets, and a 
larger arsenal of nuclear weapons. While it would like to 
develop and maintain positive ties with the United States and 
the Trump administration to advance its interests and avoid 
conflict, China is building its military capability in part to 
gain advantage in the event of a military conflict with the 
United States around the issue of China's efforts toward 
unification with the Republic of China or Taiwan. China's 
military is also expanding its presence in the Asia Pacific 
region with a focus on disputed territorial claims in both the 
East China and South China Seas.
    Beijing is advancing its cyber capabilities for 
sophisticated operations aimed at stealing sensitive U.S. 
Government and private sector information and prepositioning 
additional asymmetric attack options that may be deployed in a 
conflict. China's cyber activities have been linked to multiple 
high-profile breaches, including last year's massive compromise 
of U.S. telecom infrastructure, commonly referred to as Salt 
Typhoon.
    Beijing currently dominates global markets and 
strategically important supply chains, for example, with the 
mining and processing of several critical minerals. In 
December, China imposed an export ban to the United States on 
gallium, germanium, and antimony, all of which are important to 
the production of semiconductors and our defense technologies. 
This is in direct response to U.S. export controls on chips 
designed to broadly limit PRC access to advanced chips and 
chip-making equipment.
    China also aims to compete in other critical global 
industries, including AI, legacy semiconductor chip production, 
biomanufacturing and genetic sequencing, and medical and 
pharmaceutical supply production. Leveraging often heavily 
state-subsidized production at greater scale, lower costs, and 
weaker regulatory standards than required in the West, 
Beijing's strategy has given it a leading position in many 
parts of these sectors and supply chains that support them. In 
2023, for example, China had five first in class domestic drug 
approvals and three FDA approvals.
    Turning to Russia. Russia's nuclear and conventional 
military capabilities along with its demonstrated economic and 
military resilience make it a formidable competitor. Moscow has 
more nuclear weapons than any other nation that can inflict 
catastrophic damage on the United States and the world in the 
event of a major war that Russian leaders fear put them and 
their regime at serious risk. In late 2024, Russia announced 
updates to its nuclear doctrine, expanding the conditions under 
which Russia would consider using nuclear weapons. Russia is 
building a more modern and survivable nuclear force designed to 
circumvent U.S. missile defense through reliable retaliatory 
strike potential. Russia intends to deter the U.S. by holding 
both the U.S. homeland at risk and by having the capabilities 
to threaten nuclear war in a conflict. Russia has developed 
advanced cyber capabilities and has attempted to preposition 
access to U.S. critical infrastructure for asymmetric options 
and make it a persistent cyber threat. Russia's cyber 
activities have been linked to multiple high-profile breaches, 
including the 2023 hack of Microsoft. Russia is also fielding 
new capabilities in antisatellite weapons meant to degrade U.S. 
and allied space infrastructure. Among Russia's most concerning 
developments is a new satellite intended to carry a nuclear 
weapon as an anti-satellite weapon, violating longstanding 
international law against such activity and putting the U.S. 
and global economy at risk.
    Iran continues to be seek expansion of its influence in the 
Middle East, despite the degradation to its proxies and 
defenses during the Gaza conflict. Iran has developed and 
maintains ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and UAVs 
including systems capable of striking U.S. targets and allies 
in the region. Tehran has shown a willingness to use these 
weapons, including during a 2020 attack on U.S. forces in Iraq 
and in attacks against Israel in April and October 2024. Iran's 
cyber operations and capabilities also present a serious threat 
to U.S. networks and data.
    The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a 
nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khomeini has not authorized a 
nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. The IC 
continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize 
its nuclear weapons program.
    In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decades-long 
taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely 
emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran's 
decisionmaking apparatus. Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is 
at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a State without 
nuclear weapons. Iran will likely continue efforts to counter 
Israel and press for U.S. military withdrawal from the region 
by aiding, arming, and helping to reconstitute its loose 
consortium of like-minded terrorists and militant actors which 
it refers to as its ``axis of resistance.'' Although weakened, 
this collection of actors stills presents a wide range of 
threats including to Israel's population, U.S. forces deployed 
in Iraq and Syria, and to U.S. and international military and 
commercial shipping and transit.
    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is pursuing stronger 
strategic and conventional capabilities that can target U.S. 
forces and allies in the region as well as the U.S. homeland to 
bolster North Korea's leverage and stature, defend its regime 
and achieve at least tacit recognition as a nuclear weapons 
power.
    Kim's recently cemented strategic partnership with Russia 
supports these goals by providing him greater financial, 
military, and diplomatic support; reduce reliance on China; and 
providing North Korean forces and weapons systems authentic war 
fighting experience. Kim views his strategic weapons advances 
since 2019, its deepening ties with Russia, and North Korea's 
economic durability as strengthening his negotiating position 
against Washington's demands for denuclearization and lessening 
his need for sanctions relief. North Korea is probably prepared 
to conduct another nuclear test on short notice and continues 
to flight test its ICBMs to demonstrate their increasing 
capabilities as leverage in future negotiations.
    Since 2022, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have grown 
closer. Removing the accelerant of the war in Ukraine is 
unlikely to revert these bilateral relationships to a prewar 
2021 baseline, leaving room for new strategic priorities and 
world events to create new incentives or challenges to their 
currently high levels of cooperation.
    Russia has been a catalyst for much of this expanded 
cooperation driven heavily by the support it has needed for its 
war effort against Ukraine, including protection from U.S. and 
Western sanctions. In addition to its exchange of military and 
other resource capabilities with North Korea, Russia has relied 
more heavily on China's financial and defense industry backing 
and also has increased combined military exercises with China 
to signal shared fortitude against the United States and U.S. 
allies in the Asia Pacific region.
    With Iran, Russia has also expanded financial ties to 
mitigate sanctions. Iran has become a critical military 
supplier to Russia, especially of UAVs in exchange for Russian 
technical support for Iranian weapons, intelligence, and 
advanced cyber capabilities.
    In conclusion, the threats that we see to U.S. national 
security are both complex and multi-faceted and put the lives, 
safety, and well-being of the American people at serious risk. 
As the heads of the American people's intelligence community, 
we will continue to provide the President, Congress, and our 
warfighters with timely, unbiased, relevant intelligence to 
keep the United States secure, free, prosperous, and at peace.
    To the American people specifically, our intelligence 
community exists to serve you, and to ensure your safety, 
security and freedom.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of the witness follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Chairman Cotton. Thank you, Director Gabbard.
    As I mentioned in my opening remarks, the Annual Threat 
Assessment for the first time lists cartels and traffickers as 
the very first threat.
    Director Patel, I am pleased to say that the FBI's Little 
Rock field office has been doing its part in addressing this 
threat. The field office, along with other Federal, State and 
local law enforcement agencies, have arrested nearly 300 
immigrants in my State in 2025 so far. Could you provide some 
color about the nature of the threat these illegal immigrants 
have posed not just to Arkansas, but our Nation, perhaps 
including some of the details of the horrific offenses they 
have committed against the American people.
    Director Patel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    (A disruption occurred in the Hearing Room.)
    Chairman Cotton. The witness will suspend.
    That protester was a Code Pink lunatic, saying the greatest 
threat to world peace is funding Israel. I will observe for the 
benefit of the audience here and on television that Code Pink 
is funded by Communist China as well, which simply 
illustrates--speak up now so you can be removed as well, 
whoever is saying that.
    (A disruption occurred in the Hearing Room.)
    Chairman Cotton. If anyone else would like to join them, 
speak now, please, so we don't have any more disruptions.
    As I was saying, the fact that Communist China funds Code 
Pink which interrupts a hearing like this about Israel, simply 
illustrates Director Gabbard's point that China, Russia, Iran, 
North Korea, and other American adversaries are working in 
concert to a greater degree than they ever have before.
    Director Patel, back to my question. Could you give us some 
color about threat that illegal migrants have posed not only to 
my State which has resulted in nearly 300 arrests in 2025 but 
also to the Nation at large?
    Director Patel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, 
and Members of the Committee. I appreciate the time to address 
you all.
    Specifically to Arkansas, Senator. The priorities at the 
FBI which I identified during my confirmation hearing and since 
is attacking violent crime along with national security, and 
every single State in this country is a border State. Arkansas 
is no exception. Allow me to highlight the work of the men and 
women of the FBI and State and local law enforcement in the 
State of Arkansas. Since February 5th alone, we have 220 
illegal immigrants arrested on charges varying from violent 
offenses, weapons offenses, narcotics offenses and serious 
violent felonies; 253 separate individuals have been charged 
related to those offenses. And here is something I want the 
American people to hear about narcotics, and countering 
narcotics. Thousands of pounds of narcotics were seized in 
these three weeks in the State of Arkansas--thousands, worth 
tens of millions of dollars--everything from fentanyl, to meth 
to cocaine to heroin to marijuana and more, and also including 
manufactured drugs.
    The FBI does have the biggest footprint in Arkansas, but we 
could not achieve this mission without our State and local law 
enforcement partners, which has been one of the priorities 
since I took the helm at the FBI. They provide the greatest 
ground level intelligence to conduct these operations in 
Arkansas and in every single State across the Union. Since 
February 5, we have assisted with the arrests of hundreds of 
criminals and illegals throughout your State, and that was just 
a 3-week operation. Prior to that, Senator, there was a bust of 
17 Federal indictments relating to a meth lab in the State of 
Arkansas in the Southwest corner of your State. All of those 
individuals are now facing prosecution for hundreds of pounds 
of illegal opioids, guns, and other illicit material. So, we 
will continue to do that work. We will work seven days a week, 
365 days a year, not just in your State, Mr. Chairman, but in 
every State.
    Chairman Cotton. Thank you, Director Patel.
    As Director Gabbard highlighted from the Annual Threat 
report, Director Ratcliffe, many if not most of the chemical 
precursors for deadly fentanyl produced by Mexican drug cartels 
originates in China. China, of course, is a techno-totalitarian 
police State. They have technology to monitor their own people 
that Soviet Russia could have only imagined. Is there any 
reason, Director Ratcliffe, to believe that China could not 
monitor and crack down on this flow of chemical precursors to 
Mexico if it chose to do so?
    Director Ratcliffe. Thank you, Senator, for the question. 
No, there is nothing to prevent China, the People's Republic of 
China, from cracking down on fentanyl precursors. As you well 
know, Senator, one of the reasons that they don't is that there 
are more than 600 PRC-related companies that produce those 
precursor chemicals in an industry that generates $1.5 
trillion. That is one of the reasons that we see the Chinese 
efforts to affect the fentanyl precursors are really limited in 
nature and intermittent in nature and not a dedicated effort to 
enforce their own laws and regulations to crack down on this.
    Chairman Cotton. Thank you, Director Ratcliffe. But I have 
many more questions I could ask, but I am going to try to lead 
by example and stay within the 5-minute limit.
    For the benefit of Senators, I remind everyone there is a 
vote scheduled at noon. I hope to finish the open portion of 
this hearing before that vote closes, after which time we will 
move to the closed portion. The Vice Chairman.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be 
happy to take your extra 13 seconds. But I want to go back to 
what I addressed at the outset. This was not only sloppy and 
not only violated all procedures, but if this information had 
gotten out, American lives could have been lost. If the Houthis 
had this information, they could reposition their defensive 
systems. So I want to get a little more information about this.
    Director Gabbard, did you participate in a group chat with 
the Secretary of Defense and other Trump senior officials 
discussing the Yemeni war plans?
    Director Gabbard. Senator, I don't want to get into----
    Vice Chairman Warner. Ma'am, were you on?
    Director Gabbard [continuing]. This conversation----
    Vice Chairman Warner. So you are not going to be willing to 
address--are you denying--answer my question, ma'am. You were 
not ``TG'' on this group chat?
    Director Gabbard. I am not going to get into the specifics 
of the delivery.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Would you acknowledge whether you 
were on this group chat?
    Director Gabbard. Senator, I am not going to get into the 
specifics.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Why are you not going to get into the 
specifics? Is it because it is all classified?
    Director Gabbard. Because it is currently under review by 
the National Security Council.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Because it is all classified? If it 
is not classified, share the texts now.
    Director Gabbard. As the White House previously stated----
    Vice Chairman Warner. Is it classified or nonclassified 
information on these texts?
    Director Gabbard. I can confirm----
    Vice Chairman Warner. Director Ratcliffe, were you on the 
group chat?
    Director Ratcliffe. Senator, I was on a Signal messaging 
group.
    Vice Chairman Warner. You were the John Ratcliffe on that 
chat?
    Director Ratcliffe. I was. Can I provide some context on 
that?
    Vice Chairman Warner. Thank you, but I have a series of 
questions----
    Director Ratcliffe. So, but I think it is important, 
because at the outset you made some comments about Signal 
messaging using encrypted apps.
    So that we are clear, one of the first things that happened 
when I was confirmed as CIA Director was Signal was loaded on 
to my computer at the CIA, as it is for most CIA officers.
    One of the things that I was briefed on very early, 
Senator, was by the CIA records management folks about the use 
of Signal as a permissible work use. It is. That is a practice 
that preceded the current administration to the Biden 
administration.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Director Ratcliffe, I have a series 
of questions. If you are making the statement----
    Director Ratcliffe. To your point----
    Vice Chairman Warner. If you are making the statement that 
Signal is a secure channel.
    Director Ratcliffe. No. Can I answer that?
    Vice Chairman Warner. Sir, I've got a series of questions.
    Director Ratcliffe. It is encryption.
    Vice Chairman Warner. I understand encryption.
    Director Ratcliffe. It is permissible to use to communicate 
and coordinate for work purposes, provided--provided, Senator, 
that any decisions that are made are also recorded through 
formal channels. So those were procedures that were 
implemented.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Director Ratcliffe----
    Director Ratcliffe. My staff implemented those processes, 
followed those processes, complied with those processes, and 
finally--just please. So my communications to be clear in a 
Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and 
did not include classified information.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Well, we will make that 
determination, because if it is not classified, share the texts 
with the Committee.
    Let me go on.
    Director Gabbard, you are the security executive and set 
access guidelines for classified information. Did you contact 
the Defense Secretary or others after this specific military 
planning was put out and say: Hey, we should be doing this in a 
SCIF?
    Director Gabbard. There was no classified material that was 
shared in that Signal chat.
    Vice Chairman Warner. No classified material? Share it with 
the Committee. You can't have it both ways. These are important 
jobs. This is our national security, bobbing and weaving and 
trying to filibuster your answer. So please answer the 
question. If this was--Director Gabbard, if this was a rank and 
file intelligence office who did this kind of careless 
behavior, what would you do with them?
    Director Gabbard. I would reiterate there was no classified 
material that was shared in that Signal----
    Vice Chairman Warner. Ma'am, if there was no classified 
materials shared, and if there is no classified materials, you 
can't even answer the question whether you were on the chat. 
This is strangely familiar, and I think my colleagues remember, 
when you couldn't answer the question ``Is Edward Snowden a 
traitor?''
    Ma'am, I have serious doubts about your----
    Anyway, Director Gabbard, I am going to give you this, 
tweeted just 11 days ago, and I am quoting you: ``Any 
unauthorized release of classified information is a violation 
of the law and will be treated as such.''
    So, if this information is classified, what are you going 
to do?
    Director Gabbard. Senator, two points here. First of all, 
there is a difference between inadvertent release versus----
    Vice Chairman Warner. Careless and sloppy.
    Director Ratcliffe [continuing]. Malicious leaks of 
classified information. Second point is, there was no 
classified information on the Signal group chat.
    Vice Chairman Warner. And this Committee will seek to get 
that information.
    Director Patel, my time is about up and I am going to use 
my 12 seconds that the Chairman gave me.
    Director Patel, did the FBI launch an investigation into 
any of this?
    Director Patel. Senator, I was just briefed about it late 
last night I and don't have an update.
    Vice Chairman Warner. I would like to get an answer by the 
end of the day.
    Chairman Cotton. At this point in the ordinary course of 
affairs, I would recognize Senator Collins. She asked me to 
express to you that she is under the weather this morning. She 
regrets her absence, but anticipates submitting written 
questions, to which I would request your prompt replies.
    Senator Cornyn.
    Senator Cornyn. Director Gabbard, I applaud President 
Trump's efforts to try to bring an end to the war between 
Russia and Ukraine.
    I want to read a statement out of the Annual Threat 
Assessment and just confirm that you agree with this. It says: 
Russia views its ongoing war with Ukraine as a proxy conflict 
with the West, and its objective to restore Russian strength 
and security, and its near abroad against perceived U.S. and 
Western encroachment has increased the risks of unintended 
escalation between Russia and NATO.
    Do you agree with that statement; and that is in the Annual 
Threat Assessment, correct?
    Director Gabbard. Correct.
    Senator Cornyn. I would like to refer to an AP story, 
Associated Press, dated March 21, 2025. The title of the 
article is: ``Western officials say Russia is behind a campaign 
of sabotage across Europe. This AP map shows it.''
    Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask unanimous consent that 
this be made part of the record.
    Chairman Cotton. Without objection. [The document was 
submitted for the record, as follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Senator Cornyn. The document that AP compiled, and I 
presume this is through open sources, documented 59 incidents, 
``including cyber attacks, spreading propaganda, plotting 
killings, or committing acts of vandalism, arson, sabotage or 
espionage.''
    Is that consistent with your understanding and impression 
of what Russia is currently engaged in in Europe?
    Director Gabbard. Senator, I haven't seen that specific 
article, but I can confirm that we assess Russia's attempts to 
conduct such sabotage activities in Europe.
    Senator Cornyn. Thank you.
    One of the things that I am most concerned about, following 
some of the discussions between Russia and Ukraine and United 
States and our other allies, obviously, as I said, peace 
between Ukraine and Russia is the desirable end-state. I think 
you have to be--you would have to be crazy to say otherwise; 
but I also want to talk a little bit about the unexpected or 
maybe unintended consequences of European insecurity. I know 
the incoming Chancellor of Germany has talked about the 
possibility that Germany might share its nuclear weapons with 
Ukraine and suggested that the UK would be part of that. I know 
that Poland has talked about acquiring nuclear weapons and 
perhaps other European countries to make up for what they view 
as a receding of the American umbrella of protection.
    General Kruse, what would be the result of the 
proliferation of nuclear-weapon armed countries in Europe if, 
in fact, that would occur as a result of the perception of 
European insecurity?
    LTGEN Kruse. Senator, thank you for the question. One of 
the things that the intelligence community works very hard on 
is to understand who has nuclear weapons throughout the planet, 
and as discussed in the opening statements by both the Chair 
and by Director Gabbard, the proliferation and the increase in 
the types and the lethality of nuclear weapons is one of the 
things that we have to track and we as a Nation are going to 
have to face. And it has changed dramatically in the last 5 
years and will continue to change over the next 5 years.
    The addition of additional countries which have their own 
deterrence policies and will act in a nuclear dialogue or the 
presence of those weapons, the security of those weapons, the 
movement and the threat of use of those weapons complicates the 
environment by which all of us will operate and will complicate 
all of the decisions by which all future conflict and the 
political decisions that we support for the decision makers.
    Senator Cornyn. It makes the world a more dangerous place, 
does it not?
    LTGEN Kruse. Senator, yes, it does.
    Senator Cornyn. And just by way of history, Ukraine used to 
have the third-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons on the 
planet, but as a result of negotiations between Russia and 
Ukraine and the United Kingdom, the Budapest Memorandum 
documented a commitment by Russia and the United States to 
protect the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for 
them giving up their nuclear weapons.
    Did I correctly summarize the content of the Budapest 
Memorandum back in 1994?
    LTGEN Kruse. Yes, Senator, you did. And Ukraine willingly 
gave up its weapons for the protection of others.
    Senator Cornyn. Thank you very much.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator Wyden.
    Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Obviously, my colleagues and I feel very strongly about the 
war planning meeting over unclassified phones. Obviously 
reckless, obviously dangerous, both the mishandling of 
classified information and the deliberate destruction of 
Federal records are potential crimes that ought to be 
investigated immediately. And I want to make clear that I am of 
the view that there ought to be resignations starting with the 
National Security Adviser and the Secretary of Defense.
    Director Ratcliffe and Director Gabbard, have you 
participated in any other group chats with senior Trump 
administration officials in which classified information was 
shared using phones that weren't cleared for such information? 
Question for the two of you.
    Director Ratcliffe. Senator, thank you for the question. 
Your question was have I participated in any ``other'' group 
chats sharing classified information. To be clear, I haven't 
participated in any Signal group messaging that relates to any 
classified information at all.
    Senator Wyden. Okay. Director Gabbard?
    Director Gabbard. Senator, I have the same answer. I have 
not participated in any Signal group chat or any other chat on 
another app that contained any classified information.
    Senator Wyden. Yeah, and I just think it is important to 
follow through here. Will the two of you cooperate with an 
audit to confirm that that is the case?
    Director Gabbard. I have no objection.
    Director Ratcliffe. Senator I will certainly comply with 
any follow-up that the National Security Council would deem 
appropriate; but again, to be clear, the use of Signal message 
end-to-end encryption applications is permissible and was in 
this case used permissibly at least to my understanding, and in 
a lawful manner.
    Senator Wyden. The seriousness of this is so clear that is 
why I want to have an audit and both of you had gave me an 
answer indicating that you would be open to it and I appreciate 
it.
    Director Patel, you weren't in this particular group chat, 
but have you participated in any chats on unclassified phones 
with other administration officials relating to national 
security, and if so, on what other topics?
    Director Patel Thank you for the, question, Senator, and 
not that I can recall.
    Senator Wyden. Okay.
    Question I have for you, Director Gabbard, involves this 
question of Elon Musk wasn't going to see the military's China 
war plans because you said he ``has business in China,'' and he 
perhaps he would be susceptible to that, and that was his 
comment. So as DNI you are responsible for security clearance 
policy across the government. Under your watch, how are you 
going to go about carrying out this obligation because I think 
it obviously is a very significant one in terms of American 
national security?
    Director Gabbard. Thank you, Senator.
    As you know, the office of the Director of National 
Intelligence provides oversight over these different 18 
intelligence elements. Leaders within those elements are 
empowered with that responsibility to uphold the trust that the 
American people have placed in them. In this example that you 
have cited both Secretary Hegseth as well as President Trump 
completely denied the assertion that Elon Musk was going to 
receive any kind of classified war plan brief pertaining to 
China or any other country.
    Senator Wyden. So on the question of whether the President 
has the prerogative to get clearances is really the area that I 
want to touch on, because you are formally responsible for 
security clearance policies and that is why I am asking about 
it. So can a President decide who gets a clearance?
    Director Gabbard. Yes.
    Senator Wyden. What about your role? You are formally 
responsible for security clearance policies.
    Director Gabbard. That is also true.
    Senator Wyden. So how do you resolve it?
    The President just gets his way?
    Director Gabbard. The elected President and Commander in 
Chief has the authority to provide a security clearance to 
those who he deems necessary.
    Senator Wyden. Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, I think we 
have to have a further discussion on this and figure out what 
the ground rules are. I think it is clear what the Director 
says. I just think we need more clarity, because I think you 
have the formal responsibility for security clearances and now 
we have heard that this is somehow going to be the President's 
project, and I think we ought to have further discussions. 
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator Lankford.
    Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
    Thank you, all of you, in your service to the country. It 
matters. There are a lot of citizens in our country right now 
that have much greater security in their life because of the 
work that you do and the people that are working around you do, 
so I just want to say I appreciate that for the folks in 
Oklahoma. They would definitely want me to be able to say thank 
you for your service.
    Let me ask a couple of questions on this.
    Director Gabbard, let me start with you on this. Iran has 
been listed as one of the top sponsors of terrorism for a very 
long time. They are the primary armorers of Hezbollah, Hamas, 
the Houthis. They are arming the Russians to be able to kill 
Ukrainians. They continue to be able to destabilize the region 
and just in recent days when many nations in the Gulf region 
have talked about how to provide greater stability, Iranian 
leadership stepped out and made very clear statements, they 
want a one-State solution for Israel and that is to drive out 
all Jews. So this continues to be an issue not just for the 
region but for Americans in particular. So my question is, on 
the sanctions and the effect of sanctions, what we know about 
the Iranian response. Under the Biden administration, those 
sanctions were turned down. Quite frankly, Iran has been able 
to sell $90 billion in oil on the global market to be able to 
rearm itself and others in the region. Now sanctions are now 
going back on to Iran again. What do we know about the effect 
of those sanctions?
    Director Gabbard. Thank you, Senator, for the question. 
These sanctions have just begun to be reinstated, so the full 
effects have not yet borne fruit; but the message that the 
President has sent with his maximum pressure campaign is 
certainly heard.
    As the Chairman mentioned in his opening remarks, President 
Trump recently sent a letter to the leader of Iran expressing 
his interest in direct talks in order to try to de-escalate and 
prevent war, prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, but 
also stated there would be military consequences if there was 
no direct negotiations. So President Trump is continuing to 
carry out his vision and mission of peace through strength 
acting in the best interests of the American people. We will 
see what choices are made from here.
    Senator Lankford. Thank you.
    Director Patel, during the last administration and the very 
open border policy that they had, we had some years including 
2022 and 2023 where there were 70,000 individuals that were 
released into the country that were identified as ``special 
interest'' aliens. This is something that this Committee and 
Homeland Security Committee tried over and over again to get 
details on. The Biden administration was unwilling to share any 
of the details of the special interest aliens, which led to a 
great amount of frustration. The comment came often back to us 
that the FBI was going to track all these individuals and to be 
able to identify them, even though it was 70,000 a year that 
were coming into the country.
    You just walked into this position and trying to get your 
feet on the ground and so many different issues that are 
outstanding on that. I raise to you the issue of individuals 
that are currently illegally present in the country going 
through a process but are listed as special interest aliens. By 
definition from the administration, those are individuals that 
we don't know their level of risk, but they are considered a 
national security risk, but we don't know anything else about 
them from there. So how are you trying to get on top of the 
number of people that are criminal aliens in the country, but 
also these special interest aliens that come from terrorist 
areas?
    Director Patel. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate your 
question. As far as the FBI is concerned, you hit on it--
criminal. So we are focused across our interagency partners at 
DHS, ICE, CBP, CISA and elsewhere to identify through our 
information sharing networks that we have stood up with State 
and local law enforcement to provide us the details on any 
criminal evidence relating to any of the individuals you 
highlighted, and if there is a nexus there, a case will be 
opened by the line agents who predicate a lawful and factual 
basis to do so; and we will further refer that matter to the 
Department of Justice for prosecution. We are reviewing all of 
these cases anew and we will report back to you, Senator, with 
some fidelity on the outcome of that process.
    Senator Lankford. Okay, thank you. Are you getting good 
feedback from social media technology companies and cooperation 
from them on illegal activities that are promoted on their 
site? All the different sites have rules and standards for what 
can and cannot be done on that, but for instance on the border 
areas, many of the sites are allowing child trafficking or they 
are allowing basically the hiring of Americans to come be 
drivers and such. And they know this is being circumvented. Are 
they working with you on that to be able to take illegal 
content off their sites?
    Director Patel. Thank you, Senator.
    We have engaged directly at the top levels of all the 
private sector software communities and social media companies 
and they have been very helpful because they have known, they 
have been told that this is a priority for me at the FBI to 
work with them because they have so much information to share 
back with us. Now that is of course just on the public systems. 
We were not talking about the dark net.
    Senator Lankford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
    Director Ratcliffe, I want to start with you. Who 
determined that the content of this discussion on Signal was 
not classified?
    Director Ratcliffe. Senator, I guess I am not----
    Senator Heinrich. Well, for example----
    Director Ratcliffe. I can speak to my personal knowledge, 
there was no classified.
    Senator Heinrich. There was an agent mentioned as part of 
this story. Normally, that would be classified information. So 
I guess what I'm asking is, did you just determine it was not 
classified or was there any declassification after the fact?
    Director Ratcliffe. So, to be clear, so everyone 
understands the process. As we talked about, Signal is a 
permissible use.
    Senator Heinrich. I understand that.
    Director Ratcliffe. And it is used at the CIA and has been 
approved by the White House for senior officials.
    Senator Heinrich. And appropriate for many conversations.
    Director Ratcliffe. And recommended by CISA for high level 
officials who would be targeted by foreign adversaries to use 
end-to-end encrypted apps whenever possible, like Signal. In 
this case what the National Security Adviser did was to request 
through a Signal message that there be coordination.
    So you mentioned the name of a CIA active officer, correct? 
So----
    Senator Heinrich. I didn't mention the name, I mentioned 
the existence of that.
    Director Ratcliffe. And in the article the implication was 
that somehow that was improper. That was not the case.
    So a CIA officer was not operating under cover--so the 
request for coordination was for a staff member to coordinate 
on the high-side. So I communicated the name of a CIA officer 
not operating under cover, completely appropriate, who does 
openly and routinely coordinate with the White House as a 
member of my staff. So the information that there was something 
inappropriate was clearly incorrect.
    Senator Heinrich. Did it occur to you that given the 
sensitive nature of this discussion, that it could just move to 
the high-side?
    Director Ratcliffe. So that was clearly, Senator, I think, 
the intent, was that this was initially set up by the National 
Security Adviser with the instruction that send a point of 
contact and then you will be provided with information further 
on the high-side for high side communication.
    So I think clearly it reflects that the National Security 
Adviser intended this to be as it should have been, a mechanism 
for coordinating between senior level officials, but not a 
substitute for using high-side or classified communications for 
anything that would be classified, and I think that is exactly 
what did happen.
    Senator Heinrich. So, I am curious. Did this conversation 
at some point include information on weapons packages, targets, 
or timing?
    Director Ratcliffe. Not that I am aware of.
    Senator Heinrich. Director Gabbard, same question.
    Director Gabbard. Same answer, and defer to the Department 
of Defense on that question.
    Senator Heinrich. Well, those are two different answers.
    But you are saying that was not part of the conversation.
    Director Gabbard. Not to my knowledge.
    Senator Heinrich. Precise operational issues were not part 
of this conversation?
    Director Gabbard. Correct.
    Senator Heinrich. Okay. I want to ask you, Director 
Gabbard, something on a very different track here, which is, I 
very much agree with the conclusion of the ATA that foreign 
illicit drug actors are a major threat in the United States, 
and many of you have spoken to this today.
    Is the IC wrong in its omission of Canada as a source of 
illicit fentanyl in the ATA? I was surprised, given some of the 
rhetoric that there is no mention of Canada in the ATA.
    Director Gabbard. Senator, the focus in my opening and the 
ATA was really to focus on the most extreme threats in that 
area, and our assessment is that the most extreme threat 
related to fentanyl continues to come from and through Mexico.
    Senator Heinrich. So the President has stated that the 
fentanyl coming through Canada is massive and actually said it 
was an ``unusual and extraordinary'' threat, and that was the 
language that was used to justify putting tariffs on Canada. I 
am just trying to reconcile those two issues. Is it an unusual 
and extraordinary threat or is it a minor threat that doesn't 
even merit a mention in the Annual Threat Assessment?
    Director Gabbard. Senator, I don't have the numbers related 
to Canada in front of me at this time. I would like to get back 
to you on the specifics of that answer.
    Senator Heinrich. It is less than 1 percent of the fentanyl 
that we are able to interdict; but if you have different 
information I would very much welcome that.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator Budd.
    Senator Budd. Thank you all for being here. And Director 
Gabbard, prior to your role here, we had a big storm in western 
North Carolina, and you were among those first from outside our 
State to show up. So thank you for your work there and thank 
you for your ongoing work there and that of your family as 
well. It was good to see them out in western North Carolina 
last week, so thank you.
    Director Haugh, so what do we need to do in regards to Volt 
Typhoon. There was a lot of prepositioning that went on there. 
So where are we with that and what do we need to do in regards 
to our power companies, whether it is generation or 
distribution, Duke Energy in my home State or even the rural 
electric co-ops. What have we learned and what can I tell them?
    General Haugh. Senator, 99 percent of the critical 
infrastructure in the United States is controlled by private 
companies. That really drives us to talk about how do we 
partner with industry and with the commercial sector, in this 
case, the power sector.
    Volt Typhoon began when industry came to the intelligence 
community and said: We are seeing anomalous activity. Can you 
help us to gain context? And we were able to bring context to 
that to be able to understand what the threat was and to 
ultimately be able to identify who was behind that threat.
    Since that time, we have continued to work very closely 
with industry to be able to determine what are the right ways 
for us to be able to pursue these threats within networks to 
enable the interagency, to enable our partners, and industry to 
be able to pursue them. That is the approach we have to take. 
It is a collaboration between the government and industry to be 
able to eradicate these threats and we have continued to pursue 
them together since our first identification and notification 
related to this particular threat.
    Senator Budd. Thank you. What have you done on the 
offensive side here in regards to I think there were three, 
Salt Typhoon, Volt Typhoon and even Flax Typhoon? Maybe there 
were others, but those are the three that are known.
    General Haugh. Senator, I have been given really clear 
guidance in terms of what the Secretary of Defense expects in 
terms of our aggressive approach to be able to restore 
deterrence, and I look forward to talking with you about that 
in the closed hearing.
    Senator Budd. I look forward to that.
    Directors Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Patel, again, thank you 
all for being here. So, as you all are keenly aware, Section 
702 of FISA is an extremely useful authority to help keep our 
Nation safe. I also know that we need to rebuild the American 
people's trust and confidence that such authorities are not 
being misused by the intelligence community to unlawfully 
target Americans. So, since taking over your respective 
agencies, can you tell me and tell the American people how 
effective the recent changes have been in protecting privacy 
and civil liberties of each and every American, and then if you 
will comment on how useful the authority is in generating the 
intelligence that actually protects the homeland. We will start 
with you, Director Gabbard.
    Director Gabbard. Senator, Section 702 which authorizes the 
foreign collection of non-U.S. persons outside of the United 
States continues to be one of our most effective collection 
tools to ensure our national security. There are a number of 
reforms that the Senate passed that Congress passed last year 
that have proven to strengthen the protections of Americans' 
Fourth Amendment rights.
    In the short time I have been in this seat, I have seen a 
few examples of that directly, most recently through the FISA 
Court calling in an amici to come in and weigh in on a dispute 
regarding provisions that would further protect Americans' 
Fourth Amendment rights. I will be visiting our friends at the 
NSA next week and doing a quote unquote ``ride along'' to 
observe directly how those reforms that Congress passed are 
being implemented to protect Americans' civil liberties. I look 
forward to reporting back after I have had that opportunity.
    Senator Budd. Thank you. Director Patel.
    Director Patel. Thank you, Senator.
    With my background in FISA and 702, I just want to clearly 
delineate between FISA Title I, III, and 702 collection. We 
need to both ardently defend its use but also ardently support 
reforms that allow the American public to entrust that those 
charged with those capabilities are not violating the Fourth 
Amendment or any other violation. Speaking of Title I, Title 
III, when it comes to U.S. persons, I have already included an 
amendment in terms of FBI language to make sure when a U.S. 
person is targeted, that the FBI, specifically, is responsible 
for culling through all exculpatory information that is 
reasonably known and satisfying that burden and stating it in 
the application.
    When it comes to 702, Senator, some of the biggest 
enterprise efforts we have had to thwart, national security 
risk would not have occurred if 702 collection had gone dark. 
And the FBI continues to use that information to protect the 
homeland. We have had multiple takedowns in the last six months 
based on 702 and interagency collection processes but we just 
need to ensure the American public--and I am working with my 
team--and even in the 702 sphere that Americans' information is 
protected.
    Senator Budd. Thank you all. I look forward to the 
discussion in the closed session.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator King.
    Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Director Gabbard, I didn't intend to get into the Jeffrey 
Goldberg story, but something you said has sort of puzzled me. 
According to open source reporting, at 11:44 on the morning of 
March 15, Secretary Hegseth put into this group text a detailed 
operation plan including targets, the weapons we were going to 
be using, attack sequences, and timing. And yet you have 
testified that nothing in that chain was classified.
    Wouldn't that be classified? What if that had been made 
public that morning before the attack took place?
    Director Gabbard. Senator, I can attest to the fact that 
there were no classified or intelligence equities that were 
included in that chat group at any time.
    Senator King. So the attack sequencing and timing and 
weapons and targets you don't consider should have been 
classified?
    Director Gabbard. I defer to the Secretary of Defense and 
the National Security Council on that question.
    Senator King. Well, you are the head of the intelligence 
community, and you are supposed to know about classifications. 
So your testimony very clearly today is that nothing was in 
that set of texts that were classified.
    I will follow up on Senator Wyden's question. If that is 
the case, please release the whole text stream so that the 
public can have a view of what actually transpired on this 
discussion. It is hard for me to believe that targets and 
timing and weapons would not have been classified.
    Let me move on.
    You approved this report, this annual report, prepared by 
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Is this 
submitted to the White House routinely in anticipation of its 
public release?
    Director Gabbard. I don't know what you mean by submitted 
routinely.
    Senator King. Was this report submitted to the White House 
before its release today?
    Director Gabbard. It was submitted to them once it was 
completed. I think probably around the same time it was sent to 
all of you.
    Senator King. I want to move on.
    One note that surprised me. I have been on this Committee 
now for, this is my 13th year. Every single one of these 
reports that we have had has mentioned global climate change as 
a significant national security threat, except this one. Has 
something happened?
    Has global climate change been solved?
    Why is that not in this report, and who made the decision 
that it should not be in the report when it has been in every 
one of the 11 prior reports?
    Director Gabbard. I can't speak to the decisions made 
previously, but this Annual Threat Assessment has been focused 
very directly on the threats that we deem most critical to the 
United States and our national security. Obviously, we are 
aware of occurrences within the environment and how they may 
impact operations, but we are focussed on the direct threats to 
Americans' safety, well being, and security.
    Senator King. How about how they will impact mass 
migration, famine, dislocation, political violence, which is 
the finding, by the way, of the 2019 Annual Threat Assessment 
under the first Trump administration. You don't consider that a 
significant national security threat?
    Director Gabbard. For the intelligence community, being 
aware of the environment that we are operating in is a given. 
What I focused this Annual Threat Assessment on and the IC 
focused this threat assessment on are the most extreme and 
critical direct threats to our national security.
    Senator King. Well, let me ask you a direct question. Who 
decided climate change should be left out of this report after 
it has been in the prior 11.
    Director Gabbard. I gave direction to our team at ODNI to 
focus on the most extreme and critical national security 
threats that we face.
    Senator King. Did your direction include no comments on 
climate change.
    Director Gabbard. Senator, as I said, I focused on the most 
extreme and direct national security threats----
    Senator King. That is not a response to a my question.
    Director Gabbard [continuing]. that we face.
    Senator King. Did you instruct that there be no finding in 
terms of climate change in this report?
    Director Gabbard. I don't recall giving that instruction.
    Senator King. Final questions in a few short seconds that I 
have left. You all concede and it is in the report repeatedly 
about the cyber danger from China, from Russia, from Iran. Why 
then is the administration deconstructing CISA; 130 people 
fired, General Haugh talked about the importance of public-
private cooperation. That section of CISA seems to have been 
disestablished. What possible policy reason is there for 
undermining CISA's relationship to the States with regard to 
elections and to the private sector with regard to 
cybersecurity, when the cybersecurity threat is only growing?
    Anybody want to tackle that?
    Director Gabbard. I won't speak for all of my colleagues 
here, but I don't believe any of us have any insight into those 
specific staffing decisions that have been made.
    Senator King. Well, let me ask you this question. The 
report has found explicitly growing cyber threats including to 
elections from Russia, China, Iran. Do you believe that it is 
in the national interest to diminish our capacity to deal with 
those cyber issues, yes or no?
    Director Gabbard. President Trump is focused on effects and 
making sure that the people that we have and the resources that 
we have are focused on our national security. He and his team 
recognized that more people doesn't necessarily always mean 
better effects. Those are some of the things that are driving 
the changes that we are seeing across the administration is 
getting all of our agencies back and focused on our core 
mission.
    Senator King. General Haugh, do you agree? Sorry, my time 
is up.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator King, your time has expired.
    Senator King. Thank you.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator Rounds.
    Senator Rounds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    First of all, thank you all for your service to our 
country.
    With regard to the issues surrounding Signal, I am going to 
address it, but I am going to address it in the closed session 
so we can get more in depth into that issue.
    In the meantime, I want to direct my first question to 
Director Ratcliffe. As the debate continues in Washington 
regarding spectrum, what can you share in this unclassified 
setting regarding the critical nature of spectrum to national 
security interests generally?
    Director Ratcliffe. Thanks for the question, Senator. I 
know this is an issue of great interest to the Senate--the 
potential auction of commercial space on spectrum. Those, as 
you correctly point out, the discussions about spectrum, I will 
start out by saying there are national security implications 
from such an auction if it were to take place, to both the DOD 
and the IC.
    I think the discussions that we need to have, in a 
classified setting, I can relate to you that the direction from 
early meetings that we have had is that the discussion about 
where that might take place would not affect specifically CIA 
or IC equities and I hope that is the case where the discussion 
goes, but I think we need to be concerned that a public 
auction, that bands at certain levels would have an impact on 
our ability to deliver an accurate intelligence picture.
    Senator Rounds. In other words, there are parts of the 
spectrum which simply cannot be shared with the commercial?
    Director Ratcliffe. That is correct. And we can talk about 
the specific reasons why in a classified setting that would 
cause a diminishment of our ability to deliver a good threat 
picture to the Commander in Chief.
    Senator Rounds. And in some cases life or death 
consequences involved?
    Director Ratcliffe. Absolutely.
    Senator Rounds. Director Patel, first of all, I just want 
to thank you for what you are doing, and I know there is a 
number of items in your previous life that you did that simply 
can't be discussed; but nonetheless, we appreciate what you 
have done for our country already.
    Today, I want to just talk to you about, we have seen a 
series of public news reports about ISIS threats within the 
United States and there have been several successful 
interdictions--Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, New York. Although 
the question remains as to the total number of ISIS operatives 
who were able to breach porous borders in the months and years 
before policy changes in this January--January of 2025, to what 
extent is the FBI tracking operatives who remain in the United 
States today, and what is the FBI doing to track them down?
    Director Patel. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate your 
question and your comments. So the priorities at the FBI since 
I took over have been violent crime and national security, and 
this speaks directly to national security.
    The direction for the FBI is to track down any individuals 
with any terrorist ties whatsoever, whether it be ISIS or 
another foreign terrorist organization, and now to include the 
new designations of the cartels down south and elsewhere.
    So, the FBI is utilizing our joint terrorism task force 
which are situated in all 55 Field Offices, but the key to 
success there is our partnership with State and local law 
enforcement who have the ground level intelligence on some of 
these operatives. And as you have highlighted, we have already 
shut down numerous threats and we've identified publicly, where 
permissible, these threats on individuals and where they are 
coming from and the I think the FBI is doing a very good job 
right now in collecting this information through our 
interagency process and we will continue to thwart every bad 
actor affiliated with a terrorist organization or otherwise.
    Senator Rounds. Thank you.
    And Director Haugh, first of all, Okay. You talked a little 
bit already about the problem with Salt Typhoon, but what I 
want to really get into is the things that are moving right now 
that you haven't had a chance to address, and in particular 
Cybercom 2.0, and the need to accelerate that particular plan 
moving forward. Can you talk just briefly--I've got 40 seconds 
left. Talk to us a little bit about how critical 2.0 is in 
terms of countering the cyber activity that is going on due to 
nefarious actors.
    General Haugh. Senator, what we were asked to do by 
Congress was to look at what is the force generation model for 
the Department of Defense to be able to generate cyber forces.
    Based off of that request, I produced a recommendation for 
the Secretary that outlined three critical things which is 
really how we manage the talent, how we develop the talent in 
the Department, and also how we equip that talent underpinned 
by compute and AI.
    We brought that plan initially back to Secretary Hegseth. 
He told us to go faster. We delivered him that plan, and now, 
based off his guidance, we will now begin to move forward with 
the rest of the Department.
    Senator Rounds. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator Bennet.
    Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you very much for holding this hearing, and thank you 
for being here.
    Director Ratcliffe, it sounds to me like your testimony 
today and the DNI's testimony is that there was nothing wrong 
at all with the Signal thread that you were on; that it didn't 
include any targeting information or battle sequence. That is 
your testimony. That is your testimony. And I am a little 
staggered that that is your view, Director Ratcliffe. Does the 
CIA have any rules about the handling of classified 
information, yes or no?
    Director Ratcliffe. Yes.
    Senator Bennet. Thank you, Director Ratcliffe. Do you 
agree, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said this morning when 
asked by members of the press what had happened, he said this 
morning in Hawaii that Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeff Goldberg 
is a quote ``deceitful and highly discredited so-called 
journalist who has made a profession of providing hoaxes time 
and time again.''
    Do you share that evaluation, the Secretary of Defense's 
evaluation of Jeff Goldberg as a journalist?
    Director Ratcliffe. Senator, I didn't see those comments. I 
don't know Jeff Goldberg.
    Senator Bennet. Do you share that view of the Secretary of 
Defense?
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't have a view.
    Senator Bennet. Okay. Assuming that he has that view, I am 
curious about whether--You are the CIA Director. This has 
happened. We know it's happened. Did Jeff Goldberg somehow--was 
it--did he create a hoax that allowed him to become part of 
this Signal thread?
    Please answer the question. Don't insult the intelligence 
of the American people. Did he invite himself to the Signal 
thread?
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't know how he was invited. 
Clearly he was----
    Senator Bennet. Clearly it was--finish your sentence, 
please.
    Director Ratcliffe. Clearly he was added to the Signal 
group. Your question is----
    Senator Bennet. So you don't know that the President's 
National Security Adviser invited him to join the Signal 
thread?
    Everybody in America knows that; does the CIA Director not 
know that?
    Director Ratcliffe. I've seen conflicting reports about who 
added the reporter to the Signal messaging group.
    Senator Bennet. Do you think it is perfectly appropriate 
that there was a reporter added, especially one that the 
Secretary of Defense says is ``deceitful,'' ``highly 
discredited,'' a ``so-called journalist who has made a 
profession of peddling hoaxes over and over again''?
    Is your testimony that it was appropriate that he was added 
to this Signal thread.
    Director Ratcliffe. No, of course not.
    Senator Bennet. Why did you not----
    Director Ratcliffe. Hold on, Senator. Let me----
    Senator Bennet. No, you answered the----
    Director Ratcliffe. You are mischaracterizing my testimony.
    Senator Bennet. You answered the question. Let me ask you: 
When he was added to the thread, you are the CIA Director, why 
didn't you call out that he was present on the Signal thread?
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't know if you use Signal 
messaging app.
    Senator Bennet. I do. I do--not for classified information, 
not for targeting, not for anything remote.
    Director Ratcliffe. Neither do I, Senator. Neither do I, 
Senator.
    Senator Bennet. Well, that is what your testimony is today.
    Director Ratcliffe. It absolutely is not, Senator. Weren't 
you listening at the beginning when I said that I was using it 
as permitted. It is permissible to use----
    Senator Bennet. I agree that is your testimony.
    Director Ratcliffe. Yeah.
    Senator Bennet. I agree that is your testimony. You asked 
me if I used it, and I said not for targeting, not for 
classified information.
    Director Ratcliffe. And I said I don't either.
    Senator Bennet. I also know Jeff Goldberg. I don't use it 
to communicate with him, but you thought it was appropriate.
    By the way, I think he is one of the more outstanding 
journalists in America, but I am shocked to find him on a 
thread that he is reading in the parking lot of a grocery store 
in Washington, DC. And your testimony as the Director of the 
CIA is that it is totally appropriate.
    Director Ratcliffe. No.
    Senator Bennet. Is it appropriate that the President----
    Director Ratcliffe. That is not what I----
    Senator Bennet. Go ahead, please.
    Director Ratcliffe. When did I use the word 
``appropriate''.
    Senator Bennet. Well, go ahead, please.
    Director Ratcliffe. Well, I didn't.
    Senator Bennet. So everybody in America----
    Director Ratcliffe. So, clearly, Senator----
    Senator Bennet. Is what your testimony is. This is just a 
normal day at the CIA where we chat about this kind of stuff 
over Signal. In fact, it is so normal, that the last 
administration left it here for us. That is your testimony 
today.
    Director Ratcliffe. That's your testimony, Senator.
    Senator Bennet. That is not my testimony. That is what you 
said.
    Director Ratcliffe. I didn't say any of those things that 
you related, Senator.
    Senator Bennet. I heard you say it. Let the American people 
decide.
    Director Ratcliffe. Well, you just mischaracterized it. Are 
you going to give me a chance to----
    Senator Bennet. Is it appropriate--Did you know that the 
President's Middle East adviser was in Moscow on this thread 
while you were, as Director of the CIA, participating in this 
thread? Were you aware of that? Are you aware of that today?
    Director Ratcliffe. I am not aware of that today.
    Senator Bennet. This sloppiness, this incompetence, this 
disrespect for our intelligence agencies, and the personnel who 
work for them is entirely unacceptable. It is an embarrassment.
    Director Ratcliffe. Senator.
    Senator Bennet. You need to do better. You need to do 
better. Thank you.
    I am being gaveled by the Chairman and I apologize for 
going over my time.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator Young.
    Senator Young. Thank you all for being here. I will be 
asking some follow-up questions, clarifications about this 
Signal episode in a closed setting, and try and work with all 
of you to bring clarity to that situation. It appears to me 
there are some unanswered questions. It will take some time, I 
think, to get there in a more dispassionate setting.
    Director Gabbard, I am going to begin today asking you some 
questions about emerging technologies. It has been a real point 
of emphasis, I know, of our broader national security community 
for a period of time. We know that PRC is making generational 
investments in certain emerging tech--AI, biotech, and other 
areas of technology to reduce their vulnerability against any 
supply chain disruptions and to lead the world in some areas.
    As the IC assesses, the PRC is seeking to quote ``become a 
global S&T superpower, surpass the United States, promote self-
reliance, and achieve further economic, political, and military 
gain.''
    Director Gabbard, can you describe the actions China is 
taking to operationalize that IC assessment in ways that 
directly target the security and prosperity of everyday 
Americans?
    Director Gabbard. Senator, what we know is that they are 
trying to use these capabilities as a means to continue to 
exploit vulnerabilities within our own critical infrastructure 
and our cyber technology.
    Critical infrastructure is a key area of concern, given 
what we know has already been exploited; these asymmetric 
attacks that have been placed within our critical 
infrastructure that are of serious concern given how they could 
be exploited especially during a time of conflict.
    We know that they are experiencing a boom in their 
generative AI capability and are competing very heavily against 
our own AI capabilities. Obviously, AI can and will be used 
across a multitude of every sector of our society, both here as 
we are in our own country, and we expect China to be able to 
continue to do the same there.
    Senator Young. So, two key areas of vulnerability to the 
United States conceivably, susceptibility to cyber attacks and 
China's leveraging of AI towards misinformation and 
increasingly into the physical realm, they can pose threats to 
us as well.
    As follow-up, Director Ratcliffe, we have had Huawei, we've 
had TikTok, what do you believe will be the next point of 
technological friction in competition between the U.S. and 
China?
    What should Members of Congress be looking for?
    Director Ratcliffe. Senator, I think I can answer this 
question more fully in the classified setting. What I would say 
is it relates to the issue of emerging technologies and matters 
of quantum computing and quantum sensing, and our ability to 
stay ahead of China in the technological curve with respect to 
those issues.
    I would be happy to get into that in further detail in a 
classified setting.
    Senator Young. Excellent. We will dive into that.
    Director Haugh--general, how do you see biotech playing 
into this broader competition?
    General Haugh. I think it is an area that from our 
perspective has increasingly been a priority as we all 
understand the approach that China has taken and also to ensure 
that as we think about the President's priorities in terms of 
both economic and technology security, we are certainly as a 
community following DNI's guidance that we are increasingly 
putting our resources to be able to ensure that we understand 
where China is investing in those resources and how that will 
impact our economy and over all, the overall health of our 
national security.
    Senator Young. Thank you, General.
    Director Gabbard, not a lot of time left on this end but I 
have a little crypto interest I want to communicate to you. Can 
you share with this Committee how we are positioned to disrupt 
foreign cyber efforts to steal cryptocurrency such as the North 
Koreans have successfully done?
    If others would like to pull this thread and weigh in on 
this question very briefly, that would be great.
    Director Gabbard. Senator, we are obviously aware of North 
Korea's revenue generating by stealing cryptocurrency has had a 
significant effect on North Korea's capabilities. I defer to 
our technical experts on the actions that are being taken.
    General Haugh. Senator, I think this would be a great topic 
when we go to closed session.
    Senator Young. It is going to be a busy closed setting, 
yes. Director Patel?
    Director Patel. I agree with the General. In closed session 
I can provide some details.
    Senator Young. It is what you get when you visit with a 
bunch of spies. All right, Chairman.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator Kelly.
    Senator Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I am going to come back to the topic of the day here, the 
Signal chain as reported by The Atlantic.
    Ms. Gabbard and Mr. Ratcliffe, you each testified that 
there was no information operational in nature, no classified 
information. So, I want to ask each of you a series of 
questions. Just respond yes or no.
    I will start with Ms. Gabbard. In the Signal chain that we 
have been talking about, was there any mention of a target in 
Yemen?
    Director Gabbard. I don't remember mention of specific 
targets.
    Senator Kelly. Any generic target?
    Director Gabbard. I believe there was discussion around 
targets in general.
    Senator Kelly. Mr. Ratcliffe.
    Director Ratcliffe. I think that is consistent with my 
recollection. Again, I don't have access to that.
    Senator Kelly. Was there any mention, Ms. Gabbard, of a 
weapon or weapons system?
    Director Gabbard. I don't recall specific weapons systems 
being named.
    Senator Kelly. I am not talking about specific--any weapon 
or weapons system.
    Director Gabbard. I don't recall specific names of systems 
or weapons being used or named within the chain.
    Senator Kelly. Well, I am not asking whether--I don't want 
you to tell me what the specific weapon was, but any weapon at 
all.
    Mr. Ratcliffe, same question.
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't recall.
    Senator Kelly. How about anything about timing, Ms. 
Gabbard?
    Director Gabbard. I don't recall specific timing.
    Senator Kelly. Was there any mention----
    Director Gabbard. And I won't get into the detail of the 
conversation, but obviously there was a significant amount of 
planning and internal discussions that had occurred prior to 
and outside of this Signal chat.
    Senator Kelly. Mr. Ratcliffe, you are nodding your head. 
Any mention of any military unit whatsoever, Mr. Ratcliffe.
    Director Ratcliffe. Not that I recall.
    Senator Kelly. Ms. Gabbard.
    Director Gabbard. Not that I recall.
    Senator Kelly. Okay. I understand that DOD policy prohibits 
discussion of even what is called ``controlled unclassified 
information'' or CUI on unsecured devices.
    Are both of you aware of that DOD policy?
    Director Gabbard. I haven't read that policy.
    Director Ratcliffe. Not familiar with the DOD policy, but I 
would say that the Secretary of Defense is the original 
classification authority for DOD in deciding what would be 
classified information.
    Senator Kelly. Ms. Gabbard, does the intelligence community 
have a policy that prohibits discussion of controlled 
unclassified information?
    Director Gabbard. Yes.
    Senator Kelly. It does. Okay. Controlled unclassified 
information, according to DOD, includes information that is 
information that has not been approved for public release. 
Would you--of what has been disclosed publicly of the Signal 
chain, would either of you feel that that would be approved for 
public release?
    Ms. Gabbard.
    Director Gabbard. The discussion that took place in that 
Signal chat group was a conversation reflecting national 
security leaders and the Vice President around the President's 
objectives.
    Senator Kelly. So, yes or no, would you approve that for 
public release?
    Director Gabbard. I don't feel I can answer that question 
here.
    Senator Kelly. Because of the nature of this hearing?
    Director Gabbard. Because of the nature of a private 
discussion that took place between individual leaders in our 
government.
    Senator Kelly. It would make sense that you would not 
approve it for public release, wouldn't it?
    Director Gabbard. There are other factors that would go 
into that consideration.
    Senator Kelly. Okay. Mr. Ratcliffe, yes or no.
    Director Ratcliffe. I wouldn't approve the release of 
classified information. Again, as I've said----
    Senator Kelly. I am not talking about classified 
information, Mr. Ratcliffe. I am talking about information that 
has not been approved for public release, that is information 
that is considered controlled unclassified information.
    Director Ratcliffe. The principals that would have been on 
that would have been individuals capable of approving that for 
public release.
    Senator Kelly. I got 20 seconds. The deliberation as to 
whether or not we should launch a strike on another country, 
would you consider that classified information, Ms. Gabbard?
    Director Gabbard. The information was not classified.
    Senator Kelly. This is--I am not talking about this. I am 
just talking about deliberation from principals as to whether 
or not we should launch a strike on another country. Would you 
consider that classified information? I am not talking about 
what happened this week.
    Director Gabbard. There are other factors that would go 
into determining that classification.
    Senator Kelly. Mr. Ratcliffe, the deliberation between 
principals in our national security apparatus about whether or 
not to strike another country, would you consider that to be 
classified information.
    Director Ratcliffe. Predecisional strike deliberations 
should be conducted through classified channels.
    Senator Kelly. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Cotton. If I may, I just want to return, Mr. 
Ratcliffe, to your answer there in part of Senator Kelly. It 
has been raised on several occasions now in this hearing about 
whether classified information was discussed in this chat; and 
you mentioned about the Secretary of Defense being what you 
called the original classification authority?
    Director Ratcliffe. Correct.
    Chairman Cotton. I think it is important for the public to 
understand that although you and Director Gabbard are original 
classification authorities on many matters, you are not that 
for all matters that might be classified in the government; is 
that right?
    Director Ratcliffe. That's correct.
    Chairman Cotton. So, if the Secretary of State has 
classified sensitive diplomatic details, that is his authority. 
If the Secretary of Energy has sensitive classified information 
about our national laboratories, that is his authority; and the 
two of you can't speak to other departments who have their own 
original classification authority and which, of course, as 
Director Gabbard said, ultimately rests with one person, the 
President of the United States; is that correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. That's correct.
    Chairman Cotton. I just wanted to clarify that.
    It looks like the Vice Chairman wants to weigh in as well.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Just very briefly.
    I mean, I think it strains the audience and the watching 
public's credibility. If we are talking about timing, packages, 
that somehow this would be okay to put out, or just frankly, 
senior American officials trashing Europe. I have been around 
this for a while. This is not information you generally put 
out, and the notion that there is not even acknowledgment of 
``hey, gosh, we screwed up'' is stunning to me. And the idea 
somehow that none of this was classified but we can't talk 
about it here--you can't have it both ways.
    Chairman Cotton. I think the witness's point is they can't 
speak for every official in the government who has original 
classification authority.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Mr. Chairman, I don't--that is not 
what--I am not trying to litigate that.
    I am trying to litigate on the face, unless as Senator 
Bennet said, this reporter is somehow making this all up. I 
think the White House has acknowledged that the text chain he 
submitted was authentic--it strains my mind to think, it 
strains my mind if the shoe had been on the other foot what my 
colleagues would be saying about this. And again, we are going 
to get to the bottom of it. I appreciate your comments, but you 
both testified under law that there is nothing classified in 
that information. In a sense, I have not heard any one of you 
say: Gosh, we screwed up. We will find out. This is too 
important to our national security, and again, I know we have 
more Members to cross.
    Chairman Cotton. They testified, is my understanding--
correct me if I am wrong, that there is no intelligence 
community classified information; is that correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. That's correct.
    Chairman Cotton. Is that correct, Director Gabbard?
    Director Gabbard. Yes, Chairman.
    Senator King. (Off microphone.) That is not correct. She 
said repeatedly there was nothing classified. Period.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Period.
    You can't have it both ways. Again, we will see. I cannot 
believe this is not going to come out. And if it is not 
classified, again, we would ask you to make it--give it to the 
public today. I am sure one of your aides back there have 
probably got it on paper. If you got it here and it is not 
classified, stand by your position. Or is this just one more 
example of a careless approach to how we keep our secrets in 
this administration.
    Chairman Cotton. With apologies, to Senator Moran.
    Senator Moran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to 
our witnesses for being here.
    I want to explore a little bit about Ukraine, and I will 
direct this to Director Ratcliffe or Director Kruse. The ATA 
assesses that ``the grinding war of attrition in Ukraine will 
lead to a gradual but steady erosion of key positions on the 
battlefield.''
    Are Ukrainian forces at any significant risk of collapse 
this year?
    LTGEN Kruse. Before I turn it over to Director Ratcliffe, I 
think both sides are working through the equipment that they 
need, the industrial base they need to be able to support that 
and the personnel that are required to man that equipment and 
man the frontlines. As we see the battle space in various 
portions, whether it is in Kursk or any of the four Oblasts, we 
see areas where Kyiv will struggle to prevent the slow 
attritional grind. We do not see an imminent collapse in any of 
the line of control battle spaces at this point.
    Senator Moran. And then, vice versa. That answers my 
question, unless you want to add something, Director.
    Whatever advantages in manpower and materiel they have, can 
Russia maintain its operational tempo without significant 
changes to how it is conducting the war?
    LTGEN Kruse. I think our assessment from a military 
perspective is that Russia has the ability to sustain its 
campaign longer than Kyiv would. Now when that timeline hits, 
we do not have an assessment of, but I believe that if this 
were to go on for more than the remainder of this year, both 
sides would have a significant challenge maintaining their 
defense industrial base as well as their operational ops tempo.
    Senator Moran. Longer than this year.
    LTGEN Kruse. That is correct, and they will each have 
difficulty at various points throughout the spring, summer, and 
fall, as well.
    Senator Moran. Thank you.
    Director Ratcliffe, ATA says continuing the Russia-Ukraine 
war perpetuates strategic risk to the United States of 
unintended escalation to a large-scale war and heightened 
insecurity among NATO allies. What are the strategic risks to 
the United States if Russia were to achieve its maximalist 
objectives via a peace agreement?
    Director Ratcliffe. Achieve via a peace agreement?
    Senator Moran. Yes.
    Director Ratcliffe. Well, I think that clearly the 
negotiations that are going on reflect that President Trump is 
seeking a cessation of the war on terms that will end the war 
permanently. From an intelligence community standpoint, and 
specifically with regard to CIA assets, we have taken steps to 
support that--the President's goal of an enduring peace.
    To General Kruse's comments, I agree with his assessment 
and generally the public assessment that Russia has the 
battlefield advantage, is grinding forward slowly. I want to 
comment on that, however, to say that with regard to the 
Ukrainian resistance, the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian 
military have been underestimated for a period of several years 
now, and ultimately I am convinced from my reflections in 
observing from an intelligence standpoint that they will fight 
with their bare hands if they have to, if they don't have terms 
that are acceptable to an enduring peace.
    Obviously, to the point of maximalist goals, President 
Trump has communicated that he is aware of the dangers of 
that--of Russia getting what they want. And I think that the 
peace talks that are taking place would reflect, if 
successful--and they are making progress--that both sides would 
not get everything that they want and no one's maximalist goals 
would be achieved.
    Senator Moran. Thank you both.
    In the short time that I have, I am going to skip a 
question that I intended to ask but ask the Director of the 
FBI.
    Director, I chair the subcommittee that appropriates money 
for the Department of Justice, including the FBI. It has been 
our practice that the FBI Director as well as the Attorney 
General appear before our committee each year, and I would want 
to make certain that you do not foresee any challenges that I 
will have in your presence when you come to speak--when we 
invite you to come to speak about your budget.
    I think when you visited in the office you made yourself 
often available, pleased to talk to Congress. We are getting 
ready for the appropriations process to begin. The budget the 
President intends to submit is seemingly months away--weeks 
away, long weeks away. And we may ask you to testify about your 
priorities now or sooner than that. Is that a challenge for you 
that we ought to be aware of?
    Director Patel. From the FBI, no, as long as the Department 
of Justice and Attorney General are good with it.
    Senator Moran. Thank you.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator Reed.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Director Ratcliffe, you have repeatedly made the point that 
there was no classified information contained in any of these 
discussions that were reported in the Atlantic Monthly; is that 
correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. No, that is not correct, Senator. What 
I related is that any information that was related from my 
perspective or that I observed from the intelligence 
perspective was not classified information.
    With respect to the assertions and the allegations that 
there was strike packages or targeting information or things 
that relate to DOD, as I pointed out, the Secretary of Defense 
is the original classification authority for determining 
whether something is classified or not, and as I understood 
from media reports, the Secretary of Defense has said the 
information was not classified.
    Senator Reed. Are you aware that the Secretary of Defense 
declassified this information prior to the discussion?
    Director Ratcliffe. I am not.
    Senator Reed. Director Gabbard, you indicated--at least the 
impression that I got was that there was no classified 
information discussed; is that correct?
    Director Gabbard. Senator, my answer is the same as the 
Director of the CIA.
    Senator Reed. The question has to be posed to Secretary 
Hegseth whether he declassified the information and at what 
point he did declassify it; do you agree?
    Director Gabbard. Yes, I defer questions to the Secretary 
of Defense.
    Senator Reed. Okay. Director Patel, are you conducting an 
investigation of this--these discussions and activities?
    Director Patel. Thank you, Senator. As I informed the Vice 
Chairman on the same question, I found out about this late last 
night, early this morning. So, I don't have an update for you 
on that.
    Senator Reed. Thank you. When you get an update, we would 
appreciate it very much.
    Director Patel. Yes, sir.
    Senator Reed. Director Gabbard, were you overseas during 
any parts of these discussions?
    Director Gabbard. Yes, Senator, I was.
    Senator Reed. Were you using your private phone or a public 
phone for these Signal discussions?
    Director Gabbard. I won't speak to this because it is under 
review by the National Security Council. Once that review is 
complete I am sure we will share the results with the 
Committee.
    Senator Reed. What is under review? It is a very simple 
question, your private phone or an officially issued phone. 
What could be under review?
    Director Gabbard. The National Security Council is 
reviewing all aspects of how this came to be, how the 
journalist was inadvertently added to the group chat, and what 
occurred within that chat across the board.
    Senator Reed. So you are not going to disclose anything 
about whether you used a phone.
    Director Ratcliffe, there is an indication that the CIA has 
warned recently retired personnel about the vulnerabilities of 
Signal and other encrypted messaging applications. If that is 
the case, why were you discussing these issues on Signal?
    Director Ratcliffe. Senator, Signal use, as I said 
repeatedly, is permissible for work purposes.
    I've never said that end-to-end encryption apps like Signal 
are a substitute for classified systems, and I was not 
discussing classified information in this setting.
    Senator Reed. But as you have indicated previously, perhaps 
the Secretary of Defense was discussing classified information 
and only he can be held accountable in terms of whether it was 
classified or declassified of what he formally spoke, is that 
accurate?
    Director Ratcliffe. Well, I didn't say it that way.
    I said the Secretary of Defense is the original 
classification authority, and my understanding is that his 
comments are that any information that he shared was not 
classified.
    Senator Reed. But you have no way to verify that?
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't.
    Senator Reed. Again, this is a very troubling example, and 
a great lapse in our intelligence, in our discussion.
    One further point: If you are not aware of any classified 
information on the discussions back and forth, would it be 
appropriate for the author to release the entire text of what 
he heard or transcribed?
    Director Ratcliffe. I think the author has released--my 
understanding--essentially, almost all of the information as it 
has been related to me.
    I don't know what calculation the author made with regard 
to what information would be released or not. But again, I can 
again confirm that with respect to the communications that were 
related as to me, there was no classified information.
    Senator Reed. According to the article, quote, ``the 
message contained information that might be interpreted as 
related to actual and current intelligence operations'' and the 
author did not disclose that information. So, the question 
would be if he disclosed everything he heard, in your view----
    Director Ratcliffe. That wouldn't be classified 
information. I know the context of what that is, and I think 
the author said ``might be interpreted as related to'' 
intelligence information. It was not classified information.
    Senator Reed. So it goes back to my point, if he released 
all this information he did not release, he could do so without 
any liability at the Federal level?
    Director Ratcliffe. I think you are asking for a legal 
answer I am not able to give you.
    Senator Reed. Mr. Patel, can you opine?
    You are a lawyer and you are the Director of the FBI. Would 
he face any legal liability if he released the information?
    Director Patel. Because of the questions you and the Vice 
Chairman have put to me, I am not going to prejudge the 
situation. And that legal call is ultimately for the Department 
of Justice.
    Senator Reed. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Cotton. Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all 
for joining us and for your service.
    Just to make sure I understand some of the basics here. So, 
Director Ratcliffe, you were a member of the Houthi PC small 
group Signal chain, correct.
    Director Ratcliffe. I was.
    Senator Ossoff. And so was the Vice President, the 
Secretaries of State and Defense, the National Security 
Adviser, and Ms. Gabbard; correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. I believe so. I don't have a list of 
who was invited, to be honest.
    Senator Ossoff. So was national political reporter Jeffrey 
Goldberg, correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't know that.
    Senator Ossoff. Yes, you do.
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't know Jeffrey Goldberg, and I 
have already testified, I don't know whether or how he was 
added.
    Senator Ossoff. Okay. Well, he was a member of the Signal 
chain, and the discussion included the Vice President's private 
opinion on the wisdom of proposed U.S. strikes in Yemen, 
correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't recall.
    Senator Ossoff. Vance: ``I think we are making a mistake. I 
am not sure the President is aware of how inconsistent this is 
with his message on Europe. Right now there is a strong 
argument for delaying this a month.''
    You don't recall?
    Director Ratcliffe. As you--As you read that----
    Senator Ossoff. You don't recall seeing that?
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't.
    Senator Ossoff. It included the private opinions of the 
Secretary of Defense on the timing of strikes in Yemen, 
correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't recall.
    Senator Ossoff. Director Ratcliffe, surely you prepared for 
this hearing today. You are part of a group of principals, 
senior echelons of the U.S. Government in now a widely 
publicized breach of sensitive information.
    You don't recall whether the vice-president opined on the 
wisdom of the strikes? That is your testimony today under oath?
    Director Ratcliffe. In that setting, I don't recall.
    Senator Ossoff. Here is what Secretary Hegseth said: 
``Waiting a few weeks or months does not fundamentally change 
the calculus. Two immediate risks on waiting. One this leaks 
and we look indecisive. Two, Israel takes an action first or 
Gaza's ceasefire falls apart and we don't get to start this on 
our own terms.''
    Your testimony is that you don't recall the Secretary of 
Defense sending that message or reading it?
    Director Ratcliffe. I recall there being an exchange. I 
don't recall the specifics as you are reading it.
    Senator Ossoff. Well, let's put it this way. Director 
Ratcliffe, a discussion by senior U.S. officials on the timing 
and risks of a proposed military campaign, and disagreements 
between the President and the Vice President about U.S. plans 
and intentions would be of obvious interest to foreign 
intelligence services, would it not?
    Director Ratcliffe. Yes.
    Senator Ossoff. And they were discussing the timing of 
sending U.S. air crews into enemy air space where they faced an 
air defense threat; correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. I am going to--Senator, defer to the 
other principals that you are referring to about what the 
meaning and context of what----
    Senator Ossoff. Director Ratcliffe, they are talking about 
the timing of U.S. air strikes, correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. Yes.
    Senator Ossoff. And therefore the timing of sending U.S. 
air crews into hostile air space; correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. Yes.
    Senator Ossoff. And therefore the time period during which 
enemy air defenses could target U.S. air crews flying in enemy 
air space; correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. I don't know that.
    Senator Ossoff. You do know that. Let me ask this question, 
General Haugh.
    You lead America's signals intelligence collection. Would 
the private deliberation of foreign senior officials about the 
wisdom and timing of potential military action be a collection 
priority for you and the U.S. intelligence community?
    General Haugh. Senator, it is our job to do indications and 
warning for both the plans and intentions of adversary leaders 
and for military commanders.
    Senator Ossoff. And would not information about the timing 
of air strikes allow a military to preposition or cue air 
defense systems to shoot down enemy aircraft?
    General Haugh. I think, Senator, from our perspective, any 
advanced warning is something that we certainly are trying to 
protect.
    Senator Ossoff. Director Ratcliffe, this was a huge 
mistake, correct?
    Director Ratcliffe. No.
    Senator Ossoff. A national political----
    Director Ratcliffe. Hold on.
    Senator Ossoff. No, no, you hold on.
    Director Ratcliffe. Let me answer.
    Senator Ossoff. No, No. Director Ratcliffe, I am asking a 
yes-or-no question and now you will hold on. A national 
political reporter----
    Director Ratcliffe. You can characterize it how you want--
--
    Senator Ossoff [continuing]. Was made privy to sensitive 
information----
    Director Ratcliffe. The White House was clear that----
    Senator Ossoff [continuing]. About imminent military 
operations against a foreign adversary----
    Director Ratcliffe [continuing]. There was an inadvertent 
mistake of adding a reporter.
    Senator Ossoff. And that wasn't a huge mistake?
    [Cross talk.]
    Director Ratcliffe. Well, I think--they characterized----
    Senator Ossoff. This as an embarrassment. This is utterly 
unprofessional. There has been no apology. There has been no 
recognition of the gravity of this error.
    And, by the way, we will get the full transcript of this 
chain and your testimony will be measured carefully against its 
content.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Cotton. I thank the witnesses again for their 
appearance today.
    I sense the Vice Chairman has something to add.
    Vice Chairman Warner. I do.
    Chairman Cotton. So I will the recognize him, briefly.
    Vice Chairman Warner. Well, again, I thank the witnesses, 
but what you are saying doesn't make sense on the face of it.
    Everybody knows.
    At least, Director Ratcliffe, you had the courtesy of 
acknowledging you were on the chain.
    Director Gabbard wouldn't even touch that, even though we 
have got her initials.
    If you want a comparison, think back to the beginning of 
the Ukraine war when the United States in concert of our then-
ally the United Kingdom declassified a lot of Putin's battle 
plans that allowed the Ukrainians to push back successfully on 
the Russian invasion. How was that? That was gone through a 
real process of de-classification.
    As Senator Ossoff clearly made the point, this information 
out potentially where our adversary could reposition its 
defenses and the unwillingness of the individuals on this panel 
who were on the chat to even apologize or acknowledge what a 
colossal screw-up this is speaks volumes.
    Chairman Cotton. Thank you to our witnesses for your 
appearance.
    A few administrative matters. As I mentioned earlier, 
Senator Collins is under the weather. She regrets she cannot be 
here for your testimony.
    Senator Risch, likewise, had to preside over a hearing of 
the Foreign Relations Committee to include the nomination of my 
former Governor, Mike Huckabee, a Great American and a great 
friend of Israel, to be the next Ambassador to Israel. He also 
regrets he cannot be here. I anticipate he would have written 
questions, as well. I would urge you all to respond to those 
promptly.
    Now, the audience will remain seated while our witnesses 
and their aides depart the hearing room. The Capitol Police 
will ensure this occurs.
    I want to commend the Capitol Police and our Committee 
security staff for running an orderly hearing today.
    For the benefit of Members, the vote on the floor has been 
called. We will adjourn this open hearing, and we will 
reconvene in closed setting at 12:40 p.m.
    The hearing is adjourned.
    (Whereupon, the proceedings adjourned at 12:10 p.m.)
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