FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Remarks With EU High Representative Federica Mogherini
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Treaty Room
Washington, DC
April 29, 2015
SECRETARY KERRY: Good morning, everybody. I am pleased to welcome the EU High Representative, Federica Mogherini, who is a key player in any number of priorities that we are engaged in right now, and a good friend. And I’m very, very appreciative for her contributions on any number of things that we’re working on. First of all, she is facilitating on behalf of the EU and the UN our meetings when we gather to try to work through the Iran nuclear negotiations. Perhaps more importantly immediately in terms of the challenges that we face, we are working together on Libya, which is at a critical moment where we believe that diplomacy is really being put to the test. And the EU, with the migrant situation, is particularly seized of this issue. And I appreciate Federica’s leadership and efforts to try to help galvanize some kind of diplomatic conference/meeting that can create a government under the UN mandate and begin to provide the stability that the people of Libya deserve and that the region needs in significant ways right now.
In addition, we are coordinating on the Mideast; we are coordinating with respect to Syria, humanitarian issues. We have the challenges, of course, of Ukraine. And here the EU is again critical to the sanctions regime that is essential to helping to impress on Russia the need to fully implement the Minsk agreements. There are some very important choices coming up in the next months regarding the continuation of the sanctions regime. It’s a critical moment for Russia to help implement that agreement fully. Right now there appear to be different views as to what the interpretation of the political requirements are. So we will be very engaged with the EU in working going forward with respect to the Minsk implementation.
So as you can see, with Yemen, with other issues, there is no end to the need for major EU-U.S. and other country coordination, and we’re very grateful to Federica for her leadership and for her willingness to be a key partner in helping to provide some solutions to these very thorny, tricky, complicated issues. So thank you for being here.
HIGH REPRESENTATIVE MOGHERINI: Thank you very much. It’s great to be back. It’s great to meet again and continue our work on all the issues you mentioned that are top priorities for the United States, as they are top priorities for the European Union. It is essential to us to work on this last mile of negotiations with Iran, and I am honored to facilitate to get an agreement that can improve the security of the region and of the entire world. And I would like to thank you personally for your leadership in this. It is essential in these times for the European Union to work together on saving lives of desperate people that are looking for a better future, fighting against the trafficking and smuggling of people, especially across the Mediterranean, in partnership with the UN, with the African Union, with the Arab countries, and also on the root causes of this, that in the end of the day are the many crises and wars we have around the region. We know as Europeans we live in one of the most complicated and dangerous places in the world today. We know we have a special responsibility in trying to prevent and face this crisis. We count on our cooperation, our strong friendship to do it more and more together as we’ve been doing in these months and years. And I thank you very much for welcoming here again.
SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you, Federica.
HIGH REPRESENTATIVE MOGHERINI: It’s great to be back.
SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you very much. Thank you all.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
USS FARRAGUT RESPONDS TO IRANIAN NAVAL ACTIONS AGAINST COMMERCIAL SHIP
Right: An MH-60S Knighthawk helicopter flies by the guided-missile destroyer USS Farragut during a replenishment-at-sea evolution in the Arabian Sea on Dec 4, 2012. U.S. Navy photo.
USS Farragut Responds to Distress Call From Maersk Tigris
By Cheryl Pellerin
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, April 28, 2015 – U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain answered a distress call this morning issued by the Maersk Tigris container ship, after an Iranian Navy ship fired shots across its bridge and Iranian personnel boarded the commercial vessel, a Pentagon spokesman said today.
Army Col. Steve Warren told members of the Pentagon press corps that at about 2:05 a.m. Eastern Time, several Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, or IRGCN, patrol vessels approached the M/V Maersk Tigris, a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo vessel.
The commercial ship was in Iranian territorial waters transiting inbound, or north, in the Strait of Hormuz, between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman in the Arabian Sea. It is one of the world’s major strategic choke points, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Shots Across the Bridge
“The ship's master was contacted and directed to proceed further into Iranian territorial waters. He declined and one of the IRGCN craft fired shots across the bridge of the Maersk Tigris,” Warren said.
After this, the master complied with the Iranian demand and proceeded into Iranian waters near Larak Island, Warren said. Larak Island is off the coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf.
Warren said the Maersk is still at sea. Initial reports are that members of the Iranian IRGCN have boarded her and there are no further updates, he added.
Navcent, having picked up the distress signal, directed the USS Farragut, an Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer, to proceed to the nearest location of the Maersk Tigris, Warren said.
Navcent also directed a Navy maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft to observe the interaction between the Maersk vessel and the IRGCN craft, he added.
The Tigris’s destination, according to a marine-traffic website, was Jebel Ali, a port town 22 miles southwest of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Under a Marshall Islands Flag
Maersk is a Danish company, but the Maersk Tigris was sailing under a Marshall Islands flag.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands is a sovereign nation for which the United States has full authority and responsibility for security and defense under the terms of an amended compact that entered into force in 2004.
The United States and the Marshall Islands have full diplomatic relations, according to the U.S. State Department.
Navcent is the U.S. Navy element of U.S. Central Command. Its area of responsibility includes the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Navcent consists of the U.S. Fifth Fleet and other subordinate task forces.
“Navcent is communicating with representatives of the shipping company,” Warren said. “We continue to monitor the situation.”
Innocent Passage
The Pentagon spokesman said the Strait of Hormuz is in Iranian territorial waters, which is within 12 miles of the Iranian coast.
But, he said, because the narrow strait is recognized as containing international shipping lanes, the principle of “innocent passage” is applied, so ships that abide by international rules of the sea are authorized to pass through the strait.
Warren said that there are no Americans among the 30 or so people aboard the Maersk Tigris.
JAPAN TO HAVE GREATER INTERNATIONAL ROLE
Right: U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, far right, and U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, second from right, shake hands with Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani, far left, and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida after a joint press conference in New York City, April 27, 2015. DoD screen shot.
Carter: U.S, Japan Defense Guidelines ‘Break New Ground’
By Jim Garamone
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
NEW YORK, April 27, 2015 – American and Japanese national security leaders unveiled the new guidelines for U.S.-Japan defense cooperation today, saying the new rules will promote peace and stability not only in the region, but worldwide.
Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Japanese Foreign Affairs Minister Fumio Kishida and Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani announced the results of the Security Consultative Committee meeting here today.
Known as the “2-plus-2” meetings, the discussions covered all aspects of the U.S.-Japanese alliance, but the revision of the defense guidelines -- the first since 1997 -- took precedence.
The guidelines lay out how the United States and Japan will work together, and come after the Japanese government reinterpreted their constitution to allow a greater international role, including greater military cooperation.
Japanese leaders see the guidelines as strengthening the U.S. rebalance to the Asia-Pacific. “Though we live in different hemispheres, at opposite ends of the globe, the United States could ask for no better friend and ally than Japan,” Kerry said during a news conference.
He added that the U.S. alliance with Japan has been the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in Asia since the end of World War II.
“The guidelines will enhance Japan’s security, deter threats and contribute to regional peace and stability,” the secretary of state said. “The United States and Japan stand together in calling for disputes in the region to be resolved peacefully. We reject any suggestion that freedom of navigation, overflight and other lawful uses of the sea and airspace are privileges granted by big states to small ones.”
Guidelines Fit Japan’s Expanded Role
Carter stressed that the revisions were a necessary process, given how much has changed in the world since 1997. Both the United States and Japan have new capabilities, and new threats have emerged, including a whole new domain of warfare in cyberspace, he said.
“The Asia-Pacific region has changed,” the defense secretary said. “Its weight in world affairs has increased, and that is reflected in the U.S. rebalance to the Asia-Pacific including its expression in our own defense capabilities.”
Carter noted that Japan is taking on a bigger role in world affairs. “These guidelines allow us to modernize the U.S.-Japan alliance at the same time, by breaking new ground on existing areas of military cooperation and helping us open new areas of military cooperation both in the Asia-Pacific and around the globe,” he said.
Carter and Nakatani will continue their consultations in Washington tomorrow with discussion on establishing a bilateral space cooperation working group. “The approval of the defense guidelines mark an important step in the rebalance’s next phase,” Carter said. “There will be many more.”
Kishida said through an interpreter that the revisions reflect “the enhancement of solidarity and the expansion of cooperation between Japan and the United States.”
The guidelines are the logical outgrowth of Japan’s new policy of “proactive contribution to peace based on the principle of international cooperation and the rebalance policy on the U.S. side,” the foreign minister said. “The new guidelines will enhance synergies of both policies.”
Other Business
Other business in the meetings included the U.S. affirmation that the Senkaku Islands are territories of Japan and fall under the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security.
They also stressed the importance of cooperation in ballistic missile defense. This includes basing two more U.S. ballistic missile defense destroyers in Japan and continuing deployment of a second X-band radar in the country.
The two sides discussed ways to expand tri-lateral and multi-lateral cooperation. This includes Australia and South Korea and the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The ministers also talked about the realignment of U.S. forces based in Japan including relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on the island of Okinawa.
CORINTHIAN COLLEGES, INC., ANNOUNCES IT IS SHUTTING DOWN
FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Statement from Education Under Secretary Ted Mitchell on the closure announcement from Corinthian Colleges, Inc.
APRIL 27, 2015
Students seeking better life options should be assured that their investments will pay off in increased knowledge, skills, and opportunity. Today, Corinthian Colleges, Inc., announced it was effectively ending operations, following the company's failure to find a buyer for its remaining campuses willing to abide by conditions put in place by the Department to protect students, borrowers and taxpayers. As Corinthian closes its doors for good, the Department will continue to keep students at the heart of every decision we make. Department staff will immediately begin outreach to Corinthian students to review all their options, which may include loan discharges for students whose school closed. What these students have experienced is unacceptable and we look forward to working with Congress in an effort to improve accountability and transparency in the career college industry. A college education remains the best investment a student can make in his or her future, and this Administration will continue to work to make a college degree affordable for all students, to hold colleges accountable, and to safeguard the interests of taxpayers.
Statement from Education Under Secretary Ted Mitchell on the closure announcement from Corinthian Colleges, Inc.
APRIL 27, 2015
Students seeking better life options should be assured that their investments will pay off in increased knowledge, skills, and opportunity. Today, Corinthian Colleges, Inc., announced it was effectively ending operations, following the company's failure to find a buyer for its remaining campuses willing to abide by conditions put in place by the Department to protect students, borrowers and taxpayers. As Corinthian closes its doors for good, the Department will continue to keep students at the heart of every decision we make. Department staff will immediately begin outreach to Corinthian students to review all their options, which may include loan discharges for students whose school closed. What these students have experienced is unacceptable and we look forward to working with Congress in an effort to improve accountability and transparency in the career college industry. A college education remains the best investment a student can make in his or her future, and this Administration will continue to work to make a college degree affordable for all students, to hold colleges accountable, and to safeguard the interests of taxpayers.
FDA APPROVES FIRST GENERIC VERSIONS OF DRUG APPROVED TO TREAT SCHIZOPHRENIA, BIPOLAR DISORDER
FROM: U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION
The Division of Drug Information (DDI) is CDER's focal point for public inquiries. We serve the public by providing information on human drug products and drug product regulation by FDA.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved the first generic versions of Abilify (aripiprazole). Generic aripiprazole is an atypical antipsychotic drug approved to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Alembic Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Hetero Labs Ltd., Teva Pharmaceuticals and Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd. have received FDA approval to market generic aripiprazole in multiple strengths and dosage forms.
Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe and disabling brain disorder. About one percent of Americans have this illness. Typically, symptoms are first seen in adults younger than 30 years of age. Symptoms of schizophrenia include hearing voices, believing other people are reading their minds or controlling thoughts and being suspicious or withdrawn.
Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is another brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks. The symptoms of bipolar disorder include alternating periods of depression and high or irritable mood, increased activity and restlessness, racing thoughts, talking fast, impulsive behavior and a decreased need for sleep.
All atypical antipsychotics contain a Boxed Warning alerting health care professionals about an increased risk of death associated with the off-label use of these drugs to treat behavioral problems in older people with dementia-related psychosis. No drug in this class is approved to treat patients with dementia-related psychosis.
The Division of Drug Information (DDI) is CDER's focal point for public inquiries. We serve the public by providing information on human drug products and drug product regulation by FDA.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved the first generic versions of Abilify (aripiprazole). Generic aripiprazole is an atypical antipsychotic drug approved to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Alembic Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Hetero Labs Ltd., Teva Pharmaceuticals and Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd. have received FDA approval to market generic aripiprazole in multiple strengths and dosage forms.
Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe and disabling brain disorder. About one percent of Americans have this illness. Typically, symptoms are first seen in adults younger than 30 years of age. Symptoms of schizophrenia include hearing voices, believing other people are reading their minds or controlling thoughts and being suspicious or withdrawn.
Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is another brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks. The symptoms of bipolar disorder include alternating periods of depression and high or irritable mood, increased activity and restlessness, racing thoughts, talking fast, impulsive behavior and a decreased need for sleep.
All atypical antipsychotics contain a Boxed Warning alerting health care professionals about an increased risk of death associated with the off-label use of these drugs to treat behavioral problems in older people with dementia-related psychosis. No drug in this class is approved to treat patients with dementia-related psychosis.
10 CHARGED IN PENNY STOCK FRAUD SCHEME
FROM: U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Litigation Release No. 23243 / April 16, 2015
Securities and Exchange Commission v. Daniel P. McKelvey, et al., Civil Action No. 9:15-cv-80496 (S.D. Fla., filed April 16, 2015)
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against 10 individuals involved in a scheme to offer and sell penny stock in undisclosed "blank check" companies bound for reverse mergers while misrepresenting to the public that they were promising startups with business plans.
Blank check companies generally have no operations and no value other than their status as a registered entity, which makes them attractive targets for unscrupulous individuals seeking reverse mergers with clean shells ripe for pump-and-dump schemes. The federal securities laws impose various requirements on blank check companies to prevent such illicit use. The SEC alleges that Daniel P. McKelvey of Foster City, Calif., Alvin S. Mirman of Sarasota, Fla., and Steven Sanders of Lake Worth, Fla., routinely evaded these requirements by creating undisclosed blank check companies and installing figurehead company officers while falsely depicting in registration statements and other SEC filings that the companies were pursuing real business ventures under these officers. Allegedly concealed from the public was the fact that the companies were controlled at all times by McKelvey, Mirman, or Sanders for the sole purpose of entering into reverse mergers with unidentified companies so they could profit from the sales.
According to the SEC's complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, McKelvey, Mirman, and Sanders collectively developed nearly two dozen undisclosed blank check companies and sold most of them for a total of approximately $6 million in ill-gotten gains. They were thwarted from further sales when the SEC instituted stop order proceedings last year that led to the suspension of the registration statements of four issuers before they could be further packaged for sale. The scheme allegedly involved forging or falsifying hundreds of certifications filed with the companies' SEC filings as well as communications from impersonating e-mail accounts, management representation letters to accountants, notarizations on applications to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and securities purchase agreements used in the sales of the undisclosed blank check companies.
The SEC's complaint alleges that Steven Sanders's brother Edward G. Sanders of Coral Springs, Fla., Scott F. Hughes of Duluth, Ga., and Jeffrey L. Lamson of El Dorado Hills, Calif. assisted the scheme by acting as corporate nominees with knowledge of the false business plans, drafting or providing false business plans, or recruiting other nominee officers.
The SEC's complaint charges McKelvey, Mirman, Steven Sanders, Hughes, Lamson, and Edward Sanders with violating or aiding and abetting violations of the antifraud, reporting, recordkeeping, and internal control provisions of the federal securities laws. The SEC seeks disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest, financial penalties, and permanent injunctions as well as officer-and-director bars and penny stock bars.
The SEC's complaint also names four relief defendants for the purpose of recovering illicit proceeds of the scheme in their possession: Mirman's wife Ilene P. Mirman, a company managed by McKelvey called Forte Capital Partners LLC, and two companies managed by Steven Sanders named AU Consulting LLC and MBN Consulting LLC.
The SEC additionally charged four other figurehead officers and directors who agreed to settle their cases in separate administrative proceedings: Edward T. Farmer of Sarasota, Fla., William J. Gaffney of Cumming, Ga., Kevin D. Miller of Alpharetta, Ga., and Ronald A. Warren of Peachtree Corners, Ga. They consented to SEC orders without admitting or denying the findings that they violated the antifraud, reporting, recordkeeping, and internal control provisions of the federal securities laws. They are barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company and from participating in penny stock offerings, and they must disgorge ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest.
The SEC's investigation, which is continuing, is being conducted by Jeffrey T. Cook in the Miami Regional Office as part of the Microcap Fraud Task Force. The case is being supervised by Eric R. Busto, and the SEC's litigation will be led by Patrick R. Costello.
Litigation Release No. 23243 / April 16, 2015
Securities and Exchange Commission v. Daniel P. McKelvey, et al., Civil Action No. 9:15-cv-80496 (S.D. Fla., filed April 16, 2015)
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against 10 individuals involved in a scheme to offer and sell penny stock in undisclosed "blank check" companies bound for reverse mergers while misrepresenting to the public that they were promising startups with business plans.
Blank check companies generally have no operations and no value other than their status as a registered entity, which makes them attractive targets for unscrupulous individuals seeking reverse mergers with clean shells ripe for pump-and-dump schemes. The federal securities laws impose various requirements on blank check companies to prevent such illicit use. The SEC alleges that Daniel P. McKelvey of Foster City, Calif., Alvin S. Mirman of Sarasota, Fla., and Steven Sanders of Lake Worth, Fla., routinely evaded these requirements by creating undisclosed blank check companies and installing figurehead company officers while falsely depicting in registration statements and other SEC filings that the companies were pursuing real business ventures under these officers. Allegedly concealed from the public was the fact that the companies were controlled at all times by McKelvey, Mirman, or Sanders for the sole purpose of entering into reverse mergers with unidentified companies so they could profit from the sales.
According to the SEC's complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, McKelvey, Mirman, and Sanders collectively developed nearly two dozen undisclosed blank check companies and sold most of them for a total of approximately $6 million in ill-gotten gains. They were thwarted from further sales when the SEC instituted stop order proceedings last year that led to the suspension of the registration statements of four issuers before they could be further packaged for sale. The scheme allegedly involved forging or falsifying hundreds of certifications filed with the companies' SEC filings as well as communications from impersonating e-mail accounts, management representation letters to accountants, notarizations on applications to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and securities purchase agreements used in the sales of the undisclosed blank check companies.
The SEC's complaint alleges that Steven Sanders's brother Edward G. Sanders of Coral Springs, Fla., Scott F. Hughes of Duluth, Ga., and Jeffrey L. Lamson of El Dorado Hills, Calif. assisted the scheme by acting as corporate nominees with knowledge of the false business plans, drafting or providing false business plans, or recruiting other nominee officers.
The SEC's complaint charges McKelvey, Mirman, Steven Sanders, Hughes, Lamson, and Edward Sanders with violating or aiding and abetting violations of the antifraud, reporting, recordkeeping, and internal control provisions of the federal securities laws. The SEC seeks disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest, financial penalties, and permanent injunctions as well as officer-and-director bars and penny stock bars.
The SEC's complaint also names four relief defendants for the purpose of recovering illicit proceeds of the scheme in their possession: Mirman's wife Ilene P. Mirman, a company managed by McKelvey called Forte Capital Partners LLC, and two companies managed by Steven Sanders named AU Consulting LLC and MBN Consulting LLC.
The SEC additionally charged four other figurehead officers and directors who agreed to settle their cases in separate administrative proceedings: Edward T. Farmer of Sarasota, Fla., William J. Gaffney of Cumming, Ga., Kevin D. Miller of Alpharetta, Ga., and Ronald A. Warren of Peachtree Corners, Ga. They consented to SEC orders without admitting or denying the findings that they violated the antifraud, reporting, recordkeeping, and internal control provisions of the federal securities laws. They are barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company and from participating in penny stock offerings, and they must disgorge ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest.
The SEC's investigation, which is continuing, is being conducted by Jeffrey T. Cook in the Miami Regional Office as part of the Microcap Fraud Task Force. The case is being supervised by Eric R. Busto, and the SEC's litigation will be led by Patrick R. Costello.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
DOD REPORT ON RECENT AIRSTRIKES IN SYRIA AND IRAQ
FROM: U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
Airstrikes Hit ISIL in Syria, Iraq
From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release
SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 28, 2015 – U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.
Officials reported details of the latest strikes, which took place between 8 a.m. yesterday and 8 a.m. today, local time, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.
Airstrikes in Syria
Attack and fighter aircraft conducted four airstrikes in Syria:
-- Near Hasakah, three airstrikes struck two ISIL fighting positions, destroying an ISIL armored vehicle.
-- Near Kobani, an airstrike destroyed an ISIL fighting position.
Airstrikes in Iraq
Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 16 airstrikes in Iraq, approved by the Iraqi Ministry of Defense:
-- Near Huwayjah, two airstrikes struck two ISIL staging areas.
-- Near Beiji, two airstrikes struck two ISIL tactical units, destroying two ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL warehouses and an ISIL motorcycle.
-- Near Fallujah, two airstrikes struck two ISIL tactical units, destroying two ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL vehicle bombs, an ISIL mortar system and an ISIL heavy machine gun.
-- Near Mosul, five airstrikes struck two ISIL tactical units and two ISIL checkpoints, destroying two ISIL excavators, an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL vehicle.
-- Near Ramadi, an airstrike destroyed an ISIL excavator.
-- Near Sinjar, an airstrike struck an ISIL tactical unit, destroying an ISIL building and an ISIL fighting position.
-- Near Tal Afar, three airstrikes struck three ISIL tactical units, destroying an ISIL excavator, an ISIL building and an ISIL machine gun.
Part of Operation Inherent Resolve
The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, the region, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.
Coalition nations conducting airstrikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations conducting airstrikes in Syria include the United States, Bahrain, Canada, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Airstrikes Hit ISIL in Syria, Iraq
From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release
SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 28, 2015 – U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.
Officials reported details of the latest strikes, which took place between 8 a.m. yesterday and 8 a.m. today, local time, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.
Airstrikes in Syria
Attack and fighter aircraft conducted four airstrikes in Syria:
-- Near Hasakah, three airstrikes struck two ISIL fighting positions, destroying an ISIL armored vehicle.
-- Near Kobani, an airstrike destroyed an ISIL fighting position.
Airstrikes in Iraq
Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 16 airstrikes in Iraq, approved by the Iraqi Ministry of Defense:
-- Near Huwayjah, two airstrikes struck two ISIL staging areas.
-- Near Beiji, two airstrikes struck two ISIL tactical units, destroying two ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL warehouses and an ISIL motorcycle.
-- Near Fallujah, two airstrikes struck two ISIL tactical units, destroying two ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL vehicle bombs, an ISIL mortar system and an ISIL heavy machine gun.
-- Near Mosul, five airstrikes struck two ISIL tactical units and two ISIL checkpoints, destroying two ISIL excavators, an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL vehicle.
-- Near Ramadi, an airstrike destroyed an ISIL excavator.
-- Near Sinjar, an airstrike struck an ISIL tactical unit, destroying an ISIL building and an ISIL fighting position.
-- Near Tal Afar, three airstrikes struck three ISIL tactical units, destroying an ISIL excavator, an ISIL building and an ISIL machine gun.
Part of Operation Inherent Resolve
The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, the region, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.
Coalition nations conducting airstrikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations conducting airstrikes in Syria include the United States, Bahrain, Canada, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
U.S.-AUSTRALIA DEFENSE COOPERATION DISCUSSED IN 30-MINUTE MEETING
Right: U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, left center, meets with Australian Assistant Minister for Defense Stuart Robert, right center, to discuss matters of mutual importance at the Pentagon, April 27, 2015. DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Adrian Cadiz.
Leaders Discuss U.S.-Australia Defense Cooperation
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, April 28, 2015 – Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work met yesterday with Australian Assistant Minister for Defense Stuart Robert at the Pentagon to discuss the deep bilateral defense cooperation between the U.S. and Australia, according to a Defense Department news release.
During the 30-minute meeting, Work conveyed his gratitude for Australia’s current and past contributions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the release said.
The deputy secretary and assistant minister discussed opportunities for collaboration on the department’s Defense Innovation Initiative, progress on Australia’s 2015 Defence White Paper, and business reforms within their respective organizations, according to the release.
The two leaders also discussed progress implementing the U.S. force posture initiatives in Australia’s Northern Territory, the release said.
This was Work’s first meeting with Robert, according to the release.
U.S. CONDEMNS ATTACKS IN NIGER WHICH KILLED 48 NIGERIAN SECURITY FORCES AND WOUNDED 37
FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
U.S. Condemns Boko Haram Attacks in Niger
Press Statement
Jeff Rathke
Acting Deputy Department Spokesperson, Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
April 28, 2015
We condemn the attacks by Boko Haram on Karamga Island in Lake Chad, which killed 48 Nigerien security forces and wounded another 37, with others still missing. We offer our condolences to the Government and people of Niger and to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives and who are missing.
We condemn the violent actions of Boko Haram and its continued disregard for human life. Boko Haram has perpetrated countless unprovoked attacks on men, women, and children in their homes, schools, places of worship, and businesses. Their brutality and barbarism know no bounds.
The United States is committed to supporting the efforts of the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) to help the countries of the region increase their capabilities to degrade and destroy Boko Haram. We commend efforts by the African Union and Lake Chad Basin Commission countries and Benin to stand up the MNJTF.
U.S. Condemns Boko Haram Attacks in Niger
Press Statement
Jeff Rathke
Acting Deputy Department Spokesperson, Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
April 28, 2015
We condemn the attacks by Boko Haram on Karamga Island in Lake Chad, which killed 48 Nigerien security forces and wounded another 37, with others still missing. We offer our condolences to the Government and people of Niger and to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives and who are missing.
We condemn the violent actions of Boko Haram and its continued disregard for human life. Boko Haram has perpetrated countless unprovoked attacks on men, women, and children in their homes, schools, places of worship, and businesses. Their brutality and barbarism know no bounds.
The United States is committed to supporting the efforts of the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) to help the countries of the region increase their capabilities to degrade and destroy Boko Haram. We commend efforts by the African Union and Lake Chad Basin Commission countries and Benin to stand up the MNJTF.
THE MILITARY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BUDGET DISCUSSED BY OFFICIALS FROM DOD
Right: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s research and development in stealth technology during the 1970s and 1980s led to the world’s most advanced radar-evading aircraft, providing strategic national security advantage to the United States. Today, hypersonic technologies have the potential to provide the dominance once afforded by stealth to support a range of future national security missions. DARPA photo.
DoD Officials Discuss Science, Technology Budget
By Cheryl Pellerin
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, April 24, 2015 – The Defense Department has maintained a steady $12 billion investment in science and technology and is using new initiatives to boost innovation and military superiority, defense officials told a Senate panel April 22.
Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, testified before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee on the DoD budget request for fiscal year 2016.
Joining him were Alan Shaffer, acting assistant secretary of defense for development, research and engineering, and Steven Walker, deputy director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.
The department’s science and technology budget request for fiscal year 2016 is $12.2 billion, Kendall said.
Steady Investment
“Over the last several years we have maintained, despite all the budget fluctuations, a fairly steady investment in terms of technology,” he said.
The department is committed to pursuing innovation in all its dimensions, said Kendall, adding that Defense Secretary Ash Carter endorsed the Defense Innovation Initiative unveiled last fall, and yesterday at Stanford University the secretary announced steps the department will take to foster innovation.
Kendall’s efforts cover the broader DoD acquisition enterprise, and two weeks ago he announced final details and implementation guidance for Better Buying Power 3.0.
“The Better Buying Power label originated when Dr. Carter was undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics … but it's really a collection of initiatives that has evolved over time,” Kendall said.
Improving DoD Acquisition
The initiatives are designed to incrementally improve the acquisition system’s performance, he said.
The acquisition system includes not only major DoD programs, Kendall said, “but everything -- all the things we contract out for, all the things the department acquires … and services are more than half of the things we contract out for. And it certainly includes our science and technology investments.”
Kendall said the most recent version focuses on innovation, technical excellence and technological superiority, and on taking steps to spur innovation and get the greatest value from research and development and from new innovation sources.
The efforts, he added, include science and technology accounts, DARPA's budget, the work of DoD labs, contracted research and development,
reimbursable independent research and development conducted by industry, the Small Business Innovation Research Program, and others.
Incentivizing Industry
Several BBP 3.0 provisions are designed to incentivize industry, Kendall said.
“One of them is … to tell industry how much we're willing to pay for enhanced performance,” he said.
Normally when the department asks for a weapon system proposal, it sets a level of threshold performance that is the minimum it will accept, Kendall explained. DoD also sets an objective -– the performance it desires and that comes with a higher price, he said.
“Industry almost uniformly bids to the threshold level and ignores the objective because the threshold level is always cheaper,” he added, noting, “It's less capable and that goes with [the lower] cost.”
The undersecretary said the department is starting to communicate to industry “how much more we're willing to pay for that higher level of performance. Industry can then make an informed judgment about whether or not to invest in technology that will get to that level of performance.”
Without that information, Kendall said, there's no incentive for industry.
More Creative Products
“We're trying to involve industry earlier-on in concept definition and requirements formulation so we have an interaction with industry.” Kendall said. “We give industry a head start … to work on how they would satisfy our requirements.”
In general, he added, “we're trying to align our financial incentive structure with the things we want. In this case, what we want is innovation -- more creative, more capable products that we can get to the warfighter.”
In his remarks, Shaffer said his office has revised the way it plans and executes the science and technology program through Reliance 21.
Reliance 21 is “an oversight construct that has created communities of interest, bringing scientists working in specific technology areas together to jointly plan and execute their departmentwide program in a more effective way,” he said.
Defense Innovation
Shaffer said his office also is directly involved in the Defense Innovation Initiative and in many specific initiatives under BBP 3.0.
He said the DII is a departmentwide effort to identify and invest in novel ways to sustain and advance military superiority for the 21st century and improve business operations.
Under BBP 3.0, he said, “we are more tightly coupling acquisition requirements and the intelligence community to more dynamically adjust to changes in potential threats,” and addressing barriers to adopting commercial technology in systems and capabilities.
Shaffer said his office is increasing its use of prototypes and experimentation departmentwide to reduce technical risk early in a program cycle and to see how systems will operate. The office also is expanding the use of modular open-systems architecture to stimulate innovation.
Breakthrough Technologies
In his remarks to the panel, Walker said DARPA’s role is to make early pivotal investments that help develop breakthrough technologies for national security.
Walker highlighted two programs that DARPA is working on with the Air Force, both in hypersonics –- referring to a flow of air with a Mach number greater than five. This means the flow speed is more than five times the speed of sound, he explained.
One program is the Tactical Boost Glide system, Walker said.
This DARPA-Air Force effort will develop and demonstrate technologies to enable air-launched tactical-range hypersonic boost glide systems, including a flight demonstration.
Basically, Walker said, “you boost it with a rocket and glide the system to the target.”
Tactical Hypersonics
The second DARPA-Air Force effort is the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, designed to enable transformational changes in responsive, long-range strike against time-critical or heavily defended targets.
“You also boost that concept,” Walker said, “that you then take over with the air-breathing scramjet engine on board and that also hits its target.”
This program, according to DARPA, seeks to advance air vehicle configurations capable of efficient hypersonic flight, enhance hydrocarbon scramjet-powered propulsion to enable sustained hypersonic cruise, develop affordable system designs and manufacturing approaches, and more.
“What [hypersonic speeds] buy you is a strike capability for time-critical targets from long-standoff ranges,” Walker said.
“If we can pull that hypersonic technology into a weapon-system concept … at the end of these programs the Air Force would be ready to go off into an acquisition program on those systems -- potentially, if we're successful. That's really the future,” he added.
The Sequestration Threat
During the hearing, Kendall told the panel that one threat to U.S. military superiority is “one of our own making. It is the threat of sequestration.”
In the fiscal year 2016 DoD budget request, the department is asking for funding that is well above sequestration levels, he said.
“We are trying to recover some of the readiness that was lost when sequestration was implemented in 2013. We are also trying to acquire some of the capability we need to maintain to remain competitive,” said Kendall, adding that the department is requesting increases in its investment accounts, research and development, and procurement, of about $20 billion.
“Sequestration would force us to prioritize pressing near-term needs at the expense of these investments, preserving capability now but increasing our risk in the future,” he said, adding that uncertainties about future budgets make effective planning nearly impossible.
“We urge you to permanently repeal the threat of sequestration,” Kendall told the senators. “Removing this specter would do more than any other single act to spur innovation and preserve our military technological superiority.”
GUATEMALAN NATIONAL EXTRADITED TO U.S. FOR ALLEGED HUMAN SMUGGLING
FROM: U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, April 24, 2015
Guatemalan Woman Extradited to the United States to Face Human Smuggling Charges
A Guatemalan national appeared in federal court in the Southern District of Texas, after being extradited to the United States from Guatemala to face criminal charges for her role in smuggling undocumented migrants to the United States for profit, announced Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson of the Southern District of Texas and Director Sarah R. Saldaña of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Rosa Umanzor-Lopez, 35, of Guatemala, was arrested in Guatemala on Feb. 5, 2014, on a provisional arrest warrant based on a superseding indictment filed in the Southern District of Texas in December 2012. The indictment charges her with one count of conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants into the United States, three counts of bringing aliens to the United States for financial gain and three corresponding counts of encouraging and inducing an alien to come to the United States. Three individuals also charged in the indictment have previously been convicted and sentenced.
The indictment alleges that Umanzor-Lopez and her co-defendants established a network to recruit individuals from India and elsewhere who wished to be smuggled into the United States. The defendants then allegedly arranged for aliens to be transported to the United States through South America and Central America by various means including by air travel, automobiles, water craft and foot.
The charges contained in an indictment are merely accusations, and a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
The investigation was conducted by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in McAllen and Houston, with the assistance of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Alien Smuggling Interdiction Unit. This case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Christina Giffin of the Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Leo J. Leo III and Casey MacDonald of the Southern District of Texas. The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs assisted with the extradition.
The investigation was conducted under the Extraterritorial Criminal Travel Strike Force (ECT) program, a joint partnership between the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and HSI. The ECT program focuses on human smuggling networks that may present particular national security or public safety risks, or present grave humanitarian concerns. ECT has dedicated investigative, intelligence and prosecutorial resources. ECT coordinates and receives assistance from other U.S. government agencies and foreign law enforcement authorities.
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, April 24, 2015
Guatemalan Woman Extradited to the United States to Face Human Smuggling Charges
A Guatemalan national appeared in federal court in the Southern District of Texas, after being extradited to the United States from Guatemala to face criminal charges for her role in smuggling undocumented migrants to the United States for profit, announced Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson of the Southern District of Texas and Director Sarah R. Saldaña of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Rosa Umanzor-Lopez, 35, of Guatemala, was arrested in Guatemala on Feb. 5, 2014, on a provisional arrest warrant based on a superseding indictment filed in the Southern District of Texas in December 2012. The indictment charges her with one count of conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants into the United States, three counts of bringing aliens to the United States for financial gain and three corresponding counts of encouraging and inducing an alien to come to the United States. Three individuals also charged in the indictment have previously been convicted and sentenced.
The indictment alleges that Umanzor-Lopez and her co-defendants established a network to recruit individuals from India and elsewhere who wished to be smuggled into the United States. The defendants then allegedly arranged for aliens to be transported to the United States through South America and Central America by various means including by air travel, automobiles, water craft and foot.
The charges contained in an indictment are merely accusations, and a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
The investigation was conducted by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in McAllen and Houston, with the assistance of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Alien Smuggling Interdiction Unit. This case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Christina Giffin of the Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Leo J. Leo III and Casey MacDonald of the Southern District of Texas. The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs assisted with the extradition.
The investigation was conducted under the Extraterritorial Criminal Travel Strike Force (ECT) program, a joint partnership between the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and HSI. The ECT program focuses on human smuggling networks that may present particular national security or public safety risks, or present grave humanitarian concerns. ECT has dedicated investigative, intelligence and prosecutorial resources. ECT coordinates and receives assistance from other U.S. government agencies and foreign law enforcement authorities.
2 CHINESE NATIONALS SENTENCED TO PRISON FOR CONSPIRACY TO VIOLATE ARMS EXPORT CONTROL ACT BY EXPORTING SENSORS
FROM: U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Chinese Nationals Sentenced in New Mexico for Conspiring to Violate Arms Export Control Act
This afternoon, a federal judge in the District of New Mexico sentenced two Chinese nationals for conspiring to violate the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) by scheming to illegally export defense articles with military application to the People’s Republic of China, announced Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin and U.S. Attorney Damon P. Martinez of the District of New Mexico.
Bo Cai, 29, of Nanjing, China, was sentenced to 24 months in prison and his cousin Wentong Cai, 30, of Chifeng, China, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. Both will be deported after completing their prison sentences. The two men were charged in three-count superseding indictment with a scheme to illegally export sensors primarily manufactured for sale to the U.S. Department of Defense for use in high-level applications, such as line-of-sight stabilization and precision motion control systems. The Arms Export Control Act and the ITAR prohibit the export of defense-related materials from the United States without obtaining a license or written approval from the U.S. Department of State.
Bo Cai entered a guilty plea to all three counts of the superseding indictment in July 2014, and Wentong Cai pleaded guilty to Count 3 of the superseding indictment in December 2014. In entering the guilty pleas, each admitted that from March 2012 to December 2013, they conspired with each other to illegally export sensors from the United States to China without first obtaining the required export license. Bo Cai admitted that in March 2012, while he was employed by a technology company in China, he embarked on an illegal scheme to smuggle sensors out of the United States to China for one of his customers despite knowledge that the sensors could not be exported without a license and that the United States did not issue licenses to export the sensors to China. Wentong Cai admitted that while he was in the United States on a student visa, Bo Cai enlisted him to acquire the sensors under the ruse that he planned to use the sensors at Iowa State University where he was a graduate microbiology student.
Court filings indicate that the investigation of this case began in October 2013, when an undercover U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent responded to Wentong Cai’s overtures. After negotiations by telephone and email, in December 2013, Bo Cai and Wentong Cai traveled to New Mexico, where they obtained a sensor from undercover HSI agents and developed a plan for smuggling the sensor out of the United States to China. On Dec. 11, 2013, Bo Cai was arrested at an airport in Los Angeles, as he was preparing to board a flight to China, after the sensor was discovered concealed in a computer speaker in his luggage. Wentong Cai subsequently was arrested on Jan. 22, 2014, in Ames, Iowa.
The HSI Albuquerque, New Mexico, office led the investigation of this case with assistance from the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the Defense Security Service, HSI in Iowa and Los Angeles and the FBI. Iowa State University cooperated throughout with HSI’s investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dean S. Tuckman and Fred J. Federici of the District of New Mexico prosecuted the case with assistance from Deputy Chief Deborah Curtis and Trial Attorneys David Recker and Brian Fleming of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Iowa also assisted in the prosecution.
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Chinese Nationals Sentenced in New Mexico for Conspiring to Violate Arms Export Control Act
This afternoon, a federal judge in the District of New Mexico sentenced two Chinese nationals for conspiring to violate the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) by scheming to illegally export defense articles with military application to the People’s Republic of China, announced Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin and U.S. Attorney Damon P. Martinez of the District of New Mexico.
Bo Cai, 29, of Nanjing, China, was sentenced to 24 months in prison and his cousin Wentong Cai, 30, of Chifeng, China, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. Both will be deported after completing their prison sentences. The two men were charged in three-count superseding indictment with a scheme to illegally export sensors primarily manufactured for sale to the U.S. Department of Defense for use in high-level applications, such as line-of-sight stabilization and precision motion control systems. The Arms Export Control Act and the ITAR prohibit the export of defense-related materials from the United States without obtaining a license or written approval from the U.S. Department of State.
Bo Cai entered a guilty plea to all three counts of the superseding indictment in July 2014, and Wentong Cai pleaded guilty to Count 3 of the superseding indictment in December 2014. In entering the guilty pleas, each admitted that from March 2012 to December 2013, they conspired with each other to illegally export sensors from the United States to China without first obtaining the required export license. Bo Cai admitted that in March 2012, while he was employed by a technology company in China, he embarked on an illegal scheme to smuggle sensors out of the United States to China for one of his customers despite knowledge that the sensors could not be exported without a license and that the United States did not issue licenses to export the sensors to China. Wentong Cai admitted that while he was in the United States on a student visa, Bo Cai enlisted him to acquire the sensors under the ruse that he planned to use the sensors at Iowa State University where he was a graduate microbiology student.
Court filings indicate that the investigation of this case began in October 2013, when an undercover U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent responded to Wentong Cai’s overtures. After negotiations by telephone and email, in December 2013, Bo Cai and Wentong Cai traveled to New Mexico, where they obtained a sensor from undercover HSI agents and developed a plan for smuggling the sensor out of the United States to China. On Dec. 11, 2013, Bo Cai was arrested at an airport in Los Angeles, as he was preparing to board a flight to China, after the sensor was discovered concealed in a computer speaker in his luggage. Wentong Cai subsequently was arrested on Jan. 22, 2014, in Ames, Iowa.
The HSI Albuquerque, New Mexico, office led the investigation of this case with assistance from the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the Defense Security Service, HSI in Iowa and Los Angeles and the FBI. Iowa State University cooperated throughout with HSI’s investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dean S. Tuckman and Fred J. Federici of the District of New Mexico prosecuted the case with assistance from Deputy Chief Deborah Curtis and Trial Attorneys David Recker and Brian Fleming of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Iowa also assisted in the prosecution.
MEDICAL EXPERT GROUP TO ADVISE VA ON HEALTH CARE
FROM: U.S. VETERANS ADMINISTRATION
Group of Respected Medical Experts to Advise VA on Health Care for 9 Million Veterans
April 24, 2015, 03:30:00 PM
Group of Respected Medical Experts to Advise VA on Health Care for 9 Million Veterans
Special Medical Advisory Group Led by Dr. Jonathan Perlin of Hospital Corporation of America
WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) today announced a new 11-member Special Medical Advisory Group (SMAG) composed of leading medical experts to assist the Department in delivering health care to the 9 million Veterans enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration.
The SMAG is a reconstituted federally-chartered committee that advises the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, through the Under Secretary for Health, on matters related to health care delivery, research, education, training of health care staff and planning on shared care issues facing VA and the Department of Defense.
“We want the best of the best to work on behalf of our nation’s Veterans,” said VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald. “We are honored these respected leaders from the private, non-profit and government sectors have agreed to join in our mission improve how we provide the quality health care our nation’s Veterans need and deserve.”
The appointment of the new members of the SMAG comes at a time when VA is experiencing increased demand for its health care services. Nationally, VA completed more than 51 million appointments between May 1, 2014, and March 31, 2015. This represents an increase of 2.4 million more completed appointments than during the same time period in 2013-2014. In March 2015, VA completed 97 percent of appointments within 30 days of the Veteran’s preferred date.
Serving as SMAG Committee Chair is Dr. Jonathan Perlin, who previously served as VA Under Secretary for Health from 2004-2006. Dr. Perlin is currently Chief Medical Officer and President of Clinical Services for the Nashville, Tennessee-based Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). In this capacity, Dr. Perlin provides leadership for clinical services and improving performance for HCA’s 166 hospitals and more than 800 outpatient centers and physician practices. Recognized perennially as one of the most influential physician executives in the United States by Modern Healthcare, Dr. Perlin is a recipient of numerous awards.
Other Committee members:
Karen S. Guice, MD, M.P.P.
Dr. Guice serves as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and Principal Deputy Director, TRICARE Management Activity. In these two roles, Dr. Guice assists in the development of strategies and priorities to achieve the health mission of the Military Health System (MHS), and participates fully in formulating, developing, overseeing and advocating the policies of the Secretary of Defense. The Office of Health Affairs is responsible for providing a cost effective, quality health benefit to 9.6 million active duty uniformed Service Members, retirees, survivors and their families. The MHS has a $50 billion annual budget and consists of a worldwide network of 59 military hospitals, 360 health clinics, private-sector health business partners, and the Uniformed Services University.
Joy Ilem, Deputy National Legislative Director, DAV
Ms. Ilem, a U.S. Army service-connected disabled Veteran, was named Deputy National Legislative Director of the of the 1.2 million-member Disabled American Veterans (DAV), in June 2009. In this capacity, Ms. Ilem directs the advancement of DAV’s public policy objectives.
Thomas Lee, MD
Dr. Lee serves as Chief Medical Officer for Press Ganey, which advises and consults with healthcare businesses to help identify the best practices for the organization and the patient. Dr. Lee joined Press Ganey in 2013, bringing more than three decades of experience in health care performance improvement as a practicing physician, a leader in provider organizations, researcher and health policy expert. As Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Lee is responsible for developing clinical and operational strategies to help providers across the nation measure and improve the patient experience, with an overarching goal of reducing the suffering of patients as they undergo care and improving the value of that care. In addition to his role with Press Ganey, Dr. Lee is an internist and cardiologist, and continues to practice primary care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Ralph Snyderman, MD
Dr. Snyderman is former president and CEO of the Duke University Health System and director of Duke’s Center for Research on Personalized Health Care. He currently serves as Chancellor Emeritus for the Duke University Department of Medicine. He is former Chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).
Jennifer Daley, MD
Dr. Daley is a Senior Adviser for the consulting firm, Cambridge Management Group. She is nationally recognized for her expertise in operational improvement, patient safety, quality and service excellence. Dr. Daley is a past recipient of a U.S. Naval Academy-Harvard Business Review Ethical Leadership Award in July 2007.
James Henry Martin, MD
Dr. Martin has been practicing emergency medicine and primary care medicine in the Chicago area since 1978 and is currently on the medical staffs of Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center, North Chicago; and Metro South Medical Center, Blue Island, IL. He has extensive clinical research experience in the area of nasal insulin studies. Dr. Martin is currently developing a nasal mupirocin spray foam to eradicate nasal MRSA, and a nasal foam medication formulation. He has had 14 US patents issued and over 40 foreign patents issued, including a patent in 2014 covering the formulation above.
Melvin Shipp, OD, MPH, DrPH
Dr. Shipp serves as Dean Emeritus, College of Optometry for The Ohio State University. He has served as a consultant, panelist and reviewer for several federal institutions –notably, the Food and Drug Administration, the Health Resources and Services Administration and in several capacities with the National Eye Institute (NEI) of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Shipp also has assumed leadership and membership roles within a variety of non-federal, national health-related organizations. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry, and a Diplomate and former Chair of the Public Health and Environmental Optometry Section. Dr. Shipp is only the second optometrist to receive the DrPH degree; he is the first to do so through the highly competitive Pew Health Policy Doctoral Fellowship Program at the University of Michigan.
James Weinstein, DO, MD
Dr. Weinstein serves as Chief Executive Officer and President of Dartmouth Hitchcock, a nonprofit academic health system that serves a patient population of 1.2 million in New England. Anchored by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH, the system includes the Norris Cotton Cancer Center; the Children's Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock; affiliate hospitals in New London, NH, and Windsor, VT; and 24 Dartmouth-Hitchcock clinics that provide ambulatory services across New Hampshire and Vermont. Under Dr. Weinstein’s leadership, Dartmouth-Hitchcock is working to create a “sustainable health system” for patients, providers, payers and communities. Dr. Weinstein also is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences. He serves on the IOM Committee on advising the Social Security Administration on Disability. Most recently, Dr. Weinstein was one of four members appointed to the IOM Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice.
Deborah Trautman, PhD, RN
Ms. Trautman is Chief Executive Officer for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), a role she assumed in 2014. At AACN, she oversees strategic initiatives, signature programming and advocacy efforts led by the organization known as the national voice for baccalaureate and graduate nursing education. She has authored and coauthored publications on health policy, intimate partner violence, pain management, clinical competency, change management, cardiopulmonary bypass, the use of music in the emergency department and consolidating emergency services.
Bruce Siegel, MD, MPH, President and CEO, America’s Essential Hospitals
Since joining America’s Essential Hospitals (formerly the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems) in 2010, Dr. Siegel has used his extensive background in health care management, policy, and public health to achieve the association’s strategic vision of its members as integrated delivery systems and leaders in access and quality. He served previously as Center for Health Care Quality director and health policy professor at The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Before that, Dr. Siegel was president and CEO of two association member systems: Tampa General Healthcare and the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. He also served as New Jersey’s commissioner of health. Among many accomplishments, Dr. Siegel has led groundbreaking work on quality and equity for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as well as projects for the Commonwealth Fund, the California Endowment, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He also chairs the National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality. Modern Healthcare has named Dr. Siegel one of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” and one of the “50 Most Influential Physician Executives” for the past four years.
The announcement of the Special Medical Advisory Group follows the introduction of the Veterans Health Administration’s “Blueprint for Excellence,” which lays out strategies for transformation to improve the performance of VA health care now —making it more Veteran-centric by putting Veterans in control of their VA experience.
The SMAG Committee is scheduled to conduct its first meeting on May 13, 2015.
Group of Respected Medical Experts to Advise VA on Health Care for 9 Million Veterans
April 24, 2015, 03:30:00 PM
Group of Respected Medical Experts to Advise VA on Health Care for 9 Million Veterans
Special Medical Advisory Group Led by Dr. Jonathan Perlin of Hospital Corporation of America
WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) today announced a new 11-member Special Medical Advisory Group (SMAG) composed of leading medical experts to assist the Department in delivering health care to the 9 million Veterans enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration.
The SMAG is a reconstituted federally-chartered committee that advises the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, through the Under Secretary for Health, on matters related to health care delivery, research, education, training of health care staff and planning on shared care issues facing VA and the Department of Defense.
“We want the best of the best to work on behalf of our nation’s Veterans,” said VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald. “We are honored these respected leaders from the private, non-profit and government sectors have agreed to join in our mission improve how we provide the quality health care our nation’s Veterans need and deserve.”
The appointment of the new members of the SMAG comes at a time when VA is experiencing increased demand for its health care services. Nationally, VA completed more than 51 million appointments between May 1, 2014, and March 31, 2015. This represents an increase of 2.4 million more completed appointments than during the same time period in 2013-2014. In March 2015, VA completed 97 percent of appointments within 30 days of the Veteran’s preferred date.
Serving as SMAG Committee Chair is Dr. Jonathan Perlin, who previously served as VA Under Secretary for Health from 2004-2006. Dr. Perlin is currently Chief Medical Officer and President of Clinical Services for the Nashville, Tennessee-based Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). In this capacity, Dr. Perlin provides leadership for clinical services and improving performance for HCA’s 166 hospitals and more than 800 outpatient centers and physician practices. Recognized perennially as one of the most influential physician executives in the United States by Modern Healthcare, Dr. Perlin is a recipient of numerous awards.
Other Committee members:
Karen S. Guice, MD, M.P.P.
Dr. Guice serves as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and Principal Deputy Director, TRICARE Management Activity. In these two roles, Dr. Guice assists in the development of strategies and priorities to achieve the health mission of the Military Health System (MHS), and participates fully in formulating, developing, overseeing and advocating the policies of the Secretary of Defense. The Office of Health Affairs is responsible for providing a cost effective, quality health benefit to 9.6 million active duty uniformed Service Members, retirees, survivors and their families. The MHS has a $50 billion annual budget and consists of a worldwide network of 59 military hospitals, 360 health clinics, private-sector health business partners, and the Uniformed Services University.
Joy Ilem, Deputy National Legislative Director, DAV
Ms. Ilem, a U.S. Army service-connected disabled Veteran, was named Deputy National Legislative Director of the of the 1.2 million-member Disabled American Veterans (DAV), in June 2009. In this capacity, Ms. Ilem directs the advancement of DAV’s public policy objectives.
Thomas Lee, MD
Dr. Lee serves as Chief Medical Officer for Press Ganey, which advises and consults with healthcare businesses to help identify the best practices for the organization and the patient. Dr. Lee joined Press Ganey in 2013, bringing more than three decades of experience in health care performance improvement as a practicing physician, a leader in provider organizations, researcher and health policy expert. As Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Lee is responsible for developing clinical and operational strategies to help providers across the nation measure and improve the patient experience, with an overarching goal of reducing the suffering of patients as they undergo care and improving the value of that care. In addition to his role with Press Ganey, Dr. Lee is an internist and cardiologist, and continues to practice primary care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Ralph Snyderman, MD
Dr. Snyderman is former president and CEO of the Duke University Health System and director of Duke’s Center for Research on Personalized Health Care. He currently serves as Chancellor Emeritus for the Duke University Department of Medicine. He is former Chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).
Jennifer Daley, MD
Dr. Daley is a Senior Adviser for the consulting firm, Cambridge Management Group. She is nationally recognized for her expertise in operational improvement, patient safety, quality and service excellence. Dr. Daley is a past recipient of a U.S. Naval Academy-Harvard Business Review Ethical Leadership Award in July 2007.
James Henry Martin, MD
Dr. Martin has been practicing emergency medicine and primary care medicine in the Chicago area since 1978 and is currently on the medical staffs of Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center, North Chicago; and Metro South Medical Center, Blue Island, IL. He has extensive clinical research experience in the area of nasal insulin studies. Dr. Martin is currently developing a nasal mupirocin spray foam to eradicate nasal MRSA, and a nasal foam medication formulation. He has had 14 US patents issued and over 40 foreign patents issued, including a patent in 2014 covering the formulation above.
Melvin Shipp, OD, MPH, DrPH
Dr. Shipp serves as Dean Emeritus, College of Optometry for The Ohio State University. He has served as a consultant, panelist and reviewer for several federal institutions –notably, the Food and Drug Administration, the Health Resources and Services Administration and in several capacities with the National Eye Institute (NEI) of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Shipp also has assumed leadership and membership roles within a variety of non-federal, national health-related organizations. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry, and a Diplomate and former Chair of the Public Health and Environmental Optometry Section. Dr. Shipp is only the second optometrist to receive the DrPH degree; he is the first to do so through the highly competitive Pew Health Policy Doctoral Fellowship Program at the University of Michigan.
James Weinstein, DO, MD
Dr. Weinstein serves as Chief Executive Officer and President of Dartmouth Hitchcock, a nonprofit academic health system that serves a patient population of 1.2 million in New England. Anchored by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH, the system includes the Norris Cotton Cancer Center; the Children's Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock; affiliate hospitals in New London, NH, and Windsor, VT; and 24 Dartmouth-Hitchcock clinics that provide ambulatory services across New Hampshire and Vermont. Under Dr. Weinstein’s leadership, Dartmouth-Hitchcock is working to create a “sustainable health system” for patients, providers, payers and communities. Dr. Weinstein also is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences. He serves on the IOM Committee on advising the Social Security Administration on Disability. Most recently, Dr. Weinstein was one of four members appointed to the IOM Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice.
Deborah Trautman, PhD, RN
Ms. Trautman is Chief Executive Officer for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), a role she assumed in 2014. At AACN, she oversees strategic initiatives, signature programming and advocacy efforts led by the organization known as the national voice for baccalaureate and graduate nursing education. She has authored and coauthored publications on health policy, intimate partner violence, pain management, clinical competency, change management, cardiopulmonary bypass, the use of music in the emergency department and consolidating emergency services.
Bruce Siegel, MD, MPH, President and CEO, America’s Essential Hospitals
Since joining America’s Essential Hospitals (formerly the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems) in 2010, Dr. Siegel has used his extensive background in health care management, policy, and public health to achieve the association’s strategic vision of its members as integrated delivery systems and leaders in access and quality. He served previously as Center for Health Care Quality director and health policy professor at The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Before that, Dr. Siegel was president and CEO of two association member systems: Tampa General Healthcare and the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. He also served as New Jersey’s commissioner of health. Among many accomplishments, Dr. Siegel has led groundbreaking work on quality and equity for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as well as projects for the Commonwealth Fund, the California Endowment, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He also chairs the National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality. Modern Healthcare has named Dr. Siegel one of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” and one of the “50 Most Influential Physician Executives” for the past four years.
The announcement of the Special Medical Advisory Group follows the introduction of the Veterans Health Administration’s “Blueprint for Excellence,” which lays out strategies for transformation to improve the performance of VA health care now —making it more Veteran-centric by putting Veterans in control of their VA experience.
The SMAG Committee is scheduled to conduct its first meeting on May 13, 2015.
PRESIDENT'S REMARKS MARKING 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF OFFICE OF DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
FROM: THE WHITE HOUSE
April 24, 2015
Remarks by the President Marking the 10th Anniversary of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
McLean, Virginia
2:40 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. Please, please, have a seat. Thank you very much. Well, thank you, Jim, for that introduction. And former Director Negroponte, we are -- there he is -- we are thrilled to have you here, as well.
I am here to help mark the 10th anniversary of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. And I’m here for a simple reason: Jim asked me to come. (Laughter.) You see, as you might say with the IC, Jim is one of my best HUMINT sources. He is well-placed. His reporting is known to be reliable. So I accepted his invitation with a high degree of confidence. (Laughter.)
I want to thank you, Jim, and your entire team, and leaders from across the IC, for all of you taking the time to welcoming me here today. I’m not going to give a long speech, but I do have three basic messages that I wanted to convey.
The first is that I don’t know how astute a consumer of information I am, but I can tell you I sure do rely on it. And those who come and brief me every single morning do an extraordinary job.
I will say that the only flaw, generally, in what’s called the PDB that I receive is that when Jim provides it, some of you may have heard, he leaves paperclips all over my office. (Laughter.) They’re in the couch, they’re on the floor. He’s shuffling paper. And so because I knew I was coming over here, one of the things I did was return them all. (Laughter and applause.) And so this will be available to you. The DNI’s budget is always a little tight; we can start recycling these. (Laughter.) That’s going to be critical.
But Jim is often one of the first people that I see in the morning, during the Presidential Daily Brief. Jim always gives it to me straight. He gives me his honest assessment free of politics, free of spin. I trust his integrity. And I can’t tell you how invaluable that is in the job that he has.
And that culture is one that permeates our IC. It’s a culture that reflects leaders at the top. And nobody, I think, exemplifies that more than Jim Clapper. So I am very grateful for him.
Here at ODNI, Jim has also led important reforms, both within the office and across the intelligence community. Today, the Community is more collaborative and more integrated than it has ever been in the past.
And since no good deed ever goes unpunished, in appreciation of this integrity and outstanding work, I sent Jim to North Korea. (Laughter.) And I know he had a wonderful time in Pyongyang. But thanks to the role that Jim played, he returned home with Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller to be reunited with their families.
Today is also special to him because it happens to be his 50th wedding anniversary to his wonderful wife, Sue. So we want to congratulate the two of them. (Applause.) And fear not, this is not all he’s doing for their 50th wedding anniversary. (Laughter.) My understanding is they’re headed off for a well-deserved anniversary vacation this weekend. So I'm going to move this along.
The second reason I wanted to be here was to thank all of you at ODNI. I see Jim or Mike Dempsey, or sometimes Stephanie, every morning. And I know that everything they present reflects incredible hard work on the part of hundreds of people -- thousands of people across the various agencies that are represented. And I want you to know that Jim and Mike and Stephanie, and all the folks who give me these briefings, they are the first one to acknowledge that they are just the tip of the operation and that they can’t do their job if it weren’t for the incredible contributions that all of you are making every single day.
I know that sometimes it can seem like a one-way street. You push up your reports, but you don’t always know how your work is received by your customers, and I guess I'm the number one customer. You don’t always maybe get feedback. So I'm here just to tell you, you do an outstanding job. The work that you provide is vital for me being able to make good decisions. And the fact that the work you prepare is giving it to me straight -- that doesn’t look at the world through rose-colored glasses, that doesn’t exaggerate threats but doesn’t underplay the significant challenges that we face around the world -- that’s vitally important to me and, as a consequence, vitally important to the security of the American people.
So Jim knows it, Mike know it. The people who meet with me are always extolling your virtues. But I figured it would be useful for you to hear it from me directly in saying how much we appreciate the incredible hard work and effort that you make every single day.
Whether it’s the PDB, your daily articles, your expert briefs, NIE’s, I could not do my job without your insights and your analysis, and your judgment.
More broadly, you’re dedicated to your founding mission. The 9/11 Commission said we needed to unify our intelligence community. The legislation that created the DNI made you the statutory head of the Community overseeing all the agencies.
And it’s not an easy task bringing together 17 different organizations. They each have unique histories and missions and cultures and tradecraft. Many of you here represent those agencies. And yet, you come here together to create a sum that’s even greater and stronger than its individual parts.
And we see the results. We’ve got more sharing of intelligence across the Community and also beyond it, with our other partners. The federal, state, local and the private sectors are now working together more effectively than they have in the past. New technologies and new satellites are being shared and working across various platforms means that we’re able to do a better job both accumulating information but also disseminating it. There’s more transparency than there’s been in the past. There’s more innovation than there’s been in the past. All that is making a difference each and every day.
I know that integrating the efforts and contributions of all 17 organizations, people, expertise, capabilities, is never-ending work. And then there’s the challenge of being as open and transparent as possible, even as we continue to protect intelligence that saves lives.
But I want you to remember the United States is the most professional, most capable, most cutting-edge intelligence community in the world. And part of the reason is because all of you here at ODNI bring it together. It makes a difference.
Which brings me to my third and final point. A message that I hope you share with the colleagues who are not in this auditorium, I want you to share it with all the home agencies: You can take great pride in your service.
Many of you -- those of you with gray beards or goatees, or, in Jim’s case, just no hair -- (laughter) -- are intelligence veterans with decades of service. Some of you are young, and look even younger; a new post-9/11 generation. And over the years, I know some of you have lost good friends and colleagues -- patriots, men and women who gave their lives, like those honored in the stars on the Memorial Wall at Langley. On days like today, we remember them and we honor them, as well.
These are challenging times. And over the last few years, we’ve seen unprecedented intelligence disclosures. We’ve seen wild swings with respect to our budgets because of sequestration and furloughs; increasing demands for intelligence due to everything from Russian aggression in Ukraine to turmoil and ISIL in the Middle East.
And today, like all Americans, our thoughts and prayers also continue to be with the families of Dr. Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto. I’m not going to repeat everything I said yesterday, but I do want to make one point again. We’re going to review what happened. We’re going to identify the lessons that can be learned and any improvements and changes that can be made. And I know those of you who are here share our determination to continue doing everything we can to prevent the loss of innocent lives.
I was asked by somebody -- how do you absorb news like that that we received the other day. And I told the truth: It’s hard. But the one thing I wanted everybody to know -- because I know you, because I work with you, because I know the quality of this team -- is that we all bleed when we lose an American life. We all grieve when any innocent life is taken. We don’t take this work lightly. And I know that each and every one of you understand the magnitude of what we do and the stakes involved.
And these aren’t abstractions. And we’re not cavalier about what we do, and we understand the solemn responsibilities that are given to us. And our first job is to make sure that we protect the American people. But there’s not a person that I talk to that’s involved in the intelligence community that also doesn’t understand that we have to do so while upholding our values and our ideals, and our laws and our constitutions, and our commitment to democracy.
And that’s part of the reason why I’m so grateful to work with you, because I know you share that commitment, understanding that this is hard stuff. Everybody here is committed to doing it the right way. And for that reason, I’m absolutely committed to making sure that the American people understand all that you put in to make sure that we do it the right way. I’m very grateful for that.
This self-reflection, this willingness to examine ourselves, to make corrections, to do better -- that’s part of what makes us Americans. It’s part of what sets us apart from other nations. It’s part of what keeps us not only safe but also strong and free.
And part of what makes our job even more challenging is, is that despite the extraordinary work that’s done here and the lives that are saved on an ongoing basis, a lot of our work still requires that we maintain some things as classified. And we can’t always talk about all the challenges. And the one thing I know about people in the IC is they don’t seek the limelight. That means, sometimes, that the world doesn’t always see your successes, the threats that you prevent or the terrorist attacks you thwart, or the lives that you save.
But I don’t want you or folks across the intelligence community to ever forget the difference that you make every day. Because of you, we’ve had the intelligence to take out al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden. Because of you, we’ve had the intelligence, quickly, that showed Syria had used chemical weapons, and then had the ability to monitor its removal. Because of you, we had the intelligence, despite Russia’s obfuscations, to tell the world the truth about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine. Because of you, we had the intelligence support that helped enable our recent nuclear framework with Iran. And you’re going to be critical to our efforts to forge a comprehensive deal to prevent Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon.
So you help keep us safe, but you also help protect our freedoms by doing it the right way. And the American people and people around the world may never know the full extent of your success. There may be those outside who question or challenge what we do -- and we welcome those questions and those challenges because that makes us better. It can be frustrating sometimes, but that’s part of the function of our democracy.
But I know what you do. We’re more secure because of your service. We’re more secure because of your patriotism and your professionalism. And I’m grateful for that. And the American people are grateful, as well -- to you and your families who sacrifice alongside you.
So it’s been 10 long and challenging years. But when we look back on those 10 years, the American people have been a whole lot safer. And I’m confident that over the next 10 years and 10 years after that, as long as we continue to have outstanding patriots like yourselves, we’re going to be okay.
Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless America. (Applause.)
END
2:57 P.M. EDT
April 24, 2015
Remarks by the President Marking the 10th Anniversary of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
McLean, Virginia
2:40 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. Please, please, have a seat. Thank you very much. Well, thank you, Jim, for that introduction. And former Director Negroponte, we are -- there he is -- we are thrilled to have you here, as well.
I am here to help mark the 10th anniversary of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. And I’m here for a simple reason: Jim asked me to come. (Laughter.) You see, as you might say with the IC, Jim is one of my best HUMINT sources. He is well-placed. His reporting is known to be reliable. So I accepted his invitation with a high degree of confidence. (Laughter.)
I want to thank you, Jim, and your entire team, and leaders from across the IC, for all of you taking the time to welcoming me here today. I’m not going to give a long speech, but I do have three basic messages that I wanted to convey.
The first is that I don’t know how astute a consumer of information I am, but I can tell you I sure do rely on it. And those who come and brief me every single morning do an extraordinary job.
I will say that the only flaw, generally, in what’s called the PDB that I receive is that when Jim provides it, some of you may have heard, he leaves paperclips all over my office. (Laughter.) They’re in the couch, they’re on the floor. He’s shuffling paper. And so because I knew I was coming over here, one of the things I did was return them all. (Laughter and applause.) And so this will be available to you. The DNI’s budget is always a little tight; we can start recycling these. (Laughter.) That’s going to be critical.
But Jim is often one of the first people that I see in the morning, during the Presidential Daily Brief. Jim always gives it to me straight. He gives me his honest assessment free of politics, free of spin. I trust his integrity. And I can’t tell you how invaluable that is in the job that he has.
And that culture is one that permeates our IC. It’s a culture that reflects leaders at the top. And nobody, I think, exemplifies that more than Jim Clapper. So I am very grateful for him.
Here at ODNI, Jim has also led important reforms, both within the office and across the intelligence community. Today, the Community is more collaborative and more integrated than it has ever been in the past.
And since no good deed ever goes unpunished, in appreciation of this integrity and outstanding work, I sent Jim to North Korea. (Laughter.) And I know he had a wonderful time in Pyongyang. But thanks to the role that Jim played, he returned home with Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller to be reunited with their families.
Today is also special to him because it happens to be his 50th wedding anniversary to his wonderful wife, Sue. So we want to congratulate the two of them. (Applause.) And fear not, this is not all he’s doing for their 50th wedding anniversary. (Laughter.) My understanding is they’re headed off for a well-deserved anniversary vacation this weekend. So I'm going to move this along.
The second reason I wanted to be here was to thank all of you at ODNI. I see Jim or Mike Dempsey, or sometimes Stephanie, every morning. And I know that everything they present reflects incredible hard work on the part of hundreds of people -- thousands of people across the various agencies that are represented. And I want you to know that Jim and Mike and Stephanie, and all the folks who give me these briefings, they are the first one to acknowledge that they are just the tip of the operation and that they can’t do their job if it weren’t for the incredible contributions that all of you are making every single day.
I know that sometimes it can seem like a one-way street. You push up your reports, but you don’t always know how your work is received by your customers, and I guess I'm the number one customer. You don’t always maybe get feedback. So I'm here just to tell you, you do an outstanding job. The work that you provide is vital for me being able to make good decisions. And the fact that the work you prepare is giving it to me straight -- that doesn’t look at the world through rose-colored glasses, that doesn’t exaggerate threats but doesn’t underplay the significant challenges that we face around the world -- that’s vitally important to me and, as a consequence, vitally important to the security of the American people.
So Jim knows it, Mike know it. The people who meet with me are always extolling your virtues. But I figured it would be useful for you to hear it from me directly in saying how much we appreciate the incredible hard work and effort that you make every single day.
Whether it’s the PDB, your daily articles, your expert briefs, NIE’s, I could not do my job without your insights and your analysis, and your judgment.
More broadly, you’re dedicated to your founding mission. The 9/11 Commission said we needed to unify our intelligence community. The legislation that created the DNI made you the statutory head of the Community overseeing all the agencies.
And it’s not an easy task bringing together 17 different organizations. They each have unique histories and missions and cultures and tradecraft. Many of you here represent those agencies. And yet, you come here together to create a sum that’s even greater and stronger than its individual parts.
And we see the results. We’ve got more sharing of intelligence across the Community and also beyond it, with our other partners. The federal, state, local and the private sectors are now working together more effectively than they have in the past. New technologies and new satellites are being shared and working across various platforms means that we’re able to do a better job both accumulating information but also disseminating it. There’s more transparency than there’s been in the past. There’s more innovation than there’s been in the past. All that is making a difference each and every day.
I know that integrating the efforts and contributions of all 17 organizations, people, expertise, capabilities, is never-ending work. And then there’s the challenge of being as open and transparent as possible, even as we continue to protect intelligence that saves lives.
But I want you to remember the United States is the most professional, most capable, most cutting-edge intelligence community in the world. And part of the reason is because all of you here at ODNI bring it together. It makes a difference.
Which brings me to my third and final point. A message that I hope you share with the colleagues who are not in this auditorium, I want you to share it with all the home agencies: You can take great pride in your service.
Many of you -- those of you with gray beards or goatees, or, in Jim’s case, just no hair -- (laughter) -- are intelligence veterans with decades of service. Some of you are young, and look even younger; a new post-9/11 generation. And over the years, I know some of you have lost good friends and colleagues -- patriots, men and women who gave their lives, like those honored in the stars on the Memorial Wall at Langley. On days like today, we remember them and we honor them, as well.
These are challenging times. And over the last few years, we’ve seen unprecedented intelligence disclosures. We’ve seen wild swings with respect to our budgets because of sequestration and furloughs; increasing demands for intelligence due to everything from Russian aggression in Ukraine to turmoil and ISIL in the Middle East.
And today, like all Americans, our thoughts and prayers also continue to be with the families of Dr. Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto. I’m not going to repeat everything I said yesterday, but I do want to make one point again. We’re going to review what happened. We’re going to identify the lessons that can be learned and any improvements and changes that can be made. And I know those of you who are here share our determination to continue doing everything we can to prevent the loss of innocent lives.
I was asked by somebody -- how do you absorb news like that that we received the other day. And I told the truth: It’s hard. But the one thing I wanted everybody to know -- because I know you, because I work with you, because I know the quality of this team -- is that we all bleed when we lose an American life. We all grieve when any innocent life is taken. We don’t take this work lightly. And I know that each and every one of you understand the magnitude of what we do and the stakes involved.
And these aren’t abstractions. And we’re not cavalier about what we do, and we understand the solemn responsibilities that are given to us. And our first job is to make sure that we protect the American people. But there’s not a person that I talk to that’s involved in the intelligence community that also doesn’t understand that we have to do so while upholding our values and our ideals, and our laws and our constitutions, and our commitment to democracy.
And that’s part of the reason why I’m so grateful to work with you, because I know you share that commitment, understanding that this is hard stuff. Everybody here is committed to doing it the right way. And for that reason, I’m absolutely committed to making sure that the American people understand all that you put in to make sure that we do it the right way. I’m very grateful for that.
This self-reflection, this willingness to examine ourselves, to make corrections, to do better -- that’s part of what makes us Americans. It’s part of what sets us apart from other nations. It’s part of what keeps us not only safe but also strong and free.
And part of what makes our job even more challenging is, is that despite the extraordinary work that’s done here and the lives that are saved on an ongoing basis, a lot of our work still requires that we maintain some things as classified. And we can’t always talk about all the challenges. And the one thing I know about people in the IC is they don’t seek the limelight. That means, sometimes, that the world doesn’t always see your successes, the threats that you prevent or the terrorist attacks you thwart, or the lives that you save.
But I don’t want you or folks across the intelligence community to ever forget the difference that you make every day. Because of you, we’ve had the intelligence to take out al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden. Because of you, we’ve had the intelligence, quickly, that showed Syria had used chemical weapons, and then had the ability to monitor its removal. Because of you, we had the intelligence, despite Russia’s obfuscations, to tell the world the truth about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine. Because of you, we had the intelligence support that helped enable our recent nuclear framework with Iran. And you’re going to be critical to our efforts to forge a comprehensive deal to prevent Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon.
So you help keep us safe, but you also help protect our freedoms by doing it the right way. And the American people and people around the world may never know the full extent of your success. There may be those outside who question or challenge what we do -- and we welcome those questions and those challenges because that makes us better. It can be frustrating sometimes, but that’s part of the function of our democracy.
But I know what you do. We’re more secure because of your service. We’re more secure because of your patriotism and your professionalism. And I’m grateful for that. And the American people are grateful, as well -- to you and your families who sacrifice alongside you.
So it’s been 10 long and challenging years. But when we look back on those 10 years, the American people have been a whole lot safer. And I’m confident that over the next 10 years and 10 years after that, as long as we continue to have outstanding patriots like yourselves, we’re going to be okay.
Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless America. (Applause.)
END
2:57 P.M. EDT
WHITE HOUSE FACT SHEET ON UPSKILL INITIATIVE
FROM: THE WHITE HOUSE
April 24, 2015
FACT SHEET: Administration Announces New Commitments in Support of President Obama¹s Upskill Initiative to Empower Workers with Education and Training
100 employers commit to help millions of front-line workers climb up the career ladder and earn higher wages
Today, at the White House Upskill Summit, Vice President Biden and Administration officials will announce new steps to help realize the full potential of America’s workforce by empowering workers with the education and training they need to develop new skills and earn higher wages. Over 100 leading employers, who employ more than 5 million workers, are making concrete commitments to empower front-line workers across their businesses, in partnership with 30 national labor unions, and accelerated by new innovative data and tools. During his State of the Union address earlier this year, the President launched a new Upskill Initiative, calling on businesses to help workers of all ages earn a shot at better, higher-paying jobs, even if they do not have a higher education. The commitments being announced today already represent significant action and progress since the President’s January call to action.
As part of this Summit, the companies, unions and tech innovators are announcing that new tools and opportunities that will be made available to millions of front-line workers to get ahead in their careers:
100 leading employers are answering the President’s call to action and announcing new commitments to provide opportunities for their front-line workers to get ahead by expanding access to apprenticeships and on-the-job training; increasing uptake of training opportunities by making them cheaper, easier, and faster; and clarifying what skills workers need to get ahead within their companies. The President and Vice President are challenging other employers to follow their lead.
30 national and local labor unions and major foundations are also working with employers to expand access to best-practice training strategies like apprenticeships, and by targeting small businesses and industries like retail and hospitality where there is an opportunity to help millions of low wage workers earn a reward for better skills.
New data tools for workers and employers: To accelerate these efforts, the private sector and tech leaders are inspiring innovation and developing efficient tools that disseminate best practices for employers and workers, so that more can follow those who are leading the way.
When all Americans have the opportunity to master new skills, contribute their full talents to our economy, and be rewarded for it, our businesses, our families and our communities thrive. The President has laid out an agenda designed to increase wages for workers across the country, through steps that range from providing tax relief to working families, increasing the minimum wage, improving access to higher education and investing in areas that support well-paying jobs like infrastructure, research and clean energy. The Upskill Initiative is a public-private effort that is a critical part of that agenda, meant to create clear pathways for the over 20 million workers in front-line jobs who may too often lack the opportunity to progress into higher-paying jobs.
Developing the skills and abilities of these workers, and empowering them to contribute more at work, presents a significant opportunity to improve their wages and to increase the productivity and competitiveness of employers. Front-line workers are too often stuck because of three primary challenges: lack of access to training, which is often focused on workers who are already highly skilled; low uptake of training where it is available, due to limited awareness as well as difficulties in finding the time and money needed to take advantage of it; and a lack of clear information on pathways to promotions, which makes it hard for low wage workers to take the steps needed to advance.
Today’s White House Upskill Summit brings together employers, labor unions, foundations, educators, workforce leaders, non-profits and technologists who are committing to take action in the next year to enable more front-line workers to realize their full potential at work and advance into better paying jobs. The summit is also an opportunity to build on Vice President Biden’s comprehensive report released last summer that lays out successful strategies to train our nation’s workforce and widen the path to the middle class for more hard-working Americans.
A new White House report is also available here that includes new data on trends in employer training investments and highlights best practices and employer case studies. Click here to learn more about the Upskill commitments being announced today, which are summarized below.
To join these employers, unions, and technologists, share what you are doing to support the Upskill Initiative at Wh.gov.
Employers including 30 of the Fortune 500 and many small businesses are leading the way by taking steps within their own companies to end dead-end jobs, and enable workers to earn more over time.
Over 100 employers across the country, employing more than 5 million workers, are expanding access to on-the-job training and launching registered apprenticeship training programs, increasing uptake of these programs by making participation easier, cheaper, and faster, and clarifying career pathways for workers who want to get ahead.
More on-the-job training and apprenticeship opportunities, the “gold-standard of upskilling” that help workers get ahead, without having to leave their jobs to go back to school full-time.
Companies big and small, like IBM, Zurich Insurance, CVS, Daetwyler, Stober Drives and Optimax, are committing to start or expand apprenticeships in new industries as far-ranging as information technology, insurance, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.
Fortune 500 companies like Gap Inc., Capital One, McDonalds and Walmart are expanding partnerships with online educational organizations like LearnUp, Udacity and Cengage Learning to enable millions of front-line workers to earn credentials and develop the skills required for more senior roles.
Employers of all sizes including Pepsico, PG&E and Metaphase Technologies are setting internal goals to staff a certain percentage of their management and supervisory jobs from their front-line workforce, and leveraging on-the-job training programs to help meet those targets; others, like Orange Research are setting a goal for the percent of working hours that will be devoted to training.
Increasing uptake of training programs by building awareness and making it easier, cheaper and faster for front-line workers to benefit from these opportunities.
Companies across industries, such as Grifols and Partners HealthCare, are increasing uptake of tuition benefits by partnering with competency-based online programs, like College for America at Southern New Hampshire University, so tens of thousands of employees can use their benefits online to complete an accredited degree for free or close to free, and at their own pace.
Small businesses like R&R Transportation are providing employees with the necessary time and financial support to increase the number of workers with skills certifications; others, like Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are focusing on making training more of a company priority by talking about it more with employees.
Businesses like Discover and Amali Restaurant are testing how financial incentives can drive upward career mobility and accelerated job progression for employees.
Clarifying pathways to a promotion by articulating the skills better-paying jobs require, and providing self-assessments for workers to figure out how far away they are from having those skills today:
Businesses like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center are launching initiatives including talent management frameworks that will provide employees with a clear understanding of what differentiates success at each organizational level.
Companies like Kaiser Permanente and Bank of America are launching new online career portals that will provide employees and managers with tools, resources and training for skill enhancement and career development.
Major employers like AXA are making online gaming tools available to their employees to identify their strengths and develop a more granular understanding of their skills needs.
Employers are also working in partnership with government, unions, and philanthropy to expand the use of strategies like apprenticeships in new and growing fields.
The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour division is clarifying common employer misperceptions that may lead employers to be less likely to offer training to employees . DOL is publishing a new “mythbuster” document that stipulates how employers can more specifically determine when they are and when they are not required to compensate employees for voluntary training.
30 major employers are working with the Department of Labor to launch a new employer-to-employer outreach program called LEADERs (Leaders of Excellence in Registered Apprenticeship Development, Education, and Research) that helps business leaders learn from other businesses how to launch a successful Registered Apprenticeship program. Later this year, the Department of Labor will bring together major employers on expanding the use of Registered Apprenticeship to strengthen U.S. companies while providing workers with pathways to the middle class and beyond.
Focusing on the healthcare industry in particular, SEIU and AFSCME, together with their local unions and employer partners including Temple University Health System, Kaiser Permanente, Addus Healthcare, and the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes of New York, are joining together to create 1,700 apprenticeships for advanced home care aides, community health workers, and medical coders throughout six states.
Labor management partnerships like BEST Corp. Hospitality Training Center, District 1199C Training & Upgrading Fund, SEIU Healthcare NW Training Partnership and 1199SEIU Bill Michelson Home Care Education Fund, and unions like IBEW Local Union 43, the Carpenters’ District Council of Greater St. Louis and Vicinity, and UAW, are committing to expanding access to registered apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs.
Labor leaders such as local affiliates of SEIU and AFL-CIO, non-profits like Goodwill and industry groups such as the Western Association of Food Chains are focusing on expanding access to training and credentials in industries like retail and hospitality that employ millions of front-line workers.
Foundations like Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses are providing small business owners with a business education that promotes front-line talent development.
The private sector and tech leaders are spurring innovation and developing tools that disseminate best practices for employers and workers, so that more can follow those who are leading the way.
Recognizing and supporting employers that are upskilling: The Aspen Institute is coordinating a business-led UpSkill America campaign in partnership with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, the HR Policy Association, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, Business Leaders United for Workforce Partnerships, the Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board, the Bay Area Council, and the Small Business Majority. This coalition will work to recognize leading employers that provide expanded career opportunities for their workers, promote the widespread adoption of business policies and practices that increase economic opportunity for frontline workers, and cultivate public-private education and workforce development efforts that support and advance these initiatives.
Innovation that helps facilitate upskilling: XPRIZE is promoting innovation by announcing its commitment to design an incentivized prize competition aimed at spurring innovation and accelerating the rate of positive change in upskilling among American workers.
Tools for workers that are trying to get ahead: Glass Door is launching an On-the-Job Training Finder, an interactive, map-based tool to help job seekers easily search job opportunities, such as apprenticeships and trainee positions, in which they can learn new skills to advance their career while getting paid. LinkedIn is committing to help employers identify mentors for front-line workers by engaging interested senior employees in aspirational roles.
Best practice resources for employers: Deloitte Consulting and The Aspen Institute are launching A Guide to Upskilling America’s Frontline Workers that aims to deliver a structured resource to help businesses strengthen existing or jumpstart new upskilling initiatives. The National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS) will develop a Registered Apprenticeship Blueprint to help companies expedite implementation of customized apprenticeships that meet their talent needs.
The Upskill initiative builds on the Administration’s agenda to support job-driven training:
Proposed Rules for Reforming our Federal Workforce System. Last July, the President signed into law the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) – the most significant reform to our Federal workforce system in nearly 20 years. Last week, we issued proposed rules implementing WIOA that will move our entire system to be more job-driven. The law will also increase opportunities for work-based learning, including on-the-job training and Registered Apprenticeships.
Vice-President Biden’s Job-Driven Training Review. The President’s Upskill Initiative builds on the job-driven training review that the President asked the Vice President to lead in the 2013 State of the Union. Amongst other findings, the Vice President’s review identified employer training for front-line workers as an area in need of more job-driven training strategies to meet business needs and provide more workers with a path to the middle class.
American Apprenticeship Grants Competition. Last year, the Department of Labor launched a $100 million competition to spur partnerships to expand apprenticeships into high-growth fields like information technology, advanced manufacturing, and healthcare. The deadline for this application is April 30, 2015, and more information is available at the Grants.gov application page.
$100 million in New Federal Investments to Train and Connect More Workers to a Good Job in Technology and Other In-Demand Fields. The Administration is launching a $100 million H-1B grant competition by the Department of Labor to support innovative approaches to training and successfully employing low-skill individuals with barriers to training and employment including those with child care responsibilities, people with disabilities, disconnected youth, and limited English proficient workers, among others.
Launching a New $25 Million Competition for an Online Skills Academy that Will Leverage Technology to Offer Free and Open Online Courses of Study, helping students earn credentials online through participating accredited institutions, and will expand access to curricula designed to speed the time to credit and completion.
FY16 Budget Proposals to Expand Access to Quality Training and Career Advancement Opportunities. The President’s Budget includes measures that support upskilling through:
American Technical Training Fund would award $200 million in new competitive grants to support the development, operation and expansion of innovative, evidence-based job training programs in high-demand fields that provide a path to the middle class for low-income individuals. This could replicate successful models like Tennessee’s Applied Technology Centers whose graduates have impressive employment rates.
Doubling American Apprenticeships over Five Years: The President is calling on Congress to launch a $2 billion Apprenticeship Training Fund for states and regions to adopt comprehensive strategies ranging from economic incentives to stronger links to technical colleges to double the number of registered apprentices in America over the next five years.
Updating Licensing Requirements: The Budget proposes a $15 million increase for grants to States and partnerships of States for the purpose of identifying, exploring, and addressing areas where occupational licensing requirements create an unnecessary barrier to labor market entry or labor mobility and where interstate portability of licenses can support economic growth and improve economic opportunity.
April 24, 2015
FACT SHEET: Administration Announces New Commitments in Support of President Obama¹s Upskill Initiative to Empower Workers with Education and Training
100 employers commit to help millions of front-line workers climb up the career ladder and earn higher wages
Today, at the White House Upskill Summit, Vice President Biden and Administration officials will announce new steps to help realize the full potential of America’s workforce by empowering workers with the education and training they need to develop new skills and earn higher wages. Over 100 leading employers, who employ more than 5 million workers, are making concrete commitments to empower front-line workers across their businesses, in partnership with 30 national labor unions, and accelerated by new innovative data and tools. During his State of the Union address earlier this year, the President launched a new Upskill Initiative, calling on businesses to help workers of all ages earn a shot at better, higher-paying jobs, even if they do not have a higher education. The commitments being announced today already represent significant action and progress since the President’s January call to action.
As part of this Summit, the companies, unions and tech innovators are announcing that new tools and opportunities that will be made available to millions of front-line workers to get ahead in their careers:
100 leading employers are answering the President’s call to action and announcing new commitments to provide opportunities for their front-line workers to get ahead by expanding access to apprenticeships and on-the-job training; increasing uptake of training opportunities by making them cheaper, easier, and faster; and clarifying what skills workers need to get ahead within their companies. The President and Vice President are challenging other employers to follow their lead.
30 national and local labor unions and major foundations are also working with employers to expand access to best-practice training strategies like apprenticeships, and by targeting small businesses and industries like retail and hospitality where there is an opportunity to help millions of low wage workers earn a reward for better skills.
New data tools for workers and employers: To accelerate these efforts, the private sector and tech leaders are inspiring innovation and developing efficient tools that disseminate best practices for employers and workers, so that more can follow those who are leading the way.
When all Americans have the opportunity to master new skills, contribute their full talents to our economy, and be rewarded for it, our businesses, our families and our communities thrive. The President has laid out an agenda designed to increase wages for workers across the country, through steps that range from providing tax relief to working families, increasing the minimum wage, improving access to higher education and investing in areas that support well-paying jobs like infrastructure, research and clean energy. The Upskill Initiative is a public-private effort that is a critical part of that agenda, meant to create clear pathways for the over 20 million workers in front-line jobs who may too often lack the opportunity to progress into higher-paying jobs.
Developing the skills and abilities of these workers, and empowering them to contribute more at work, presents a significant opportunity to improve their wages and to increase the productivity and competitiveness of employers. Front-line workers are too often stuck because of three primary challenges: lack of access to training, which is often focused on workers who are already highly skilled; low uptake of training where it is available, due to limited awareness as well as difficulties in finding the time and money needed to take advantage of it; and a lack of clear information on pathways to promotions, which makes it hard for low wage workers to take the steps needed to advance.
Today’s White House Upskill Summit brings together employers, labor unions, foundations, educators, workforce leaders, non-profits and technologists who are committing to take action in the next year to enable more front-line workers to realize their full potential at work and advance into better paying jobs. The summit is also an opportunity to build on Vice President Biden’s comprehensive report released last summer that lays out successful strategies to train our nation’s workforce and widen the path to the middle class for more hard-working Americans.
A new White House report is also available here that includes new data on trends in employer training investments and highlights best practices and employer case studies. Click here to learn more about the Upskill commitments being announced today, which are summarized below.
To join these employers, unions, and technologists, share what you are doing to support the Upskill Initiative at Wh.gov.
Employers including 30 of the Fortune 500 and many small businesses are leading the way by taking steps within their own companies to end dead-end jobs, and enable workers to earn more over time.
Over 100 employers across the country, employing more than 5 million workers, are expanding access to on-the-job training and launching registered apprenticeship training programs, increasing uptake of these programs by making participation easier, cheaper, and faster, and clarifying career pathways for workers who want to get ahead.
More on-the-job training and apprenticeship opportunities, the “gold-standard of upskilling” that help workers get ahead, without having to leave their jobs to go back to school full-time.
Companies big and small, like IBM, Zurich Insurance, CVS, Daetwyler, Stober Drives and Optimax, are committing to start or expand apprenticeships in new industries as far-ranging as information technology, insurance, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.
Fortune 500 companies like Gap Inc., Capital One, McDonalds and Walmart are expanding partnerships with online educational organizations like LearnUp, Udacity and Cengage Learning to enable millions of front-line workers to earn credentials and develop the skills required for more senior roles.
Employers of all sizes including Pepsico, PG&E and Metaphase Technologies are setting internal goals to staff a certain percentage of their management and supervisory jobs from their front-line workforce, and leveraging on-the-job training programs to help meet those targets; others, like Orange Research are setting a goal for the percent of working hours that will be devoted to training.
Increasing uptake of training programs by building awareness and making it easier, cheaper and faster for front-line workers to benefit from these opportunities.
Companies across industries, such as Grifols and Partners HealthCare, are increasing uptake of tuition benefits by partnering with competency-based online programs, like College for America at Southern New Hampshire University, so tens of thousands of employees can use their benefits online to complete an accredited degree for free or close to free, and at their own pace.
Small businesses like R&R Transportation are providing employees with the necessary time and financial support to increase the number of workers with skills certifications; others, like Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are focusing on making training more of a company priority by talking about it more with employees.
Businesses like Discover and Amali Restaurant are testing how financial incentives can drive upward career mobility and accelerated job progression for employees.
Clarifying pathways to a promotion by articulating the skills better-paying jobs require, and providing self-assessments for workers to figure out how far away they are from having those skills today:
Businesses like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center are launching initiatives including talent management frameworks that will provide employees with a clear understanding of what differentiates success at each organizational level.
Companies like Kaiser Permanente and Bank of America are launching new online career portals that will provide employees and managers with tools, resources and training for skill enhancement and career development.
Major employers like AXA are making online gaming tools available to their employees to identify their strengths and develop a more granular understanding of their skills needs.
Employers are also working in partnership with government, unions, and philanthropy to expand the use of strategies like apprenticeships in new and growing fields.
The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour division is clarifying common employer misperceptions that may lead employers to be less likely to offer training to employees . DOL is publishing a new “mythbuster” document that stipulates how employers can more specifically determine when they are and when they are not required to compensate employees for voluntary training.
30 major employers are working with the Department of Labor to launch a new employer-to-employer outreach program called LEADERs (Leaders of Excellence in Registered Apprenticeship Development, Education, and Research) that helps business leaders learn from other businesses how to launch a successful Registered Apprenticeship program. Later this year, the Department of Labor will bring together major employers on expanding the use of Registered Apprenticeship to strengthen U.S. companies while providing workers with pathways to the middle class and beyond.
Focusing on the healthcare industry in particular, SEIU and AFSCME, together with their local unions and employer partners including Temple University Health System, Kaiser Permanente, Addus Healthcare, and the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes of New York, are joining together to create 1,700 apprenticeships for advanced home care aides, community health workers, and medical coders throughout six states.
Labor management partnerships like BEST Corp. Hospitality Training Center, District 1199C Training & Upgrading Fund, SEIU Healthcare NW Training Partnership and 1199SEIU Bill Michelson Home Care Education Fund, and unions like IBEW Local Union 43, the Carpenters’ District Council of Greater St. Louis and Vicinity, and UAW, are committing to expanding access to registered apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs.
Labor leaders such as local affiliates of SEIU and AFL-CIO, non-profits like Goodwill and industry groups such as the Western Association of Food Chains are focusing on expanding access to training and credentials in industries like retail and hospitality that employ millions of front-line workers.
Foundations like Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses are providing small business owners with a business education that promotes front-line talent development.
The private sector and tech leaders are spurring innovation and developing tools that disseminate best practices for employers and workers, so that more can follow those who are leading the way.
Recognizing and supporting employers that are upskilling: The Aspen Institute is coordinating a business-led UpSkill America campaign in partnership with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, the HR Policy Association, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, Business Leaders United for Workforce Partnerships, the Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board, the Bay Area Council, and the Small Business Majority. This coalition will work to recognize leading employers that provide expanded career opportunities for their workers, promote the widespread adoption of business policies and practices that increase economic opportunity for frontline workers, and cultivate public-private education and workforce development efforts that support and advance these initiatives.
Innovation that helps facilitate upskilling: XPRIZE is promoting innovation by announcing its commitment to design an incentivized prize competition aimed at spurring innovation and accelerating the rate of positive change in upskilling among American workers.
Tools for workers that are trying to get ahead: Glass Door is launching an On-the-Job Training Finder, an interactive, map-based tool to help job seekers easily search job opportunities, such as apprenticeships and trainee positions, in which they can learn new skills to advance their career while getting paid. LinkedIn is committing to help employers identify mentors for front-line workers by engaging interested senior employees in aspirational roles.
Best practice resources for employers: Deloitte Consulting and The Aspen Institute are launching A Guide to Upskilling America’s Frontline Workers that aims to deliver a structured resource to help businesses strengthen existing or jumpstart new upskilling initiatives. The National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS) will develop a Registered Apprenticeship Blueprint to help companies expedite implementation of customized apprenticeships that meet their talent needs.
The Upskill initiative builds on the Administration’s agenda to support job-driven training:
Proposed Rules for Reforming our Federal Workforce System. Last July, the President signed into law the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) – the most significant reform to our Federal workforce system in nearly 20 years. Last week, we issued proposed rules implementing WIOA that will move our entire system to be more job-driven. The law will also increase opportunities for work-based learning, including on-the-job training and Registered Apprenticeships.
Vice-President Biden’s Job-Driven Training Review. The President’s Upskill Initiative builds on the job-driven training review that the President asked the Vice President to lead in the 2013 State of the Union. Amongst other findings, the Vice President’s review identified employer training for front-line workers as an area in need of more job-driven training strategies to meet business needs and provide more workers with a path to the middle class.
American Apprenticeship Grants Competition. Last year, the Department of Labor launched a $100 million competition to spur partnerships to expand apprenticeships into high-growth fields like information technology, advanced manufacturing, and healthcare. The deadline for this application is April 30, 2015, and more information is available at the Grants.gov application page.
$100 million in New Federal Investments to Train and Connect More Workers to a Good Job in Technology and Other In-Demand Fields. The Administration is launching a $100 million H-1B grant competition by the Department of Labor to support innovative approaches to training and successfully employing low-skill individuals with barriers to training and employment including those with child care responsibilities, people with disabilities, disconnected youth, and limited English proficient workers, among others.
Launching a New $25 Million Competition for an Online Skills Academy that Will Leverage Technology to Offer Free and Open Online Courses of Study, helping students earn credentials online through participating accredited institutions, and will expand access to curricula designed to speed the time to credit and completion.
FY16 Budget Proposals to Expand Access to Quality Training and Career Advancement Opportunities. The President’s Budget includes measures that support upskilling through:
American Technical Training Fund would award $200 million in new competitive grants to support the development, operation and expansion of innovative, evidence-based job training programs in high-demand fields that provide a path to the middle class for low-income individuals. This could replicate successful models like Tennessee’s Applied Technology Centers whose graduates have impressive employment rates.
Doubling American Apprenticeships over Five Years: The President is calling on Congress to launch a $2 billion Apprenticeship Training Fund for states and regions to adopt comprehensive strategies ranging from economic incentives to stronger links to technical colleges to double the number of registered apprentices in America over the next five years.
Updating Licensing Requirements: The Budget proposes a $15 million increase for grants to States and partnerships of States for the purpose of identifying, exploring, and addressing areas where occupational licensing requirements create an unnecessary barrier to labor market entry or labor mobility and where interstate portability of licenses can support economic growth and improve economic opportunity.
UN AMBASSADOR POWER'S REMARKS ON YOUTH AND COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM
FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
U.S. Mission to the United Nations: Remarks at a UN Security Council Debate on the Maintenance of International Peace and Security: the Role of Youth in Countering Violent Extremism and Promoting Peace
04/23/2015 12:27 PM EDT
Samantha Power
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
New York, NY
April 23, 2015
AS DELIVERED
Thank you, your Royal Highness Crown Prince, for joining the Council to chair this meeting, your presence here is yet another testament to Jordan’s deep commitment to combatting violent extremism among youth and people of all ages.
This Monday, April 20th, six young Somali-American men – ages 19 to 21 – were charged in Minneapolis on terrorism related offenses. They had planned to travel to Syria to join ISIL. Five of the six were U.S. citizens, and one was a permanent resident.
The young men had reportedly been inspired in part by another Somali-American, Abdi Nur, who left the same city in May 2014, shortly after his 20th birthday, and joined ISIL in Syria. And they had in part been encouraged by one another – what is known as peer-to-peer recruiting – through regular meetings to plan their trip and discuss their violent ideology.
Their case is just one of the many recent instances in which young people have attempted to join ISIL or other terrorist groups. In some instances, as in the Minneapolis arrests, we have succeeded in stopping youth before they could reach their destination. In other instances, we have not, as happened in February, when three British girls – ages 15 to 16 – traveled to Turkey, and likely onwards to ISIL-controlled territory, where they presumably remain.
ISIL is showing increased sophistication in recruiting young people, particularly in virtual spaces. The group disseminates around ninety thousand tweets each day, and its members and supporters routinely co-opt trending hashtags to disseminate their messages. ISIL even reportedly developed a Twitter app last year that allows Twitter subscribers to hand over control of their feed to ISIL – allowing ISIL to tweet from the individual subscriber’s account, exponentially amplifying the reach of its messages. In February, ISIL posted a polished, 50-page guide online called, “The Hijrah to the Islamic State,” that instructs potential recruits how to make the journey to its territory – including everything from finding safe houses in Turkey, to what kind of backpack to bring, and how to answer questions from immigration officials without arousing suspicion. And it’s not just ISIL that is aggressively targeting children and youth – but al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, and other groups.
There is a clear consensus that we – and by we of course, I mean not only the United States, but all countries committed to combatting terrorist groups – must make countering violent extremism a central part of our counter terrorism efforts. And this is particularly true among children and teens, whose youth makes them especially vulnerable to recruitment. Yet even with increased attention to this problem, the reality is that we are being outspent, outflanked, and out-innovated by terrorist groups intent on recruiting new young members. We have to catch up – for their welfare, and for our collective security.
That is one of the reasons we are looking forward to the Secretary-General’s Plan of Action to Counter Violent Extremism, which we hope will galvanize the UN to take a leading role in empowering and uniting Member States to tackle this very grave problem. And it is one of the main reasons President Obama convened a White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism on February 19th. More than 60 governments took part in the summit – including most of the members of this Council – together with civil society representatives from over 50 countries and private sector leaders. And as many of you know, we are looking forward to a leaders summit on the margins of the General Assembly in September, to evaluate the progress that has been made and the challenges that most definitely remain to implement the White House’s CVE Agenda.
One of the participants in the White House’s February summit was a young Moroccan woman named Zineb Benalla. Zineb works for the Arab Center for Scientific Research, an NGO that, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, has helped lead an innovative effort to counter violent extremism in northern Mali. As you all know, terrorist groups seized large swaths of the region in 2012, and continue to carry out attacks and recruit young people. Zineb’s project was focused on reaching vulnerable youth studying in the region’s madrasas. Research showed that madrasa instructors were teaching only religious texts and focusing mainly on rote memorization; Zineb’s program aimed to broaden the curriculum to foster more critical thinking and reasoning skills – skills that help young people question, and ultimately reject, the narrow ideologies of terrorist groups.
Zineb did not go directly to the schools, knowing that she would be turned away. Instead, she met repeatedly with imams and elders in Timbuktu and Gao – gradually earning their trust over cups of tea. When eventually she laid out the proposal to start book clubs in the madrasas, they accepted. With the backing of the imams, these imams and these elders, students and teachers were given e-Readers, and allowed to download books that previously would have been considered “haram,” or sinful, such as works of philosophy and novels. She then organized workshops where she trained dozens of educators in how to teach the new material.
Now, this is a narrow program designed for a specific set of circumstances. But Zineb’s story demonstrates several key lessons about how to build efforts to counter violent extremism among young people.
First, education is of course essential to developing the critical thinking skills that empower youth to challenge violent extremist ideologies. We’ve seen similar efforts undertaken on a broader scale by the government of Morocco and others, Morocco is working to replace teachers and imams who promote violent extremist ideologies with ones who hold up the values of respect and dignity, and preach more moderate interpretations of Islam.
Second, the trust and support of local actors is critically important – and that includes not only government officials, but religious and civil society leaders, and even families. As the first and most important line of defense in protecting youth, communities need the tools to do their part. The Safe Spaces Initiative – a guide created by the Muslim Public Affairs Council to help communities implement a multi-tiered strategy of prevention, intervention, and ejection of violent extremist elements – is just one example of a resource that informs communities how to be more active partners.
Third, as others have stressed here today, we need to enlist youth themselves in leading this effort. Research shows that young people are more likely to listen to, and be influenced by, their peers. Yet too often, we approach youth as the passive recipients of campaigns to counter violent extremism, rather than active participants in shaping their strategy and spearheading their implementation. We’ve seen how powerful youth-led initiatives can be, including those that use satire. That was the approach Karim Farok adopted. An amateur Egyptian musician, Karim took an ISIL chant and remixed it into a pop song, posting his version on social media sites. While his action may at first glance look like a way of amplifying ISIL’s message, in reality Karim’s remix was a form of protest, because ISIL’s fundamentalist interpretation of Islam forbids music with instruments. By transgressing the group’s rules, Karim’s song encouraged others to express criticism as well, rather than be silenced by fear. Not only did his remix go viral, garnering hundreds of thousands of views, but it also spawned countless other musical and dancing spoofs of ISIL chants – a potent form of counter-extremist messaging that kids can relate to.
Of course, we must pursue other lines of effort in countering violent extremism among youth as well, such as strengthening laws and international coordination to stop the flow of young foreign terrorist fighters to battlefields, as we committed to do under Resolution 2178; and enlisting the private sector in amplifying our message, as Google Ideas has done through the launch of its Against Violent Extremism Network, which has given a platform to more than 500 rehabilitated former extremists. We need to do more on all of these fronts.
At the beginning, I spoke about the six young men from Minneapolis who were detained earlier this week. One of the main reasons that they were stopped from joining ISIL was because a young man who had originally planned to join with them experienced a change in conscience. He took a step back, he saw the group’s violent intentions for what they were, and he decided to report the group to law enforcement. Without his action, those young men may well have made it to ISIL-controlled territory, where they could have taken part in the group’s horrific atrocities. That young man’s choice shows how a single changed mind – just one person who starts to think differently, and more compassionately – can disrupt and ultimately stop a dangerous action by many people. That is a valuable lesson in countering violent extremism, and ultimately, it is what our efforts are all about.
Thank you.
U.S. Mission to the United Nations: Remarks at a UN Security Council Debate on the Maintenance of International Peace and Security: the Role of Youth in Countering Violent Extremism and Promoting Peace
04/23/2015 12:27 PM EDT
Samantha Power
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
New York, NY
April 23, 2015
AS DELIVERED
Thank you, your Royal Highness Crown Prince, for joining the Council to chair this meeting, your presence here is yet another testament to Jordan’s deep commitment to combatting violent extremism among youth and people of all ages.
This Monday, April 20th, six young Somali-American men – ages 19 to 21 – were charged in Minneapolis on terrorism related offenses. They had planned to travel to Syria to join ISIL. Five of the six were U.S. citizens, and one was a permanent resident.
The young men had reportedly been inspired in part by another Somali-American, Abdi Nur, who left the same city in May 2014, shortly after his 20th birthday, and joined ISIL in Syria. And they had in part been encouraged by one another – what is known as peer-to-peer recruiting – through regular meetings to plan their trip and discuss their violent ideology.
Their case is just one of the many recent instances in which young people have attempted to join ISIL or other terrorist groups. In some instances, as in the Minneapolis arrests, we have succeeded in stopping youth before they could reach their destination. In other instances, we have not, as happened in February, when three British girls – ages 15 to 16 – traveled to Turkey, and likely onwards to ISIL-controlled territory, where they presumably remain.
ISIL is showing increased sophistication in recruiting young people, particularly in virtual spaces. The group disseminates around ninety thousand tweets each day, and its members and supporters routinely co-opt trending hashtags to disseminate their messages. ISIL even reportedly developed a Twitter app last year that allows Twitter subscribers to hand over control of their feed to ISIL – allowing ISIL to tweet from the individual subscriber’s account, exponentially amplifying the reach of its messages. In February, ISIL posted a polished, 50-page guide online called, “The Hijrah to the Islamic State,” that instructs potential recruits how to make the journey to its territory – including everything from finding safe houses in Turkey, to what kind of backpack to bring, and how to answer questions from immigration officials without arousing suspicion. And it’s not just ISIL that is aggressively targeting children and youth – but al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, and other groups.
There is a clear consensus that we – and by we of course, I mean not only the United States, but all countries committed to combatting terrorist groups – must make countering violent extremism a central part of our counter terrorism efforts. And this is particularly true among children and teens, whose youth makes them especially vulnerable to recruitment. Yet even with increased attention to this problem, the reality is that we are being outspent, outflanked, and out-innovated by terrorist groups intent on recruiting new young members. We have to catch up – for their welfare, and for our collective security.
That is one of the reasons we are looking forward to the Secretary-General’s Plan of Action to Counter Violent Extremism, which we hope will galvanize the UN to take a leading role in empowering and uniting Member States to tackle this very grave problem. And it is one of the main reasons President Obama convened a White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism on February 19th. More than 60 governments took part in the summit – including most of the members of this Council – together with civil society representatives from over 50 countries and private sector leaders. And as many of you know, we are looking forward to a leaders summit on the margins of the General Assembly in September, to evaluate the progress that has been made and the challenges that most definitely remain to implement the White House’s CVE Agenda.
One of the participants in the White House’s February summit was a young Moroccan woman named Zineb Benalla. Zineb works for the Arab Center for Scientific Research, an NGO that, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, has helped lead an innovative effort to counter violent extremism in northern Mali. As you all know, terrorist groups seized large swaths of the region in 2012, and continue to carry out attacks and recruit young people. Zineb’s project was focused on reaching vulnerable youth studying in the region’s madrasas. Research showed that madrasa instructors were teaching only religious texts and focusing mainly on rote memorization; Zineb’s program aimed to broaden the curriculum to foster more critical thinking and reasoning skills – skills that help young people question, and ultimately reject, the narrow ideologies of terrorist groups.
Zineb did not go directly to the schools, knowing that she would be turned away. Instead, she met repeatedly with imams and elders in Timbuktu and Gao – gradually earning their trust over cups of tea. When eventually she laid out the proposal to start book clubs in the madrasas, they accepted. With the backing of the imams, these imams and these elders, students and teachers were given e-Readers, and allowed to download books that previously would have been considered “haram,” or sinful, such as works of philosophy and novels. She then organized workshops where she trained dozens of educators in how to teach the new material.
Now, this is a narrow program designed for a specific set of circumstances. But Zineb’s story demonstrates several key lessons about how to build efforts to counter violent extremism among young people.
First, education is of course essential to developing the critical thinking skills that empower youth to challenge violent extremist ideologies. We’ve seen similar efforts undertaken on a broader scale by the government of Morocco and others, Morocco is working to replace teachers and imams who promote violent extremist ideologies with ones who hold up the values of respect and dignity, and preach more moderate interpretations of Islam.
Second, the trust and support of local actors is critically important – and that includes not only government officials, but religious and civil society leaders, and even families. As the first and most important line of defense in protecting youth, communities need the tools to do their part. The Safe Spaces Initiative – a guide created by the Muslim Public Affairs Council to help communities implement a multi-tiered strategy of prevention, intervention, and ejection of violent extremist elements – is just one example of a resource that informs communities how to be more active partners.
Third, as others have stressed here today, we need to enlist youth themselves in leading this effort. Research shows that young people are more likely to listen to, and be influenced by, their peers. Yet too often, we approach youth as the passive recipients of campaigns to counter violent extremism, rather than active participants in shaping their strategy and spearheading their implementation. We’ve seen how powerful youth-led initiatives can be, including those that use satire. That was the approach Karim Farok adopted. An amateur Egyptian musician, Karim took an ISIL chant and remixed it into a pop song, posting his version on social media sites. While his action may at first glance look like a way of amplifying ISIL’s message, in reality Karim’s remix was a form of protest, because ISIL’s fundamentalist interpretation of Islam forbids music with instruments. By transgressing the group’s rules, Karim’s song encouraged others to express criticism as well, rather than be silenced by fear. Not only did his remix go viral, garnering hundreds of thousands of views, but it also spawned countless other musical and dancing spoofs of ISIL chants – a potent form of counter-extremist messaging that kids can relate to.
Of course, we must pursue other lines of effort in countering violent extremism among youth as well, such as strengthening laws and international coordination to stop the flow of young foreign terrorist fighters to battlefields, as we committed to do under Resolution 2178; and enlisting the private sector in amplifying our message, as Google Ideas has done through the launch of its Against Violent Extremism Network, which has given a platform to more than 500 rehabilitated former extremists. We need to do more on all of these fronts.
At the beginning, I spoke about the six young men from Minneapolis who were detained earlier this week. One of the main reasons that they were stopped from joining ISIL was because a young man who had originally planned to join with them experienced a change in conscience. He took a step back, he saw the group’s violent intentions for what they were, and he decided to report the group to law enforcement. Without his action, those young men may well have made it to ISIL-controlled territory, where they could have taken part in the group’s horrific atrocities. That young man’s choice shows how a single changed mind – just one person who starts to think differently, and more compassionately – can disrupt and ultimately stop a dangerous action by many people. That is a valuable lesson in countering violent extremism, and ultimately, it is what our efforts are all about.
Thank you.
Monday, April 27, 2015
AG LYNCH MAKES REMARKS AT SWEARING-IN CEREMONY
FROM: U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at Swearing-In by Vice President Joe Biden
Washington, DCUnited States ~ Monday, April 27, 2015
As I look out over all of you gathered here today, my overwhelming reaction is one of profound gratitude. I must, of course, thank the President for his faith in me in asking me to lead the department that I love to even greater heights.
Thank you, Mr. Vice President, for your presence and your comments here today, and for your steadfast support and wise counsel throughout the process. I also must thank Senators Schumer and Leahy for their support, over the years and now, and for making the floor of the U.S. Senate a welcoming place for me and my family. And of course, my wonderful family. As you can see, we’re quite a force multiplier!
Many of you have come to know my father through this process. He has been at every hearing and every vote. But he didn’t just start now. I remember looking up as a young Assistant U.S. Attorney starting my first trial and seeing him there – and he came to every one thereafter. He has encouraged me in all things, even when my choices were not the ones he would have made for me. In that, he has been the best of fathers. Without him, I would not be here today, being sworn in as the 83rd Attorney General of the United States, just one week after his 83rd birthday.
And my mother, who could not be here today but is never far from my thoughts or my heart. She grew up in a world where she was always told what she could not do or could not be, but always knew in her heart that she could soar. She did what would have seemed impossible in the small North Carolina town of her youth. She raised a daughter whom she always told, whatever the dream, whether lawyer, prosecutor or even Attorney General, “of course you can.”
I must also thank my wonderful husband, who has supported all of my choices and my dreams. I would not trade his love and support for all the riches in the world – because to me, they are all the riches in the world.
Thanks also go to my colleagues and friends here in the department, in the Eastern District of New York, and beyond. But even more than that, tremendous thanks go to the literally thousands of people, many of whom I have never met, who have expressed their support throughout the process. From the sisterhood of my sorority and all the Greeks who came together, to churches and schools and people on the street who have stopped me and said just a word or two – please know that those few words sometimes made all the difference in the world to me as I traveled this road.
I thank you all, as I prepare to join once again with the outstanding people of the Department of Justice. I have been privileged to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you twice before from the Eastern District of New York. You are the ones who make real the promise of justice and redress for all Americans. I am honored beyond words to step into the larger role today as your Attorney General, as we continue the core work of our mission – the protection of the American people.
All of the people here at the department are here because at some point in our lives, we all said, “I want to be a lawyer.” “I want to be a law enforcement officer.” “I want to be a federal agent.” “I want to be someone’s hero.”
At the heart of that – for me and for all of us – whether attorney or agent, staff or principal – is the desire to leave this world a better place for us having been a part of it.
The challenge in that – for you, for me, for all of us that love this department and love the law – is to use the law to that end. To not just represent the law and enforce it, but use it to make real the promise of America, the promise of fairness and equality, “of liberty and justice for all.” We are all just here for a time – whether in this building or even on this earth. But the values we hold dear will live on long after we have left this stage. Our responsibility, while we are here, is to breathe life into them; to imbue them with the strength of our convictions and the weight of our efforts.
I know this can be done.
Because I am here to tell you, if a little girl from North Carolina who used to tell her grandfather in the fields to lift her up on the back of his mule, so she could see “way up high, Granddaddy,” can become the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America, then we can do anything.
We can imbue our criminal justice system with both strength and fairness, for the protection of both the needs of victims and the rights of all. We can restore trust and faith both in our laws and in those of us who enforce them. We can protect the most vulnerable among us from the scourge of modern-day slavery – so antithetical to the values forged in blood in this country. We can protect the growing cyber world. We can give those in our care both protection from terrorism and the security of their civil liberties. We will do this as we have accomplished all things both great and small – working together, moving forward, and using justice as our compass.
I cannot wait to begin that journey.
Thank you all for being here, both today and in my life.
Thank you.
Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at Swearing-In by Vice President Joe Biden
Washington, DCUnited States ~ Monday, April 27, 2015
As I look out over all of you gathered here today, my overwhelming reaction is one of profound gratitude. I must, of course, thank the President for his faith in me in asking me to lead the department that I love to even greater heights.
Thank you, Mr. Vice President, for your presence and your comments here today, and for your steadfast support and wise counsel throughout the process. I also must thank Senators Schumer and Leahy for their support, over the years and now, and for making the floor of the U.S. Senate a welcoming place for me and my family. And of course, my wonderful family. As you can see, we’re quite a force multiplier!
Many of you have come to know my father through this process. He has been at every hearing and every vote. But he didn’t just start now. I remember looking up as a young Assistant U.S. Attorney starting my first trial and seeing him there – and he came to every one thereafter. He has encouraged me in all things, even when my choices were not the ones he would have made for me. In that, he has been the best of fathers. Without him, I would not be here today, being sworn in as the 83rd Attorney General of the United States, just one week after his 83rd birthday.
And my mother, who could not be here today but is never far from my thoughts or my heart. She grew up in a world where she was always told what she could not do or could not be, but always knew in her heart that she could soar. She did what would have seemed impossible in the small North Carolina town of her youth. She raised a daughter whom she always told, whatever the dream, whether lawyer, prosecutor or even Attorney General, “of course you can.”
I must also thank my wonderful husband, who has supported all of my choices and my dreams. I would not trade his love and support for all the riches in the world – because to me, they are all the riches in the world.
Thanks also go to my colleagues and friends here in the department, in the Eastern District of New York, and beyond. But even more than that, tremendous thanks go to the literally thousands of people, many of whom I have never met, who have expressed their support throughout the process. From the sisterhood of my sorority and all the Greeks who came together, to churches and schools and people on the street who have stopped me and said just a word or two – please know that those few words sometimes made all the difference in the world to me as I traveled this road.
I thank you all, as I prepare to join once again with the outstanding people of the Department of Justice. I have been privileged to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you twice before from the Eastern District of New York. You are the ones who make real the promise of justice and redress for all Americans. I am honored beyond words to step into the larger role today as your Attorney General, as we continue the core work of our mission – the protection of the American people.
All of the people here at the department are here because at some point in our lives, we all said, “I want to be a lawyer.” “I want to be a law enforcement officer.” “I want to be a federal agent.” “I want to be someone’s hero.”
At the heart of that – for me and for all of us – whether attorney or agent, staff or principal – is the desire to leave this world a better place for us having been a part of it.
The challenge in that – for you, for me, for all of us that love this department and love the law – is to use the law to that end. To not just represent the law and enforce it, but use it to make real the promise of America, the promise of fairness and equality, “of liberty and justice for all.” We are all just here for a time – whether in this building or even on this earth. But the values we hold dear will live on long after we have left this stage. Our responsibility, while we are here, is to breathe life into them; to imbue them with the strength of our convictions and the weight of our efforts.
I know this can be done.
Because I am here to tell you, if a little girl from North Carolina who used to tell her grandfather in the fields to lift her up on the back of his mule, so she could see “way up high, Granddaddy,” can become the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America, then we can do anything.
We can imbue our criminal justice system with both strength and fairness, for the protection of both the needs of victims and the rights of all. We can restore trust and faith both in our laws and in those of us who enforce them. We can protect the most vulnerable among us from the scourge of modern-day slavery – so antithetical to the values forged in blood in this country. We can protect the growing cyber world. We can give those in our care both protection from terrorism and the security of their civil liberties. We will do this as we have accomplished all things both great and small – working together, moving forward, and using justice as our compass.
I cannot wait to begin that journey.
Thank you all for being here, both today and in my life.
Thank you.
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