Testimony of

David Keith

Campaign Chairman

National Association to Protect Children (PROTECT)

Before the

U.S. House Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations

Public Witness Hearing

May 20, 2010

Chairman Dicks, Ranking Member Young, distinguished members, thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. Mr. Chairman, in 1980, when you and I were 26, I enjoyed filming “An Officer and a Gentleman” in Washington’s 6th district, and it’s a pleasure to speak to you these scant years later, at 56, about something to which I have dedicated the final chapter of my life. The members of this Committee remember well how shocked and appalled millions of Americans were to see the graphic photographs of cruelty and abuse in the Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib. I ask for your full attention as I describe something much, much worse.

Abu Ghraib photos show dogs attacking naked adults. In 2007, a Cyber cop testified to Congress he had seen photographs of a young girl, in tears, tied to a chair, being raped by a dog.1

Abu Ghraib photos show adults tied up in prison cells. In 2006, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified to Congress about a video of “a toddler tied up with towels, desperately crying in pain, while she is being brutally raped and sodomized by an adult man.”2

The Abu Ghraib photos are eclipsed—in volume and savagery—by the millions of images of little

children being raped, tortured, sodomized and bleeding that flood the Internet to fill the bottomless appetite of a global pedophile marketplace.3

Child exploitation is the great blind spot to a homeland security establishment that is focused on protecting our ports, financial assets and intellectual property… but is bafflingly oblivious to international criminal networks soliciting the filmed abuse of American children. Children in U.S. military families are no exception.

A 2008 investigation by The London Times delivered a stunning indictment to our cyber-security response when it reported British officials had found “secret coded messages… embedded into childpornographic images, and paedophile websites,” because this is “a secure way of passing information between terrorists.”4

Internet-facilitated child exploitation is investigated by four military criminal investigative organizations, or MCIOs: the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the Army Criminal Investigative Division and the Coast Guard Investigative Service.

These MCIO’s do their best, but their capacity is a national disgrace. Only half a dozen of their investigators are trained and ready to conduct online investigations. This is about the size of the police force of Forks, Washington, Mr. Chairman, to protect the entire U.S. military. This small ghost patrol knows the location of hundreds of child exploitation suspects and their victims in the U.S. military right now, but they cannot take action due to sheer lack of resources.  Here are examples of the kind of cases that MCIOs investigate:

 Marine Staff Sgt. Tyrone Hadnott was arrested in Okinawa for the rape of a 14-year old girl, locking down a U.S. military installation and causing an international incident.

 Senior Airman Timothy Miller sexually assaulted a toddler he was "babysitting" at a U.S.military base, doing traumatic damage to a military service family.

 Army Staff Sgt. Christopher Barbieri was convicted of child pornography after a child disclosed he had sexually abused her since she was 11. New reports say Barbieri showed her a video, saying "that's what little girls do."

 Command Master Chief Edward E. Scott of Naval Base Kitsap in Seattle was arrested after he was caught attempting to arrange sex with two 12 year-old children.

Last month, PROTECT, coordinated a meeting of the best and the brightest. At the table here in Washington were federal and state law enforcement agents, computer scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Cray, makers of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. We posed a simple question: “If America asked them to attack the problem of child exploitation, what might be possible?” Since that meeting, Cray has begun a research and development project that could dramatically change the game for law enforcement. About a dozen computer scientists at Oak Ridge National Lab are developing – without funding – new tools for locating child pornographers and their victims. The information giants LexisNexis, Google and Microsoft are all engaged in this or similar attacks on the problem. The one indispensible partner not fully participating is the United States government. In addition to underfunded MCIOs, the ICE Cyber Crimes Center (C3) took crippling budget cuts this year. The Department of Justice also lags far behind, leaving the National Internet Crimes Against Children Data System (NIDS) and the PROTECT Our Children Act –which reshaped our national child exploitation response—unfunded. Shame on us. Shame on our great country.Modest emergency funding from this Congress in a simple, three-pronged attack will significantly advance the war against child predators in the military and those attacking our homeland

Provide at least $2 million in Defense funding to the four Military Criminal Investigation Organizations for investigation of child exploitation and for the development and deployment of new technology.

 Provide at least $10 million in Homeland Security funding to the ICE Cyber Crimes Center to for the specific purpose of research and development in high speed computing and related technology.

 Provide at least $2 million in Justice funding for the implementation of the NIDS computer platform, as authorized by the PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008.

I understand that two of these proposals for funding are beyond the purview of this subcommittee. However, no piecemeal attack will be effective or an efficient use of precious taxpayer dollars, and I ask each of you to champion this simple three-pronged solution with the full House Appropriations Committee.

Finally, let me share one other project that PROTECT is working on that is gathering Congressional momentum. The “Hero to Hero” bill would provide financial assistance and training to returning and disabled veterans, allowing them to transition into jobs combating child exploitation and abuse. Allowing them, literally, to go from hero to hero Since the dawn of history, men have gone off to war understanding that they were leaving behind what they held most dear. Protecting our children and families is why we fight, it is why we are all here today. Given that our children face this clear and present danger, we cannot fund wars overseas without first funding this war at home. It will take your leadership, right now, to make that happen.

1 Prepared Statement of Special Agent Flint Waters, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, Before the House

Judiciary Committee, September 2007.

2 Prepared Statement of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales Before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and

Urban Affairs Concerning Sexual Exploitation of Children on the Internet, Washington, D.C., September 19, 2006.

3 For a discussion of the full magnitude of child exploitation in the U.S., please refer to House Energy and Commerce

hearings on “Sexual Exploitation of Children Over the Internet,” May 4, 2006, questioning by Rep. Joe Barton.4 Times, “Link between child porn and Muslim terrorists discovered in police raids,” October 17, 2008.