Mike Lawler Warns That China And Russia Could Use A 'Guise Of Counterterrorism' To Build Influence

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During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) asked Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Bureau of Counterterrorism Gregory LoGerfo about other countries using counterterrorism initiatives to build influence in other regions.

Transcript

00:00I thank the representative from Illinois. I now recognize myself for a second round of questioning.

00:07Mr. Lajurfa, how does CT coordinate with other agencies and embassies to ensure its diplomatic

00:14and programming efforts complement U.S. efforts on great power competition, particularly in regions

00:22where China, Russia, or Iran may seek influence under the guise of counterterrorism support,

00:27and how does the budget request reflect this responsibility to carry out this mission?

00:34Mr. Chairman, thank you. We have comprehensive interagency coordination. I would say since January 20th,

00:46the strategic deliberation and the review of CT counterterrorism or of terrorism hotspots around

00:53the world has been accelerated, deliberate, and proper. We work with the intelligence community

01:02and our coordinating capacity, also with the Department of Defense, combatant commanders,

01:07of course, within the Department of State. We work with the regional bureaus and we work with

01:12other security-related bureaus to make sure we're postured to address counterterrorism threats,

01:19threats, terrorism threats. And the other thing, to answer your question, with respect to Asia,

01:25we are 100 percent in sync with our Asia Bureau, with other colleagues across the interagency to make

01:35sure the relationship between terrorist threats and security threats and our partnerships in Asia is 100

01:45100 percent synchronized. I have led diplomatic representation to the Quad with Australia and Japan

01:52and India. Those are partners in the region that have shared security interests, and that's just one

01:59example of diplomatic engagements that we have to secure our strategic objectives in the Indo-Pacific

02:07region with respect to security and counterterrorism. The CT Bureau receives 1.6 million from the worldwide

02:17security protection account in fiscal year 26. Given the Bureau's responsibilities, do you believe that is

02:23sufficient to support surge operations, special events, and training?

02:28I do believe our overall budget request is proper. With respect to your specific question, I'm confident

02:37that it is, but I will get back to you with more specific information. Okay. With various functional

02:44bureaus addressing counterterrorism adjacent issues like cyber security, proliferation, and the irregular

02:50warfare, how is CT's budget and programming de-conflicted from those of other offices,

02:57and is there a need for new legislative direction or internal budgetary coordination mechanisms to prevent

03:05redundancy? Thank you. Absolutely. And again, going back to it, the reorganization provides us the best

03:13opportunity to eliminate unnecessary overlap and duplication of effort with, for example, our Narcotics and

03:24Law Enforcement Bureau, our Political Military Affairs Bureau, and other bureaus in the undersecretariat

03:30of security policy. And we are off to a very good start in the past, just in the past couple weeks with

03:36looking at, uh, a given country and saying, okay, you've got, uh, funding for this issue and we've

03:43got funding for this, a very similar issue and de-conflicting. It's, uh, it's in real time now and it's

03:49something that, uh, I'm very confident will yield better results for the taxpayer and better results for

03:55the administration's, uh, priorities of keeping America safe and secure. Appreciate it. I yield, uh,

04:01uh, the remainder of my time. I now recognize

04:11you

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