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CAPRONI: From our perspective, the problem is not with the law, Although, I would note that unlike other areas that our agents -- where they get these sorts of records, there are very specific rules and they have to wend through those nes. That, in my sense, is our responsibility as the lawyers to make sure that the agents understand what they can do and what they can't do. CAPRONI: Again, there is no doubt that the problem with the national security letlers was a colossal failure on our part to have adequate internal controls and compliance programs in place. The laws themselves provide us with a needed tool. And it's a tool that we should use responsibly. SMITH: OK, thank you. Mr. Fine, Ms. Caproni, why are national letters of security -- national security letters important in our investigation of terrorism? CAPRONI: They are critical. They are -- national security letters provide us the basic building blocks that we need to build an investigation. For those of you who had prior criminal AUS A experience -- and | know a number of you did -- you're used to issuing grand jury subpoenas to provide -- to obtain telephone records and banking records. Frequently, in terrorism investigations, we don't have an open criminal investigation, In fact, that was one of the things that the 9/11 Commission really encouraged us to do, and this committee encouraged us to do, and the intelligence committees, 10 move more - - when we're thinking about terrorism case, move from simply a criminal mindset to thinking in intelligence mindset. So a national security letter is the tool that we use in order to get the basic building blocks of those investigations: again, like phone records for almost every terrorism, financial records when we're building terrorism financing cases. So without national security letters, our national security investigations would really be stopped before they even got started. SMITH: OK, thank you. Mr, Fine? FINE: I do think that they are important investigative tools. They can connect terrorist individuals with terrorist groups. They can find out where terrorist financing can occur. They're indispensable in counterintelligence investigations. And the FBI did tell us, from