Now, as howling winds echo across the snow-covered reaches of the wild northwest, the Quaker Oaks Company makers a Quaker Pop Wheat, and Quaker Pop Rice, the delicious cereal shot from guns. In cooperation with the Mutual Broadcasting System, present by special recording, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. It's Yukon King, swiftest and strongest lead dog of the northwest, breaking the trail for Sergeant Preston of the northwest mounted police in history's relentless pursuit of lawbreakers. And King on your hands, King! Gold, gold discovered in the Yukon, a stampede to the Klondike in the wild race for riches. Back to the days of the Gold Rush, and the adventures of Sergeant Preston and his wonder dog, Yukon King, as they beat the challenge of the Yukon. Our adventure will begin in just a moment. Enemy bombers can now reach any part of these United States. A devastating air attack could be launched against us at any moment. To meet this threat, we must have early warning. That's why one million civilian volunteers are desperately needed in the ground observer corps. To meet this threat of a surprise attack, our armed forces and radar network are on the job day and night, but radar has its limitations. Hostile aircraft could sneak through undetected. Our defenses are incomplete without a strong ground observer corps. And one million volunteers, men, women, retired people and teenagers, are desperately needed. Just a few hours a week of your spare time, that's all you need to give. Do your part. Contact your civil defense office and join the ground observer corps today. This message is brought to you as a public service. Black-eyed young man stepped forward and introduced himself. I am Peter Caron, sir. You've been most proud. I had a message from a Mr. Dimitri. Say yes. That is what he chooses to call himself in Dawson. I shall take you to his room. At least there. Chooses to call himself? What's his real name? Dimitri. It's the Mr. which is a little misleading. However, title is of no importance in the Yukon, is it? Could be useful as a means of identification. I'm sure that Mr. Dimitri will identify himself sufficiently. I'm only his secretary. I can't speak for him. This is the room. The huge black-bearded man who was lying on the bed wore a silk dressing gown. There was a heavy gold-signet ring on the fourth finger of the hand he extended to the sergeant. Sergeant Preston. How do you do? Uh, cheerfully, Sergeant Peter. At once. Your notes said your business was urgent, Mr. Dimitri. It is, to me, if you please, Sergeant. Oh, thanks. Now then. Yes, how shall I begin? When I came to Dawson, it was with the full expectation that someone would try to murder me. It was with expectation and with hope. Your hope to be killed? No, no, no. I hope that an attempt would be made on my life. You see, there is only one man who would try to kill me up here. And he is a stranger, complete stranger. It is only by his actions that he could reveal himself to me. Why should only one want to kill you? I shall come to that. First, you should know that the attempt has been made on my life. I can describe him to you. Let's have it. He's about five feet eight or nine, sleight of bill with graying hair. The night he was wearing a gray suit and the hat which was pulled down over his forehead. Still, it was not possible to conceal a scar which ran across his cheek in his sore. If he's in Dawson, we'll find him.  Yes, he has in his possession a diamond which does not belong to him. He is aware that I am searching for the diamond.  Let us say I am a special agent. Let us say what's in a name, detective, or a special agent. You're on the trail of a stolen diamond. And your butter gives me all the details of the theft. He's a very large stone sergeant, nearly 30 carats. He belongs to a beautiful lady of the highest rank who was, shall we say, indiscreet in her choice of friends during a recent stay in New York City. Because of this indiscretion, it was impossible for her to appeal to the American police. There would have been grave personal consequences if the loss of the stone had been made public. Therefore, the task of recovering it was placed in my hand. Now, from New York I traced it to San Francisco. There I learned through various sources that it had been brought up here. No, we'll try to find the man who shot it, Joe. I'll get started on that once. Good night, gentlemen. Good night, Sergeant. On his return to headquarters, the sergeant wrote out a description of the man with a scar, preparatory to alerting the other members in the force. He had just finished it when the door of his office opened and castable down he had it. Sergeant. Oh, yes, Jim. A few men just came in. They reported finding a dead man down near the waterfront. Dead? From natural causes? No, Sergeant. Murdered. Shot through the heart. Any identification? No, they looked through his pockets. They were empty. A slight man wearing a gray suit and hat. Oh? He had a scar across his left cheek. I'll take charge of the case, Jim. We'll continue our adventure in just a moment. Say, kids, which would you rather do? Read about your favorite baseball team in the papers or see a game on the screen or be right in the ballpark, yelling for the players on your team, eating hot dogs, drinking soda pop and having the time of your life. Golly, nothing beats the fun in a ballpark. Come out to the game now as guests of a major or minor league team. Walk right through the gate without paying a cent if you are 12 years or younger and bring mom or dad or another paying adult relative. You can now get a free baseball ticket right inside a package of Quaker Puff Wheat or Quaker Puff Rice or Muffet Shredded Wheat or by Quaker Pakotin and get two free baseball tickets. Names of teams and dates are on every ticket. Get in on the fun. Right away, get a free baseball ticket package of Quaker Puff Wheat or Rice, Muffet Shredded Wheat or Quaker Pakotin. Bring the whole family to the ball game. You'll all have a picnic. Now to continue. Bill Caldwell, the mate of the Margaret O and an old friend of the sergeants was one of the two men who had reported the murder. The other was a young American called Tom Conlon. The sergeant started for the waterfront with them at once and King, who had been waiting outside headquarters for his master, shot it along beside them. Now then, Bill, how'd you happen to find the body? Well, young Conlon and I were sitting in the war. We were just talking about this and that, but all of a sudden we heard a shot. It seemed to come from between the Yukon Company warehouse and the one next to it. Both of us figured it was a shot right off in the town. That's right. So we decided to investigate and we found the body. How long ago was this? Only a few minutes ago. I made sure the man was dead and come to the look through his pockets. Why did you do that, Conlon? Well, neither of us recognized the man, sergeant. We thought there might be some papers or perhaps a wallet. They shouldn't have been touched. Well, it was nothing in his pockets, sergeant. Nothing at all. We didn't move the body. Flying right where we found it. I called one of my boys to keep watch over it while we came for you. See anyone around, Bill? Anyone who might have fired the shot? Well, I hesitate to say this, sergeant. It's either yes or no. Well, yes, I did see someone. As we turned in between the buildings, I saw a man at the prairie in the crossing front street. Then you described him? Well, I think I know who it was, sergeant. It was only the moonlight. I'm not sure. Who do you think it was? Ben Rappley. I don't recognize the man. Well, he's new. He was one of our passengers on the last trip. Just landed the other day. The town knows him. Well, I'm not a friend of his, but I was on the market, too. Did you see him tonight? I'm no sure that Billy. It could have been that way. He's a big man with red hair, sergeant. If you want to question me, you shouldn't be hard to find. What, under falling? Well, we hadn't found the dead man when we saw him. Afterwards, we did take a look up down front street. He disappeared. Well, this is the Yukon warehouse between this building and the next one. Yeah. And here we are, straight down towards the river. There's Jack, and you can see the dead man lying on the ground. After the coroner's examination, the dead man was moved to headquarters, and Dmitry was called from the palace hotel to view the body. Was the man who fired a shot at you earlier this evening? Yes, sergeant, it is. The diamond, what of the diamond? There was nothing in his pockets, and I found him.  We're looking for the murderer. You may be able to help us find him. Well, I do not see how. You'd better tell me everything you learned from your various sources in San Francisco. About the diamond? About the man who might have it. Well, by the time it reached San Francisco, it was in the hands of a well-organized band of jewel thieves. One of their number was sent up here to dispose of it. This man. What's his name? Oh, he had many aliases. Scar Milano, for one. What about the other members of the gang? According to my information, only one man was sent up here. As confederates must have trusted this Milano a great deal. You were... you believed they had him followed? Why not, if only to make sure he didn't double-cross them. I see your point. For instance, Ben Rafferty. Who's he? Big Red. You've heard of him? Yes, I have. Another member of the gang? No, not of the same one. He's a member of a rival gang. Well, Ben Rafferty, or Big Red, as you call him, was seen near the warehouse where Milano was killed. Sure, then he has the diamond. We're looking for him. I'd like to check our description with you. Red hair, a powerful man. That is all I can tell you. He isn't registered at any of the hotels. Do you know of any friends he might have in Dawson? No, Sergeant. Yes? I have another witness who thinks he can identify the body. Sundayman, constable. That will be all, Dimitri. Thank you, Sergeant. Well, excuse me, please. Sure thing. Howdy, Sergeant. Oh, Mike Wilson. Is that his body underneath the blanket? Yes, Mike. Do you know him? I do. His name is Miller. Another alias. Did you just happen to meet him around town? Well, he's been living with me for the past two weeks over in Shanty Town. But I never knew him before. I was talking to him one night in Monte Carlo, and he wanted to move out of the hotel, and I suggested my place. Strange little man, Sergeant. He acted as if he was afraid of something all the time. He had good reason. Yeah? He was a crook, huh? Absolutely. Well, I'm sure you're on the right track hunting for the big man with red hair. Why, Mike? Miller was afraid of him all right. He caught a glimpse of him last night. He was in the Monte Carlo again. Miller insisted on leaving at once to the back door. Any idea of where we can find Rafferty? That's the redhead? Yeah. Well, so I'm earlier this evening. A number of people have. Yeah, he was with Barrett. Barrett? You know Barrett? That fully Englishman, Muckluck Jackson, hired to act as his butler when he built his mansion downriver? Of course, but Muckluck's gone to the States. Barrett living in town now? No. He's still living on the big place. All by himself. That caretaker, Sergeant. He may not be all by himself if he and Rafferty are friends. Thanks, Mac. This is the best lead we have. I'm going to follow it myself. Jim, Mac's given me a lead on Rafferty. Sergeant, he might have only been pestered in the time of day with Barrett. It's worth investigating. Barrett's the caretaker of the Jackson House downriver, Jim. I'll see if Rafferty's there and question Barrett. Hold the fort until I get back. Bye, Sergeant. Come on, King. Round to the stable, boy. We're going somewhere. As the Sergeant turned the corner of the headquarters building, a rider raced past him. A king that looked like Dimitri under where he's headed so fast. More I see of him, fella. The last night's trusty. Well, finding Rafferty's our first job, boy. Come on. Muckluck Jackson was the freest spender of all the Bonanza millionaires. And the great white house he had built downriver from Dawson was one of the showplaces of the Yukon. The furnishings had been shipped all the way from New York. And Muckluck had spared no expense. When he was in residence, there was a party every night and every window blazed with light. Now the house was dark and seemed deserted. But there was a saddled horse stitched with tree near the entrance. Pull buggy. Pull buggy. We've been following Dimitri, King. I'm sure that's the horse he was raiding. Do you like the looks of the place, boy? Sergeant Preston. Your name is Barrett. Quite correct, Sergeant. Mr. Jackson's can't take him. But if you're looking for him... I'm not. Then may I ask a few questions, Barrett? May I come in? Of course. Thank you. But please, not your dog. If cause our muddy rugs, he'd ruin them. Oh, very well. You stay out here, King. This way, Sergeant. The small parlor. This is about the only room I use when I'm all alone. Are you all alone? Please sit down. Yes. Yes, I'm quite alone. What about Mr. Dimitri? Dimitri? There's horses outside. No, Sergeant, you're mistaken. That's my horse. I was just about to ride to Dawson. Perhaps you'll ride with me. I'll answer your questions on the way. I prefer asking them here. As you wish. I concern a man named Rafferty. I don't know the name. You were seen talking with him this season in Dawson. Well, one talks to many people in Dawson. He's very large with red hair. Oh, yes, I do remember such a person. I only spoke to him for a few moments. I had no idea what his name was. And you've never heard of him, Mr. Dimitri? Never. That yell should refresh your memories. Sergeant, say if you have a gun. I know. All right, march ahead of me into the next room. Harry, open that door. In the next room, Dimitri and then Rafferty were rolling on the floor, starting for the possession of a gun. Quickly, the sergeant moved in and grabbed him. That's enough. Stand up for the bill. Your name, Rafferty? Yeah. You're under arrest. What for? Suspicion of murder.  He was holding a gun on me. But he turned his head to listen to what you were saying in the next room. I took my chance. I'd like to know how you happened to be here, Dimitri. I should not have come. I should have told you my suspicion. What suspicion? That big red might be here. It is well known in San Francisco that this barret used to be a member of his gang. You know, the more you talk about the San Francisco underworld, the more certain I am that you've been personally connected with it. What do you mean by that? He's got you, tag count. Quiet. Why should I be? You're absolutely right, sergeant. This is Count Charlie, one of the slickest confidence men on the coast. He's up here for the same reason I am. To get the princess's diamond, only he uses different methods than I do. I'm beginning to understand him. His plan was to let the northwest-mounted police recover the diamond and get possession of it to forged papers. Yeah, maybe so. Well, your method was murder. Listen, Milano stole the diamond from me down in Prisco. I only wanted to get it back. He pulled a gun on me first. I shot himself to death. You're under arrest. And anything you say may be taken down and used as evidence against you. I raise the diamond. In the safe in the next room, I'll get it for you, sergeant. I was dragged into this deal. I wanted no part of it. Believe me. It was only the... Sergeant, look out! Peter, get him! Peter Caron had appeared in the doorway, leading to the front parlor. Before the sergeant could act and bear it, the barrel of Caron's gun crashed down on the side of the sergeant's head, and he crumpled to the floor. Peter waved his pistol menacingly at Rafferty and Barrett, as Dmitri, alias Count Charlie, ran forward to pick up the sergeant's gun. Good work, Peter. How did you happen to be here? I saw the sergeant heading his way. Just follow them and hunch. Orderly, I do not approve of strong-arm tactics, but I am happy you are so good at them. What happens now? First, we shall bind and gag the sergeant and Rafferty. Then Barrett will open the safe for us and give us the diamond. What about afterwards? I heard the sergeant talking. He will do no more talking. Leave it to me. But first, the curtain ropes to bind them. We'll continue our adventure in just a moment. Say, if you had the thrill lately of being right there in the ballpark when the lead-off man steps up to the plate, have you been there to see the star players in person, see them wallop home runs, see the exciting double-plays? Well, don't miss the fun another day. Come out to the ballgame as guests of a major or minor league team. Walk right through the gate free if you are 12 years or younger and bring mom or dad or another paying adult. Yes, you can get a free baseball ticket. No mailing, no waiting. It's right inside a package of Quaker Pop Wheat or Quaker Pop Rice or Muppet Shredded Wheat or buy Quaker Packle 10 and get two free baseball tickets. Names of teams and dates are on every ticket. Hurry to get your free baseball ticket in the special package of Quaker Pop Wheat or Rice, Muppet Shredded Wheat or Quaker Packle 10. Now to continue. King had bought the little one. Peter Caron rode up and entered the house. But he had no reason to distrust the man and no reason to try and stop him. However, at the very moment when Caron's gun came down on the sergeant's head, King leaped to his feet and hurled himself to the front door. He realized that once there was no way he could force it open. He ran down from the porch and circled the house. There were no windows open at the side and he continued on to the porch at the rear of the building. One of the windows that opened off was raised about a foot. King was able to stick his head inside. He tensed the muscles of his neck and pushed up. The window opened a few more inches. King wriggled through. What he found himself in was a large pantry. There was a man on the floor bound and gagged. King ran past him to the closed door. He stood against the door jam and tried to turn the knob with his mouth. It was impossible to get a grip on it. He turned back to the man on the floor. It was the young American, Tom Conlon, who had been with the sergeant when they found the dead man earlier that night. He might not be an old friend of the sergeants, but at least he was no enemy and King needed help. The great dog started to chew the ropes a few minutes later the ropes around the man's wrist parted.  You're here. The sergeant must be too. I'm luckier than I have any right to be. Just wait until I get these ropes off of my feet and I'll open the door for you, King. Tom Conlon worked fast. The last knot was untied and he stood up. It's better be quiet, King. The pantry opened into the kitchen. King ran across the room to the door that led to the center hall. Wait a minute, King. I want a knife. Better than no weapon at all. This one will do. All right, King. Leave me to the sergeant. King ran down the hall to the second door and scratched up. I'm here, King. I can hear voices in the front room. All right, boy. I'll take your word for it. As the door opened, Conlon saw the sergeant lying on the floor bound and gagged. Rafferty lay beside him. King ran to his master, and a moment later, Conlon had removed the gag and started cutting the cords on his wrist.  No, Sergeant. I'm a private detective. I have credentials. I've been after the X diamond for six months. X diamond? That's the only name I have for it. I'm just an operative, and I have no idea who the firm's client is. Now, the diamond is no next to him. To me, it's me and the colon that are forcing Barrett to open the safe. I'll go after them so I can get some circulation back in my hand. How do you happen to be here? I knew that Barrett was an old friend of Rafferty's. I thought Rafferty and the diamond might be... Why did you just tell me that? The orders have been to keep the police out of the case if possible. With murder involved? I know, I know. I made a mistake, and I nearly paid for it with my life. I crawled in through a back window and found myself staring into the muzzle of Rafferty's gun.  They just tied me up and threw me into a pantry. Your dog came in through the window and chewed through the ropes in my hands. Then he let me to you. It was Dmitry and Karen who captured you? Yeah, it was Karen who slugged me from behind me. Well, at least they tied Rafferty up so he couldn't make any trouble. Let's go. Neither of us is armed, Sergeant. Surprise is our only chance. King will help.  Silently, the sergeant moved toward the door of the front parlor with King at his side and Colin directly behind him. Carefully, the sergeant opened the door a crack just enough to see and hear. I'm not stalling. My fingers are trembling. I must have turned the dial a little too far before. He did better over this time. Didn't will. There. Now, over here. That is better. Now, they've done. It's in the oil-silk envelope. Hang it away. Here, keep him covered, Peter. This is our chance, Colin. Dmitry put his in reach, Karen, and grab his gun before he can use it to take care of Dmitry. Right. I don't think Parlor will make any trouble, but King will guard him. Let's go. You are choking me. I have his gun, too. The guard made a break for the front door, but King drove him into a corner and held him there, growling a warning not to move. All right, King, we have him covered, boy. Get over there with Barrett, Karen. You, too, Dmitry. That's better. Now, as soon as we tie your hands behind your backs, we'll march you three and Rafferty back to Dawson. You're all under arrest in the name of the crown. Sergeant, I want to testify against these men. As soon as they got the diamond, they were going to cure you and me and Rafferty and throw us into the river. You'll get to a chance to testify, but you'll go to jail with the rest of them. Malcolm and as the diamond. The end of a long trail for me. Not quite the end. The diamond will remain in the custody of the Northwest Mounted Police until we're authorized to release it. The firm will take care of that. My work is finished, Sergeant. Good night's work for all of us, especially for you, King. The case is closed, boy. We'll return in just a moment with a word about our next exciting adventure. There's warring adventure on Mutual. Tales that will take your breath away and transport you into lands where danger is your constant companion. First, we take you far up into the barren Yukon territory of yesterday, where icy winds and howling wolves are enough to drive a man wild, and civilized ways are gone and never present lust for gold. Now, let's go to another lawless world, the West of Early Frost. The West of Early Frontier Days. Not so cold, but which makes up for the freezing temperatures with trigger-tempts tempers where the gun is a man's lease on life. This is a country which abounds with cattle rustlers and where miles and miles go by before you see any signs of life. The West, beautiful but wild, a land which cries out for the hand of the law. You'll never lack for adventure on Mutual, whether it freezes you with fear in the wild Northwest Territory or singes you with the accurate heat of the Western Plains. It's all on Mutual every week over most of these stations. And now, Sergeant Preston reports to the Inspector at Northwest Mounted Headquarters in Dawson. Is that for me, Inspector? Yes, Sergeant. Tom Berry has escaped from prison. Escaped? But Tom wanted to stand trial. He was confident he could prove his innocence. A jailbreak arranged by a killer in order to get at the only man this is the situation the Sergeant faces. Tom Berry, he feels, is innocent. And Lewis Coe is guilty. Berry must be Coe's prisoner. But how long can the innocent man hope to live in the hands of such a ruthless killer? Don't miss this next exciting adventure. These Sergeant Preston of the Yukon Adventures are brought to you every Monday through Friday at this time by the Quaker Roads Company. Makers of Quaker Pop Week and Quaker Pop Week and Quaker Pop Rice. The delicious cereals shot from guns by special recording in cooperation with the Mutual Broadcasting System. They are a copyrighted feature of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon Incorporated, created by George W. Trenble, produced by Trenble Campbell Muir Incorporated and directed by Fred Plower Day. The part of Sergeant Preston is played by Paul Sutton. This is Jay Michael wishing you good bye, good luck and good health from Quaker Pop Week and Quaker Pop Rice. So long. This is Mutual, Radio Network for All America.


I have received a lot of compliments about the extraordinary day that we had yesterday. I was just told it was the best in someone's 30-year memory of attending the current strategy forum. I saw a lot of that. I think the discussion of the intellectual firepower that was here yesterday, I certainly felt the same way. You know, goosebumps having read a lot of the books of that combined talent was a really special day. And that's really a tribute to Mike Sherlock who is much more than just the administrator of the current strategy forum. He's the guy who goes out and gets that talent and puts this on, so I'd like to thank you, Mike. And we've got an equally exciting day today. You saw the schedule there. It starts off with one of the world's foremost foreign policy experts. Our next keynote speaker is a recognized foreign policy expert, a prolific writer, a businessman. It's my pleasure to introduce my friend, Dr. Harlan Omen. Dr. Omen is the chair of two different companies, the C&I Guard and the Killowen Group. He's a graduate of the Naval Academy, served in the Vietnam War as a small vote commander, swift vote commander, received his Ph.D. at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, was a professor of strategy at the National War College. Author of numerous books, including Shock and All, a Handful of Bullets, which is about the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and it has a forthcoming book titled The Anatomy of Failure, Why America Loses Wars It Starts. Dr. Omen Harlan has been a great supporter of your U.S. Naval War College. He recently did six lectures here for the student body, showing his Russia expertise and filling a very important niche that we have at the college. So it gives me great pleasure to introduce Dr. Harlan Omen. That was too kind, Jack. Am I on? Can you hear me? Admiral, that was a very, very kind introduction. I'm grateful. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure and a privilege to be back at Newport, the home created by Stephen B. Luce, Alfred Thea Mahan, James Spruance, and of course, Stansfield Turner. It is also the intellectual center of gravity for the Navy and Marine Corps. And for those students who are about to graduate, I hope you've made best use of your time here because you are our future leaders. A lot is writing on you and what you've learned here. And for our civilian friends in the audience, especially members of the Naval War College Foundation, I have a plea I would like to make for you at the end of this session. I want to leave you with three points to ponder. First, John Paul Jones was correct. Men and by extension women are more important than guns in the rating of a ship. I will say that again. Men and women are more important than guns in the rating of a ship. We often give lip service to people, but unless we realize in the 21st century how important our people are going to be, we are never going to be able to deal with all these challenges. Second, for you going back to the fleet, to the Marine Corps, I would argue that the largest challenge you will face is not the Russians or the Chinese or North Korea or the Islamic State. It is the threat of uncontrolled internal cost growth of about five to 7% a year, which means just to sustain the current force, you need plus ups in the budget of between 30 and 50 billion dollars. And unless that is corrected, we are headed for some variant of the hollow force following the Vietnam War. And for those of you who may be disbelieving, listen to the testimony of the vice chiefs before Congress earlier this year. My third point is that I want to offer to you a brains-based approach to sound strategic thinking.  And we do it, if we do it correctly, we win. Fortunately, we won the big ones, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. But when we did not exercise sound strategic thinking, it got us Korea, it got us Vietnam, it got us the Second Iraq War, it got us Libya, and it got us Syria. Now what do I mean by a brains-based approach to sound strategic thinking? And I actually am gonna talk about national security and force design. But I wanna give you the context. First, we have to realize that the 21st century is not the 20th century. The world is far more interconnected, interrelated on an instantaneous basis. The Westphalian system of state-based centric politics has been at least eroded by the diffusion of power that has given far more authority to individuals, Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and non-state actors from Al Qaeda to the Islamic State. And what we have to realize on top of that, when we create force design, we have to understand the broader context of national security. And I would argue the four greatest challenges to mankind. What I call the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are first, failed and failing government. This applies from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe with Washington and Brussels in between. It accounts for the fact why Donald Trump was elected president and why Bernie Sanders made a very close run at it. It reflects what's happening right now in Britain over Brexit and the failure of Theresa May to sustain a majority. The second is economic disparity and dislocation. The world is being increasingly divided between rich and poor and what happens in the United States is happening around the rest of the world. Third is the rise of violent religious extremism, most seen in the form of a violent Islam. And fourth, potentially the most wild of wild cards is environmental catastrophe. Whether this is a pandemic or global warming, this could change everything. And unless or until we understand these are the major challenges, any subset of strategy in my mind is gonna be incomplete. The second facet of a brains-based approach is knowledge and understanding. And I mean knowledge and understanding. The war I fought in, we were clueless about the Vietnamese. Before September 11th, most people didn't know the distinctions between Sunni and Shia. And one of the problems we face is we find ourselves engaged in situations about which we know very little. And I hope some of the knowledge that the students gain here will really be extremely important in making sure your understanding of future environments is far better than many of our understandings in the past. Finally, policy must be about, in my view, affecting, influencing, and controlling will and perception of friends, adversaries, and others. Force may be necessary, but it's not sufficient. Former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld put this brilliantly by saying, this is about getting people to do what you want or preventing people from doing things that you don't want. But unless you take this Klaus Witzian principle and focus on will and perception, we are going to fall short. Now how do I take this and put it into a practical application so that you can think about what future force design should be? Admiral Bud Zumwalt became CNO in 1970 at age 50. Some of you may have heard of Project 60. This was not just Z-Grams and sideburns and social issues. This was the most fundamental change the Navy had probably made since Pearl Harbor. Bud came up with four missions for the Navy. Deterrence, sea control, power projection, and presence. I would take that framework and modify it for the 21st century. Deterrence, during the Cold War, the McNamara scheme of 400 megatons, 400 megatons of deliverable nuclear munitions was enough to kill a third of the Soviet population and destroy half their infrastructure. That was seen as enough to deter. We then had conventional deterrence. Today is quite different. We now have a four plus one matrix planning for the Department of Defense. The requirements are to be able to deter and if necessary, defeat Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea and deal with the Islamic State. What does it take to deter Russia? World War II was a global war. We mobilized more than 12 million people. If we're looking at a global war today, and that was about 15% of the population, we're looking at 30 million people. We're not gonna do that. And how do you deter Russia from moving into Crimea, from active measures, from moving into Syria, from using Russian television, Sputnik, and all these other devices? That's something we have to think about. About sea control, the fact of the matter is, notions are normally not contested. And I think we have to look at sea denial. And I'll come back to that in terms of a strategy as opposed to sea control. About power projection, we have to be very, very careful. In every exercise I ever participated in, when I was the Navy, including a midshipman cruise in a Guppy class World War II submarine, which was terrific. Two things always happen. The carrier got sunk and the submarine got away. Now I'm sure our technology is much better, but these ships unfortunately are very vulnerable. Now the Commandant yesterday talked about forcible entry, and one of the challenges that I will put to the Marines to see a forcible entry is still a viable strategy. 50, 67 years ago marks the battle of, that's not correct, 77 years ago marks the battle of Okinawa. Okinawa is the biggest amphibious operation in history, far bigger than Normandy. The Japanese flew thousands of kamikazes, depending upon how you count, only between eight to 10% hit some 368 ships. Supposing the effect of this rate was 20%, or 30%, or 100%, and supposing they had EMP, electromagnetic pulse, to shut us down. That's what we're looking at. And the last area behind power projection is presence. And I think here we have to redefine presence in a much more sophisticated way relying on partners. When George W. Bush was president, he signed a directive authorizing the Navy to pursue maritime partnerships, which was shorthand for a thousand ship Navy. The idea was to connect all these navies together and Marine Corps, and I think we have to do that. Now what do you derive from all this? There are three challenges I would present to you. First, we need a broader strategy, and most national security study strategies are aspirational. They tell you the what, they don't tell you the how. Second, you have to deal with a couple of strategic black holes. One is that we have been very poor in dealing with Russian active measures. We've not been very good dealing with the Chinese encroachment. We have to think about that. Now this encovers everything from cyber, and the excuse that cyber is too tough is not a really good answer. If you were ordered into battle and you said, gee Admiral, gee General, it's a little bit too tough, you know what the response would be. So we have got to deal with these active measures in an intellectual way, and then we have to deal with the hollow force. Now taking all that, I wanna talk about force design. I would argue that we have several choices. Steady as you go, hollow force, spend more money, which I don't think we're gonna do, or make some dramatic changes. If you're forced to make dramatic changes, here are my assumptions. First of all, given the choice between a large, unready force and a smaller, ready, capable force that will work, that's what I want. You can disagree with me, you can say we can rely more on a strategy of reconstruction and regeneration, but I think today's environment needs a force that's ready. I would size this force on the basis of having the equivalent of a joint core CORPS on each coast of about 150,000 each who are either R-deployed or could be deployed. If you use a three to one rotational basis and add in a few, you're talking about a force of about 900,000 or a million, perhaps a quarter of a million fewer. And the reason I want a smaller force is so that I can use that money, recapitalize as Zumwalt did, who almost cut the Navy in half to make sure the current force is really able. On top of that, what would this mean for the Navy and the Marine Corps? I'm looking at a Navy which is about the current size. I would put it on the basis of six to eight deployable carrier battle groups. I would not decommission the other ships, but I would put them in a cadre or stand-down condition. I served as XO of a cadre destroyer, that was fine. And if we needed it, we could have bring it back. And so I would take a look at putting some of our forces in the status. I would also look at designing two new classes of ships. Admiral Mike Borda had what was called the Arsenal ship or the strike cruiser. Imagine a ship that could contain say 500 Tomahawk cruise missiles and arguably a thousand drones, UAVs, and have all sorts of other capacity. I'd let you use your imagination about that. And second, being a small boat guy, I would like to see us designing a ship somewhere between 1200, 1500, 2000 tons displacement that is loaded to the gills, just like the Russian ships are. And I'd like to use these much more actively in these partnership arrangements. As far as the Marine Corps, I would look at a Marine Corps of about 150,000 simply because we cannot afford in my mind what we currently are going to have. Now, what are some of the other things that we would do? First, I would call for a revolution in naval education. I think it's essential we need to draw these capacities on which we spend huge amounts of money to be able to empower you to be able to do a better job. Further, I would say anybody who makes flag or general officer has to go to a war college, preferably the Naval War College. And regarding acquisition, which is broken, I was on the Packard Commission in 1986 as an advisor. I also conducted a study co-chaired with Jim Schlesinger, former secretary of defense on this. And after the Packard Commission was over, I took Dave Packard, who obviously chaired it, former inventor of a Hewlett Packard to lunch. And I said, what do you think, Dave?  It's not gonna work. There's only one thing that we can do in acquisition that is codify and streamline or streamline and codify the acquisition regulations. I don't know whether John Layman said this yesterday, but he did say at one time, the only Washington monument is the thousands of pages of defense acquisition regulations. This is what I think needs to be attacked because unless or until we do that, we can reorganize the Pentagon and unfortunately that's not gonna work. Let me conclude. For the civilians in the audience, you should be extraordinarily proud and surprised that the Pentagon is doing as well as it is under the most odious conditions. The situations in which it is working, not just continuing resolutions and sequestration, but the odious rules and regulations had to be designed by the KGB because no rational American would do that. And what I would ask you to do is to call, write, email at your member of Congress and say, we have to do something about defense. I'm gonna hold you responsible.  They're doing too much. They've been at war for 16 years under these extraordinary circumstances but it's gonna take public outcry to keep whatever forces we have ready, manned, and able. And for the military, a brains-based approach to sound strategic thinking is not the only answer but unless we have something like that, the chances for failure are gonna be too great to take. And I implore you to think about how we minimize those chances by thinking much smarter. I'll stop now and be delighted to take your questions and comments. We've got 12 minutes. If you don't have questions for me, I've got questions for you. Please. What you said, I think makes eminent sense and I think a lot of people would agree with that. But Eisenhower warned of a military and real complex. And ever since there have been a lot of smart people that have come and gone from Washington and come and gone from the ranks of flag officers in the military would like a solution to that. On a practical level. I think you gotta push the button down. I am holding the button hard. If you get everybody to agree, do you have any potential steps as to how you would approach the great barrier to what you are talking about? The military industrial complex. Well, first of all, you gotta put Eisenhower in context. We're talking about the military industrial complex. What you just said really wasn't what he meant to say. What he meant to say was we can't have a permanently mobilized military. He was calling for a much smaller military. Having said that, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the secretary of defense and the service chiefs go forward with their plan and they really lay out the problems and they've done this piece mail. You can make a big change. Bud Zumwalt did that. Go back to his project 60. It was remarkable and he got away with it. And by the way, one of the things I forgot to add, those in uniform, what was Zumwalt's best advice? It is far better to beg forgiveness than request permission. Don't ever forget that. Sir, could you expand a little more on that revolution in military education that you talk about and also the international partnerships? Yeah. I will send you a study I did for Gordon England twice when he was secretary of the Navy and also deputy secretary of defense. We have these huge assets in military education. They're not coordinated. There's no center library. One of the things I've argued for is a combination. Everybody know what Bletchley Park was, the code breakers, World War II? Everybody know what companycommander.com is or was? In Iraq, General Jack helped me, the former vice chief. Keane, Jack Keane set up the system online in which a young officer, captain and below, could ask any question of people who had been previously deployed to Iraq. This was sort of a Wikipedia. And what we need is a Wikipedia for enlisted and officers, far more extended learning. We need to coordinate the war colleges much more closely and we need to challenge and I know the students are gonna groan, challenge the students to think even more profoundly than we do right now. I taught at the National War College and one of the ways I got that was that I would bring in the service chiefs or the vice chiefs to conduct seminars and grade each of the student seminars. Boy, I will tell you that got a lot of people thinking. Those are things that we have to do because we have these terrific capabilities and I think the only way we're really gonna succeed is through this brains-based approach about partnerships. I think we need to expand the whole issue of exchange officers and enlisted. I think you can probably do as much with a squad of Marines. And by the way, I also forgot to say that one of the things I would do, having served in the Royal Navy with a platoon of Royal Marines on board, I would like to see more Marines and special forces serving on some of these ships which will be adept in dealing with things like saving Captain Phillips and other issues that are gonna take place. But I think what we need to do is expand our training and interaction with other services. We have it here in the War College where you've got a bevy of international students working more proactively so that we keep in touch with these students as they rise to great ranks heading navies as the Admiral did and even rising to more senior positions in government. That's what I would do. Good morning, sir. I've had the opportunity to speak with a lot of different software companies, companies that make applications and the biggest concern that they have with dealing with DOD as far as innovative things that may come out of the enterprise is speed. The accuracy to me is a temporary condition. We've just told ourselves it's too big. We can't tear it down but we're missing major opportunities in the civilian sector because they don't see any investment that's in their favor because we can't operate in a 60 to 90 day cradle to grave environment. Are we working on that? I don't see a ton of things coming out of DIUX to promote the speed and efficiency. Is there any other ways we can be doing that better? That's a terrific question. If you get into the acquisition rules and regulations which he never really did, that's step one. If we rely on the ingenuity of our troops to develop things, as an example for the Royal Artillery in Helmand Province had a series of cameras that they installed for protection but they realized they could all be linked microwave through microwaves and therefore they had this great protective device for virtually the entire province. I think in terms of innovation, we need to go out into the field and get all these suggestions and then use those suggestions to see how can we then apply the technology that's available. I don't think we're relying sufficiently enough on our younger people. I'm a Luddite when it comes to computers and cell phones. I only have a cell phone to use to call. I can't do anything else on it. But you've got any number of these youngsters who have been at this forever and that's where we have to really seek the innovation and reward. There's nothing a kid likes better. I use the word in the nicest sense than get a metal pinned on for doing something that's of value. And so I think we're not using creativity enough. I think Ash Carter's innovations were very, very good. They were at the wrong level. I think you've got to start at the deck plates and work up. And then you're going to have to work arounds. The other problem is IP. There's a huge problem with intellectual property. But I think we can fix that by saying, okay, it's the corporations, but it's going to take some major changes, I would argue, to the acquisition rules and regulations. Is a hand way in the back. Good morning, sir. Lieutenant Stipas, Kelly, creation name. You are speaking today about revolution in organizational armed forces and revolution in building off new ships. So how do you plan to incorporate all of that because acquisition processes with her for new class of ship is pretty long and with the challenges that we have today for all our service, decreasing the number of armed forces, how that going to reflect the current operation and how we can respond to the challenges in future. Thank you, sir. Yeah. By the way, you have a great president. She's a lovely, lovely lady. The issue here about innovation. We've got to be clever. We've got to be clever. For example, this is not a direct answer to your question, but it's something that you want to consider. The Russians have a huge advantage numerically in theater or local nuclear weapons. We have a handful of old B61s out there, a couple of hundred in Europe. And quite frankly, we're not really ready to use them because we haven't had the training money. Supposing Supreme Allied Commander Europe stood up and said, I am denying the rumor that I have been given operational control of a tried submarine. What's going to happen in Moscow? Jorasimov is going to go nuts. I can guarantee you that the Russian permanent representative to NATO is going to go to the NAC, North Atlantic Council and say, what are you doing? So there are ways I go back to will and perception. There are lots of things that we can do in bringing our alliance together. Many of our friends in the alliance have got far better understanding, for example, of Russia. I've been actively dealing with a couple of those countries. We don't incorporate this. Too often we look at the world as a binary sense in which it's us against them. And one of the intellectual problems we face in my judgment is that during the Cold War, we mis-assumed that there was monolithic communism. That partially got us into Vietnam. It was a mistake. I think we're making the same mistake saying we have to bet against peer competitors. We're not going to go to war with China and we're not going to go to war with Russia. It's not in their interest or our interest. Now, obviously the services have got to be prepared for every contingency, but I think the flaw in considering monolithic communism is being repeated in saying we have these peer competitors. We have to deal with them, but we have to deal with them with measures short of force. That requires using our brains. Military force, as I said, is necessary, but not sufficient. And it's the innovation and imagination about how we deal with this. I go back to active measures that's really going to be critical. And along those lines, that's how you are able to use the NATO Alliance, I think, much more proactively, to come up with good ideas. And instead of challenging the NATO Alliance to send 2% or pay all the money in arrears which allegedly they owe, I would challenge the Alliance to come up with better ideas for how we make the Alliance more vibrant. Robbie, Captain Harris, Commodore Harris. Holland, thank you for a most provocative comment this morning. This morning, you referred to Admiral Zulmol's Project 60. Yep. Which redirected, redesigned the Navy, if you will. And yesterday morning when Secretary Layman spoke, he referred to the Reagan era at Maritime Strategy. Which restructured the Navy. Now, arguably in both cases, when Admiral Zulmol was a CNO, he and the Secretary of the Navy owned the Navy. When Secretary Layman was the Secretary and Jim Watkins was a CNO, they owned the Navy. Arguably that doesn't exist today among other reasons because of Goldwater Nichols. So I just don't see how a CNO or the Secretary of the Navy, regardless of how brilliant they may be and dedicated they may be, how they can do what Zulmol did with Project 60 or John Layman did with the Maritime Strategy. How do you make that work? Do you, everybody understand the question? Okay. Very easily. I'm the Chief of Naval Operations. I'm the Secretary of the Navy. I'm in charge of training, equipping, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This is what I'm gonna do. I go to the Secretary of Defense and the President saying if we don't do this, I'm gone. Very simply. Very simply. I would use a couple of bad words to say whether it's gonna take. But that's, and I think, and the service chiefs are getting close to that. Mark Milley said the Congress would be derelict if we don't get a derelict during the Vietnam War. The only guy that I used that word was HR McMaster. None of the service chiefs did. I think we're at the point where this is what we need and if we don't get it, I'm gone. That's what it's gonna take and it's gonna take our civilian cadre to persist with Congress, call them, hold them accountable and say I'm not gonna vote for you if this does not come out right. That is a powerful message, even when it's delivered in ones and twos because that becomes cumulative. We've gotta work both sides of the Potomac. Otherwise, this is not gonna work and we're doing it at a time where our system is broken. It's failed government. Both political parties are so much in the extreme they cannot tolerate each other.  It's gonna take the public and outrage to change that and I think the Department of Defense is an area where most people would agree because the military is in such high standing this might work. If it doesn't, Robbie, I'm convinced we're gonna be headed towards some variant of a hollow force. What's your show on the board? You bet. But make sure you got a good plan. Plan B always works. Okay, we're gonna take a 20 minute break. That would be 0-9-23 back in your seats.


Arctic fact archaeology and arctic fact, or arctic fact, is something made or given shape by humans, such as a tool or a work of art, especially an object of archaeological interest. In archaeology, however, the word has become the term of particular nuance and is defined as, an object recovered by archaeological endeavour, which may be a cultural artifact having cultural interest. However, modern archaeologists take care to distinguish material culture from ethnicity, which is often more complex, as expressed by Carol Kramer in The Dictum Pots Are Not People. Examples include stone tools, pottery vessels, metal objects such as weapons, and items of personal adornment such as buttons, jewelry and clothing. Bones that show signs of human modification are also examples. Natural objects, such as fire-cracked rocks from a garth or plant material used for food, are classified by archaeologists as eco-facts rather than as artifacts. From the point of view of ethnography and archaeology, an ancestral artifact can be defined as any object of natural raw material-chert, obsidian, wood, bone, native copper, and so on made by a people following a lifestyle based on foraging e.g. hunting, gathering hand slash or basic agriculture or pastoralism e.g. horticulture, transhumans.


All right, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is the Vermont State Senate Committee on Institutions. I am Joe Benning, the chair of the committee. Apologies for us having technical difficulties. We were due to be on at 1.30, but we are here live and in person. Including myself, we have Senator Mazza from Grand Isle, Senator McCormick from Windsor County, Senator Ingalls from Essex Orleans and Senator Parent from Franklin County. Laurie Emerson, I understand you're going to start us off in the conversation of mental health during COVID-19. Welcome. Thank you so much, Chairman Benning and members of the Senate Institutions Committee. My name is Laurie Emerson and I'm the executive director at NAMI Vermont. And I wanna thank you for allowing us to provide testimony to your committee today for Mental Health Advocacy Day or week. My comments are gonna focus on two areas. Mental health and COVID in corrections and mental health crisis response and diversion from the criminal justice system. So this year's Mental Health Advocacy Day was held virtually and we brought together over 250 advocates and organizations on February 1st. So if you weren't able to attend, I did provide a link in my testimony and hope that you can take the time to look at the recording and view the day's events. So I collected testimony from somebody that is in corrections or was in corrections and I just wanted to share those thoughts with you. One of the worst experiences anyone can ever have is to be locked up in corrections, especially during COVID-19 pandemic. Imagine what it must be like to enter the correction system and be quarantined for two weeks. This means isolation and solitary confinement when you first arrive. If you leave the correctional facility for core or emergency medical situations, you need to quarantine again for two weeks by yourself in isolation. Once admitted to the mental health unit, you're doing your time in a locked eight by 10 cell with a roommate. Half of the unit is allowed one hour a day to use the common area and staying six feet away from each other where they can at least interact with others. Cloth masks are supplied to the inmates and then washed and reused to whoever gets the mask net. I think we have lost Lori. No exercise time, not able to go outside in the yard, not able to enjoy any hot commissary items such as coffee or other food that needs to be microwaved.  No in-person visits from family or friends. On a positive note, what is going well in corrections? There's a signup program called Open Ears that is one-on-one peer support for 45 minutes once a week. It is a wonderful program that helps people connect with someone who understands who is also an inmate. Although there are no in-person visits, there is a rotating schedule of using the phone and inmates are provided with tablets. The new medical care team is a great improvement. Staff are there in-person if needed and people are doing hard time these days in corrections. The second part of my testimony will focus on mental health crisis and diversion from the criminal justice system. When mental health crisis happens, it should get a mental health response. The handcuffing and pepper spraying of a nine-year-old girl in Rochester, New York, last Friday by local law enforcement after a crisis deserved help, not handcuffs and pepper spray. NAMI believes that responses to situations like this family's crisis should be met with well-trained mobile crisis that provide the de-escalation help and support people need. These teams should include peer and family support advocates, but police response to a mental health crisis is not the answer. Police are trained to respond to criminal encounters. We've seen countless times when police respond to mental health crisis. They can escalate a situation and the likelihood of criminal charges being filed or worse yet, someone is injured or killed. We need to avoid these encounters by having alternatives to responding to mental health crises. Many families or community members do not know or understand what options and alternatives exist within their community other than calling 911 or bringing their loved one to the emergency room, which should be a last resort and only if someone is in immediate danger to self or others. Last year, federal adoption of 988 as a three-digit number for mental health, substance use and suicidal crises, which will be effective nationwide by July of 2022, provides a path forward to accelerate better options for communities across the country. NAMI Vermont advocates for state and local crisis systems that combine well-trained call centers with mobile crisis teams that includes peer support to meet people where they are at and crisis stabilization programs. Other states are creating legislation that will ensure a well-funded system is in place once the 988 phone number is active. Vermont needs to ensure the 988 number is comprehensive and addresses mental health, substance use and suicidal crises and not to serve only as a suicide prevention lifeline. We can set up call centers and crisis teams, but what's next? Where do people go to get immediate help? Do we continue to bring people to the emergency room? No. We need to invest into crisis stabilization programs, a program that allows drop-ins, that allows people to stabilize within 24 hours in a home-like setting, and then are referred back to the community and followed up on. Another example of crisis response models from Eugene, Oregon, the Kahootz program has been in existence for 31 years. It's a non-police trauma-informed mobile response to children and adults in crisis. And last year, at a total of roughly 24,000 Kahootz calls, police backup was requested only 150 times. As Vermont builds a crisis response systems that includes mobile mental health crisis clinicians, it is critical that we also include people living in long-term recovery from mental illness to be part of the design, planning and workforce. Some people respond better to the peer approach. Every community and individual has unique challenges and needs and each response needs to be tailored to fit that local environment and person. Additionally, NAMI Vermont and Team 2 Vermont are scheduling screenings of the Ernie and Joe Crisis Cops documentary that includes an interactive panel discussion with different communities in Vermont. And I would highly encourage a Senate institutions committee to attend the next screening in April. The documentary follows two San Antonio police officers from the mental health unit and how they approach crisis intervention by de-escalation and diverting people from criminal justice systems. So I'll forward that information to you once it becomes available and hope you folks can attend. We request that the state and your committee continue to establish alternatives to mental health crisis, intervention, and crisis stabilization which will help diversion from the criminal justice system. Thanks so much for listening to our comments. Thank you, Lori. Committee, any questions? Peter and Julie, who would like to go next? Joe, Chair. Yes, Russ, go ahead. One of the things that's always been helpful is if you could ask Ms. Emerson, Executive Director Emerson how she fits into the capital bill or does she? Lori, can you answer that question? So funding for NAMI Vermont? Yes, ma'am. Okay, so our funding for NAMI Vermont includes a grant from the Department of Mental Health. It also includes donations and, no, Peter. Oh, okay. It also includes donations from the community and we're also funded through other grants as well. Okay. So I probably should have given this introduction which I usually do but with the technical difficulties I was a little off base this afternoon. This committee deals primarily with the brick and mortar questions and you're touching on areas that are for the most part policy questions which generally in the Senate are handled by either judiciary or health and welfare but some of your comments are dovetailing with our responsibilities which include what facilities are available to deal with mental health. Keeping that in mind, we have new committee members who are learning who the players are for the first time and we're trying to make sure that everybody who appears before us has some basic understanding presented to the committee about who you are and how you might fit into the capital bill. With that in mind, any other questions for Laurie? Okay, Peter and Julie, I don't know which one of you would like to go first. I'd be glad to go next. Okay. Welcome. And I did prepare some slides and some of that is like who are you and what are designee and specialized service agencies but I can try to go through them quickly and at the end I was gonna talk to you about our capital leads. Does that sound okay? That's perfect. Okay, so I'm gonna try to share my screen. So far I'm disabled, so I need Denise to enable me. There we go. Okay. I'm still disabled. I think that this is just the day for technical difficulties. If you make her a co-host, if you right click on her you can make her a co-host and then she can share. Say when. All right, there we go. Thank you. So my name's Julie Tessler. I work as the Executive Director of Vermont Care Partners, the Vermont Council end of it. Just to tell you what Vermont Care Partners is, it's a statewide organization. We provide leadership to designate and specialize service agencies that provide their nonprofit community member agencies and they serve people with developmental disabilities, people with mental health conditions and people with substance use disorders. This map just kind of shows you the areas that they cover. The designated agencies have somewhat different responsibilities than the specialized service agencies. They have a zero reject responsibility to meet the needs of their communities, whereas the specialized service agencies provide more specialized services and supports. So the core functions is to provide those comprehensive services. We have high needs mandated populations and crisis services to all Vermonters. Each agency has some uniqueness to it depending on its own community and the regional needs. And all the work we do is done in collaboration with healthcare partners, schools, human service providers, employers, housing agencies, shelters, law enforcement, blueprint for health. You name it, we're in our communities. As a system of care, we do maintain core competencies and standards of care and we contribute to the healthcare triple aim. This is just a quick overview. We actually serve 32,000 Vermonters a year as clients, but we touch the lives of more Vermonters because not everyone we serve actually becomes a client, but we do health promotion and outreach disaster response. We do a lot of reaching out to our communities beyond the people we serve as clients. We have 5,000 staff and we also have contracted workers. So people in substance use disorder services total over 3,000, eight of our agencies contract with ADAP. There's nearly 4,000 people who receive developmental disability services. Our crisis services that are 24 seven serve over 8,500 people a year. We serve over 7,000 people in adult mental health services over 11,000 children. And as I mentioned, we have a lot of community outreach education, response disasters, and we use peers for services. Just to be clear that this is not just about people coming in for therapy, all the agencies employ clinicians in primary care settings, although not all primary care doctors have us in them. We're in over 90% of supervisory unions. We provide services in people's homes and in different community settings as well as in our offices. We feel good about our services. We think we're pretty accessible. 67% of the people we serve are able to access, be able to be seen in five days as at least for their initial appointment. And then within two weeks, we serve almost two thirds of them. 90% of people say the services were right for them. 87% say the services made a difference. 84% of the people we serve say their quality of life improved. And 90% say they feel respected. But we had this little thing that happened this year, COVID, right? So 40% of Americans say that they are feeling struggling with mental health and substance use disorders. This is much higher than it was. 11% are considering suicide. 13% have either increased or have started using substances. Anxiety and depression affects almost a third of the population and more than a quarter of people are feeling trauma and stress related disorder. So that's kind of a national picture. If you ask the designated agency directors what they're seeing, they're seeing individuals and families under stress. It's housing, it's food and security, job loss, isolation, loss of loved ones, you name it, you know it, your neighbor is your family, everyone is experiencing it. They're experiencing trauma and the trauma is gonna have lasting effects way beyond when everyone has their vaccines and we're safe to go out without masks again. And it's affecting more people and the people that we have been serving, the purity of their needs is higher. Our staff are also under a lot of pressure. A number of them just said, that's it, this is too hard, I'm retiring, I'm not doing this, this is too much. Some have had to go on family or medical leave because of people in their family whose immune systems are compromised. So the staff that remain have been really stretched then or asking them to do things like use PPE, if they have people in their cars, they have to do all this cleaning and they have to deal with the testing and they're taking risk of serving those at risk and filling for coworkers. This has especially happened in our residential facilities where we've had a number of times where people have developed COVID in our facilities. Now, fortunately, our facilities are small. We had a four-person facility in Bennington where every single person there developed COVID and the staff developed COVID. And at first the staff said, I will just stay, we're already got it, but they're sick and so they couldn't stay. So other staff had to come in. So it's been tough or if we have someone in the crisis bed it was COVID then you can't fill the second crisis bed. So our staff have worked really hard and I wanna thank the legislature for recognition of the healthcare workers out there. What we're finding is we don't have as many staff as we need. We have nearly 500 vacancies out of the 5,000 physicians. We've got a growing weight for outpatient services and urgent care. And we're feeling we don't have enough nursing services, case management and crisis beds. And those crisis beds are not just for adults with mental health crisis but also for elders and people with developmental disabilities that are really feeling that isolation and stress. So that is one of the things we could use capital investment as crisis beds. I do wanna say that we're doing a lot of, we've created warm lines to combat social isolation. We're finding ways to get people food, medicine, educational and activity supplies and we bring them to people's homes.  We have had to temporarily house some people in hotels who are in crisis because as I mentioned, we don't have enough crisis beds and sometimes a two bed unit only serve one person, especially if someone has COVID or has been exposed.  We are, I think you've read in Dettger that the conditions there are not great. We've been doing lots of virtual telehealth and support services by Zoom and the audio only and I'll go back to that in a minute. We've also been doing a lot of public education. Hopefully you've seen some of the COVID support for month that Vermont Care Partners has been working on with the departmental health to help people have coping skills, to have outreach to crisis counseling and supports and education and ideas about how to maintain wellness and we're doing more wellness activities, not just for the people we serve, but also for our staff and communities. So we've really mobilized to address COVID. Before COVID, literally we had provided only 28 telehealth services to 24 Vermonters between last November and February. So when COVID hit, you can see we just really increased that service. It's been really critical to us being able to provide supports to people in their homes. 80% said the services were helpful, 60% said it's actually as good as in person and it really varies. For some people it's not as good and for some people they prefer it. One thing we have less of is no shows. So what kind of support do we need from the legislature? We need investment in services. And I know this is not what you do but you are as senators, you're always involved in everything. We need investment in our workforce with all those vacancies it is a big issue and we've been having struggles because we have not been getting great increases on a regular basis like state employees and we don't have the cost shift capability of health providers. So we've really been close to level funded for quite some time and our salaries are really low. So when we find someone to hire, very often they turn us down because we can't offer them significant salaries. We also need to develop more educational opportunities for our workforce and increase some very specific services to elders, the homeless, to improve outreach and serving people in the criminal justice system and we do support the justice reinvestment initiatives. But we do have one-time investments and we realize that that is where there's more resources this year. We could use one-time investments and things like the work with the hotels, the case management, helping people before they get on SSI, doing trainings, investing in the stabilization programs especially when we can't have them at full census because of COVID and addressing some of the one-time expenses like the air systems, equipment facilities and testing. So specifically our finance directors when we reviewed what their needs are in capital and we need new facilities. We need facilities to house people. We're actually one of the major houses of low income people in the state of Vermont. Their people are homeless elders in particular because many times they don't necessarily need nursing home care and they get stuck in the hospital because there's nowhere for them to go. Most nursing homes aren't well equipped to serve people with elders with psychiatric needs but we could develop specialized programs so we'd actually need to have the residences, the crisis beds and office space because of COVID right now is more challenging. We need to be spaced out more. We have a great need for renovation and upgrades. There's a lot of safety risks out there. ADA, the hand to cap accessibility is, we're not all there the way we should be. HIPAA compliance means that we actually need to have soundproofing between where we serve clients and we don't always have that. We need better air filtration systems and for accessibility, we need the elevators and chair lifts or using a lot of old buildings that don't have that. And because we've been under resource for so long we really need investments in maintenance and repair. Roofs, windows, doors, flooring, carpeting, ramps, boilers, kitchens, you name it, we need it. So we have significant capital needs and I know that you've been focusing on state programs. Woodside we support, the secure residential we support but we are a big part of the mental health service system and the more that we can support people in the community the fewer people would need inpatient and the higher level residential care. So we think it's worth the investment. I know it's an unusual ask but I hope that you would consider it and we certainly could give you more detail if you are interested in doing that. And I can see if I can figure out how to stop screen sharing. Did I do that? I don't know. I still have it on your screen. Stop share. Okay. There we go. So Julie, the capital bill begins in the house as you know, I don't know if you've approached the house. I don't know if you actually had anything in the governor's recommend but the upshot is the conversation if you're asking for money would be starting in the house and then we would see what happens when they send it over to us in March. We'll keep your thoughts in mind. We can't obviously make any promises but your challenge is to talk to the house first to see if you can't squeak in under the tent so to speak to try to get something from the capital bill. Thank you. Committee, any questions? Seeing no hands. Peter, welcome. Yeah. Thank you, Senator. And thank you all for having us here today and I'm Peter Mallory and I'm vice president in charge of government relations and community outreach and advocacy for the Ramon Association of Mental Health and Addiction Recovery, otherwise known as VAMHAR. And I really am here mostly to back up Laurie and Julie. I know you're pressed for time. I don't have any immediate capital requests. So I think Julie covered that well and I support those and we'll do what I can to help her in the house. Otherwise, it's been a really good week for mental health and mental health awareness. And I feel that the three of us have done this now for what Julie, six or seven years and I think it's working better and better. As Laurie said, we had 250 people on Monday and that is a tribute to virtual success, if you will. I may be back to you and I'll talk to Denise if that's all right because week after next we're gonna do work on recovery issues and there might be some capital ideas there that I'll take up with the representative Emmons but might be interested in having 10 minutes at some point on that. And I've had Tracy Hawke in from Rutland on her program a couple of years in a row and you've been very gracious to hear her but maybe I'll try to squeeze her into judiciary this year. So you have a little more time for other things. So that's really all I've got. I think Julie and Laurie have covered the bases real well. We appreciate this opportunity. Sure, I appreciate you guys coming in. Our committee is made up of three new members, one who's a brand new legislator and in this new world of YouTube presence there are probably people out there in the public. I don't know how you check and see if anybody out there is actually watching but should they be, the basic introductions are really important for people to know all about you. In the event that the capital bill comes over to us and at that point in time there is a monetary request we would probably have you back in. So that's after crossover but that's the point where you'd probably be making a play for money if that happens to be planted in there first by the house. So now's a great time to be talking to Alice and moving forward from there. Okay. So thank you very much for coming this afternoon. We hope you all have a great day. Thank you. Great to see you all. Take care. Thank you. Bye bye. Catherine, just to give you a heads up and committee you as well.


Today, I'm speaking with Dr. Colleen Delaney of Coeptus Therapeutic Holdings. And she's got a lot of very interesting things to tell us. And since this is a very technical field, all I'm going to say is that I am thrilled to hear anybody and I've read your company's material as far along in treating cancer as you are. And I'd like you to tell us in simple terms, because the audience here are ordinary people. What is it that your company is doing and hopes to accomplish? Yeah, first, thanks, Jack, for chatting with me. I could talk about this, I could go on and on talking about all the really cool things that we're doing. But let me try to, I'll try to make this very high level and then we can dig in deeper as you see fit.  I'm a pediatric stem cell transplant physician, pediatric oncologist by training. So I have lived this for many, many years and my goal has always been to really develop therapies that I felt would be accessible to anyone who needed them. One of the really cool things we're now seeing in the field of oncology and treatment of oncology and other types of diseases, autoimmune diseases and infectious diseases is the use of cellular therapies. And when I say that, what I mean by that are living drugs. So we are taking healthy functioning cells and trying to replace diseased or non functioning cells within the human body. And this has proven to be incredibly effective. Many people, even if you're not in the field, will have heard of immunotherapy or CAR T's. So we know that those have been transformative. What we are trying to do is really turn that whole thing on its head. While CAR T's or immunotherapy have been transformative, they are not from my standpoint as a physician scientist, I would say that they are not uniformly accessible. They are very expensive to make and to deliver. And really our goal is to utilize a platform that I developed from my years back at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center where we can generate cells almost of any lineage that we want. We can make a white blood cell, we can make a red blood cell, we can do all of these different things. And we are creating the means to generate cells, immune cells, that we can give to anyone regardless of who they are or where they are. So what we are trying to do is say, okay, this is transformative, but I want to be able to make that therapy and be able to stockpile it effectively, like going to your bathroom cabinet and pulling out a jar of aspirin, right? We want physicians to have access to these therapies that are immediately available to their patient, regardless of any kind of tissue typing or where they are and make them easy to deliver. And we've really started to do just that. And how far are you from having a therapy and a treatment that anyone can go to see their local oncologist and they'll have heard about it and it'll be accessible. Now, I've had a personal background in clinical trials and things in the study of them, not in participating. And so I'd like to know the timing here because that's very important for investors who are of course interested in a return on their capital within their non-diseased lifetimes. So can you give me some idea of where you are in the development of a saleable product or a licensable product? Right, so something that makes it all the way to FDA approval is really what you're talking about. Now, some of that, and I'm not trying to get out of addressing that question, but some of that really does depend on the cancer you're treating. So for example, if you are treating a cancer or a patient who has a certain type of cancer where they have already tried everything else, and this is their last-ditch effort, right? Those trials are going to be smaller because that patient really has certain death versus maybe a therapy that can save their life, right? And that's what CAR-T has done. But those trials to reach actually FDA approval can be single-arm meaning, you know, because really who wants to get randomized when you're at that point, right? So some of these trials can be single-arm trials, low numbers, and you can get there fast. But let me back up a little. We are already at the stage where we know exactly how to make these sales, right? We have been doing this, my group has been doing this for 20-ish years now, right? If you go back to the beginning of when this platform was developed, we have developed a number of products along the way. And what coeptus is doing is really taking that immune effector cell platform. And when I mean that, I'm talking about natural killer cells or monocytes and macrophages that we can engineer. We already have two INDs that have been approved by the FDA. Now, that's not a drug approval. That's an approval to do your clinical trials. I just want to be clear about that. But what is very interesting and unique about this is, again, back to that idea of making this accessible, cost-effective, reliable. We are the only company that's doing pool donor manufacturing, right? So we have optimized ways of combining donors. So we have ultimate scalability. We already know how to make them in a very cost-effective way. We can freeze them, right? That's pretty important. You need to be able to freeze them if you want to deliver them globally, right? They need to be able to be sitting in the doctor's office. So we are currently in phase one trials with our natural killer cell product. And we are in the preclinical aspects of engineering these cells to make them even more universal and target more cancer. Are the raw materials for you the available readily? Or is there going to be a limit on how much you can produce? No. And this is, thank you for asking that because this is the other, well, what I see as a beauty of our approach. So we start from what I would say is the healthiest source of starting material, of cellular material, and that is umbilical cord blood. So many of the listeners may have either had a child recently or about to have a child or, you know, know someone and you'll hear about private banks. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about are the public banks. So there are a number of banks across the United States that already have this system all in place. They are FDA licensed. So these are actually drugs, right, in the eyes of the FDA. And what's great about that is our starting material is the only source of regulated starting material.  I want to take your blood and then make a whole lot of natural killer cells, right?  And many of those things right there are viruses that I would not say are clinically relevant, but we've all been exposed to them. And some with cancer, it might be a problem. Cord blood is really considered to be naive for all of those things, right? So it's a clean source of starting material. It's sitting frozen, already donor eligible in a cord blood bank. Our cord blood banking partners are continuously collecting and it's an endless supply, really. Right. It's a cost effective, highly regulated, already in drug in the eyes of the FDA source of starting material. And it's a very proliferative source of starting material.  They can request a trial of your material, okay? But tell me, if everything goes well, when will this be available across the board, at least in civilized countries? Go to your doctor and ask for a dose, right? Everyone would know about it. So I think the time to FDA approval for unmodified therapies, right? So one of the things we're talking about doing is expanding access to viral indications, right? That therapy's already been in the patient, right? So this is really around a phase two, phase three. And I would say that the earliest we would be to FDA approval would be somewhere around three years, right? If we get these studies done, get the resources in, get these studies done. It could be as early as three years and it could stretch out to about five years, right? Well, let me ask you a follow up question. How confident are you that these products will be approved and will be on the market in three to five years? Whatever the time frame is, because it's very common in academic research to have things not go as planned, okay? And in this case, you've formed a company, you've got a company, okay? That company is going to have constraints of time and finance and it's got to start generating revenue within a time frame, okay? How confident are you that these products will be able to be brought to the market in five years? Yeah, and say five years. I mean, I wouldn't be talking with you if I weren't confident about that. So I think really, I'm extremely confident. I think what this platform has that many other folks and many other people who are just starting out in this field don't have, is we have about 15 years of predecessor clinical trials, not with NK cells, but that product that's been put in over 300 patients, that's basically our starting material to make our immune effector cells. So this is one of the reasons why I have so much confidence, because I think the hurdles that are many people are facing today are things like, oh, I've got this great new target, but I can't make my cells reliably. We already have all of that done. So our CMC, we call it our manufacturing abilities, is already tried and true and developed and been seen by the FDA. That's the biggest hurdle. Let me add one more thing. Manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, which I'm familiar, is extremely regulated. And the expense of such a facility is not the equipment, it's being certified and maintaining that certification. Now, I believe that your CEO has this background in manufacturing, background in pharma. Is that correct? Yes. Okay, so that's a big plus. Yeah. I just wanted to say something. I'm very interested in this, and I'm going to follow it, because I read your website. I was very impressed by your advisory board, okay? And I have a question. I see that you're dealing with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Are they just advisors, or have they done R&D on this topic?  The Karolinska Institute has really defined some of the things you see on our website around how we will better make those cells really potent killers, and effectively get them to do their job better than what a naked cell would do. And then we also are working with the University of Pittsburgh, but now we can bring all of those things in-house, and we have full capability here to do all of our own R&D with scientists, our process development, and bring all that to the clinic. Thank you Dr. Delaney, and quite frankly, I'm very much looking forward to following you, because it's not just about investment, it's actually about life and death, and I find this very interesting. Thank you again. Yeah, thank you for talking with me, and thanks to everyone who's listening, and I hope you all follow along. We have a lot to do.