what do you give up by using the grand jury?
Mr. Comey. What did the --
Mr. Gowdy. What do you give up? What investigatory advantage do you lose? If you have a choice between a voluntary interview and a grand jury appearance, what are you risking losing with the grand jury interview?
Mr. Comey. A number of things. If you're going to talk about TS/SCI information, you have a real problem with the grand jury. You'll have to clear a grand jury, which is really tricky, and both because of the intrusion on their private lives and just how difficult it is to clear 23 U.S. citizens who have been summoned for jury duty.
And so you have to figure out what can we discuss in the grand jury and what can't we discuss in the grand jury. So what you're gaining with the informal interview is, in a SCIF, an agility that you wouldn't have in a grand jury and then the ability of a group of investigators all to fire at the person and watch and poke and watch and poke in a way you can't in a grand jury.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, I'm out of time. I'm going to let Ratcliffe go. But I do need you to -- if the witnesses don't have clearances, then how much conversation would there be with those witnesses about classified information over which they had no clearance?
Mr. Comey. I think they gave everybody in that room an
