THE
NATIONAL SECURITY LANDSCAPE 2005
Director Testifies on Worldwide Threats and our Global Response
02/16/05
It's long—nearly
10,000 words—and, at times, unsettling.
Still, we
strongly encourage you to read Director Mueller's prepared
statement on 2/16 before the Senate Select on Intelligence.
Why? It
paints a detailed picture of the major national security and criminal
threats facing the U.S. today—from al-Qa'ida's growing push to
obtain "dirty bombs" and other potent weapons to the rising
strength and reach of violent American street gangs.
Among the
things you'll learn:
- Al-Qa'ida main
targets for attack in the U.S.;
- Its most fertile
grounds for recruiting and breeding future terrorists in this country;
- International
terrorist groups besides al-Qa'ida that have a presence here and capability
to launch attacks;
- The domestic terrorist
group that believes in armed conflict to abolish our nation's prisons,
legal system, and capitalist state.
- Secrets that foreign
spies are most interested in today ... and the new and clever disguises
and strategies they're using to find them out; and
- Why we're worried
about the growing number of hackers-for-hire.
Just as importantly,
the Director's statement spells out the primary strategies we're using
to protect the nation from these threats—intelligence, partnerships,
and information technology—and the tangible results they've produced.
In particular,
we call your attention to:
- Proactive initiatives
we've launched over the last year to disrupt potential and predicted
terrorist plots;
- Our National Strategy
for Counterintelligence and its effectiveness in responding to current
and emerging intelligence threats;
- Our progress in
becoming an intelligence-driven organization, including specifics on
improvements in our analytic and translation capacities;
- Our new National
Gang Strategy, which includes a new $10 million National Gang Intelligence
Center, 29 more Safe Streets Task Forces, and a newly created task
force focusing exclusively on the dangerous gang Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13);
and
- The new investigative
tools we're putting at the fingertips of our agents and analysts.
Final words
from the Director: "Our adversaries will keep evolving,
national security and criminal threats will further converge, and old
jurisdictional boundaries will become less and less relevant ... [yet]
I am confident that we will out-network, out-think, and ultimately
defeat our adversaries."
Link: The
full statement
