Ambassador Griffin Welcomes Overseas Security Advisory Council

Ambassador Richard J. Griffin, Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, welcomes members to the 21st annual meeting of the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), Nov. 15, 2006.

Good morning and welcome to the 21^st Annual Briefing of the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC). I would especially like to extend a warm welcome to the OSAC Council members and Technical Advisors, OSAC Alumni, and the OSAC Executive Staff and Executive Working Group members assembled here today.

I want to thank each of you for making the effort to come, particularly those of you who traveled from distant locations to be here today. To the 1,000 members who have joined OSAC in the past year, let me say how pleased we are to enlist your support in protecting Americans and American interests abroad through the sharing of information.

In the 21 years since Secretary of State George Shultz established the Overseas Security Advisory Council, OSAC has come to play an increasingly important role in helping the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) to carry out its mission.

The theme of this year's meeting, "Global Resiliency:Operating in Challenging Environments," is well chosen. The challenges we face today from global terrorism call attention to a fact that is well understood by OSAC members: namely, that American security begins abroad.

Since 9/11, we have witnessed a move by terrorists towards attacking so-called "soft" targets. The shift from targeting military, diplomatic, and governmental personnel and facilities to private citizens and organizations presents DS - and the U.S. government as a whole - with very complex challenges. DS must defend more than State Department personnel and facilities abroad. We also must ensure the security of Americans traveling and working overseas and of American businesses, schools, faith-based organizations, and other civil institutions operating abroad.

We all know that American business does not stop at our national borders. To be successful in business today, you have to think and operate globally. Similarly, to protect Americans and American interests, we must think and act globally.

OSAC is a key component in DS's ability to think and act globally. By providing businesses and other private organizations with current, credible, and factual security-related information, OSAC and its members help DS to maintain a presence in regions where the Department of State does not have official representation.

Read press release about Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte's remarks to OSAC on overseas security for U.S. organizations

Today as never before, business men and women, academics, and other private citizens represent the United States around the world. In the course of doing their daily jobs, they embody the freedoms that are at the heart of our democracy: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the creativity and freedom of American private enterprise.

By representing these American ideas and ideals in places where such freedoms are under attack, private American citizens and institutions can become the targets of attacks by extremists. In the face of such attacks, it is important to remember that, for the great majority of people around the world, the freedom of American citizens to live and work as they choose is living proof of the promise that democracy and private enterprise can bring to all people.

Thank you for representing American ideals and ideas abroad, for your contributions to our nation's prosperity, and for your continuing partnership, as together we work to build a world of freedom, prosperity, and peace.