REMARKS DELIVERED BY
JOHN D. NEGROPONTE
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
TO THE
WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCILS OF AMERICAS
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2005
THE OMNI SHOREHAM HOTEL
WASHINGTON, DC
Ambassador Negroponte:
It’s a pleasure to be with all of you here this evening, ladies
and gentlemen.
I also want to note that in the reception beforehand, I had a chance
to meet with – again – with a number of people that I have known
before through the course of my career, a number of whom represent your
councils around the country. Whether it was Los Angeles or New York, or
Stamford, Connecticut, and other places where I have had a chance to speak
during the course of my time in public service. I have always appreciated
greatly the work that World Affairs Councils do around our country. I
think you play a vital role in promoting and understanding an awareness
of foreign affairs and national security issues and I want to encourage
you to keep up the great work.
I also want to thank Dr. Sugar for not only the introduction but for
the great contribution that your corporation makes to the national security
of our country.
I want to express my appreciation to the various sponsors of our event
this evening. I want to greet the Ambassador of Brazil to Washington.
A good friend – I am happy to see you again, sir.
Above all, I want to thank Ambassador Jones for having invited me to
speak to you this evening. Jim and I have known each other a long time,
but I suppose the time when we were the most closely associated professionally,
was when Jim succeeded me as Ambassador to Mexico. I think we both –
we don't fight over this. I think we both share great pride in the fact
that we accomplished the North American Free Trade Agreement during our
respective tenures. I guess I would take credit for mostly for the negotiating
part and I think Jim would take credit for having helped get it through
the Congress. I think that was the division of labor and I think that
President Clinton – it was an inspired choice on his part to ask
Jim Jones to be our Ambassador to Mexico at that critical moment in the
history of United States-Mexico relations.
As I said earlier, over the years, I have had a number of opportunities
to address World Affairs Councils around the United States, and I always
have been impressed with the size, the diversity, and the expertise of
your membership.
There are many ways to try to stay abreast of developments in today’s
world, but surely one of the most important and effective is direct contact
and dialogue between public servants like myself and civic, business,
and cultural leaders like the members of the World Affairs Councils.
I also value your many initiatives that go beyond speakers programs –
your exchanges, your people-to-people public diplomacy, your workshops,
outreach to schools, support for the Model United Nations, and efforts
to promote discussion of international issues on radio, television, and
in the print media.
In an era of global interdependence, the World Affairs Council plays
an indispensable role in ensuring that we have an informed citizenry that
can make judgments and take stands on matters that affect all Americans.
So I accept your award with gratitude for your recognition of my career
as a diplomat, but I speak to you in my capacity as Director of National
Intelligence, a position created by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act of 2004. Which has the rather unfortunate sounding acronym
of IRTPA. Having served as the Director of National Intelligence for nine
months now, with my principal charge being to implement the Act, let me
say that I believe the nation’s efforts at intelligence reform are
headed in the right direction, but before I expand on this topic, I would
like to emphasize two points.
My first is that even as we implement intelligence reform, the Intelligence
Community is supporting the nation in fighting a war. This war has fronts
in Afghanistan and Iraq, where our military confronts deadly enemies.
It also has fronts elsewhere and much closer to home. The terrorists who
struck on 9/11 have never stopped trying to strike us again. But this
does not mean that our adversaries are winning or will win this war. Neither
is the case. And that is at least in part attributable to the efforts
of the patriotic, lawful, dedicated efforts of our Intelligence Community.
Even as we discuss and consider what we must do to protect American lives
within the framework of our Constitution, we should keep in mind that
many Intelligence Community professionals are taking life-threatening
risks to keep us safe. Unlawful disclosures of classified information
put us all in greater jeopardy and demonstrate disregard for real sacrifices
on the front lines of a dangerous conflict.
My second general point is this: Conducting a war and implementing reform
– what President Bush has called the most dramatic reform of our
Intelligence Community since President Truman – are both daunting
challenges, each in their own right. Doing them both at once is even more
daunting. But as we have no choice when it comes to the war, and the fact
is that we need intelligence reform to help address threats to national
security that go beyond terror. Countering the spread of weapons of mass
destruction, to cite a single additional threat, is an essential task
for the Intelligence Community, and unfortunately there are many more.
Here’s a simple way of looking at reform that may resonate in particular
with those of you in the business world: Prior to the reform legislation,
our Intelligence Community was a federation of business units directed
by a CEO whose overwhelming preoccupation was operating the lead business
unit. By this, I mean that the Director of the CIA was dual-hatted: he
also was Director of Central Intelligence, coordinating and guiding 14
other intelligence agencies. Further, the Intelligence Community had a
structural challenge: it wasn’t well organized to respond to transnational
threats confronting the homeland.
Various studies and inquiries – notably those produced by the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence, the 9/11 Commission and the Silberman-Robb
Commission – did the nation a great service by documenting the requirement
for change in our intelligence practices and posture. Now, the IRTPA has
put that requirement into law. It created the position and office of the
Director of National Intelligence to make the United States Government
collect and produce more sophisticated and accurate intelligence, to disseminate
it more quickly to more of the people who need it, and to make the necessary
organizational changes required to accomplish all of this.
As a consequence, while making a number of decisions and setting various
initiatives in motion, I have spent my first nine months building a leadership
team whose job it is to help me optimize the Intelligence Community, and
develop a strategy for them to execute. I will speak about some of our
specific decisions and initiatives in a moment, because they are the stuff
of real tangible reform, but first let me talk about the leadership team
of the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence and our strategy.
My Principal Deputy, Air Force General Mike Hayden, and I have recruited
an experienced corps of senior executives in whom we have great confidence.
If there is a single reason to think that our office will make good decisions
and ensure that they are carried out, it lies in the quality of our four
Deputy Directors of National Intelligence, the Associate Directors of
National Intelligence, the Directors of the National Counterterrorism
Center and National Counterproliferation Center, the Program Manager for
the Information Sharing, and many others.
In the Washington scheme of things, the leadership team of the Office
of the Directorate of National Intelligence was assembled very quickly.
What is this team’s job? In my mind, it has been assembled to do
four things: preside over the Intelligence Community’s strategy,
policies, standards, and budgets. Again four things: strategy, policies,
standards, and budgets. And the Directorate of National Intelligence is
not here to manage the Intelligence Community’s individual business
units – their own leadership can do that – it is here to integrate
– this is a real watchword for us – to integrate them into what
President Bush has called for. That is to say, an intelligence enterprise
that is “more unified, coordinated, and effective.”
So one of our leadership team’s first tasks was to devise a National
Intelligence Strategy that would bring about comprehensive reform
while preparing to meet our intelligence needs as the 21st century unfolds.
The National Intelligence Strategy – I invite you to review
it at www.DNI.gov, because it
is, and I think this is probably something of a first for the Intelligence
Community – it is an unclassified, public document. We believe that
it gives everyone in the Intelligence Community clear direction. We need
to move from a loosely federated Intelligence Community to a well-integrated
one, and we’re doing that. The leadership team of the Directorate
of National Intelligence began consulting with the 15 Intelligence Community
leaders last summer to define and align our objectives. This integrated
planning process will continue, serving as a forcing function for innovation.
It also will provide the data necessary to make budgetary decisions in
the context of the whole enterprise.
And as we budget, we will measure. For every strategic objective, we
will stipulate outcomes that are both quantifiable and intuitively right.
This process is consistent with the best practices of industry and the
public sector.
In addition to overarching objectives, the National Intelligence Strategy
points to many of the specific reforms we have undertaken consistent with
the legislation and the 70+ recommendations of the Silberman-Robb Commission,
and our commitment to protect American civil liberties and privacy. In
nine months we have – and I cite a number of these achievements:
- Established the National Counterproliferation Center, the Directorate’s
Open Source Center, the National Clandestine Service, the National Intelligence
University System;
- Worked with the Department of Justice and FBI to establish the FBI’s
National Security Branch;
- Commenced the development of an integrated human capital plan that
includes both jointness requirements – somewhat along the lines
of the Goldwater-Nichols legislation as it applied to our military a
generation ago – so that intelligence officers obtain experience
outside of their own agencies, and flexible pay, to put in place the
right incentives;
- Expanded the analytic expertise that the President and his senior
advisors draw upon in their daily intelligence briefings;
- Transformed the role of the National Intelligence Council to strengthen
the quality and integrity of analytic assessments across the Community;
- Established the first-ever Office for Customer Outcomes to ensure
that the consumers of intelligence are satisfied with the products that
we produce and are engaged in constant dialog with us about their requirements;
- Created a National Terrorism Bulletin to synthesize the key terrorism
intelligence provided daily to senior policymakers;
- Put our own office on track to consolidate our workforce in a new
headquarters at Bolling Air Force Base;
- Established strong relations with the Department of Defense by rationalizing
budgetary decision making for national and defense-related budgets;
- Appointed Mission Managers for North Korea, Iran, for counterterrorism
and counterproliferation, who will manage the entire intelligence enterprise
for their respective subjects and serve as my go-to people on these
key topics;
- Established an Office of Inspector General and appointed a highly
experienced individual from the private sector to fill that role; and
finally
- Appointed a Civil Liberties Protection Officer to help ensure that
the Intelligence Community’s policies appropriately incorporate
protections of privacy and civil liberties. Safeguarding the rights
of all Americans and maintaining the trust of the American people is
a vital part of everything we do.
So in addition to team building and strategy development, I view our
first nine months as a period of quick action in areas where immediate
reform and structural reorganization were necessary. Urgency is our watchword
as we strive to achieve cascading effects that make it possible for everyone
in the 15-agency Intelligence Community to work more effectively with
each other and better serve the President, the Congress, our troops overseas
and our law enforcement officers at home.
Now, having received your recognition this evening and availed myself
of your attention, let me offer to reciprocate by trying to answer a few
questions. In so doing, let me note that even though I was asked to speak
about intelligence reform this evening, I share your great interest in
this conference’s major theme – the world’s rising powers,
China, India, Russia, Brazil, and others. The point of intelligence reform,
of course, is to make sure that we have a good understanding of this and
similar topics. As the President’s principal intelligence advisor,
that is an essential element of my job.
I also would like to take note of the award you plan to give to Anne
Garrels for her news coverage from Iraq. I have admired Annie’s journalism
a long time, and I can tell you that her contribution to the public understanding
of developments in Iraq are not only outstanding but heroic. The tragic
element of unpredictable danger in Iraq remains far too high, even though
it is an uncertain indicator of the progress the Iraqi people are making
as they shape their political destiny. The two elections and constitutional
referendum the Iraqis have held in the last twelve months have had a much
larger and more lasting impact in Iraq and the entire Middle East than
any insurgent or terrorist attack could ever have.
When we talk about “nation-building” we often think of schools,
hospitals, ports and bridges, but the central element, especially when
confronting terror and insurgency, is less tangible, though more durable.
“Nation building” is first and foremost an act of political
will, calling for courage, leadership, and sacrifice. By skillfully reporting
and recording what she has seen and heard throughout Iraq, I think Anne
Garrels has given her audience an opportunity to get to know the Iraqi
people’s political will firsthand. Despite the costs that they have
paid, their determination remains strong, and that’s what ultimately
will be decisive in defeating the insurgency and terror alike.
But again, I think dialogue is what makes the World Affairs Council so
special. As Jim mentioned earlier, I understand that he may have collected
a few questions from you and if they are as good as the ones that I have
always received at the World Affairs Council events, I’m sure they
will be first-rate. And so, Jim, I am ready if you are.
Thank you very much. (Applause)
Ambassador Jones:
John, thank you very much for those words. We are going to go into a
few questions. You have to earn that – do that to earn the award,
right? One question came in dealing with the concern that not enough Americans
speak Middle Eastern languages, and what can be done to better engage
Americans of Middle East background to help the situation and bring peace
in the Middle East.
Ambassador Negroponte:
First of all, I couldn’t agree with you more with respect to languages
– language and area studies. I think this is a field of endeavor
and academic and intellectual activity that in the wake of 9/11 has really,
again, come to the fore in terms of importance and interest for our country.
I think one of the problems we have had in foreign affairs and national
security community is that there was a decline in the number of people
working in these various fields including in the intelligence community
after the end of the Cold War. The 1990's saw an overall decline in the
size of those working in the area national security. If you combine that
with the retirements that have occurred in government service as a result
of the baby boomers, if you will, coming of retirement age, we have had
a real hollowing out of the middle and senior ranks of our services.
This is an area we need to reinvigorate – and it's a high priority
for the Intelligence Community, not only training people in language and
area studies during the course of their careers – which is the expensive
way to do it, if you will. But I think we also have to make efforts to
encourage more language study within the population of the United States
as a whole.
In that vein, I’m pleased to announce to you that just recently,
the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and myself jointly launched
an initiative to promote greater study in K through 12 schools in the
United States of foreign languages. And the Intelligence Community is
making a contribution to that effort and we expect to see our contribution
grow in the years ahead. (Applause)
As far as availing ourselves of the talents of the various ethnic and
national communities that have integrated to the United States –
becomes citizens of our country. By all means, I think we must avail ourselves
of the talents, and the skills, and the backgrounds and experience of
those people. Certainly, from my experience in the Foreign Service, which
is of course longer than the time I have been in the Intelligence Community,
I see that happening before my eyes. I think it is a trend that is both
desirable and to be encouraged.
Ambassador Jones:
I am going to try to bunch together some questions and I also –
he has about two more hours of work yet to do tonight – so I also
promised him I would try to get him out at a decent hour. Here are a number
of questions that deal first of all with your experience in Iraq and intelligence
gathering. Let me try to summarize them into one question about three
or four points.
One is – there is the comment about the intelligence failures with
the Weapons of Mass Destruction, etc. Are you satisfied that the intelligence
reforms that are going on will prevent these sorts of major intelligence
failures in the future?
Another question that sort of related to that, are you satisfied that
the political pressure that some write about on the dissemination of intelligence
has been corrected?
And then on Iraq: What is winning in Iraq and how do we know when that
has happened?
Ambassador Negroponte:
Great questions. With an increasing degree of difficulty, it seems to
me.
First one about the reforms and whether we have corrected the mistakes,
and might they be repeated. Well you can never say never, can you? But
I think it's important in any society, just like our own, that we learn
the lessons from mistakes and experience of the past. I think that that
was the effort that was entered into by these various commissions that
I referred to in my remarks. I think they have come up both in the legislation
and in the commissions with very, very good ideas as to how we can take
steps at least to try and avoid repetition.
And what are some of these steps? We are embarked on achieving all of
these changes.
One of them – I think was said in the 9/11 commission report –
the question of connecting the dots, to make sure that we have developed
the kind of connectivity between foreign, military and domestic intelligence
that is necessary if you are going to actually track the activities of
terrorists and others who wish our nation harm, and be able to do something
about it. It doesn't do much good to know about a plot that's taking place
somewhere in South Asia to do harm to the United States if you then don't
have an effective way of sharing that information with authorities within
our own country who can do something about it when the time comes. That's
just one example.
I think in the area of analysis, we have encouraged – as I mentioned
with respect to the intelligence information that we bring to the attention
of the President – particularly in his daily brief – we have
involved both the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Bureau of Intelligence
and Research of the State Department in the drafting of the President's
daily brief in addition to the CIA. I would say the CIA still carries
the lion's share of it, but I think we’ve encouraged a greater diversity
of contribution.
We also encourage alternative views. We don't want to stifle those in
any way and we also developed the so called “Red Cell Teams”
that occasionally develop – totally alternative analysis to some
of conventional wisdom. So that if proposition X is the conventional wisdom
and its a very important judgment to a course of action we are planning
and we'll say now “Look we all think that's the way it is, but let's
find some really smart person to write the totally contrary analysis of
that particular question to see if it has any merit.” Those are the
kinds of things we're undertaking.
Let me get to your question on success in Iraq.
Let me maybe answer that question about the definition of success by just
saying what I felt I was trying to accomplish while I was Ambassador there.
I think in sum it comes down to helping them complete the political process
that was laid out for Iraq in UN Security Council Resolution 1546, which
was to create a democratically elected government after drafting a constitution.
That, as you know, been a multistage process with a transition from a
coalition administration, then an interim government, then a transitional
government and now on the verge of seeing a definitive government formed
there. And that is one major part of it – to encourage the consolidation
and the strengthening of the self-governance of Iraq.
The other part – this is an area I devoted a great deal of attention
to when I was there that remains a very, very high priority for our policy
– and that is enhancing the ability of the Iraqi military and police
forces to take on – to shoulder a greater and greater burden for
their defense – the defense of their own country, which ultimately
should lead to the possibility of us reducing and eventually withdrawing
our military presence from that country.
Those are two of the key – I guess we used to call them during my
short time in the private sector – critical success factors.
Ambassador Jones:
I am going to try to summarize in to two more questions.
To deal with the nuclear threat – we focus on Iran – North
Korea is there. Would you comment on the seriousness of that? Do we have
our priorities right in terms of Iran vs. North Korea, etc?
Ambassador Negroponte:
Both of them are an issue. Both of them pose a threat to the international
community. I won’t speak directly to the policy issue. I would say
from an intelligence perspective, both countries that are on the path
to having a nuclear weapons capability. Maybe North Korea is farther along
in that area – in fact, it’s almost certain that they are –
because they have fissionable material – they themselves claim to
have weapons. Although we have never been certain whether to credit that
claim or not.
But in the case of both of these countries, I think we are talking about
countries that are determined to have – and that was the judgment
we issued with respect to Iran a number of months back – determined
to possess nuclear weapons, notwithstanding the fact that one is and the
other had been a member of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. I certainly
think that we are right to be concerned about the threat posed by both
of those countries. As I mentioned earlier, we have created these mission
managers to follow the respective issues of Iran and North Korea because
of the importance of those issues for our country and I think it behooves
us to follow those two situations extremely carefully.
Ambassador Jones:
The last question is related – deals with the United States domestic
– and that is your relationship between your office and the Office
of Homeland Security. And then the second part of that – from someone
– dealt with the question of how serious – or do you believe
the statement that someone made that we really don't have many al-Qaeda
operatives in the United States, otherwise we would have seen some terror
action within this country.
Ambassador Negroponte:
Relations with the domestic agencies that work on protecting the homeland
– well, first of all, they're very close. And one of the interesting
aspects of the National Counterterrorism Center, which reports to me,
is that that has become the fusion center for all National Intelligence
– all Federal Intelligence – on the terrorism threat. They called
it a fledgling institution a couple of years ago.
Under the new legislation, it was placed under the wing of the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence. I recruited a permanent director
for that center, a retired admiral, Admiral Scott Redd, who had been the
executive director of the Robb-Silberman Commission, and within that organization,
we have representatives of all of the different agencies concerned with
the war against terrorism, the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Homeland
Security, and others. I think that's one area where we – one vehicle
whereby we have forged extremely good relationships with the other departments
and agencies.
I also have a role, as I mentioned in my remarks, in overseeing –
they're not under my executive authority, but I have an input into the
work of the National Security Branch of the FBI. That is another way in
which we work very closely together. We work with all of these agencies,
particularly the Homeland Security Department in helping them strengthen
their intelligence capabilities.
I've carried on so long, Jim, I forget the other part of your question
– al-Qaeda and terrorists here at home.
First of all, I come back to my first proposition in my remarks. There
is absolutely no doubt in my mind that there are members of al-Qaeda in
this world actively plotting and planning to do harm to our country and
to other friendly countries around the world, and they do this on a constant
basis.
I would say that these activities for the most part take place outside
of the United States. Certainly, the planning and the plotting, the preparations
and the logistics and so forth. That, after all, was the way the 9/11
plot was carried out. It was not hatched here in the United States. It
was hatched abroad and it was carried out by people who had recently come
into our country.
And they do. We know that they certainly try to establish contacts and
people with whom they can work here in the United States – or to
get people to travel into our country to carry out their plans and their
desires. I think that we cannot rest so long as we know that this kind
of activity is being plotted and planned outside of our country against
us. I don't think that we can, in anyway, afford to let down our guard.
Ambassador Jones:
John, thank you very much. It is a great pleasure to present this award
to Ambassador Negroponte. (Applause)
END
