Thank
you, Kathleen, and thanks to all those who put
together today's celebration and the excellent
video perspective for us. On behalf of myself
and Director Mueller, I want to extend my warmest
welcome to our many distinguished guests and
my thanks to all of you for joining us. Unfortunately,
Director Mueller was called away to the White
House at the last minute, giving me the chance
to be with your today.
Let me start by offering my deepest congratulations
to everyone here at the FBI Academy -- all
those past and present who have made it such
a tremendous success over the past three decades.
Without a doubt, this Academy is one of the
crown jewels of the FBI. Throughout the law
enforcement community nationwide and worldwide,
you just say the word, "Quantico,"
and people automatically think leadership
and excellence. That is a tribute to all of
you and the outstanding work you have done
and continue to do for the Bureau and the
nation.
I particularly want to thank our faculty and
staff at the Academy, as well as our partners
at the University of Virginia. I hear again
and again from Academy graduates how much
you are appreciated. The class spokespersons
at the graduations, in fact, often thank you
by name and quote your most memorable lines.
It is truly phenomenal, and it is a reflection
of the high caliber of training here at the
Academy.
I also want to thank everyone on the operational
side of the Academy. You do some great work
for the Bureau, providing research, analysis,
lab services, construction, crisis response,
and library and communications support. I
know you stepped up to the plate in the days
and weeks following September 11, doing everything
from staffing up SIOC to scouring crash sites
for clues to lending a hand at overtaxed field
offices. So thanks for all of your hard work
and the many important services you provide
to the FBI and its partners, including our
colleagues at the DEA who we are proud to
host here at the Academy.
And none of us should ever forget the work
of the maintenance staff, the security officers,
the administrative employees, and the other
support professionals who keep this facility
functioning at a very high level day-after-day
and year-after-year.
Finally, on behalf of the FBI, this Academy,
and all the past and future graduates of our
National Academy program, I want to thank
Captain Miller and all the graduates of 207th
for their generous and moving tribute to the
victims of September 11.
This anniversary, of course, falls at a time
of great change for the Bureau. We have a
new mission and new priorities, and we are
reorganizing from top to bottom to meet these
challenges. To succeed, we need the Academy
to go into overdrive in the things that it
does best: providing training, building partnerships,
and developing leaders. Many of you here today
have been Academy change agents in times past.
You build a solid, professional infrastructure,
then used it to adapt to new directions and
responsibilities. You forged critically important
relationships within the domestic and global
law enforcement community. You were open to
new ways of doing things. You changed curricula.
You always saw it as your responsibility to
build leaders for the future.
Now, the future is upon us, and we are counting
on today's Academy to help take us there.
First and foremost, we need you to help us
achieve the now overriding mission of the
Bureau: preventing terrorist attacks. We need
you to help us improve our analytic capabilities,
to ground our analysts in best practices,
and to guide us through the transition to
new computer-based tools. The new College
of Analytic Studies is a positive step forward,
and I applaud you for taking the lead in getting
it up and running.
We also need you to build a cadre of subject
matter experts in emerging areas critical
to fighting and winning the war on terror.
We need you to make our training more sophisticated
and more flexible through efforts like e-learning
and the coming Virtual Academy. We are counting
on the Lab and the new Investigative Technology
Division to keep us on the cutting edge of
forensic analysis, creating new tools and
sharing expertise with the criminal justice
community. We need to understand better the
psychology of terrorists, to identify crime
patterns, to analyze threats, and to devise
investigative strategies. In all these areas,
I ask that you look at the work you do through
our new prevention lens and help us meet this
important mission.
Second, as Kathleen said, we need this Academy
to build even stronger partnerships throughout
law enforcement. Within the walls of these
buildings you help us bring down the walls
that often stand between us and our partners.
In this post 9-11 world, those partnerships
are more valuable than ever. We live in a
time when terrorists openly threaten us, when
every landmark and every asset and every critical
system is a target, when attacks on our homeland
have gone from unthinkable to virtually inevitable.
To fulfill our prevention mandate, we must
work seamlessly with colleagues at every level
of law enforcement, whether they work in New
York City or New Delhi. We need their information
and support, and they need ours. As I have
said so often, the FBI in the future will
only be so good as it relationships with law
enforcement. And you can play a pivotal role
in taking those relationships to the next
level.
Third, we need you to produce more leaders
-- leaders with vision, leaders who understand
not only today's issues but also tomorrow's
challenges. This Academy must build on its
reputation as a gateway to professional development
and become an educational crossroads for every
member of the FBI, both Agent and support.
It must be the place where we shape tomorrow's
leaders, both within the FBI and throughout
law enforcement. We must instill in everyone
who passes through here the understanding
that leadership is not a position, but a responsibility
we must all shoulder as protectors of the
people and guardians of democracy. More than
ever, we need your help in developing leaders
in our profession who are willing to make
sacrifices, who are confident enough in themselves
to take risks, and who never fail to act with
the utmost integrity.
To succeed in these goals, of course, the
FBI Academy needs more resources, both in
terms of people and budget. Director Mueller
recognized that fact in the second phase of
our reorganization, when he proposed shifting
25 Agents to the Academy to help train new
Agents. That's just a beginning. We need to
get you more help. We need to reach out across
the FBI and across law enforcement to continue
recruiting the "best and the brightest"
faculty and professional staff. We need to
continue improving the facilities here. Yes,
we're modernizing the firing range and building
a new state-of-the-art facility for our Lab.
But after thirty years, other areas are beginning
to show their age. We need to make the investments
needed to bring the Academy into the twenty-first
century in every respect, just as we are doing
across the FBI.
Today, we have the opportunity to look back
and take some measure of pride in our successes
and those of our predecessors. We see how
far the Academy has come since it first opened
its doors here three decades ago. It's my
hope -- and our mutual challenge -- that another
thirty years from now our successors will
look back and see the same thing. With your
help and hard work, they will see that the
FBI Academy never rested on its laurels, that
it made the sometimes hard choices necessary
to fulfill its tremendous promise, and that
it took the right steps to ensure that it
would remain the finest institution of its
kind in the world.
Thanks and God bless.