Good
afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here with
so many colleagues who share the same goal—the
goal of protecting innocent people from harm.
John Pistole, the Deputy Director of the FBI,
met with you in Ottawa last year, and I know
that he made many new friends and contacts,
and returned with valuable information and
added insight into how we can work together
more effectively.
The September 11th attacks forever changed
the United States and the world. They also,
by necessity, changed the way we do business
in the FBI.
I just returned from an international counterterrorism
conference in Siberia of all places. American
author Mark Twain once said that the coldest
winter he ever spent was the summer he spent
here in San Francisco. One thing is certain.
Mark Twain never visited Siberia in February.
I was part of a group representing law enforcement,
intelligence, and special services representing
more than 50 countries. We shared information
about our counterterrorism programs and talked
about future plans. Conferences like that,
and like this one today, are taking place
now around the world, on a regular basis.
These gatherings, like this one today, are
vitally important if you believe as I do that
we cannot afford to meet
our international counterparts at another
crime scene, after the fact. We must work
together to dismantle terrorist cells, destroy
their financial networks, and disrupt their
plans before they attack.
We have entered an era of unprecedented information
sharing within the law enforcement and intelligence
communities. We are sharing our expertise
and our intelligence, our criminal and financial
data, our training and our technology. And,
most importantly, we are working together
in new ways and with new partners.
So, with that in mind, today I want to talk
about some of the changes we have made in
the FBI to further information sharing among
international law enforcement officials and
intelligence agencies, and what those changes
have meant to our efforts.
Twenty years ago, the idea of sharing intelligence
and technology with countries around the world
was as foreign as the Internet or the mobile
phone. But times change. We face new and constantly
evolving threats to our safety. And in this
new world, we cannot stand alone. We must
work together. The sharing of information
and intelligence will be the hallmark of our
success against threats from home and abroad.
Before September 11th, we collected information
to solve crimes. For the
most part, we shared information and collaborated
with other officials and agencies on a case-specific
basis. Now, we are sharing information
and working together every day to prevent
crime, and to prevent
the next terrorist act.
We are thinking in new ways about using technology
to share information, about collaborating
with international law enforcement and intelligence
agencies, and about the benefits of these
global partnerships.
We are using technology to share up-to-the-minute
information with law enforcement officers
and intelligence agencies around the world.
As an example, within the FBI's Counterterrorism
Division, we operate an information system
known as the Investigative Data Warehouse.
The IDW provides our agents and analysts with
instant access to photographs, biographical
information, physical location information,
and financial data for thousands of known
and suspected terrorists. The database comprises
more than 100 million pages of terrorism-related
documents, and billions of structured records
such as addresses and phone numbers. Much
of this information came from our international
partners.
Our Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification
System is another example of improved technology.
This searchable database comprises fingerprints
from known and suspected criminals from around
the world. To date, the FBI has obtained fingerprints
for more than 10,000 terrorist suspects and
detainees from more than 16 countries. And
we have made these prints available to law
enforcement, military, and homeland security
personnel.
Our information-sharing efforts are giving
people on the front lines the resources they
need to fight crime and terrorism. For example,
we have bridged the National Crime Information
Center or NCIC as it is known to many of you,
to the U.S. Government's Terrorist Screening
Center. This was recently accomplished to
ensure that federal, state, and local law
enforcement officers have ready access to
the information and expertise they need to
respond quickly and appropriately when a suspected
terrorist is screened or stopped.
How does this work in practice? A local police
officer pulls an individual over for a routine
traffic stop and runs a check on that individual.
The officer’s query runs up against
the NCIC. Simultaneously, that same name query
is run up against the Terrorist Screening
Center and appropriate immediate alerts and/or
instructions are made to the officer on the
spot if that individual is a known or suspected
terrorist.
The officer is provided contact information
for the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center
enabling one on one contact between that officer
and an Intelligence Analyst at the Center.
By combining our resources and sharing information,
every federal, state, and local police officer
has an immediate, hands-on role in disrupting
the next terrorist attack.
We are making good use of this type of information-sharing
technology. But technology doesn’t help
if you don’t know how to use it. For
that reason, training also is vital to our
information-sharing efforts. Since 2001, the
FBI has trained more than 20,000 law enforcement
officers, intelligence analysts, and state
officials from Russia, Canada, England, Australia,
and Saudi Arabia, among others.
We have shared our knowledge of terrorist
financing and money laundering, intelligence
collection and dissemination, fingerprinting,
cybercrime, and forensic science with countries
around the world. In this past year we have
made numerous trips around the globe for this
very purpose.
We provide continuous training opportunities
for international law enforcement and intelligence
officials at our International Law Enforcement
Academies in Hungary and Thailand, and at
our counterterrorism training center in Dubai.
We also regularly receive international law
enforcement executives for the National Academy
program, the National Executive Institute
program, and several other programs at our
Training Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
These training initiatives are ongoing. At
the conference in Siberia, I discussed with
my counterparts from the Russian Security
Service the final plans for several Russian
explosives experts to attend counterterrorism
training at an FBI facility. In the near term,
FBI Special Agents will do likewise and train
at a Russian facility. Through training, we
will continue to strengthen our relationship,
and improve our ability to share information.
In addition to our training initiatives, we
routinely collaborate with law enforcement
and intelligence officials around the world.
I would like to elaborate on a few of these
partnerships, including our Legal Attaché
offices, joint terrorist financing investigations,
and joint terrorism task forces.
The FBI has more than 50 Legal Attaché
offices—known as “Legats”
—around the world. Through these Legats,
the FBI shares information with our international
law enforcement and intelligence partners
and assists with international investigations.
Legats are the eyes and ears of the FBI overseas.
They are vital to the FBI’s counterterrorism
efforts and to addressing international crime.
They also provide excellent linkage to our
intelligence community partners also operating
overseas.
Through the FBI’s Terrorism Financing
Operations Section, we are working with international
intelligence and financial officials to investigate
and dismantle terrorist financing mechanisms.
In multiple instances, we have joined with
our international counterparts and today work
full-time along side them. Money is the lifeblood
of terrorist organizations. If we cut off
the funding, we can disrupt, dismantle, and
eliminate the threat.
For example, we are collaborating closely
with the Russians in the war on terror. Agents
from the FBI, along with our colleagues from
the CIA, work with Russian security and intelligence
officials to monitor, prevent, and disrupt
terrorist attacks both here and abroad. Agents
from our field offices regularly meet with
their Russian counterparts to share information
and to discuss strategy. Gone are the days
of the Cold War. Today, we are fighting a
common enemy.
While it may not be what you would expect,
we are also working with our international
partners to fight domestic
terrorism. During the past decade, special
interest extremist groups have emerged as
terrorist threats. Some extremist groups act
without harm to people or property. But for
others, volatile protest has turned to unlawful
action. In recent years, animal rights extremists
and eco-terrorists have become the most active
criminal extremist elements in the United
States.
The eco-terrorist movement has given rise
and notoriety to groups such as the Animal
Liberation Front, or ALF, and the Earth Liberation
Front, or ELF. These groups exist to commit
serious acts of vandalism, and to harass and
intimidate owners and employees of the business
sector.
One animal rights extremist group, called
“Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty,”
or SHAC, targets Huntingdon Life Sciences,
a British company that does business around
the world. SHAC is based in England and has
operations as well in the United States.
In recent years, members of SHAC have vandalized
personal and corporate property and committed
numerous acts of arson. They have harassed
owners, employees, and their family members,
and have disrupted the business activities
of Huntingdon and its American business partners,
including Bank of America, Marsh USA, and
Deloitte and Touche.
Members of groups like ALF, ELF, and SHAC
have used homemade explosive devices against
their targets, accompanied by threats of continued
bombings and even potential assassinations
of corporate officers and employees, until
their demands are met.
In August and September of 2003, in California,
an animal rights extremist named Daniel San
Diego detonated several improvised explosive
devices on the properties of two American
businesses—the Chiron Corporation and
the Shaklee Corporation—to protest alleged
animal rights violations. These devices were
intended to cause both structural damage and
human injury.
The search for San Diego has turned into an
international manhunt. In the course of our
investigation, we learned that he has numerous
ties around the world. It is highly likely
that when we find San Diego, we will find
him overseas. For that reason, it is crucial
that we keep in contact with our international
counterparts.
On our own, we might not be able to detect
and disrupt the activities of groups like
these. Extremist groups are difficult to track.
They are loosely organized, without firm structure
or organization. They typically have no center
of operations. Their membership is multi-national,
but their activities are local, often involving
only a few members of the group, without direction
from above. And it often is difficult to distinguish
the acts of one group or movement from another,
unless a particular party claims responsibility.
Working together, we can pool our resources
to paint a complete picture of an extremist
group. By way of example, today we are working
with our Canadian counterparts and authorities
in England to monitor SHAC’s activities,
both here and abroad. Just three weeks ago,
several FBI agents from our headquarters Domestic
Terrorism component traveled to the United
Kingdom to meet with their international counterparts
to discuss SHAC’s recent activities
and future plans. In the months before that,
we hosted similar meetings with our UK counterparts
at FBI Headquarters.
In addition to working together on individual
cases, we are sharing information and strategy
with many countries that face similar domestic
terrorism issues. In May of this year, we
will participate with Finland, Norway, the
United Kingdom, Sweden, Belgium, Germany,
and the Netherlands in a conference about
animal rights and eco-terrorism extremist
groups. This type of ongoing dialogue is critical
to our efforts to fight these splintered and
diverse groups.
By combining our efforts, we have been able
to put together a better picture to help us
prevent acts of terrorism before
they occur. And we will continue to work together
on this threat to law-abiding citizens and
their legitimate business pursuits.
In Pakistan, our Legat team worked with local
police to solve the brutal murder of Wall
Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The
FBI’s forensic examination of a laptop
computer seized by police led to the capture
and conviction of Omar Sheikh and his co-conspirators.
Without a physical presence in Pakistan, or
such a high level of cooperation from the
local authorities, we might not have been
able to bring these criminals to justice.
In Moscow, undercover FBI agents teamed up
with their counterparts from the Russian Security
Service to engage an alleged terrorist suspect
dealing with a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Their success has led to this subject's arrest
and at this moment he is currently facing
prosecution. Three weeks ago, two Russian
security service agents traveled to the United
States to testify in Federal court against
this alleged terrorist. We will continue to
work together to bring international criminals
to justice.
We have already seen a number of successes.
With our partners, we have deprived al Qaeda
of its sanctuary in Afghanistan. Thousands
of al Qaeda operatives have been detained.
Investigators have followed terrorist money
trails, and have frozen hundreds of millions
of dollars in assets. Because of our efforts—all
of our efforts—al Qaeda has been disrupted
and diminished.
These are just a few examples of our international
partnerships. And these partnerships have
paid off. We have identified, disrupted, and
neutralized numerous terrorist threats. We
have broken up terrorist cells from Buffalo
to Bali, from Seattle to Singapore, and from
Tampa to Thailand.
These partnerships are not a fad; they are
a new way of doing business. In this global
era, we are all interconnected—law enforcement
and intelligence agencies, private citizens
and multi-national corporations. What happens
to one of us will affect all of us.
Where will we be in five years…10 years?
What new threats will we face? It is impossible
to say. But it is clear that we must continue
to work together.
In today’s changing world, no law enforcement
or intelligence agencies can stand alone.
We must rely on each other for human resources
and technology, experience and expertise.
We must work to create a seamless network
of law enforcement and intelligence, at least
to the extent constraints of these two disciplines
will allow. And we must constantly search
for more interactive ways to conduct our business.
There is no greater calling than to be in
service of the United States and its people.
Today, we also have an expanded role of service
to help all nations, and
all people who embrace freedom.
To this end, the FBI is proud to be working
with its international partners in making
the world a safer place in which to live.
Thank you for inviting me today.