Good
afternoon. It is great to be here. I always enjoy
spending time with National Academy graduates. I
myself have not been through the 10 weeks of National
Academy training, and so I can't truly understand
the experience, but being with you at graduations
and conferences is the next best thing.
I
want to thank Hanneke Brouwer for her hospitality
and for her service as president of the European
chapter. And I want to thank each of you for traveling
from your own countries to be here today. It is
one thing to cross the ocean for 10 weeks of training.
It is another to keep the National Academy experience
alive by continuing to come together years after
you have graduated. I want to thank you for your
continued commitment to the National Academy Associates.
More
than 70 years ago, Director Hoover established the
National Academy-though back then, it was called
the FBI Police Training School. Only 23 students
attended the first session. At their graduation,
the students formed the National Police Training
School Associates.
And
during the eighth session of the National Academy,
the first retraining program was held in Washington,
D.C. The vision of the associates was to make sure
that the relationships that began at the academy
would not end there. Their vision was to stay connected,
to become leaders in their agencies, and to pass
on their knowledge to other officers. Their vision
was to build a worldwide law enforcement network,
officer by officer, country by country, generation
by generation.
Seven
decades later, we are meeting in the Netherlands.
Last year, we met in Scotland, and next year we
will meet in Estonia. You are the worldwide law
enforcement network. You are the ancestors of those
first National Academy alumni. And you have made
their vision a reality.
Today,
I want to talk about how the threats we faced 70
years ago have evolved, and how the FBI and the
National Academy have also evolved to meet today's
challenges.
Let's
go back for a moment to the 1930s in America:
National
Academy students took classes such as "Bank
Robbery Investigations," and "Criminal
Investigation Techniques" to learn how to more
effectively combat bank robbers and gangsters. Criminals
were just beginning to take advantage of the automobile
to cross state lines and evade capture. Threats
that affected Finland had nothing to do with threats
affecting Florida. And the idea of regularly communicating
with law enforcement officers in other countries
was about as foreign as the Internet.
Flash
forward to 2006:
Today's
National Academy curriculum reflects the reality
that we are investigating everything from cyber
crime to organized crime to terrorism. Criminals
and terrorists can now hop on an international flight,
or hop online and ignore borders entirely. Our enemies
may be based anywhere in the world, or anywhere
on the World Wide Web. Threats that originate in
Paris, France, may have an impact in Paris, Texas.
And law enforcement officers are training together
and working together all across the world, from
Quantico to Qatar.
Last
year, we talked about how advances in technology
and the spread of globalization have made the world
"flatter." We also discussed the need
to create our own "flat world" across
the global law enforcement and intelligence communities.
This
year's theme of "Empowering Possibilities Beyond
Borders" builds on that discussion. The world
continues to flatten, and threats continue to cross
international boundaries. The only way to defeat
global threats is by building global partnerships.
These
partnerships are born in training. They grow stronger
through joint investigations. And they come to maturity
through leadership.
The
National Academy training is one of the pillars
of improved international cooperation. But there
are many others.
For
instance, the FBI conducts extensive training both
at Quantico and overseas. Just in the last year,
we have trained Iraqi police officers in combating
terrorism. FBI personnel traveled to Cairo to provide
terrorism financing and money laundering training
to Egyptian law enforcement officers. Last month
at Quantico, we trained a delegation from Lebanon
in establishing two Evidence Response Teams in their
own country.
Hundreds
of officers have attended the International Law
Enforcement academies in Budapest (Hungary), Bangkok
(Thailand), Gaborone (Botswana), and Latin America.
They received training on everything from weapons
of mass destruction response to public corruption
to terrorist crime-scene management.
These
are just a few of our ongoing training efforts.
The partnerships built through training lay the
groundwork for future cooperation.
Let
me give you an example. In May 2003, the Saudi government
allowed the FBI to send a large forensic team to
assist their investigation of a terrorist bombing
of housing compounds in Riyadh. There was unprecedented
cooperation, in part because more than 100 Saudi
police were trained at the National Academy. The
FBI and Saudi officers were using the same techniques
and the same terminology. As they told us, "We
were taught together, now we can work together."
This
same spirit of cooperation is alive and well in
Europe. Here in the Netherlands, the FBI works closely
with the Dutch National Police Agency on counterterrorism
matters. One joint investigation involved an Iraqi-born
Dutch citizen who had traveled from the Netherlands
to Iraq in order to attack coalition forces. This
investigation resulted in the first U.S. criminal
charges connected to terrorist activities in Iraq.
In
Romania, the FBI has teamed up with the Romanian
National Police to form a joint cyber task force.
Together, we investigate major cyber cases that
have international dimensions.
In
Italy and Hungary, the FBI has teamed up with police
to target international organized crime. Also in
Italy, we had exceptional coordination between U.S.
and Italian law enforcement at the 2006 Olympics
in Turin, due largely to the liaison efforts of
National Academy graduate Giuseppe Petronzi.
In
Spain, we are working closely with law enforcement
on a variety of investigations, from counterterrorism
to child exploitation. As one example, Spanish law
enforcement working on a cyber investigation identified
a man who was living in the United States, but who
intended to travel to Spain to sexually exploit
a child. The Spanish authorities alerted us, and
we initiated a parallel investigation. By working
together, the man was arrested in Spain and is now
in custody.
And
in the United Kingdom, we have outstanding information-sharing
with our counterparts. This partnership improves
every day. For example, we worked closely with British
authorities on the July 2005 bombings. They sent
boxes filled with tens of thousands of documents
to our Legat office in London. Our London staff
manually combed through the boxes to find the most
pressing leads, and then had to ship them back to
FBI Headquarters.
That
experience taught us that while our information
sharing was excellent, our means of sharing needed
work. And so together, we revamped the process.
This
past summer, we worked closely with British investigators
on the London plot to bomb airplanes bound for the
United States. We communicated constantly. But this
time, British authorities passed the intelligence
electronically to our Legat in London. The Legat
office was able to upload it immediately onto the
FBI system. Agents and analysts back in the United
States were then able to download it the same day.
These
are just a few examples. I know there are othersand
not just examples involving your agencies and the
FBI, but success stories that have come from your
countries working together. I said earlier that
training turns into partnerships, and partnerships
turn into leadership.
And
so I want to challenge you, as the leaders of the
worldwide law enforcement community, to create even
more success stories.
The
economist John Kenneth Galbraith said, "All
of the great leaders have had one characteristic
in common: it was their willingness to confront
unequivocally the major anxiety of their people
in their time."
The
major anxiety of our people in our time is terrorism.
We just marked the fifth anniversary of the September
11 attacks, which changed the course of our nation,
and of the FBI.
But
Europe is no stranger to terrorism. In the last
two and a half years, terrorists have attacked Madrid
and London. In other countries, more plots have
been disrupted, and terrorists have been arrested.
For example, earlier this month, a group of men
were arrested on suspicion of preparing explosives
for a terror attack in Denmark.
Working
together, we have made significant progress in combating
global terrorism. But we still face determined and
committed adversaries. They will continue to be
the major challenge of our time.
That
is why your leadership is so important. You must
lead the way to greater cooperation in Europe and
around the world. You must lead the way to better
communication among law enforcement and intelligence
agencies in your own countries. You must lead the
way to closer collaboration on multi-national investigations.
You must lead your colleagues, especially those
who are your juniors, toward stronger relationships
with other colleagues in other countries.
It
is our personal connections, far more than any technology
or tool, that are at the heart of our ability to
protect our countries. Criminals and terrorists
operate in covert local and international networks.
The only thing that can stop their network is our
network.
You
must lead the way. And just by being here this week,
you have shown that you are leading the way. Because
the best way to protect our nations is to strengthen
the friendships that were forged in the classroom,
in the Boardroom, and on the Yellow Brick Road.
These
relationships transcend our differences. They run
deeper than any ideology. And they are stronger
than any weapon.
If
we continue to build these relationships, I have
no doubt that we will prevail.
Thank
you again for inviting me to be here today. Thank
you for all you do for the FBI and for the global
law enforcement community.