Before
I begin, I want to thank Minister Lamperth for inviting
me to celebrate the 10th anniversary of one of Budapest's
more recent, but nonetheless historic, institutions--the
International Law Enforcement Academy. Thanks go
also to Ambassador Walker, Chief Laszlo Bene, and
Assistant Secretary of State Nancy Powell for their
ongoing support.
It has been about 10 years since I was last here
at "Quantico East." Back in the mid-1990s,
I was working as an attorney in private practice,
and came here to teach a course on investigating
and prosecuting public corruption. Even in ILEA's
infancy, the quality of training and the quality
of students here left a tremendous impression on
me. Never did I dream that I might someday have
the privilege of celebrating ILEA's 10th anniversary
as Director of the FBI.
On the way over, I was leafing through a book by
historian John Lukacs called Budapest 1900.
Lukacs describes Budapest at the turn of the century
as a "great metropolis." With its coffee
houses and opera houses, museums and universities,
Budapest was known worldwide for its economic prosperity
and cultural vibrancy. It was a time of great hope
and great achievement. And although this city has
endured decades of hardship since then, hope and
achievement are once again flourishing.
Budapest 1900 covers the end of the age of
industrialization. If the author were to write Budapest
2000, it would take place in an age of globalization.
In his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree,
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman describes
globalization as having "replaced the Cold
War as the defining international system."
Then, nations were separated by walls, both physical
and cultural. But during the 1980s, political and
cultural forces gathered, culminating in what Friedman
describes as a "whirlwind strong enough to
blow down all the walls of the Cold War system and
enable the world to come together."
The physical collapse of these walls started right
here in Hungary, in the autumn of 1989, when Hungarians
began cutting through the barbed wire of the Iron
Curtain at the Austrian border. Within hours, thousands
of East Germans had stepped through the opening
into Hungary. From there, they made their way to
free lands. Later that year, the Berlin Wall fell.
Once communism gave way to multiparty democracy,
market-based economies, and open borders, globalization
was not far behind.
We generally think of globalization as a phenomenon
that affects commerce. But it also affects crime
and terrorism. Modern technology makes it possible
for an investor in New Delhi to electronically manage
his stock portfolio in New York. But it also enables
crimes as diverse as drug trafficking, organized
crime, corporate fraud and terrorism to jump from
Sarajevo to San Francisco with the stroke of a computer
key.
Here in Central Europe--as in the United States
and many other places around the world--criminals
took immediate advantage of the open society and
marketplace. New economies attract foreign investors,
but also foreign criminals. Open borders allow citizens
to travel freely, but also facilitate the growth
and movement of organized crime, drug smuggling,
and human trafficking. Cars, cell phones, and computers
have become common, but so have auto theft, fraud,
and cyber crime.
Unfortunately , there will always be those who choose
to exploit freedom to criminal ends. Fortunately,
ILEA Budapest is preparing our law enforcement agencies
to combat criminals who seek to stifle liberty and
stunt progress. ILEA Budapest strengthens two of
our most valuable crime-fighting tools: training
and partnerships.
First, training is vital to our
collective mission to protect our citizens from
crime and terrorism. In this global age, the number
of criminal cases with an international dimension
is increasing. Let me give you an example.
Two years ago a United States scientific research
station in Antarctica called us for help after hackers
had broken into their systems. The hackers announced
their crime in an e-mail, and threatened to sell
the stolen data to other countries. Because of the
sub-freezing temperatures, it was impossible for
FBI agents to go to the scene--no aircraft could
land on the South Pole for months.
But working from thousands of miles away, our investigators
traced the source of the intrusion to a server in
Pennsylvania. From there, we determined that the
criminals were accessing their e-mail at a cyber
café in Romania. We contacted the Romanian
police, who executed a search warrant and arrested
the suspects.
Fifteen years ago, none of us could have imagined
working hand-in-hand on cases covering thousands
of miles and crossing countless jurisdictions. Yet
this is the age of globalization. And so it is critical
that investigators from Rome to Romania and from
Amman to America be able to work together effectively.
ILEA makes that possible.
Over the past 10 years, students from 26 countries
have graduated from the eight-week ILEA program.
More than 8,000 officers, judges, and prosecutors
have taken specialized courses geared toward specific
criminal issues affecting their countries--from
computer crime to counterproliferation.
Last year, we added another critical training element:
forensics. Here at the new Forensic Science Training
Center, scientists and law enforcement officers
learn to use sophisticated forensics to solve crimes.
The first course taught analysis of hair and fibers.
These small bits of evidence are often the key to
cracking a case. Last month, students took a course
on crime scene management. By sharing our techniques,
we can all build strong cases that result in successful
prosecutions.
Training is critical to investigating and prosecuting
cases. But training has an even more important long-term
benefit--it promotes the growth of stable governments
that respect the rule of law. For example, in 2003,
Georgian prosecutors and judges came to ILEA for
discussions on criminal procedure. They did more
than just talk--they wrote and signed the Draft
Code for Criminal Procedure in Georgia. The new
code reforms outdated laws that blocked police from
investigating and prosecuting criminals. Equally
as important, the new code emphasizes the civil
rights of suspects and protects due process.
Another benefit of training is that while it may
begin at ILEA, it does not end here. Officers bring
their knowledge and expertise back to their home
countries, raising the caliber of every law enforcement
agency. In fact, many of the officers who graduated
from the Academy have been promoted to high-ranking
positions in their agencies. They have been instrumental
in changing and strengthening the legal systems
in their countries to better promote security and
protect freedom.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of training is that
it leads naturally to partnerships.
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 the FBI
had trained more than 100 Saudi police at our 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."
In this global age, law enforcement agencies are
only as strong as their partnerships. No department,
no agency, and no country can defeat crime and terrorism
alone. We must draw on each other's strengths, experiences,
and expertise in order to succeed.
And this is where globalization helps the law enforcement
community. As walls have fallen throughout the world,
they have also fallen among our agencies in historic
ways. In the United States, the FBI and the CIA
now freely exchange information. The FBI recently
signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Russia
that will help coordinate our anti-terrorism efforts
with those of the Russian Federal Security Service.
Also, for the first time, Russian law enforcement
officers will attend the FBI's Hazardous Devices
School in the United States this month for explosives
training. And the FBI-Hungarian National Police
Organized Crime Task Force has been up and running
for five years, working to dismantle organized crime
groups. Just last month, we obtained approval to
have FBI agents permanently stationed here in Budapest
to work on the Task Force.
The Task Force has had a number of successes. Right
here in Budapest, Ukranian-born Semion Mogilevich
established the headquarters of his powerful organized
crime enterprise. The group engaged in drug and
weapons trafficking, prostitution, and money laundering,
and organized stock fraud in the United States and
Canada in which investors lost over 150 million
dollars.
As soon as the Task Force began investigating his
activities, Mogilevich realized he could no longer
use Budapest as his base of operations. He immediately
fled the country, and is now hiding in Moscow. Working
closely with Hungarian authorities, United States
prosecutors obtained a 45-count indictment against
Mogilevich and three other criminals, charging them
with money laundering, securities fraud, and racketeering.
Also, take the arrest in June 2000 of Hungarian
Top Ten Fugitive Andras Lakatos, known as the "banker
to the Hungarian underworld." His criminal
activities ranged from extortion to document fraud,
and he had been hiding out in South Florida. The
Hungarian National Police worked closely with the
FBI office in Miami to locate Lakatos. He was subsequently
arrested and deported back to Hungary.
Training at ILEA has certainly improved the FBI's
partnerships with each of your countries--but most
importantly, it has improved your partnerships with
each other. The bonds of teamwork that you have
forged at this Academy will continue to serve you
years from now. There are countless stories from
officers who met at the Academy and who called on
each other months and years later for assistance
in developing a program or solving a case.
Let me share one of those stories. In 2001, Macedonian
and Albanian officers trained together at the Academy.
A short time later, the Macedonian and Albanian
police agencies needed to negotiate a cross-border
agreement. Because of the sensitive and complex
issues involved, both sides anticipated that it
would take a long time to reach an agreement.
Instead, it took one day. Why? Because there were
ILEA graduates on each of the negotiation teams.
Because the relationships they had formed at the
Academy meant they were not meeting for the first
time at the negotiating table.
These are just a few examples of the outstanding
accomplishments made possible by training and partnerships.
As our nations work to strengthen freedom and security,
law enforcement must be equipped to combat those
who would use freedom to undermine security.
To do that, we must continue to train together and
work together. We must continue to build bridges
together that transcend our differences, be they
borders, backgrounds, or beliefs. This has been
the greatest success of ILEA over the past 10 years--building
those bridges through training and partnerships.
In thinking about the bridges we have built, I want
to share a thought from American poet Robert Frost.
In his poem entitled "Mending Wall," a
man is reinforcing a stone wall that separates his
farm from his neighbor's farm, isolating them from
one another. He says, " Good fences make good
neighbors."
That sounded like good advice in the 20th century,
when walls between neighbors and nations seemed
a logical way to ensure our safety. But within the
21 st-century global law enforcement community,
dividing walls mean less security, not more.
The mission of previous generations was to tear
down the physical walls that divided us. The mission
of our generation is to tear down the cultural,
legal, political, and psychological walls that prevent
us from working together in partnership. Today,
good bridges make good neighbors.
On its 10th anniversary, ILEA stands as a living
monument to the principles of cooperation and partnership.
And when we come together to celebrate ILEA's 20th,
50th, 100th anniversary, I am confident that we
will hear hundreds of other success stories--stories
of courage, dedication, and cooperation that allowed
freedom to flourish, and forced tyranny to flee.
Standing apart, we cannot succeed. But standing
together, we cannot--we will not--fail.