11:00 A.M. EST
MODERATOR: Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming. We’re really happy to have you here today. And we’re also happy to have Ms. Janice Fedarcyk, who is the assistant director-in-charge as of August 2010 for the Federal Bureau of Investigation for New York. So, welcome, and she will speak for about 20 minutes and then she will take your questions.
So, Janice.
MS. FEDARCYK: Good morning. It really is a pleasure to be here with you this morning, and I appreciate you taking time and allowing me to come and address you and talk specifically about the FBI, where we are in 2011, some of our priorities. And then I’ll open it up to you to be able to ask me some questions, and I look forward to that dialogue.
So just by way of background, here in the New York office, we have over 2,000 employees. We cover quite a bit of territory, basically all the way out from Montauk to Duchess County. And in order to do that, not only do we have our office here in New York City, but we also have what we call resident agencies. There are five of those situated throughout the territory and appropriately staffed to allow us to accomplish our mission throughout the area that we have responsibility for.
But oftentimes as a new year starts and gets underway, we will do an assessment of what our priorities should be as we look forward to the new year, much like as individuals, corporations, public and private sectors, kind of do a beginning of the year assessment, where we’ve been and where do we need to go. And that’s no different in your lives as it is with the FBI as an organization, as a whole.
Since 9/11, we have focused on what we call national priorities. And as you can imagine, for an organization the size of ours, being able to articulate our goals and objectives in a fashion that allows us to tackle the most serious and pressing problems is something that we have done since 2001 in a very straightforward way. So today, I’m going to touch briefly not only from the FBI perspective, but – nationally, but also from the standpoint of internationally and locally here in the New York area.
Many of you may know that the FBI is what we like to call threat-based and intelligence-driven. And what that means is that we continue to collect, analyze, and share intelligence in a way that allows us not only to understand what the current threat or crime problems may be as they exist currently, but to be more proactive in our stance and our approach to addressing those threats that are coming over the horizon towards us.
And it goes without saying that from our perspective, first and foremost, the issue of terrorism remains at the top of our investigative priority list. How that translates into allocating our resources is certainly that you could expect that the FBI will allocate the vast portion of its resources, the majority of its resources, to the terrorism arena. But that does not mean that that is the only priority that the FBI has. And we certainly look at areas such as transnational organized crime, white collar crime, violent gangs, and the like.
So when we talk about transnational organized crime groups, we understand that those types of groups have expanded worldwide, and they typically can have a direct or indirect effect on certainly more than one country beyond the confines of the United States. Over time, what we find is that criminals increasingly are benefiting from advancements in technology, expanding capabilities for international travel, and improved communication throughout the globe. Because of this broad scope and the covert nature of many of these groups, as well as the international dimension that has a role here, what we find, that the crimes that subsequently they are engaging in tend to be more complex, certainly tend to be a little bit more difficult to detect and identify, and certainly the complexities of conducting the investigations and having success in those areas become a little bit more complicated as well.
What we oftentimes see with some of the transnational groups is that you have an international narcotics trade, human trafficking rings, money laundering. And clearly, because of the influence of terrorism around the world, we’re always looking at some of these groups with an eye towards ferreting out whether there is any terrorism nexus, whether it is through material support, funding, and the like.
White collar, white collar crime, is also at the top of our priority list for the FBI as a whole. And underneath that broad dimension, we talk specifically about economic crimes such as mortgage and insurance fraud, in addition to corporate and securities fraud, healthcare fraud, and public corruption. As you can imagine, all of these – all of these types of crimes – can have an impact on our economy, not just domestically but internationally. And certainly, when we talk about public corruption, the impact and the erosion of public trust is an area of great concern for us in that area.
In the New York area specifically, when we talk about Medicaid-eligible individuals, we find that there are more than 75 percent of those types of individuals in New York State, and a rough estimate would suggest that this area would also be home to approximately $60 billion worth of claims that are made to private health insurance programs. The National Healthcare Anti-Fraud Association also suggests that about 3 percent of healthcare is spent and allocated to fraudulent claims. So you can see that, again, when we talk about impact in a community, impact on a nation, it can be extrapolated to be a significant concern. And certainly within the FBI, our allocation of investigative resources towards that area remains at the top of our list. Taxpayers and customers obviously become unwitting victims of that kind of effect when healthcare fraud exists, and the numbers that we continually see indicate that we need to be proactive in trying to counter some of those challenges.
When we talk about our gang criminal enterprises, we see that those are also expanding in size and scope. And we differentiate between what we would call a national gang presence, such as the ones that you are probably familiar with or have heard about, like the Crips, the Latin Kings, the MS-13 groups, but it also, from our perspective, takes into account what we frequently encounter domestically, which are locally-based neighborhood violent crimes, which – or, I’m sorry, neighborhood gangs that will typically come together and gain a foothold in a neighborhood or in a community and may not necessarily be linked with a national element.
And then although what we see – members of these gangs certainly pledge allegiance to their own beliefs and methods of conduct, they share the similar trait of exerting control through violence and intimidation. It also comes as – much as the white-collar arena, at a high cost to our communities, and oftentimes the output of that is the violence that we see oftentimes against innocent victims in neighborhoods and communities.
As one way to highlight how far some criminals, gang affiliates, et cetera may go, there was a case concerning a South American jewel theft organization’s members, all of whom had long arrest records. They went so far as to remove the tips of their finger – their fingertips surgically because they didn’t want the ability to have law enforcement identify them, and so that they actually went through that type of a surgical procedure. One went so far as to have a part of a rib removed and implanted in his forehead and his eye sockets to change his physical appearance. So when you think about how far some criminals are willing to go to conceal their identities, to preclude the ability of law enforcement to detect them, these are some of the examples that are on the more extreme end of that type of activity.
Since 1992, the FBI has employed what we call Safe Streets Violent Crime task forces. And what this does is – this is a nationwide initiative, brings together local, state, federal agencies in investigating gangs, allows us really to force multiply our investigative resources in a way that allows us to have a deeper and a broader impact. Right now, today, we have approximately 160 of these violent gang Safe Streets task forces throughout the United States. And they are composed of more than 2,300 special agents and task force members, who, again, work very closely together to make an impact in the communities in reducing the gang violence and the gang activity, be it narcotics trade or others.
How do we go about accomplishing some of this? I like to think that we have a number of different tools and resources at our fingertips, but there are three in particular I’d like to call out that we constantly rely upon in order to allow us to be successful in our mission. And those are our partnerships, our community outreach, and our use of technology. And as we continue to expand organizationally, we, by all means, don’t negate the ability and the impact that these three areas can have on our success in the FBI’s mission.
So first and foremost, working with our citizenry is an area that probably a lot of people don’t think the FBI typically is out there engaging in outreach, in talking to our citizens. But we do find internally is that it’s a very effective way to bridge into the communities and start a dialogue with the citizens that we are sworn to protect. And at the end of the day, what that will translate into is our ability to conduct our mission, to accomplish our duty, but also to remove some of the mystique about what the FBI is and what the FBI is not.
And we do this, in large part, through outreach efforts, through town hall meetings, and, quite frankly, down to the individual level, where our citizens may come into contact with an employee of the FBI, and it may be the only time they have that kind of an encounter. And so from the standpoint of making sure that that contact is as positive and informative as it can be aides in our accomplishment.
On the heels of that, the FBI sometime back started what we call Citizens’ Academies. And that is where we will take a group, probably about the size of this one, over a six to eight week period. And we will start, one night a week, talking about the FBI’s history, the mission, and all of our priorities, and basically peel back the onion to expose exactly the internal workings of the FBI, and to talk very concretely going forward about when the graduation is over and people go back to their daily lives, how do we keep that dialogue, how do we keep that relationship robust in an ongoing way, and again from the standpoint of being able to have a two-way dialogue and discussion and continually bridge into the communities.
A few years ago, Clear Channel Outdoors and our Philadelphia office of the FBI established a relationship that stemmed from a Clear Channel executive participating in a Citizens’ Academy class. And through that dialogue and through the efforts of the executive, Clear Channel Outdoors offered to use their digital billboards in the Philadelphia market to assist the FBI. That started as long ago as October 2007. They then, because of the success that they saw in the local market, decided to take that initiative nationally. And they based it on the plan of making the digital Outdoor networks across the country available without charge to help the FBI. And it was done to capture fugitives and provide important law enforcement messages to the traveling public. And that initiative was made nationwide in December of 2007.
In only a few months of operating, a number of fugitives from multiple cities across the country were apprehended, and that was based on tips from the public seeing the information that was pushed out over the billboards. And other companies, seeing the value and the success of that partnership, have come forward. And we now partner with many different companies in similar arrangements. Right now, the FBI has currently profiled hundreds of cases together with the Outdoor billboard initiative, and at least 39 cases have been solved as a direct result of that publicity, and with many more cases also coming forward and being enhanced or assisted through that same type of an initiative.
So that’s one example of how not only partnering with our citizens, but through the Citizen’s Academy starts a discussion and a dialogue with the corporate sector, private sector, and today it’s a very robust initiative that is helping to solve crimes, apprehend fugitives nationally….
Additionally, our growing use of technology helps us to carry out our duties. Over the past nine years, we’ve made significant advancements in technology, and I’m sure all of you have probably followed in the press some of our difficulties with our internal upgrades as respect – with respect to technology. We continue to make great strides there, and what that does is allow us to collect, analyze, disseminate information in a much more robust and real-time manner. So that our ability with intelligence not only to obtain the information but also to use the technology to help us make those patterns, create those links, and knit a picture together.
Lastly, our partnerships, as I mentioned, are really key to what we do whether they are with the private sector, with the citizenry, certainly with respect to our taskforce environment and particular to within the taskforce environment within the terrorism arena. I want to speak specifically about the joint terrorism taskforce. They are perhaps, I think, one of our longest serving partnerships in that area. The first one was created here in New York back in the early 1980s. It actually started as a bank robbery taskforce, and following the Brinks robbery, morphed into a taskforce that allowed us to address domestic terrorism and, to this day now, is a – is the largest joint terrorism taskforce across the country and is allowing us to tackle both domestic and international terrorism with over 53 participating agencies.
Right now, we have about 4,000 members in joint terrorism taskforces across the country, and they have allowed us, collectively, to disrupt terrorist plots across the country and certainly put up more of a net to preclude other plots from developing. That’s a key example, I think, of the partnership effort, and it’s one that is both long-term in its nature and also successful in its outcome.
Certainly, one of our most vital partnerships has been with you, members of the press. Obviously, with the increasing international nexus of all that we do in the FBI, it’s incumbent that our ability to tie together and bring to resolution many of our cases is probably no more crucial than it has ever been in this very global world in which we live. And so the freedoms and the ability to live in a free society, I think, is one of the things that we would all agree is probably one of our greatest assets. The ability to interact with members of the press, such as yourselves, both to help tell our story here at home, but also abroad, I think, goes a long way in helping to dispel myths about what the FBI is, what our mission is, how we go about accomplishing that. And oftentimes being able to have that picture and that story placed out into the public domain is critically important to making sure that we remain transparent to those that we serve. And it goes without saying in a very challenging and complex international environment in which we live, we rely very heavily on you to be able to assist us in communicating our efforts.
And I would just like to bring this to a close very quickly by talking a little bit about the state of affairs that we are certainly aware of with the unfolding events in Egypt and how that will translate into the world as we know it going forward. The opportunity to come and speak to you today about our role both domestically and internationally, I think, is beneficial for us. Many people think of the FBI as a domestic law enforcement agency. That is true. Obviously, we’ve been in existence for over 100 years, and we certainly got our start in a very criminal-oriented way from a domestic perspective. But we are much larger and much more internationally postured probably than at any other time in our history with both a very robust domestic presence, but also our international presence through our legal attaches that currently exist in upwards of 60 to 70 offices abroad.
What that means is that we are much more than a law enforcement agency. We are also an intelligence agency, and working very closely with our domestic and our international partners is key and critical in accomplishing some of the priorities that I’ve set out to you. That being said, it’s also important to note that when the FBI has a presence overseas in a different country, we are there as guests of the host country and don’t unilaterally conduct investigative activities. We have a very limited mission set in the sense that our ability to conduct an investigation has to follow certain protocols and certainly in accordance with the countries that we’re located within.
So what I’d like to do is just draw my comments to a close. Thank you very much for the opportunity just to get in front of you here this morning and talk a little bit about the FBI. And I would like to go ahead and open it up to you if you have some questions.
MODERATOR: Just everybody, we have four mikes out there. So just stand up and state your name so we can keep that for the record and (inaudible) and say where you’re from.
QUESTION: Should we stand up?
MODERATOR: Yes.
QUESTION: My name is Diego. I work for Caracol Radio in Colombia. You were mentioning the complexity of the international investigations that the FBI does. Yesterday, the attorney for the southern district in Florida announced a partnership with FBI agencies, maybe the local FBI there, on tackling a new phase of crime, of international crime, which is -- they’re called BACRIM in Colombia, the new criminal bands that are coming former demobilized members of the (inaudible) in our country. What can we expect of the FBI involvement in this, and how big of an impact would it be for your office here in New York, because you have handled also narco-traffic cases.
MS. FEDARCYK: From a – from the international perspective, obviously, as I’ve mentioned, our presence overseas and our ability to work on transnational organized crime groups, narcotics trafficking, et cetera, we always have to enter into an investigation based on predicated reasons. In other words, we cannot just open an investigation without having an established reason for doing so. What I would expect – and I did not see that news report, so please bear with me – but it sounds like a new initiative partnering with – partnering between the FBI and some of our international foreign law enforcement partners. Obviously, that would come with memorandums of understanding and things of the like. But there would be clear goals and strategies set forth in order to actually engage in the investigations and certainly have some strategies in terms of how we’re going to counter and dismantle and have an impact on that type of activity, both overseas and as it might influence into the domestic presence here in the United States.
QUESTION: Hajime Matsuura of NIKKEI News Japan. My question is two-fold. I am very surprised to witness the fact that we haven’t seen any Wall Street bankers not held criminally liable after the national crisis. And could it be attributed to the fact that we have heavily allocated a resource to terror – anti-terror, or is this just lack of like technology or financial intelligence?
And the second question is: In order to be ahead of the current events (inaudible) so that next crisis will never happen, could you introduce what kind of tactics or (inaudible) you’re engaging right now?
MS. FEDARCYK: With respect to your first question, the allocation of resources to tackle securities fraud, mortgage fraud, and the like – when I talked about our national priorities from the FBI perspective, those are national to the FBI, which means that every special agent in charge or assistant director in charge who heads a field office – and there are 56 here in the United States – follow those in descending order. Top of the list, of course, is counterterrorism. And as I indicated, as we start to go down the list through the other priorities, white collar is certainly a priority for us. So as it relates to the New York office and the allocation of resources into the white collar arena, we have a very robust allocation of resources, because at the end of the day, we have a lot of issues that we need to address relative to white collar crime, be it public corruption, insider trading, securities fraud, corporate fraud, healthcare fraud. We do make sure that we service those programs with adequate resources and tackle the crime problems within that particular set.
With respect to your second question about being intelligence driven, I think anybody who has followed some of the transformation that has taken place within the FBI since 9/11 will have seen that there has been a significant reemphasis on our ability to collect, gather, analyze, disseminate intelligence, and we work in a very close way with local, state, federal agencies, intelligence agencies in terms of sharing information in a way that is much more robust than it was in the years leading up to 9/11, and that’s been a significant thrust within the organization and continues to this day.
QUESTION: It’s Mike Nichoson with NHK. The failure of the passage of the Patriot Act sunset clause extension several days ago, will that greatly impair the FBI’s ability to conduct surveillance and gather intelligence?
And a part – the second part of that is the same regard with respect to the OIG guidance that came out of the investigations last year on the abuse of exigent letters and NSLs and so forth would be – just seems like your ability to gather critical information is being constrained.
MS. FEDARCYK: That – the renewal of the Patriot Act is a matter that is still before Congress. So really, I think it’s premature to talk about any impact that that will have on our organization until that matter is resolved. And quite frankly, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to talk about the results of the OIG investigation as it related to the review of the exigent letters and the NSLs.
However, what I will say is that as a whole, the FBI operates under the attorney general guidelines and certainly upholds the Constitution in its conduct of our investigations, and that is no less than with the national security letters as well. As much as there may have been some identified internal issues through that report, I would say confidently that those have been addressed and we’ve moved on from there.
QUESTION: But you haven’t been impacted by the constraints?
MS. FEDARCYK: Well, define impacted.
QUESTION: Making it harder to issue subpoenas – well, to get records, to get specific records from your private sector partners and –
MS. FEDARCYK: I would say that with the national security letters, obviously, that is still one of the lawful avenues that we have for obtaining information within the FBI and certainly we go about that through the appropriate mechanisms and with the appropriate and requisite oversight.
QUESTION: Morten Aanestad, Norwegian Dagens Naeringsliv. (Inaudible) opportunity with higher rewards. Has that made any impact on the information you get? And has that –
MS. FEDARCYK: I’m sorry. Can you say that again? I apologize.
QUESTION: Through the (inaudible) integration, financial integration, (inaudible) higher –opportunity for higher rewards when they get some information to you. Has that made any impact on your work?
MS. FEDARCYK: I don’t believe so. But I certainly want to be clear that I’m understanding your question correctly, and so I don’t want to comment –
QUESTION: (Off-mike.)
MS. FEDARCYK: Yes. Yes.
QUESTION: I get the opportunity – information to you. I have an opportunity to get a reward up to 30 percent. Has that impacted your work in any way? For example –
MS. FEDARCYK: I’ve not seen that here in New York, but I don’t want to speak nationally, because I think that’s really much more of a Department of Justice national question than it is relative to here in New York City.
QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Olaolu Akande, and I work for the Nigeria Guardian. In January, the United States offered to send some FBI agents to Nigeria to help with the bomb blasts on New Year’s Day. I wanted to know whether you can tell us some of the opportunities specifically in that role, and also, if you have any information about FBI’s role in Nigeria, knowing that one of the offices that you mentioned is in Nigeria.
MS. FEDARCYK: I will say, only because our efforts are ongoing, it would be inappropriate for me to contact on any – comment on any kind of ongoing investigation. Clearly, we’re there at the request of the host country to assist in the investigation, and those efforts are currently underway.
QUESTION: I’m Enny Pichardo from NTN 24. Now, yesterday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano spoke about the terrorism threats and she said that the alert is at the highest levels since 9/11. What is the FBI doing, anything different? Is the FBI doing anything different because of this?
And then my other question is: The situation in Egypt, many people have said that because of the U.S. involvement in it or the way the U.S. Government has dealt with the situation, that there could be some possible attacks from extremists here in the U.S. Now, what is the FBI doing to prevent any attacks and to protect the American people?
MS. FEDARCYK: I think the answer to both of your questions is the fact that we have very robust joint terrorism task forces situated around the country. The testimony, I think, that was provided yesterday had to do with the uptick in the terrorism-related activity that we have seen probably over the last year or two with some of the plots that had been disrupted across the country, and the continued concern, of course, that the U.S. interests both here and abroad, Western interests obviously abroad, remain of concern, viable concern.
And so what are we doing to counter that? Again, it comes back to the participation by local, state, and federal agencies working in the joint terrorism task force, working in concert with not only our domestic partners, but our international partners to make sure that we’re sharing the information and the intelligence that hopefully will proactively identify emerging plots and allow us to disrupt and dismantle them before they actually come to fruition. And that, at the end of the day, remains one of our key tools in trying to counter terrorism and prevent future acts.
QUESTION: Hi, Yamashina from – working from Japanese media (inaudible). I read some news about the – many mafia in New York was thwarted* by you, and not only other investigations of those organizations. Could you (inaudible) your efforts to – how to manage to this operation? Is there any difficulty, or what are the most difficult point to carry* this operation?
MS. FEDARCYK: Well, I think you saw from some of the domestic reporting about that particular investigation, and without discussing any aspects of the investigation, clearly, I think the biggest challenge, as you could probably imagine, was that we coordinated over 800 law enforcement officers on the day of that particular takedown in a seamless and coordinated way that allowed us to conduct the operation within the space of a number of hours. And basically, it was without incident, which means that no one was injured, law enforcement or individuals that were taken into custody.
And at the end of the day, as you can imagine, trying to plan and coordinate not only here in New York City, but in some of the other areas, the other judicial districts that were involved, was really not done overnight. There was a lot of lead-up to planning, operational planning that took place before that was actually executed on that day. That was the biggest challenge.
QUESTION: Nina Vishneva, Russian television. How FBI works with federal Russian (inaudible)? This is what changed after the terrorist attacks (inaudible).
MS. FEDARCYK: Well, I mean, as I said, from the standpoint of our overseas relationships and our ability to continue to engage and liaison both domestically and overseas. Certainly, that takes into account our relationships with certain entities of the Russian Government, law enforcement agencies, and I think that, for the most part, that’s been a very successful and ongoing effort, quite frankly.
I think terrorism is something that touches us all, and to the extent that we share information to help prevent another act of terrorism, regardless of where that may occur, at the end of the day, will make us all safer, as it is something I think that we’re all confronting and increasingly so.
QUESTION: Shafiq Saddiqui, Indus News. My question is (inaudible) incident. The FBI made some initiative to get closer to the Muslim community under (inaudible) outreach event in New York, and information you update from the special (inaudible) link to Pakistan’s travel. Anything (inaudible) other information that deals with Pakistan.
MS. FEDARCYK: Obviously, I can’t speak about information that was or was not obtained. I think that the success of that particular investigation was – first and foremost, it goes back to what I mentioned earlier, which is the strength of the partnerships that we share. That was actually a citizen in Times Square that made that initial report that allowed the initial responders, the New York Police Department, to quickly get on scene and start that investigation. And from start to finish, it took about 53 hours to go from the initial response to where we were successful in taking Shahzad into custody. Anything that’s gone on beyond that, I’m really not at liberty to discuss.
QUESTION: Zdenek Ficik, Czech News Agency. When the congressional convention* concluded its investigation of financial crisis several weeks ago, they said that their talks (inaudible) was not (inaudible) in this investigation, but however, they discovered some things that they tipped* about the law enforcement agencies, some possible criminal activities. Did you follow up on these tapes* or – and also can you say how many cases that you investigated in relation to financial crisis?
MS. FEDARCYK: I’m sorry, which commission are you referring to?
QUESTION: The national.
MS. FEDARCYK: I’m afraid I’m --
QUESTION: The U.S. Congress (inaudible) investigate the financial crisis. They published their report, I don’t know, a week or two weeks ago. And on the press conference they had, they said that they found out about some possible criminal activity related to financial crisis.
MS. FEDARCYK: I’m not familiar with the report, so I’d have to review that in order to really give you an answer to that question.
QUESTION: Okay. So to answer how many cases (inaudible)?
MS. FEDARCYK: Not here, I can’t. Even if I had read that and were in a position to be able to respond to that, we don’t comment on ongoing investigations.
MODERATOR: We’re going to take, like, two more questions. You, sir.
QUESTION: My name is Michi Yanagisawa with Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. The U.S. media recently reported that the FBI and law enforcement agencies of the United States had warned the Wall Street financial institutions that there might be some kind of attacks against them. But my question is: What is this warning based upon and what kind of measures did you take to prevent this type of attack against financial institutions?
MS. FEDARCYK: The – I think the report that you’re speaking about had to do with the latest edition of Inspire Magazine, and obviously that is out and available for anybody that cares to look at it online. Obviously, we remain concerned about the information that is put forth through the Inspire Magazine – I think this is edition 4 – only because it is so widely available and because so many people can access it online and conceivably buy into the rhetoric that is being espoused through that. I think the most recent edition of Inspire was the one that alluded to the ongoing threat. And obviously, as we all know, the financial sector, as with other sectors, where you expect large mass gatherings and the like, remain a viable target. And so anything that was addressed as a result of that was in that context of non-specific, but certainly from the standpoint of just maintaining awareness, just due diligence.
QUESTION: Hi. I’m Wenjia Li from China Central TV. And most Chinese people learn about FBI based on the TV series in the field, like CSI and Criminal Mind. So to what level would you say it reflects or (inaudible) your (inaudible), your work?
MS. FEDARCYK: Very little. (Laughter.) Very little.
QUESTION: Than my second question is: How do many who are (inaudible) to keep the classified information and yet to reveal some of it to the public?
MS. FEDARCYK: Well, obviously, when we handle classified information, there’s a reason that it’s classified, but there is certainly a lot of other information that is out there. And oftentimes, when we are engaging in some of our initiatives or trying to get information out to the public, truly the press helps us in many different ways to share the information with the citizenry and to get that information out into the public domain, but that would not be a venue that we would be in a position to discuss or disseminate any type of classified information.
QUESTION: Business Magazine from Korea. First of all, thank you for breaking my prejudice. I thought all FBI person look like very brutal – (laughter) – but you look like just a mom. (Laughter.)
You have been in charge of terrorist financing operation for a while. So in that sense, there is some story circulating online, whenever terrorists try to terror it is very – pretty much related to financing, such as like investing (inaudible) which is an option, such as – which is option that the more stock markets collect, the more investor make money. So the terror reason is very much related to the financing. So investments – what do you think of them?
MS. FEDARCYK: Well, I think I mentioned earlier that in many of the crimes that we investigate we are always evaluating whether there is a potential terrorism nexus. That is just part of how we go about conducting our investigations, and if we rule that out, then we’ve, again, done our due diligence with the investigation. But it’s always something that we are mindful of, whether it is something that is transnational in nature, white collar in nature, et cetera. There’s always that evaluation in terms of is there any potential terrorism link here. And that’s just part of how we would go about doing our daily work.
QUESTION: One last thing about WikiLeaks. I want to know how do you do your work after what happened with WikiLeaks and how do you handle yourself with sharing information in this new era?
MS. FEDARCYK: That’s an ongoing matter, obviously at the national level, that really wouldn’t be appropriate for me to talk about.
MODERATOR: Last question.
QUESTION: You mentioned the field office in New York devotes a considerable amount of resource on domestic and local crimes and criminal enterprise with organized crime and so forth. I’m just trying to get a picture of what the operations are like and the proportion. But presumably there are experts who have to deal with both types of work. So I guess my question is: Are there links between domestic and local – for instance, organized crime in the U.S. and terrorism, and whether the folks who are involved in investigating these things actually work in the same office, in the same environment? How do you cross-pollinate your sort of resources?
MS. FEDARCYK: No, I think that’s a great question. Let me first also say we don’t – the FBI does not investigate local crimes – obviously, our federal statutes that we would investigate and prosecute. Well, sometimes people are unclear about that, but I just want to make sure that that’s understood.
I think that we have gotten very good in terms of using the intelligence in our approach to investigating our crimes. And what we do – what we encourage our investigators to do, our agents to do, is to widen the aperture, so that even though they may be investigating one thing, i.e., transnational crime, gangs, we encourage them to be looking for other things, whether that may be fraud, may be terrorism, so that we’re not limiting and going down a very narrowly defined path. We encourage them to look much broader. And where necessary, we have actually pulled the subject matter experts from different program alignments into an investigation to bring that exact thing that you’re talking about, which is the subject matter experts, who are best postured to have an impact.
MODERATOR: Thank you for your time. (Inaudible) concluded and we have to get going, so I appreciate your time and thank you for coming.
MS. FEDARCYK: Thank you very much. It’s been very much an enjoyable moment – morning here this morning. Thank you for your attention and thank you.
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