Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Rockefeller, and Members of the
Committee. I appreciate this opportunity to discuss the world threats
facing this nation and how the FBI has adapted to meet emerging
threats. I am going to touch on some of the successes of the past
12 months, but I would like to say, at the outset, that none of
these successes would have been possible without the extraordinary
efforts of our partners in state and municipal law enforcement
and our counterparts around the world. The Muslim, Iraqi, and Arab-American
communities have also contributed a great deal to our success.
On behalf of the FBI, I would like to thank these communities for
their assistance and for their ongoing commitment to preventing
acts of terrorism. All of us understand that the threats we face
today, and those we will face tomorrow, can only be defeated if
we work together.
SUCCESSES
IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM
In
2003, the United States and its Allies made considerable advances
toward defeating the al-Qa’ida network all over the world.
Since this Committee’s World Wide Threat hearing last
year, the efforts of the FBI, and our state and local law enforcement
partners, to identify terrorists and dismantle terrorist networks
have yielded major successes:
- In Cincinnati,
an al-Qa’ida operative was charged with providing material
support to terrorists.
- In Baltimore,
a resident was identified as an al-Qa’ida operative
with direct associations to now detained senior al-Qa’ida
operatives Tawfiq Bin Attash and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
- In Tampa,
the U.S. leader of Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and three
of his lieutenants were arrested under the RICO statute for
their participation in a conspiracy which contributed to
the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Israel.
- In Newark,
three individuals, including an illegal arms dealer, were
indicted for their role in attempting to smuggle an SA-18
shoulder-fire missile system into the U.S.
- In Minneapolis,
an individual who trained in Afghanistan and provided funds
to associates in Pakistan was recently arrested and charged
with conspiring to provide material support to al-Qa’ida.
- And in
cities across the country, the FBI, along with our law enforcement
partners, conducted over 10,000 interviews of Iraqi expatriates
to seek information in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
These efforts resulted in the generation and distribution
of information that proved valuable to our troops in Iraq,
and to our counterterrorism and counterintelligence programs.
Mr. Chairman,
it is important to note that we attribute these and other recent
successes to our close coordination and information sharing
with other members of the Intelligence Community, with our
overseas partners, and with the essential force multipliers – state
and local law enforcement officials who participate on our
84 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs). The JTTFs have played
a central role in virtually every terrorism investigation,
prevention, or interdiction within the United States. As you
know, JTTFs team up FBI agents with police officers, members
of the Intelligence Community, Homeland Security, and other
federal partners to coordinate counterterrorism investigations
and share information. They are also a critical conduit between
the FBI and the officer on the beat.
Our current
abilities to coordinate with our partners and develop actionable
intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks are a direct result
of our efforts to transform the FBI to better meet our counterterrorism
mission. I am going to discuss this transformation, but first
I would like to discuss what we see as the greatest threats
facing the United States.
The
Terrorist Threat
Al-Qa’ida
and Other Sunni Extremists
The greatest
threat remains international terrorism -- specifically Sunni
extremists, including al-Qa’ida. While our successes
to date are dramatic, we face an enemy that is determined,
resilient, and patient, and whose ultimate goal is the destruction
of the United States. Al-Qa’ida’s flexibility and
adaptability continue to make them dangerous and unpredictable.
This enemy still has the capability to strike the U.S. both
here and abroad with little or no warning.
Al-Qa’ida
is committed to damaging the U.S. economy and U.S. prestige
and will attack any target that will accomplish these goals.
- There
are strong indications that al-Qa’ida will revisit
missed targets until they succeed, such as they did with
the World Trade Center. The list of missed targets now includes
the White House and the Capitol.
In
addition, our transportation systems across
the country, particularly the subways and bridges in
major cities, as well as airlines, have been a continual
focus of al-Qa’ida targeting.
Mr. Chairman,
my classified statement sets forth additional detailed information
about what we know and can anticipate about al-Qa’ida’s
operational methodology. I will be happy to address those matters
with the Committee in a closed session.
We also
remain concerned about al-Qa’ida’s efforts to acquire
weapons of mass destruction. The discovery of ricin in Europe,
al-Qa’ida’s clear interest in a range of Chemical,
Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) weapons, and its
desire to attack the U.S. at equal or greater levels than 9/11,
highlight the need for continual vigilance in this regard.
Finally,
al-Qa’ida retains a cadre of supporters within the U.S.
that extends across the country. These supporters are not confined
to individuals of Middle Eastern extraction, as evidenced by
the members of the al-Qa’ida support group arrested and
convicted in Portland, Oregon. In fact, al-Qa’ida appears
to recognize the operational advantage it can derive from recruiting
U.S. citizens. While the bulk of al-Qa’ida’s supporters
in the U.S. are engaged in fundraising, recruitment, and logistics,
there have been cases of those apparently involved in operational
planning.
Other
International Terrorist Groups
While al-Qa’ida
and like-minded groups remain at the forefront of the war on
terror, other groups, such as Hizballah, HAMAS and PIJ in the
U.S. warrant equal vigilance due to their ongoing capability
to launch terrorist attacks inside the U.S. Historically, however,
these groups have limited their militant activities to Israeli
targets and have reserved the U.S. for fundraising, recruitment,
and procurement.
The FBI
disrupted several significant Hizballah cells over the last
year. In Charlotte, North Carolina, an individual was sentenced
to 155 years in jail for conspiring to provide material support
to Hizballah. In Detroit, Michigan, 11 individuals – some
of whom have admitted to ties to Hizballah – were charged
with bank fraud, cigarette smuggling and RICO offenses. These
arrests were the result of a long-term investigation of criminal
enterprises associated with Hizballah.
The
Foreign Intelligence Threat
Mr. Chairman,
although the impact of terrorism is more immediate and highly
visible, espionage and foreign intelligence activities are
no less threats to U.S. national security. Given our country's
stature as the leading political, military, economic, and scientific
power, both now and for the foreseeable future, foreign intelligence
services and non-intelligence collectors will continue to recruit
sources to penetrate the U.S. Intelligence Community and U.S.
government, target our national economic interests, research
and development base, and national defense plans and information,
and assert political influence through perception management
operations. The loss of sensitive, classified, and proprietary
information critical to U.S. interests can hamper our ability
to conduct international relations, threaten our military,
and diminish our technological base and economic competitiveness.
My classified statement discusses our National Strategy for Counterintelligence
and our current assessment of foreign intelligence threats. I will
be happy to address these issues in greater detail in a closed session.
The Cyber Threat
Finally,
Mr. Chairman, I would just like to mention that the FBI is
also expanding our efforts to address the rapidly growing cyber
threat as it relates to both terrorism and national security.
The number of individuals and groups with the ability to use
computers for illegal, harmful, and possibly devastating purposes
is on the rise. We are particularly concerned about terrorists
and state actors wishing to exploit vulnerabilities in U.S.
systems and networks.
The FBI
has a division dedicated to combating cyber crime and cyber
terrorism. We are committed to identifying and neutralizing
those individuals or groups that illegally access computer
systems, spread malicious code, support terrorist or state
sponsored computer operations, and steal trade secrets that
present an economic and security threat to the U.S.
TRANSFORMATION
OF THE FBI
Prioritization,
Mobilization, and Centralization
Over the
past year, the men and women of the FBI have continued to implement
a plan that fundamentally transforms our organization to enhance
our ability to predict and prevent terrorism. As you know,
we took the first steps toward this transformation in the days
and weeks following the 9/11 attacks. We established a new
set of priorities that govern the allocation of manpower and
resources in every FBI program and office. Counterterrorism
is our overriding priority, and every terrorism lead is addressed,
even if it requires a diversion of resources from other priorities.
The other threats discussed above are also top priorities for
the FBI.
Since 9/11,
we have centralized management of our counterterrorism, counterintelligence,
and cyber programs to limit “stove piping” of information,
to coordinate operations, to conduct liaison with other agencies
and governments, and to be accountable for the overall development
and success of our efforts in these areas. Our operational
divisions at Headquarters have analyzed the threat environment,
devised national strategies to address the most critical threats,
and are implementing these strategies in every field office,
task force, and Legat.
We have
also reallocated resources in accordance with the new priorities.
For example, we increased the number of agents assigned to
counterterrorism from roughly 1,300 to 2,300, and hired over
400 analysts. To enhance our translation capabilities, we increased
the number of permanent and contract linguists with skills
in critical languages from 555 to over 1,200. We also established
a number of new operational units that give us new or improved
capabilities to address the terrorist threat.
The FBI Intelligence Program
Over the
past year, we have made tremendous progress in implementing
the next key step in our transformation – the FBI’s
Intelligence Program.
While the
FBI has always been among the world's best collectors of information,
for a variety of historical reasons, the Bureau never established
a formal infrastructure to exploit that information fully for
its intelligence value. Individual FBI agents have always capably
analyzed the evidence in their particular cases, and then used
that analysis to guide their investigations. But the FBI as
an institution never elevated that analytical process above
the individual case or investigation to an overall effort to
analyze intelligence and strategically direct intelligence
collection.
Today, an
enterprise-wide intelligence program is absolutely essential.
The threats to the homeland are not contained by geographic
boundaries and often do not fall neatly into investigative
program categories. Consequently, threat information has relationships
and applicability that crosses both internal and external organizational
boundaries. Counter-terrorism efforts must incorporate elements
from -- and contribute toward -- counter-intelligence, cyber,
and criminal programs. In order to respond to this changing
threat environment, we are building our capabilities to fuse,
analyze and disseminate our related intelligence, and to create
collection requirements based on our analysis of the intelligence
gaps about our adversaries.
We have
created an Office of Intelligence within the FBI to establish
and execute standards for recruiting, hiring, training, and
developing the intelligence analytic workforce, and ensuring
that analysts are assigned to operational and field divisions
based on intelligence priorities. We also established a new
position, the Executive Assistant Director for Intelligence
(EAD-I), who joins the three other Executive Assistant Directors
in the top tier of FBI management. We have hired an intelligence
expert with 25 years of experience in the Intelligence Community
to serve in this position, which is responsible for managing
the national analytical program and for institutionalizing
intelligence processes in all areas of FBI operations.
We have
established a formal requirements process for identifying and
resolving intelligence gaps. This will allow us to identify
key gaps in our collection capability that must be filled through
targeted collection strategies.
Finally,
in order to ensure that FBI-wide collection plans and directives
are incorporated into field activities, all field offices have
established a Field Intelligence Group (FIG). The FIG is the
centralized intelligence component in each field office that
is responsible for the management, execution, and coordination
of intelligence functions. FIG personnel gather, analyze, and
disseminate the intelligence collected in their field office.
Field offices
will also support the "24-hour intelligence cycle" of
the FBI by employing all appropriate resources to monitor,
collect, and disseminate threat information, investigative
developments (e.g. urgent reports), and other significant raw
intelligence to meet the executive information needs of the
field offices, other field offices, FBI Headquarters, Legal
Attachés, and other federal or state and local agencies.
If our
Intelligence Program is to succeed, we must continue to build
and strengthen our intelligence workforce. Our efforts to recruit,
hire, and train agents and analysts with intelligence experience
began shortly after September 11, 2001. In 2003 and in early
2004, we have also taken steps to enhance the stature of intelligence
and analysis within the FBI and to provide career incentives
for specialization in these areas. To ensure that our intelligence
mission is carried out, we revised field office and program
inspections and agent and management evaluations to make it
clear that developing and disseminating intelligence is the
job of every office and agent.
Mr. Chairman,
my prepared statement provides additional details about the
many enhancements to our intelligence program to include increased
training, targeted hiring, creation of a College of Analytical
Studies, establishment of career tracks for Agents who devote
their careers to intelligence, and improvements to our information
technology. In the interest of time, Mr. Chairman, I will conclude
at this point and respond to any questions the Committee may
have. Thank you again for the opportunity to be here today.
