Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I am gratified to see that you are anxious and willing to engage with us in grappling with the immense problem facing us today with regard to the protection of sensitive information, proprietary information, security, economic competitiveness and economic security in this...

So, you have my statement, and rather than regurgitating that now, I'll just make some points and then we can get on to the questions, if you'd like.

The Attorney General, essentially, defines economic espionage as the unlawful or clandestine targeting and acquisition of sensitive financial, trade or economic policy information, proprietary economic information, or critical technologies.

In today's environment, intellectual property and economic information in general have become the most important and sought-after commodity by all nations of the world, no question about it.

I would say that because of our unique position in the world, we, as a target-rich nation for natural resources, intellectual property, just general overall wealth, that we are the number one target in the world for economic espionage and the stealing of those -- of that information and secrets.

Why are we the most sought after commodity, the United States, that is? It's a pretty complex situation, actually, but three reasons sort of come to the fore. The first is the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tremendous relief that that has brought throughout the world. There were essentially, and not to be overly simplistic, but two large camps in the world. And various countries in the world devoted their natural resources, their personnel resources and their general overall wealth towards supporting their position either with the West or with the Soviet Empire.

When the empire fell, they found themselves looking around and saying, look, we've got to redefine what is economic -- what is our national security? It is no longer aligning ourselves with the Soviet Union or the West, it is -- we've got to have a piece of the economic pie, we want to do this -- we want to have wealth as well.

So, the intelligence services as well as the governments themselves said, who has the most? And the answer is the United States has the most. Secondarily, allies, military allies who are -- as well as ideological allies, during that last 50 years of our history, are now aggressive, economic competitors. We are faced with former friends -- I don't want to say attacking, but certainly working against us, very aggressively, in order to get, again, a piece of the pie.

Thirdly, a rapid globalization of the world economy defines national security, not so much in how many tanks you have deployed or how many soldiers you have on the field, necessarily, but instead, their strength is measured in terms of the nation's economic capability.

So, the nations of the world, as well as our own, and President Clinton underscored this point, I think back in 1991 by saying, "Now we should realize very strongly that national security equals economic security." That's an extremely important point, I think, for us to keep in mind in terms of our war or fight against economic espionage.

What are the targets? Very briefly, they come in sort of two flavors, if I could be a little bit flip there. We're still facing the threat and the attempted threat on classified military defense- related national information. There's no doubt about that. That is still ongoing. And we are always battling espionage cases on that basis.

Coming out of classified information, however, and related to classified information is cutting edge technologies, dual technologies, sensitive information that may not reach the classified level, and hence wouldn't be subject to an espionage case, but certainly would be fodder for economic espionage cases, and our inspection of those kinds of cases.

The other flavor, if you will, is the non-sensitive area and theft of our non-high tech products and services. It's very important to realize that the way we approach economic espionage investigations, it does not have to be high-tech for us to take an interest in something. It's the -- a trade secret can be just as valuable in many instances as more sensitive and highly classified or classified information.

So, that's how we approach that. And the way we approach it is through the Economic Espionage Act, which you have already indicated that is out there. Prior to 1996 there was only state laws and some civil remedies for companies and individuals and entities to pursue theft of their trade secrets or theft of their proprietary information. In 1996, the law gave us an overarch -- or gave the federal government the ability with the federal law, to approach the theft of trade secrets offering stiffer penalties and other advantages that were not available to us and to business and industry to pursue these cases.

We have prosecuted -- you mentioned 18 -- there are actually up to date, there are 20 in which we have successfully prosecuted over the last four years. Interestingly enough, the Department of Justice -- or Congress, actually, not the Department of Justice, was concerned that we would take this apart in 1996 and profligately investigate all sorts of smaller issues and inappropriate crimes under this umbrella.

I think that you can be well served and proud that in the four years the Bureau and the Department of Justice have carefully looked at these cases and have had what I consider a tremendous success in the 20 cases that we have prosecuted.

We are truly faced with a problem that, because of the Cold War and our 50 years involvement in that, perhaps it did not allow us to focus, as we should have as an intelligence community, as a government on this problem. It is not a new problem. It has been around for years and years and years. But our government was focused on the Cold War issues and realities and perhaps did not have enough time to pursue this as aggressively as we are trying to do today.

So, let me stop there, Madam Chairman, and engage with you and your fellow members any issues that you might want to pursue.