For Immediate Release
August 25, 1999

Washington D.C.
FBI National Press Office

The FBI together with the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies will be co-hosting an international conference on organized crime on August 31 through September 2, 1999, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

The conference, entitled "Organized Crime: the National Security Dimension," will be attended by more than 21 European and Eurasian countries, in addition to the United States. The focus of the conference will be to determine which aspects of organized crime pose the greatest threats to national security in these regions and to allow the crime-fighting experts from these countries to explore and develop proposals to enhance their national security through unilateral and cooperative measures.

Scheduled speakers will include officials from Hungary, Poland, the United Kingdom, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and the United States. The FBI will be represented by Assistant Director Thomas J. Pickard, Criminal Investigative Division, as a keynote speaker; and the following FBI officials will serve as moderators during panel discussions held at the three-day conference: Deputy Assistant Director Michael A. Vatis, and Section Chiefs Charles H. Middleton and Robert M. Burnham, National Security Division; Section Chief Thomas V. Fuentes, Criminal Investigative Division; and Associate General Counsel M. E. Bowman. Also attending will be SSA Gwen McClure, FBI representative to Interpol at Lyon, France; William Kinane, Legal Attache in Moscow, Russia; R.C. Gamble, DEA detailee to the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division; and Section Chief Bruce Ohr, Organized Crime Section, Department of Justice.

News media representatives interested in more information regarding the conference or in covering the event may contact Debbie Weierman at the FBI National Press Office at (202) 324- 3691 prior to Friday August 27; or at the George C. Marshall Center in Germany at 011 49 8821 750 543 after 9:00 am (Germany time), 3:00 am (Eastern Standard Time) on Saturday, August 28.

The Marshall Center maintains an academic policy of "non-attribution," but the Public Affairs Office of the Center and FBI Media Representatives Debbie Weierman and Special Agent Dawn Clenney, will seek to accommodate advance requests for interviews with distinguished guest speakers following their presentations or other requests for coverage of the conference.