I
am honored - and impressed - to be on stage with so many leaders
from this city. And I am glad to be together with so many of you
from across the community. Thank you all for being here.
It is good
to see Willie Hulon, our Special Agent in Charge for Detroit.
Many people probably do not realize the scope of the cases that
your office investigates, from counterterrorism to corporate
fraud to cyber crime. Willie, my thanks to you and to the men
and women of the FBI for all you do for this city and for our
country.
For years,
Detroit has played a leadership role in terms of its industry
and innovation, from the Model T to Motown. Today, this city
is also playing a leadership role in terms of security, whether
it is putting terrorist cells and supporters out of business
or performing the non-stop work of protecting the border. I
want to thank and recognize our federal, state, and local partners
for their hard work, especially over the past two years. Without
them, we in the FBI simply could not get the job done.
I realize
that most speakers come to the Detroit Economic Club to talk
about things like economics, manufacturing, or export growth.
As you might expect, that will not be my focus today. What I
can give you, however, is a slightly different perspective on
the economy and what it takes to keep our economy strong.
There was
an article a month ago in the Detroit Free Press that talked
about signs of improvement in the nation's economy. It had an
interview with a woman who owns a graphic design company in
Ann Arbor. She said her business had been hit hard by 9/11 but
had since rebounded. She said she was glad to hear about these
positive economic forecasts. But then she added: "If something
big happens again, like another 9/11, we're back to square one."
That thought
captures how it is no longer possible to separate our country's
economic well-being from its national security.
Businesses
today not only have to contend with the brutal forces of global
competition. They also face criminal and terrorist threats of
such magnitude that they concern even a small business owner
in Ann Arbor.
So today
I want to talk about our economy and the many security threats
coming at it with a speed and force we have not seen before.
Then, I want to describe how the FBI is responding to these
threats and how we are working to protect the economy in this
global age.
Let me
start with the threats and why they concern us.
First and
foremost, international terrorism. Al Qaeda and all of those
who subscribe to its brand of extremism are taking direct aim
at our economy like no other terrorists or criminals before
them. Their goal is to destroy the United States. Assaulting
our economy is a means to that end.
September
11th was the most far-reaching and most costly attack on our
nation's economy. Al Qaeda would like to repeat that success.
Their potential targets include shopping malls, skyscrapers,
railways, and subways: whatever will cause panic and disrupt
our economy.
The threats
reach beyond our borders. Two months ago, on August 5th, the
Marriott Hotel in nearby Sterling Heights was having a fairly
routine day. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, the Marriott
Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, was in a state of emergency after
a suicide bomber had detonated a car packed with explosives.
Why did
a terrorist target the Marriott in Jakarta? One important reason
is that American-owned businesses are everywhere. They are in
Detroit and Dresden. They are in New York and New Delhi. Our
global presence has created a world of targets.
Preventing
terrorist attacks on America and on American interests overseas
is the FBI's overriding priority. But the threats to our economy
come from far more than just bullets and bombs. They also come
from criminal industries that rob our nation of billions of
dollars in potential GDP.
Theft of
trade secrets and critical technologies -- what we call economic
espionage -- costs our nation upwards of $250 billion a year.
The counterfeiting of U.S. goods overseas costs at least the
same amount.
Organized
crime has diversified into telemarketing fraud, stock manipulation,
and cyber crimes. And as you might expect in a global age, organized
crime is now an international force. Criminal enterprises from
countries like China, Japan, Hungary, and Russia are here in
the United States, siphoning billions of dollars from companies
and consumers.
Today,
however, one does not have to be part of a terrorist network
or a criminal syndicate to do significant damage to our economy.
Thanks to our increasingly interconnected world, isolated individuals
can now launch attacks that cost billions of dollars and impact
millions of people.
Three years
ago, you may recall, a student from the Philippines developed
a powerful computer virus called the "Love Bug." A few bits
of code, by themselves, do not pose much of a threat. But when
they are sent across a global electronic network that connects
hundreds of millions of people, it sets off a worldwide chain
reaction. It is like knocking over a line of dominos, only without
knowing when, where, and how fast they will fall. By the time
the "Love" virus had run its course, millions of systems had
been disrupted. The total damages worldwide were estimated at
$8 to $10 billion. And today, those billion-dollar attacks by
individuals are even more common.
Another
example of this new age of high impact crimes is corporate fraud.
The Savings and Loan scandal of the late 80s and early 90s gave
us a taste of how billions of dollars could be lost through
a series of interconnected crimes across the financial industry.
Corporate fraud scandals of the past two years have shown us
how billions can be lost by a single company.
Each month,
we open a number of major cases of corporate fraud that involve
manipulations of financial statements at large, publicly-traded
companies. At last count, the FBI has 16 separate cases of corporate
fraud in which the investors have lost at least a billion dollars.
Not one, but two of these investigations represent $80 billion
crimes: Enron and Qwest. That is how much investors lost in
each case because of fraud. And that does not take into account
the number of jobs lost: more than 22,000 at WorldCom and thousands
more at Enron and Tyco.
Eight months
ago, we launched a national toll-free hotline for reporting
tips and information. We have already logged nearly 2,000 calls.
Over the past three years, I might add, FBI investigations have
led to charges against 176 individuals, with 83 convictions
and guilty pleas.
When it
comes to our nation's financial health, corporate fraud is a
particularly insidious crime. It erodes our trust in corporate
institutions and the marketplace, thereby undermining the foundation
of our economy.
In this
era of globalization, attacks on our economy can do more damage,
more quickly, than ever before. These attacks come from within
the United States and from beyond our borders. From organized
networks and from isolated players. From nation-states and from
terrorist and criminal groups tied to no particular country.
Knowing
what we know now, if you could go back one hundred years and
start designing an agency that could handle all these threats
to our economy, what would you create?
First,
you would want this agency to have skilled investigators to
address complex, global investigations. Experts who could determine
the explosive content of a bomb in Baghdad. Agents who could
match a paint chip to nearly every color of car that has rolled
off the assembly lines in Detroit. Scientists who could peer
into the DNA of a cell to establish guilt or innocence in a
homicide case. Accountants who could analyze financial records
from Dubai, Geneva, and New York.
But at
the same time, you would want this agency to be able to look
at the world through a wide-angle lens, seeing threats from
local, national, and international perspectives. An agency that
could fight traditional crimes like white collar fraud and complex
threats like terrorism, espionage, and cyber crime. And an agency
with the capability to fight traditional crimes and emerging
global threats in tandem, recognizing that they are increasingly
interconnected -- from terrorists who commit credit card frauds
to finance their operations, to organized crime rings that collaborate
with terrorists.
Second,
this agency would have the power to arrest and investigate like
any law enforcement agency. Yet, it would also operate in the
complex world of intelligence, gathering countless bits of raw
information, making sense of them, and using them to draw the
larger picture.
Third,
this agency would have partnerships across the world so it could
fight crimes and threats to the economy that increasingly transcend
borders. It would be equally at home working with Chief Oliver
in Detroit as it would be with Bashir Wali Mohmaund, Director
General of the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau.
This is
the agency needed to defeat the global threats to our economy.
This is the FBI of today. We are in a position to protect the
economy because we straddle the worlds of both crime and terrorism.
We gather intelligence and act on it. We look at threats from
a broad point of view and use scientific precision to disable
those threats.
Every day,
we work to refine these skills. Every day we are working to
build new skills.
An example
is our intelligence capabilities. Reaching outside the Bureau,
we have brought in a long-time expert from NSA to head up our
intelligence program. Each of our field offices now has an intelligence
unit that analyzes local threats. That information is then centralized
in Washington to help paint the national picture. We are enhancing
our ability to take a daily, system-wide snapshot of our domestic
intelligence picture: what we are collecting, how we are collecting
it, and where any gaps in our intelligence might lie. That is
an important step in enabling us to better predict and prevent
attacks.
Technology
is a key to that success as well, and it is improving. We have
new analytical tools that help us spot patterns in an endless
sea of information. We are building databases that will integrate
information across all of our cases and programs. In the near
future, our Agents will move to a completely digital case system
for the first time. We are also recruiting our fair share of
computer wizards. Bill Gates should not get them all.
The age
of global threats has also propelled the Bureau into an age
of global partnerships.
One phrase
you hear in the FBI these days is "the blurring of lines." The
clear-cut divisions of responsibility and jurisdiction that
once existed between agencies -- and even between the United
States and other countries -- are becoming less and less relevant.
How do
you defeat international terrorism, for example, without the
help of countries such as Great Britain, Germany, Saudi Arabia,
Yemen, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Kenya?
Let me
give you an example of the type of international challenge we
face today.
In May,
a United States scientific research station in Antarctica reported
to us that their systems had been hacked into and their data
corrupted. They sought our help.
Normally,
we send our Agents to the scene to investigate. But no aircraft
would be able to land in Antarctica for another six months because
of the sub-freezing temperatures. But working from a distance,
our investigators were able to trace the source of the intrusion
to a server in a trucking company outside Pittsburgh. From there,
we identified two Romanian suspects. With the help of the Romanian
authorities, they were arrested outside Bucharest shortly thereafter.
Today,
cases such as these have become the rule rather than the exception
for the FBI.
That is
why the FBI, like many institutions, has gone global. In 1940,
we established our first international office - what we call
a Legal Attaché or Legat. Today, we have 45 Legal Attachés around
the world. Not only in such cities as London, Paris, and Rome.
But also in places like Islamabad, Riyadh, Seoul, Moscow, and
Beijing.
Increasingly,
these Legats are helping to stop crime and terror from being
exported to our shores. FBI Agents today are working with counterparts
in places like Romania and Russia to track down cyber criminals.
They are joining forces with the Hungarian National Police to
tackle organized crime syndicates. They are gathering important
pieces of intelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan and hunting down
terrorists in concert with partners in countries like Pakistan,
Morocco, and Indonesia.
In an age
where attacks on our economy come from the four corners of the
globe, from the streets of Detroit to the shores of Yemen, the
FBI must be able to call upon a full range of capabilities.
We must combine the tools of law enforcement with the tools
of intelligence to identify and disable threats. We must fight
crime even as we roll up terrorist cells, using the same investigative
capabilities to root out corporate fraud as we use to catch
financiers wiring funds to terrorists. We must work locally,
but think globally. And we must apply our unique strengths even
as we share them and blend them with those of other agencies.
This is
the FBI of today, and this is the future of the FBI. With the
support of all of you and our many partners, we are committed
to protecting this city, protecting our nation, and protecting
our nation's economy in the years to come.
Thanks
for having me today, and God bless.