Testimony of David Szady, Assistant Director, Counterintelligence
Division, FBI
Before the United
States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary
April 9, 2002
"Changes the FBI is Making to the Counterintelligence
Program"
Mr. Chairman, Senator Hatch,
and other members of the Committee, I would like to express
my appreciation to you for inviting me to share my thoughts
and provide you with an update on the changes we are making
to the Counterintelligence program at the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI). I am pleased to be appearing jointly
today with Kenneth Senser, Assistant Director of the FBI's
recently established Security Division. By necessity the cooperation
between our two Divisions is complementary and seamless. Our
Director is committed to protecting the full range of U.S.
national security interests and has made counterintelligence,
along with counterterrorism and prevention, his highest priorities.
Because the world has changed
so dramatically, the FBI is making significant changes to
its Counterintelligence program. Our end goal is more effective
and efficient detection, prevention, and disruption of hostile
foreign intelligence activity directed against the United
States and its interests. The FBI appreciates your support
as we continue to implement these changes across our organization.
First, I would like to provide a very brief assessment of
the characteristics of the foreign intelligence threats of
the 21st Century, for they provide a basis for understanding
our new national, centrally managed counterintelligence strategy.
The Threat Environment
The United States today faces
an intelligence threat that is far more complex than it has
ever been historically. The threat is increasingly asymmetrical
insofar as it seeks to exploit the areas where there is a
perception of weakness within the U.S. national security approach
and organizations. Traditional notions of counterintelligence
that focus on hostile foreign intelligence services targeting
classified national defense information simply do not reflect
the realities of today's complex international structure.
Foreign targeting of the elements of national power, including
our vibrant national economic and commercial interests, continues
to evolve. While traditional adversaries were limited to centrally
controlled national intelligence services, today's adversaries
include not only these traditional services but also non-traditional
and non-state actors who operate from decentralized organizations.
Moreover, the techniques and methodologies used to target
classified, sensitive, and commercially valuable proprietary
information march forward with the advance of technology.
This new environment and the
uncertain future that accompanies it present the FBI with
new challenges. The FBI's role as the leader of the nation's
counterintelligence efforts requires that we understand all
dimensions of the intelligence threats facing the nation and
match them with new and innovative investigative and operational
strategies. The FBI must continually assess and measure its
performance against ever-evolving threats found in these new
and different environments. The constant parade of new technologies,
the vulnerabilities created by them, the extraordinary value
of commercial information and the globalization of everything
are but a few examples. The FBI must focus its resources on
those actors that constitute the most significant intelligence
threats facing the nation, wherever that might come from and
in all of these new arenas.
The FBI Response
In response to the increasingly
complex intelligence threat environment, the FBI is taking
measures that re-orient its counterintelligence strategy,
prioritize intelligence threats, and make the requisite organizational
and managerial changes to ensure U.S. national security interests
are protected. The following initiatives are underway:
Nationally-Directed Strategy
We recognize that in order to
mitigate the intelligence threats our country is now facing,
we must continually redesign our Counterintelligence program.
Historically, when the threat lines were more clearly drawn,
counterintelligence at the FBI was largely decentralized,
with field divisions setting local priorities and assigning
resources accordingly. To effectively recognize and counter
the extremely diverse intelligence threats now evolving, a
new more centralized and nationally directed, focused, and
prioritized program is more effective. By centralizing our
program we will ensure the ability of the FBI to be more proactive
and predictive in protecting the critical national assets
of our country. Centralization cements accountability regarding
counterintelligence program direction, control and leadership.
Moreover, a centralized counterintelligence program facilitates
the FBI's cooperative and collaborative interaction with other
members of the United States Intelligence Community. The counterintelligence
environment must be transparent.
Our National Strategy will be
totally integrated with the Office of the National Counterintelligence
Executive (NCIX), or CI-21, to ensure that our efforts are
focused on policy driven priorities and that we are positioned
to protect identified critical national assets. Our efforts
will also be seamless with the CIA to ensure that our counterintelligence
efforts extend worldwide.
As part of this nationally directed
strategy, I have undertaken a comprehensive strategic planning
effort that is providing the FBI with the framework in which
to prioritize and address intelligence threats. This framework
is based on community-wide analysis and direction and recognizes
that there can never be unlimited resources so we must be
focused on the greatest threats. This will better position
the FBI for the future by changing our performance expectations,
management practices and processes and workforce. The central
elements of this initiative are:
- Development of clear strategic
objectives and operational priorities in support of those
objectives. As the Assistant Director of Counterintelligence
for the FBI, I have responsibility for meeting these objectives
and will be held accountable for their successful implementation.
Some characteristics of this effort include the establishment
of:
- A highly trained and specialized
Counterintelligence workforce with a management team that
reinforces counterintelligence as a specialized priority
career within the FBI.
- A much stronger operational
component within the Counterintelligence Division to include
a stronger program management role and specific accountability
at Headquarters.
- An ongoing system of accountability
that clearly defines responsibilities for all elements of
counterintelligence both at Headquarters and in the field;
and
- An enhanced communication
strategy that is more effectively communicating counterintelligence
policy, plans, priorities, and management concerns throughout
the counterintelligence program.
- Greatly enhanced analytical
support that relies more extensively on highly specialized
disciplines and that is interwoven into the intelligence
community as a whole.
Organizational Changes
Accepting responsibility to
prevent and disrupt foreign intelligence threats and espionage
from threatening U.S. national security requires the Counterintelligence
Division to adopt a more proactive posture, the kind envisioned
by CI-21. In order to fully evolve to this posture, the FBI
is developing operational strategies that strategically align
our resources in a manner consistent with community-wide national
priorities. A fully proactive posture also requires candor
in acknowledging our limitations and constraints, and courage
in committing ourselves to confront and overcome them. One
organizational change I have made consistent with this goal
is the establishment of a Counterespionage Section within
the Counterintelligence Division from existing base resources.
This new section is responsible for managing all of our major
espionage investigations. The section also evaluates and prioritizes
all existing espionage cases to ensure effective allocation
of financial and human resources and expertise to these top
priority cases. I want to ensure that these cases are being
handled and managed by the most highly skilled and trained
FBI personnel.
Resources
In order to meet the challenges
ahead of us, I am ensuring that the most important resources
the Counterintelligence Division has, its human resources,
have the appropriate tools available to effectively implement
our mission. While the FBI has historically provided counterintelligence
training to new special agents and support personnel and provided
specialized courses as advances training, a systematic approach
to a comprehensive counterintelligence training regimen applicable
throughout an Agent's career has not been in place. The FBI
is currently studying its counterintelligence training program.
Agents and analysts assigned to work counterintelligence should
have a systematic and integrated training program that allows
them to continually refine their operational, investigative
and analytical skills as their careers advance and a program
to ensure that FBI counterintelligence personnel have the
same knowledge and understandings as those elsewhere in the
community.
Analysis is another area of
my focus. Counterintelligence analysis is central to our program,
as it not only provides tactical support to ongoing investigations
and operations, but is also integral to providing strategic
analysis in assessing the foreign intelligence threat we face.
With the dissolution of the Investigative Service Division
(ISD), many of the counterintelligence analysts have returned
to the Counterintelligence Division. It is my job, working
with our training Academy and our new college of analytical
studies, to have in place a world class analytical function
that operates seamlessly within the larger community effort.
I think today's challenges require much greater reliance on,
and bring in much greater numbers of, outside subject matter
experts to bolster our efforts and understanding.
Information management and intelligence
sharing are also two areas that we are improving in concert
with the directives established by Director Mueller regarding
these subjects. The technology being put in place at the FBI
will vastly increase our capability to maximize the value
of what we know and, even more basic, to know what we know.
These new technologies will be the thread that ties the sum
of the community body of knowledge together.
Summary
Counterintelligence and counterterrorism
are the FBI's leading priorities. If we are to successfully
mitigate the asymmetrical intelligence threats facing us today
and in the future, a new approach, new ways of thinking and
better technology are required. We are in the process of redesigning
the counterintelligence program at the FBI. It will be much
more centralized to ensure the program is nationally directed,
prioritized, and that appropriate management and accountability
measures are in place. The Counterintelligence Division will
continue to work closely with the Security Division to ensure
that our activities are complementary and that the FBI is
able to comprehensively address any internal threats. Through
our ongoing comprehensive strategic planning process, we are
ensuring that our counterintelligence priorities, performance
expectations and management practices are designed in a manner
that is responsive to ensuring our national objectives are
achieved. We are working to not only ensure that counterintelligence
personnel have the best possible tools to conduct their work,
but also to enhance the training and experience amongst counterintelligence
personnel and to bolster counterintelligence as a specialized
and vital career within the FBI.
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