Testimony of Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, FBI
Before
the Senate Committee on the Judiciary
May 8, 2002
"FBI Reorganization"
The FBI
faces daunting challenges from an increasingly volatile world
situation. Terrorists at home and abroad threaten U.S. interests
at unprecedented levels. Foreign intelligence services continue
to target U.S. secrets and technology, often for their own
countries' economic advantage. Cyber-space is threatened by
increasingly malicious criminal activities. Organized crime
of all types operates without regard to geographic borders.
And most obvious, the tragic events of September 11th have
changed the American landscape forever.
Responding to these challenges requires a redesigned and refocused
FBI, imperatives reinforced by the recent findings of Inspector
General Fine and Judge Webster. We must refocus our missions
and priorities. New technologies must be put in place to support
new and different operational practices. And, we must improve
how we hire, manage and train our workforce; collaborate with
others; and manage, analyze, share and protect information.
All will be necessary if we are to successfully evolve post-9/11.
Most would have been necessary even absent 9/11.
I believe that we all recognize that given the scope and pace
of needed change, that the FBI is in a period of transformation.
This transition is not only organizational and technological,
but also cultural. I am more impatient than most but we must
do these things right, not simply fast. Refashioning a large
organization takes not only a reformer's zeal, but also a
craftsman's patience. But the task of transforming the Bureau
is a national priority and well worth the large expenditure
of effort by all of us involved.
Nevertheless, despite the large scope of the challenge, I
believe we are making progress on all fronts and I very much
appreciate your recent comments Chairman Leahy when you said,
"The men and women of the FBI are performing the task
with great professionalism at home and abroad. Americans have
felt safer as a result of the full mobilization of the FBI's
dedicated Special Agents, its expert support personnel, and
its exceptional technical capabilities" because our people
are our greatest asset.
Change has many dimensions. We are not only structurally different,
but we are fundamentally changing our approach in a number
of areas, most notably counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence
and technology. As this Committee knows, many of these initiatives
are works in progress, with final decisions still to come.
Currently, I am working closely with Deputy Attorney General
Thompson, the Attorney General's Strategic Management Counsel
and our own executives on all of these issues and I anticipate
being in a position to discuss them in depth in the coming
weeks. I am also meeting with our Special Agents in Charge
for the third time next week to consult with them as we continue
to work through the complex issues inherent in remaking the
FBI.
Central to any successful structural change at the FBI is
new technology. As this Committee knows from prior hearings,
our information infrastructure is far behind current technology.
It cannot support the robust analytical capacity we need.
Fortunately, Congress has provided us substantial funding
and we are deploying new hardware and networks on an accelerated
schedule. But, having to so dramatically replace the entire
infrastructure rather than make incremental improvements,
as is common in the private sector, makes the replacement
process more difficult. I am continuing to bring in extremely
talented individuals to assist in this endeavor and will keep
the Congress regularly advised about both the progress we
make and the difficulties we encounter.
Just as we change our technology, we must reshape and retrain
our workforce. Over the years the FBI tended to hire generalists,
operating within a culture that most jobs were best done by
Agents. Former Director Freeh began changing that notion.
We are accelerating this approach. We are hiring subject matter
experts in areas like IT, foreign languages, internal security,
area studies, engineering, records and the like.
There also has been much in the media about coordination with
state and municipal authorities, what is commonly referred
to as information sharing. After a series of meetings with
our law enforcement colleagues and state homeland security
directors, it became clear that our history of solid, personal
relationships alone was not addressing the basic information
needs of our counterparts. They have our attention and we
are doing much better. Adding 650,000 state and local officers
to our efforts is the only way to make this truly a national
effort, not just a federal effort.
To move forward on this broad range of issues, we took a significant
step in the process of change with a major reorganization
of the FBI. The first phase of our comprehensive plan established
four new Executive Assistant Directors who report directly
to me and oversee key areas of our work: Counterterrorism
and Counterintelligence; Criminal Investigations; Law Enforcement
Services; and Administration. This structure reduced the span
of control of the former Deputy Director position, a management
concern raised here on Capitol Hill and in internal and external
reviews of the Bureau. These changes also increased accountability
and strengthened executive-level management oversight of day-to-day
operations, and permitted a greater focus on strategic management
issues.
The reorganization addressed other significant issues as well.
It created a stand-alone Security Division, headed by an experienced
professional from the CIA who has appeared before this Committee,
to raise our security practices and standards to the level
we need to remedy the weaknesses that the Hanssen investigation
made painfully obvious. It also included a Records Management
Division, led by an experienced records expert who also has
appeared before this Committee, to help us modernize our record-keeping
systems, policies, and processes to ensure there is no repeat
of the OKBOMB document situation. It established an Office
of Law Enforcement Coordination that will not only improve
relationships and information sharing with state and local
police professionals and others, but will also help the FBI
tap into the strengths and capabilities of our partners. We
are hiring High Point, North Carolina Police Chief Louis Quijas,
an experienced executive from local law enforcement to head
this new office. He is someone who will better integrate our
state and municipal counterparts in the war against terrorism
and into major criminal investigations.
At the same time, the ongoing reorganization responds directly
to the events of September 11 by putting a coordinating analytic
umbrella over Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence. The
new structure creates the Office of Intelligence, which will
focus on building a strategic analysis capability and improving
our capacity to gather, analyze, and share critical national
security information, an initiative supported by our new College
of Analytical Studies at Quantico. It also creates a new Cyber
Division dedicated to preventing and responding to high tech
and computer crimes, which terrorists around the world are
increasingly exploiting to attack America and its allies.
Our old approach was fractured and not well coordinated. The
new Cyber Division will move elements of the Criminal Investigative
Division and National Infrastructure Protection Center ( NIPC)
into one coordinated entity. This change will bring together
various cyber initiatives and programs so we are better focused,
organized, and coordinated in working with our public and
private sector partners to protect our Nation's growing digital
marketplace and electronic infrastructure.
We are now in the second phase of our reorganization. As part
of this phase, we are developing a comprehensive strategy
to permanently shift resources to supplement the substantial
new resources Congress has already provided in the fight against
terrorism and in support of a massive prevention effort. Given
the gravity of the current terrorist threat to the United
States, the FBI must make the hard decisions to focus its
available energies and resources on preventing additional
terrorist acts and protecting our Nation's security. At the
same time, I want to assure you that we will continue to pursue
and combat international and national organized crime groups
and enterprises, civil rights violations, major white-collar
crime, and serious violent crime consistent with the available
resources and the capabilities of, and in consultation with,
our federal, state, and municipal partners.
We believe the changes to date and those that will be proposed
in the near future are vital to ensuring that the FBI effectively
satisfies its national security, prevention and criminal investigative
missions. They represent important steps in the difficult
process of change. But what emerged from the events of 9/11
leaves no doubt about the need or urgency for change.
Our massive investigation of 9/11 paints a sobering portrait
of the 19 hijackers and makes clear they carried out their
attacks with meticulous planning, extraordinary secrecy, and
extensive knowledge of how America works.
The plans were hatched and financed overseas, beginning at
least five years ago, but perhaps going back even further.
Each of the hijackers came from abroad: 15 from Saudi Arabia,
two from the United Arab Emirates, and one each from Lebanon
and Egypt. All 19 entered our country legally, and only three
had overstayed the legal limits of their visas on the day
of the attacks.
While here, the hijackers did all they could to stay below
our radar. They contacted no known terrorist sympathizers.
They committed no egregious crimes. They blended into the
woodwork.
The hijackers also apparently left no paper trail. In our
investigation, we have not yet uncovered a single piece of
paper either here in the U.S. or in the treasure
trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and
elsewhere that mentioned any aspect of the September
11th plot. As best we can determine, the actual hijackers
had no computers, no laptops, no storage media of any kind.
They used hundreds of different pay phones and cell phones,
often with prepaid calling cards that are extremely difficult
to trace. And they made sure that all the money sent to them
to fund their attacks was wired in small amounts to avoid
detection.
In short, the terrorists managed to exploit loopholes and
vulnerabilities in our systems, to stay out of sight, and
to not let anyone know what they were up to beyond a very
closed circle. The patient, skilled and exploitive approach
used by the hijackers means our prevention efforts must be
massive, globally collaborative and supported by ample technology
and analytical capacity. It means that the information possessed
by every agency - - both here and abroad, both federal and
local - - must go into the multi-agency prevention mix and
be acted upon.
In response to 9-11, and with an eye towards preventing future
attacks, the Bureau has strengthened ties with the Central
Intelligence Agency, placing key staff in each others' command
centers. In addition, we are members of the Foreign Terrorist
Tracking Tack Force, and are expanding the number of Joint
Terrorism Task Forces, which include other federal agencies
and state and municipal officials. Within the FBI we have
centralized accountability within the Counter Terrorism program
under a new Assistant Director. Among the new programmatic
tools at his disposal will be the Financial Review Group to
focus on disrupting the flow of financial resources to terrorists,
the Telephone Applications group, and new data mining capabilities.
But foremost among the lessons I think we have learned in
retrospect is the need for substantially greater and more
centralized analytic capability resident at headquarters but
available anywhere in the world to all who are combating terrorism.
We need a capacity with ample resources, better technology
and better training, one that is better intertwined with other
agencies - - domestic and foreign, federal and local - - and
all the information they may possess. We are designing our
new counterterrorism program and technology, standing up an
Office of Intelligence, changing our training at Quantico,
and hiring subject matter expertise with that exact premise
in mind. The capacity must be in place to permit every piece
of information from every source to be rapidly evaluated from
an analytical perspective.
It is also important, as we search for ways to improve our
Nation's capacity to prevent terrorism, for America to put
the attacks of 9-11 in context. The terrorists took advantage
of America's strengths and used them against us. They took
advantage of the freedoms we accord to our citizens and guests,
particularly freedom of movement and freedom of privacy. And
as long as we continue to treasure our freedoms, we always
will run some risk of future attacks.
In addition, the terrorists also took advantage of the openness
of our society. 50 million people, Americans and guests, entered
and left America during the month of August 2001, the month
preceding the 9-11 attack. The vastness of this number highlights
the dynamic openness of our society. It is also the source
of our economic strength and vitality. But this openness does
bring with it vulnerabilities, as 9-11 so terrifyingly showed.
America will continue to be free and open, and we at the FBI
believe that our job is to protect these freedoms, not reduce
them in the cause of security. However, these attacks highlight
the need for a different FBI, more focused, more technologically
adept, more reliant on outside expertise, and better equipped
to process and use the vast quantities of information available
to us.
I and the 27,000 women and men of the Bureau, were devastated
by the attacks and remain deeply affected. But with this has
come the conviction to do everything within our power to reduce
the risks that Americans run in the exercise of their freedoms.
It is to this goal that all the reorganization, reform, technology
and new personnel are committed. But ultimately, standing
behind all the capabilities that we have now and that we are
working to build is a cadre of FBI professionals, men and
women who exemplify courage, integrity, respect for the law,
and respect for others. I am extremely proud of how they have
performed over the past eight months. As Chairman Leahy recently
recognized, they have worked long days and nights, sacrificing
time with their families to get the job done. It is an honor
to appear before this Committee representing them.
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