We urge you to read Director Mueller's March 17 testimony, which outlines the FBI's FY 05 budget request. Every American taxpayer should scrutinize the programs and the reasoning that go into government agency budgets. For us, in fact, this budget represents the largest request the FBI has ever made.

Why? In Director Mueller's words from his opening statement, "Over the past two and a half years, the FBI has moved from an organization that primarily focused on traditional criminal investigations to one that actively investigates and disrupts terrorist operations. Our mission has changed dramatically, and our budget reflects this change."

What are the top budget priorities? As you'd expect, we continue to strengthen and support our top operational priorities: counterterrorism, counterintelligence, cyber, and major criminal programs. But this year we have a priority that tops even these–one that relates and interrelates to all of them.

What is it? Again in Director Mueller's words, "My primary focus, and a top priority in the FY 2005 budget, is the FBI's Intelligence Program...strengthening it, improving interagency coordination of intelligence, and expanding our overseas presence."

Why such emphasis on intelligence? Again, because it is key to ALL our investigations. Only by piecing the universe of criminal and terrorist information together, distilling it into intelligence, and sharing that intelligence appropriately across the world can terrorist plans be foiled and investigations come to speedy conclusions.

Please read in the testimony the strides we have made in our Intelligence Program–our network of intelligence groups stood up in field offices and at headquarters, headed by a career Intelligence executive with a tightly articulated concept of operations...our participation in the Terrorist Threat Integration Center...and our leadership in the Terrorist Screening Center. Please read about our operational programs, our forensic programs, and progress in strengthening our information technology infrastructure. We encourage you to do so.

Final words of Director Mueller: "We have made great progress. But our work is not yet finished." In fact, it never will be so long as we are "dedicated to protecting the United States, securing freedom, and preserving justice for all Americans."

Link: Full testimony