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*Major Executive Speeches*
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* John S. Pistole
**Deputy Director
**Federal Bureau of Investigation *
* National Fusion Center Conference
Destin, Florida *
* March 7, 2007 *
Good morning. It?s great to be with you and to see so many people here.
Some of you may have attended one of the regional fusion center
conferences that were held last year. Each was such a hit that it seemed
a national conference was in order. Seeing the turnout today is proof
that the fusion center concept has caught fire across America. And
that?s a good thing for America. Being in Destin, Florida, doesn?t hurt
either!
I know you?re hearing a great deal about the nuts and bolts of fusion
centers this week?from technology to training and from funding to policy
development. Instead of getting in the weeds, I want to give you an
overview of why fusion centers?why all of you in this room?are important
to the FBI.
When you reach a certain age, you start to see the world in terms of
?before? and ?after.? Certain events serve as milestones in our lives,
as points that change us personally, and that also change history.
President Kennedy?s assassination. Man landing on the moon. Even the
Colts winning the Superbowl.
Those who have lived through these moments remember exactly where we
were and what we were doing when they happened. They were markers that
divided our lives into a ?before? and an ?after.?
For those of us in law enforcement, September 11 was one of those
milestones. It changed all of us personally. It changed America. And it
changed the way we go about protecting America.
If you Google the phrase ?before September 11,? almost half a million
results pop up. Thousands upon thousands of them center on the
intelligence failures that contributed, in part, to the hijackers? success.
The bottom line is that before September 11, we didn?t have the
technology, the partnerships, or the information sharing we needed to
prevent the attack. After September 11, our challenge was to improve all
three.
Before September 11, we didn?t have the comprehensive intelligence
capability we needed to prevent the attack?from collection, to analysis,
to sharing, to action. After September 11, our challenge was to
strengthen each element.
Before September 11, all of us were collecting the dots, and all of us
were connecting the dots?but we were all doing it individually. After
September 11, our challenge was approach intelligence as a team.
We have all risen to the challenge. Speaking just from the FBI?s
perspective, I can say we are much more connected to our state and local
partners today than we were before September 11. We built new
databases?and we also increased connectivity to them. We formed new task
forces?and worked to integrate our partners so they could fully
participate on them.
But the most important change we made is one that all of us in law
enforcement had to make?and that is changing our understanding of what
intelligence is.
A question I frequently hear is, ?What exactly constitutes intelligence?
How can you define it?? Simply put, it is information: vital information
about those who want to harm us. But as you know, nothing is ever that
simple. There is a world of difference between information and knowledge.
The problem we face is not a lack of information, but rather a flood of
it. It?s like trying to sip water from a firehose. Our job is to wade
through a river of unrelated and often indecipherable data, and to
determine what is important, and who needs to know it.
But how do we turn all that raw information into valuable knowledge? How
do we turn a name, a phone number, or an ATM receipt into a
comprehensive understanding of our threat environment? How do we
transform it into actionable intelligence that helps us prevent a
terrorist attack?
That?s where the fusion centers come in.
Inside fusion centers, information collected by a police officer on a
beat can be merged with information from an ongoing FBI investigation
several states away. For example, many of you have heard the Chesapeake
Bay Bridge story. Back in 2004, local law enforcement officers in
Maryland stopped a car after a woman was observed videotaping the
structure of the bridge. Red flags went up when the officers ran the
driver?s name through NCIC. They then called the fusion center, in this
case, the Terrorist Screening Center. It turned out that the driver of
the car was wanted in connection with a Chicago investigation involving
Hamas.
Now, we won?t have a story like that every day. But fusion centers do
much more than just provide timely intelligence. They allow us to see
both the macro and the microview of our threat environment. We can?t win
a battle without understanding our adversary, and knowing every inch of
the battlefield.
And in this interconnected world, it?s not easy to discern who our
adversaries are, or where the battlefield is. They could be an
international network of terrorists communicating in online chat-rooms.
But they could also be members of a homegrown cell meeting in a
small-town gym, as was the case in the U.K. with the July 7 bombers. The
global battlefield may be one suicide bomber away from becoming a local
battlefield.
We have to be attuned to what?s going on in our own backyards, and look
for connections well beyond our state and national borders. In the FBI,
we call this ? knowing our domain.?
We have to understand the full scope of threats in every region?not just
when it comes to counterterrorism, but also criminal, cyber, and
counterintelligence. We are working to identify potential targets,
assess the threats against them, and then review our ability to combat
those threats. And the threats will vary from region to region.
For example, those of you from the Midwest might focus on the threat of
agroterrorism. The FBI?s San Francisco field office might focus on
economic espionage and theft of trade secrets in Silicon Valley. Large
cities might focus on high-risk targets, like power grids, subways, or
nuclear power plants. Here in Florida, we might focus on port security.
As we scrutinize our territories, we know there may be gaps between
potential threats and our ability to address those threats. Fusion
centers help us narrow those gaps.
But their value is not limited to counterterrorism. As the face of
terrorism evolves, fusion centers are tracking crimes and even
individuals who are not usually associated with terrorist activity. For
instance, fusion centers are keeping tabs on criminal
activity?everything from tax evasion to cigarette smuggling to robbery.
On the surface, these may seem like relatively low-level crimes that
only have a local impact.
But several years ago, we uncovered a cigarette-smuggling ring operating
out of North Carolina. Members of the cell were transporting the
cigarettes across state borders to sell them at a profit?and were using
the profits to support Hezbollah in Lebanon.
And in August 2005, police in Torrance, California, arrested two men in
a gas station robbery. When they searched the men?s apartment, they
found documents listing the addresses of U.S. military recruiting
stations and synagogues. They called the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and
together we uncovered a terrorist cell, disrupted a terrorist plot, and
possibly saved many lives.
We never know when something that seems typical may be connected to
something treacherous.
That?s why the fusion centers are so vital. And that?s why the FBI fully
supports fusion centers. We have committed almost 200 agents and
analysts to 33 centers around the country. We are there to participate
as partners, and to make sure we are fully integrated with law
enforcement across the country.
We have seen the value of this integration time and again. The fusion
centers allow us to analyze an issue from every angle, instead of our
own limited perspectives. They let us bridge the gap from information to
knowledge, and from knowledge to action.
Mark Twain once said, ?It is wiser to find out than to suppose.? In our
business, there will always be some element of supposing. In this
information age, that is unavoidable. But fusion centers cut down the
supposing and increase the knowing.
One of our special agents in charge refers to fusion centers as
?interagency communication on steroids.? And it?s true. A couple of
weeks ago, I visited the fusion center in Phoenix, and I saw this
firsthand.
Federal, state, and local officers from a myriad of agencies work
together under one roof, sharing information as if they are one agency.
The officers, agents, and analysts were not meeting as strangers over
conference calls, but as colleagues over coffee.
Like all fusion centers, it was immediately clear that this was not just
a collection point for information. It was a coalescing point?an
integration point?fusing the 30,000-foot strategic look with
on-the-ground action. Information comes in, and then everyone adds his
or her own insight and value. This not only creates a more complete
picture of the threats we face, it puts us in a position to prevent
crime and terrorism, instead of just reacting to them.
This paid off for the Arizona fusion center last summer. During a drug
bust in Phoenix, police found a suspicious vial of white powder. The
powder was the explosive TATP?the same substance Richard Reid put in his
shoes and tried to detonate aboard American Airlines Flight 63, and the
same substance used by the London bombers.
We heard the news at FBI Headquarters within minutes. The investigation
eventually revealed that this was not a terrorist incident?and it also
revealed an outstanding level of preparation, communication, and
integration throughout the law enforcement community.
As /The Washington Post/ reported, ?the news?went the old-fashioned way,
with an Arizona police official walking across the hall to tell his
friend in the local FBI [Joint Terrorism] Task Force, who then picked up
the telephone and called headquarters.?
That?s the value of fusion centers. Before September 11, it might have
taken much longer for such information to travel. But after September
11, we tore down the walls that divided us. We built up our capabilities
as a team, instead of being territorial. We planned carefully and
thought creatively. And the fruits of these efforts? your efforts?are
right here in this room.
I was thinking about various meanings of the word ?fusion? on my way
here. It means ?merging,? ?combining,? ?blending.? But there?s also an
element of physics to it.
Now, I?m no nuclear physicist, but I do know how to use Wikipedia. This
is what Wikipedia says about fusion: ?It takes considerable energy to
force nuclei to fuse?but the fusion?will generally release more energy
than it took to force them together.?
Now, there?s obviously a lot more to it. But I was most struck by the
idea that fusion involves absorbing energy, and then producing it.
That?s what all of you are doing in your fusion centers. Each of you
contributes your expertise, your information, and your resources. And as
your energy fuses with that of the other agencies, it produces something
larger, and results in a surge of collective energy.
That collective energy is what we need to win out against all threats.
The great coach Vince Lombardi once said, ?The achievements of an
organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.?
Scientists call it synergy?the idea that the whole is greater than the
sum of its parts. None of us alone has enough money, manpower, or
expertise to protect America. But by combining our resources, we
collectively have created first-class facilities that do first-class
intelligence work.
Working together is not just the best option?it is the only option. By
working together, we are making America safer. And by working together,
we will prevail.
Thank you for your work with the FBI, and for all you do for law
enforcement and for the American people. God bless you all.
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