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.
