I think around the world, our agents are the best collectors of information you'll find.
We had to address information technology in the ways we had not before and give the agents the tools that they need to do their job more efficiently and more expeditiously.
Prior to the passage of the Patriot Act, it was very difficult - often impossible - for us to share information with the Central Intelligence Agency, with NSA, with the other intelligence agencies, and likewise, for them to share information with us.
There'll be differences of opinion in just about every intelligence analysis that you make.
So there is a foreign intelligence purpose for every one of our FISA warrants.
In order to be successful against each of these threats, we have to have a presence overseas, work closely not only with our counterparts in the law enforcement community, but also with the intelligence community.
What we bring to the table is not only our 56 field offices in the United States and our number of resident agencies, but also we have 45 legal attaches overseas.
I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war.
If you look at the 19 hijackers who came to the United States in Sept. 11 to commit those acts, if you'd looked at them before they got onto a plane, you could probably say the same thing. There were various levels of expertise, various levels of com...
It's because we need to determine who in this country is poised, positioned to commit terrorist acts.
I would say in just about every investigation we have, there will be differences of opinion, where you have partial facts, as to what those facts mean.
As I said before, there are often disagreements as to what a particular set of facts mean. That is not at all unusual, and one shouldn't read into it more than is there.
In planning an attack, persons have various roles.
The FBI's principal priority right now is protecting the United States against another terrorist attack.
Secondly, not only have we put additional agents on counterterrorism, but we've also built up our analytical structure so that we're better positioned to analyze the information we have.
All I'm going to tell you is investigations, whether it be this and others, where you have partial facts, analysts, agents are always trying to interpret what those facts mean, extrapolate from them what they mean.
I was in my office when - on 9/11. I think I had a number of meetings scheduled. I was just getting to know the bureau. And somebody walked in and said the first plane had - or a plane had struck the World Trade Center, one of the towers.
And at that point, I think we all realized it was something tremendously tragic, probably a terrorist attack, and the next step was to go down to our command center and get things going.
I didn't know the organization, but the one thing you can say about the FBI, it's tremendously professional.
And from the moment that we realized it was a terrorist attack, there isn't an agent or a support person in the FBI that wasn't committed to bringing to justice those who were responsible for this.
