The meeting in my conference room

The meeting in my conference room at five o'clockfive days a week could be the most important meeting thatoccurs in Washington on terrorism, because operational andanalytic decisions are made on the spot about globalterrorism, al-Qa'ida, Afghanistan, the terrorist threat Rosetta Stone fromchemical, biological, and radiological weapons, and thefinancial war on terrorism. Representatives from all themajor agencies are there. Obviously, terrorism is anissue on which the DCI chooses to spend an enormous amountof personal time. I spend it at the strategic level, thetactical level, and understanding our operations andanalysis. There is not a more dangerous threat to thecountry than this. I am personally involved with our liaisonpartners, often making direct phone calls for operationaldiscussions. In the Millennium period alone I personallytalked with 20 of our liaison partners to alert them to ourfindings about targets and the need to go after them. Everyvisit I take overseas has a counterterrorism or al-Qa'idacomponent to it. That was the reality of my job beforeSeptember 11 and it is the reality now. I continue to devotethe greatest proportion of my time to the war on terror,just as I did before 9/11. Operations are more complex now,and counterterrorism is intensely operational. There is aconstant flow of new data, new threat reporting, new people,and new relationships. There are new and bigger actors onthe scene, because there is a very different set ofrelationships with the military than existed before 9/11. Ihave a close working relationship with the Central Commandand with the Special Operations Command that is differenttoday and very intense. CIA is engaged in direct support toour military in counterterrorism operations in Iraq andAfghanistan and in other theatres of operation on a scalenot seen since Vietnam. 27 There is a difference inthe pace and scope of my relationship with the FBI, now thatwe have created a common threat matrix and common datapoints that we review and discuss each day. We have morejoint investigations and CIA support to theirinvestigations. From a technical perspective we arecollecting a lot more data Rosetta Stone Spanish Latin because we have a lot more peoplein the fight than we ever had before. We are managing acollection process that integrates the National SecurityAgency and a new and very important Information OperationsCenter. We can integrate them with a Foreign IntelligenceSurveillance Act process in a way that was never donebefore. - Specifically, the Patriot Act aut horizedintelligence officials engaged in the collection of foreignintelligence under the FISA to consult with law enforcementpersonnel in order to coordinate efforts to investigate orprotect against threats to national security. -Additionally, law enforcement personnel are required by thePatriot Act to share with the DCI foreign intelligenceobtained during criminal investigations. - Finally, thePatriot Act gave me the authority to establish requirementsand priorities for the collection of foreign intelligenceinformation pursuant to the FISA, an authority that I haveexercised. We have a very robust analytical effort thatis substantially bigger than before. Additionalsupplemental funding provided by the Congress has providedan enormous amount of impetus. From a managementperspective, we have a much bigger cadre of people workingthe problem than we ever had before. We also learned that wecould not fight this war effectively without a trusting,professional, dedicated set of liaison partners to help withcollection and operations. Whoever sits in this job isgoing to be right in the middle of countering terror fortheir entire time in office. It does not matter who it is.Yes, we have Rosetta Stone American English broken down a lot of stovepipes. But, there arestill things you work on all the time. The big managementmoral of the story is that you have got to be here doing ithands-on in a continuous way.