Transcript
Donald Van Duyn
Chief Intelligence Officer
National Fusion Center Conference, Kansas City
Van Duyn:
As you’re all aware, the FBI has undergone a sea change in the way we collect and use intelligence. In the past, collecting evidence was the goal. Now, evidence collection is really incidental to intelligence collection and dissemination.
Don’t get me wrong—we’re still going to collect evidence, but we’re constantly weighing the benefits of gathering and disseminating intelligence versus the value of prosecution. At the end of the day, our goal is to completely dismantle terrorist and criminal networks. To do this, we need to ensure that those who do us harm can be put into jail, and to do that you need to complete the evidentiary chain.
At the same time, however, you need to build a complete intelligence picture to ensure that you’ve got the entire networks. The reality is, if you just get one or two terrorists and the rest of the network is still out there, you really haven’t solved the problem and it’s going to come back and bite you.
Terrorism is still our priority, that’s clear. But we also recognize that for you and for us this is about all crimes and all hazards, and we see the fusion centers in that broader role.
It’s not just lip service—it’s because the fusion centers work, and we know that. We’ve got to learn to be less bureaucratic and flexible and fusion centers come into that—they’re a great tool. No police officer … no agent, no country, can prevent crime or terrorism alone. We all have to rely on each other to build those partnerships. We are committed to doing that, committed to working with fusion centers.
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