Despite all of the understandable loom and doom, I believe, my personal opinion and remember again, I am speaking as a private citizen now, no longer in the government. My personal opinion is that the international community has, in fact, begun to turn the corner on international terrorism. At least as it has manifested itself so far. It will be a generational effort, much as the Cold War was, but we have made real strides. For example, after 9/11 the first step was very clear. Afghanistan. In no other place on earth could Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in effect rent so much territory in such an open and secure way from something resembling a government. Our military and other agencies of the government and other agencies played a very important role in this, even though what you saw on CNN was primarily the military. Cleaned out Al-Qaeda training bases, laboratories for making chemical and biological weapons, safe houses for planning and carrying out attacks. Seized massive quantities, massive, mountains of documents, computer hard drives and things. Killed or captured large numbers of Al-Qaeda operatives.

Back home however, the U.S. government of September 12, 2001 did not communicate information and intelligence inside well enough. Not within individual agencies and not among agencies of the government. Along with Afghanistan, this was an obvious fix that had to be made. By the time I returned to Washington in the summer of 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the Washington Interagency Community and I think you all understand what I mean about that, the cooperative group of the various key agencies – State, CIA, Defense, FBI, and others. The Interagency Community was doing much better. In fact, I was really struck by the spirit of cooperation inside the house by the key counterterrorism people, my counterparts in the agencies. Huge strides have been made since then including such steps as the creation of the National Counterterrorism Center – NCTC, to fuse intelligence from across the U.S. government and local and state authorities and foreign governments. The next step also was fairly obvious.

It was understood at all levels of the U.S. government, that the United States, even though we were the largest superpower, could not locate and capture every terrorist in the world. Could not find and break up every cell in the world. Not possible. And even though the media were saying both here and abroad that the U.S. is unilateralist and wants to do this by itself, I can tell you in terms of counterterrorism, that is not so. Everybody from the President on down understood that the primary responsibility in Indonesia and in Pakistan and in Europe and all of these places had to be on those governments, sometimes helped by us in one way or another, particularly with information, but we could not do it. Even if we wanted to do it. We worked at building the largest possible coalition across the globe to fight what seemed to us to be a new scourge, looking back obviously there were lots of signs. And found that there were not many countries that professed themselves unwilling to do this fight. The coalition in fact has held together rather well despite what you all know of the vicissitudes of pre-Iraq and Iraq and high-level feuding among senior people like the President of France and our President and other people. We really significantly strengthened counterterrorism cooperation around the globe. These activities included enhanced intelligence sharing, law enforcement cooperation, as well as finding and freezing terrorist assets – their money, and engaging in capacity building to help others do the same thing. We engaged and cooperated with other donor countries, especially the Europeans, the Australians out in Asia, to coordinate our capacity building because of course even as rich as we and the Europeans appear to the rest of the world, nonetheless, there just aren’t enough resources to meet every wish that comes in from all over the rest of the world – help us build a counterterrorism police force or help us create an enhanced emergency operations or commands center, those kinds of things. They are usually worthwhile requests, but there just isn’t enough money and we don’t inadvertently want to be doing the same thing that the Germans are doing or the Brits, or something like that.

Of course, the military activity continued beyond Afghanistan and beyond Iraq. There has been some, but the U.S. military has not been the primary instrument outside of those two countries in fighting terrorism around the world. We engaged in a lot of multilateral activity, even though of course we were accused of not having any interest in multilateral work at all, with a lot of organizations and it sounds like alphabet soup, but you know, the U.N., the European Union, the International Civil Aviation Organization, that was really important. The International Maritime Organization, the G8, and other regional organizations like the Organization of American States. At the same time, a lot of most, in fact, of our really productive work was done bilaterally. Is still being done bilaterally. In the Middle East that included obviously Israel, but also Jordon, Saudi Arabia, small Gulf states, and others. We worked quickly and well with the Europeans after 9/11. That was a given, not only our history in NATO, but because they have really sophisticated security services, and because they have had a fair amount of experience of their own in fighting terrorism with the IRA, and EPTA, and the Botterman Hoft and others. We also enhanced our cooperation with Columbia against the group down there that is called the Fark because even though most of the emphasis is properly placed on so-called Islamic terrorism, which is really not a very good term, but it is a self-professed term by them. By killers who say they are operating in the name of Islam.

It’s not only that. Fark, for example, is a group that Columbia obviously pays attention to and we work with them to contain the Fark. We also created new mechanisms to engage and cooperate with others in Latin America, like for example Brazil, Argentina to try see what was going on in this very dangerous area called the tri-border area where there’s lots, at least, money raising for Lebanese groups. We’ve also established major cooperative efforts with Kenya and others in Africa, and help their regional organization, which used to be called the OAU, it’s now called the African Union, to set up a regional counterterrorism center in Alger. Asia-pacific the same. That unfortunately has become a major theater of terrorism and we enhanced what was already a very strong partnership with Australia as you can imagine. Engaged in counterterrorism dialogues with China, Japan, and others. We enhanced our cooperation with the Philippines, both on the civilian side and military side. Established a new dynamic with Indonesia, particularly after the first Bali bombing. That was a terrible tragedy. The most recent one was a terrible tragedy. The first one did wake some people up out there because it was lots of sort of looking away like it’s not happening here, and we don’t know what you are talking about. And they couldn’t say that after the first Bali bombing, and there was lots of activity and cooperation after that. Thailand, important partner out there. The major leader under Bin Laden in that region was a fellow named Humbali and he was captured in Thailand by the Thais.

That’s what I was talking about, about the countries themselves really need to pick up the ball sometimes without our help. We’re working with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASAN to devise, we have already devised a counterterrorism work plan. I’m just laying out some sort of ideas without exhaustive list at all of what we were doing. What I outlined above in just a brief few minutes really took an enormous effort by U.S. officials and others worldwide. That was only the beginning though. That was the essential phase right after 9/11. Afghanistan, enhancing intelligence, and finding and freezing money and law enforcement and all of those things. As we reached the period that I call the end of the beginning, sort of the middle of ’03 and of ’04, there began another phase of this struggle that is going to have real relevance for everybody, not only for us, but around the world. It’s what I call remaking the international system.

For example, we’ve cooperated very much with the Europeans and the Organization of Security and Cooperation for Europe, OSCE in Vienna, on standardization and strong improvement of passports and travel documents. The current ones are easily forged or altered. I mean you know that, it’s not too different than they were fifty years ago. They are a piece of paper with a photo print glued on there and some security features that they didn’t have fifty years ago, but it’s not what needs to be done. We need to go to tamperproof travel documents using biometrics. Fingerprints. Iris scans and those kinds of things and we’re moving toward that. We are also worked very closely with the International Civil Aviation Organization out of Montreal, ICAO, on aviation security. None of us will ever forget the image, again and again, of the plane flying into the World Trade Center. And major strides have been made in the U.S. and internationally on hardening cockpit doors and strengthening passenger and baggage screening and improving airport security. There has been less progress and there needs to be progress on maritime security. We’ve made a start with International Maritime Organization and others on such programs as the Container Security Initiative, trying to find ways to understand what’s in containers over there before they come here. We’ve been discussing maritime security broadly, particularly with the Asians given how critical shipping is them and also there are very important chokepoints around the world and one of the really key ones out there is called the Straight of Malaka, a lot of the world’s oil passes through there. There is no agreement at this point on exactly how to protect the Straight of Malaka, but we have been having a lot of dialogues with governments in the region about trying to convince them to be flexible and creative about how to defend the Straight of Malaka.

We also have been trying to understand much better about crews. I mean you know ships used to just come in. They wait their turn and they come into a harbor and there was an immigration official trying to see who the crew was and asking them what was on the containers. Now we have got to go to a different system of understanding when it’s way out there, what’s on the containers and who the crew is. Paying a lot more attention to that than we used to because it’s not only planes that can be used as missiles. A lot of times people will say it would be really awful if the terrorists can smuggle a nook or something in one of the containers. That would be horrible and people are trying their best to prevent that. But the ship itself can be used as a missile, like the plane. And I am not putting any ideas in the terrorist mind I guarantee that people already haven’t thought up. They are very innovative. So in light of this, I do not want to dwell on this too long.

How are we doing? My personal opinion is that at one level, we are winning the war on terrorism. The Al-Qaeda of 2001 has been very seriously degraded. In 2001, Bin Laden had global reach. His preferred method is to be a really active hands-on CEO. He likes to run several things at one time and to tell “recruit more people for that one” and “hold up on that one for a week until I get back to you” and these kinds of things. He cannot do that anymore. The organization of recruiting and training centers and laboratories and finance for Al-Qaeda - I am talking about now, not all groups across the world- I’m talking about Al-Qaeda, has been very seriously degraded. Most of the major, original leaders, the senior experienced leaders who were with him at the time of 2001 are either dead or under captivity. The really key one was ---- Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was his Ops Chief, his Operations Chief. When the Pakistanis took him down, that was a very major blow and of course there are always younger guys coming in, but it is not the same. They’re vicious, they want to kill us, but they’re not the same as these really experienced, sophisticated guys who could move around the world and who were known to know Bin Laden. They were known to be confidants of Bin Laden. They don’t have the experience as I mentioned and it is interesting speaking of Zarqawi, an interesting guy to watch because I personally believe that Zarqawi has visions of himself, although he has pledged some level of allegiance to Bin Laden. I believe he has visions of himself as being the next Bin Laden. And Iraq is only a little first step for him. I don’t believe that he will be on this earth long enough to actually organize such a thing. And it’s interesting that Bin Laden’s senior deputies, the two top guys, are still out there. Bin Laden and an Egyptian physician named Zawyhiri. And Zawyhiri recently sent a letter that was intercepted and it is a very interesting, long letter, and very important. Any of you who really want to probe deeply into this, the letter is on the website www.dni.gov. It’s a really interesting letter to read. And Zawyhiri actually felt the necessity to ask Zarqawi in Iraq to tone it down. To chill out a little and not do these televised beheadings and those kinds of things because he was actually harming what he wanted to do. So some of the younger ones are clearly not in control. And Zawyhiri was asking his clear underling, he thought he was his underling because he was lecturing to him in Iraq, tell me what’s going on, we are really isolated up here, we don’t have the news. A really important letter and he also was really crystal clear that they still want to attack us, what their strategy is, etcetera. It was a very, very interesting reader.

And the strategy is more realistic than some have thought, where they said just try to take over the world and make the U.S. a Muslim state and all of that - it is not so. But they do want to create this caliphate across the whole Middle East including Egypt and the other Jordan and the other key countries, starting with Iraq. That wasn’t the original game plan. That was Saudi Arabia there. That has changed, but the basic goal is still the same and an ultimate would be the destruction of Israel and he says it all right in there. Zawyhiri’s Iraq-based Al Queda group, Jamia Islamia the lead group out in Southeast Asia, in the Philippines and others do not have the global reach that Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group had in 2001. That’s the good news, but we are in a time of transition. The whole change of it in part because of new leaders in Iraq and in part because of successes against Al-Qaeda. It’s a transition of fluid situation. Terrorist groups seem to be trying to come together in some way. They are small. They are more diffused. They are not centralized not Al-Qaeda was in 9/11. It’s often apparent that individuals or very small groups are acting on their own in situations like Madrid. So that is good at one level, but not one of these groups yet have the kind of global, overarching reach that Bin Laden used to have. The bad part is that is makes it really difficult for the security forces.

Now, the homeland. You can see that I am personally convinced that the international community has made real strides on international terrorism. One obvious question, particularly after Katrina and the other recent disasters, is have the U.S. government, state, and local authorities and the private sectors made as much progress? I will say that I again, my personal belief is that the homeland is safer than it was on September 10, 2001, but I have to qualify this by reminding you that we were starting from a very, very low baseline and I know it couldn’t be the case for any of the students in this room, but just a theoretical example, I’ll give you an example of a theoretical student who had a F or a D minus in his or her course and actually started getting out of bed and going to class and paying a little attention and raised his or her grade to a C minus, that’s be a big improvement percentage wise. Still wouldn’t be very satisfactory progress. We were starting from a very low base. The homeland is safer because at least we are awake. We know we are under attack.

Before 9/11, I must say, there were a few lone voices out there who were trying to raise the alarm, but most of us were asleep. We were still dosing in this post- Soviet roaring nineties kind of rivalry. Compared with that time, we are safer. We know someone is gunning force. We have a pretty good idea of who it is. Now there have been some very dramatic changes. The obvious one is creation of the Department of Homeland Security. That plus the creation of the Northern Military Command called NorthComm, the Northern Command and other things like that have resulted in the biggest reorganization of the U.S. government since World War II. We also of course have the new Director of National Intelligence, John Knight Negreponti, and may others, too numerous to list and you know them anyway. But these are very important from a bureaucratic point of view. I do believe, again personal view, that despite New Orleans, despite all of the very justified criticism against FEMA, I think that in the big picture, that DHS, Department of Homeland Security, has been much more of a plus than a negative. I know there are all kinds of calls on the Hill. Let’s dismantle this, let’s change that, let’s pull FEMA out, let’s put it back, and I don’t know how it is going to come out and I think DHS, what they did was bring together twenty-two agencies of the U.S. government including Coast Guard and Customs and Immigration and Secret Service, and TSA, the ones we all love who make us take our shoes off, altogether in one mega-agency. Mega department that overnight became the third largest in the U.S. government after DOD and the Veteran’s Administration. Huge – one hundred eighty thousand employees, twenty-two legacy agencies. It’s still not perfect to this day, but in my opinion, Tom Ridge and Jim Loy did as well as anyone could have done to begin the process of at least getting them to talk to each other, getting communications that could work together.

There have been a lot of other improvements and noticeable changes. Very visible ones are in aviation and in government buildings. Washington, for example has changed in ways, for example, that did not happen after Oklahoma City. There are cement planters, delta barriers, police everywhere. I certainly noticed a huge change from my earlier years in Washington. A lot of these buildings were sitting ducks. They still could be attacked, but they really were sitting ducks before. And of course the financial and manpower implications are huge. Likewise, many experts believe it would be very difficult to highjack a commercial airliner today. Some say impossible. I don’t say that, but many people even believe it is impossible. With hardened cockpit doors, new crew rules, greatly enhanced screening of passengers, screening including before they ever arrive at the airport, an Israeli style. Something is known about some people before they even get there. Screening of carry-on bags. You’ve got cabin crews and passengers who are alert and determined to be another layer of defense. Determined that these guys are not going to get inside the cockpit in addition to the cockpit door. In addition, there are a lot more stein marshals out there. I don’t know the details of that, but there are certainly more of them than there used to be. Other defenses include increasingly sophisticated machines for detecting explosives, expanded use of sniffer dogs, improving techniques such as facial recognition inside airports and strengthened perimeter security against shoulder fired missiles. And now while commercial aviation in my view is much safer, there is a long way to go in private and what’s called general aviation. Many of the smaller airports remain quite open and provide real targets for terrorists. After 9/11, many countries took a look at their terrorism laws and realized that there were serious gaps. Italy, where I was serving at the time, did that and found some gaps that it closed. The U.S. took a crucial step forward in my opinion by dismantling the so-called wall that was blocking the sharing of intelligence acquired overseas with domestic agencies. I am not a fan of all parts of the so-called Patriot Act, but this piece is very important and allowing the sharing of key information with the FBI has enabled the FBI to work much more effectively to uncover and lock blocks inside the United States. Some states and localities get it and have worked hard. And New Orleans not withstanding, I think many states and large localities are better prepared than they were. Some states, localities, and counties are woefully unprepared. Again, I just say the word Katrina and you get it.

They’ve gotten a lot of dollars, some of them from DHS, some others have had to struggle for money or they’ve had other priorities or there has been a very low level belief in the possibility of a terrorist attack. Critical infrastructures are really important there. There has been some progress in critical infrastructure there. There are better, for example, better barriers and fences around some nuclear plants than there were, which were just wide open before. Increased police patrols around bridges in some places. Security efforts to protect key tunnels. I mentioned airports. Lots of port security enhancements around the U.S. and globally by the way. However, much critical infrastructure in this country is private. In private hands and there’s lots of debate how to persuade or coerce private companies to use some of their money for these kinds of security upgrades.

One thing I want to mention in particular is the chemical industry. That is of great concern. Richard Falkenrat is a visiting fellow at Brookings. He gave some testimony on April 27, 2005 before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Richard said to the Senate, “Of all the various remaining civilian vulnerabilities in America today, one stands alone as uniquely deadly, pervasive, and susceptible to terrorist attack. Toxic inhalation hazard (TIH) industrial chemicals such as chlorine, etcetera, etcetera. They are essential to our economy, etcetera, but storage facilities for these ultra-hazardous chemicals routinely carry thousands of tons. Security that exists at any particular facility is essentially the outcome of voluntary, discretionary decisions made by the owners of the facilities. There is no security whatsoever along TIH transportation routes”. And here’s the sentence I wanted you all to focus on, “Even the most conservative estimates of the Department of Homeland Security can see that there is at least one TIH chemical facility, which if successfully attacked could result in more than one million human deaths. One million human deaths. Specific scientific estimates of scenarios that could result in tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of human deaths are commonplace”. So you can see why people are talking about that in Washington so it’s not a completely negative view that I give you, but no matter what the politicians say, if you think that it is impossible for there to be some level of terrorist attack after all that apparently has been done since 9/11, you are wrong. It is not possible that all trains, subways, shopping malls, can be protected against suicide bombers like in London recently or in Madrid. There will be at least a smaller Madrid or London style attack somewhere. It is impossible to prevent in a country this large and this open.