Milstein Criminal Justice Policy Forum: FBI Counterterrorism Measures

M I LS TEIN CRIMINAL JUSTICE P O L I C Y F O R U M
FBI
COUNTERTERRORISM
MEASURES
Remarks by Robert S. Mueller,

Director of the FBI
Introduction by Howard P. Milstein
December 19, 2002
Citizens Crime Commission

OF NEW YORK CITY, INC.
THE MILSTEIN
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
POLICY FORUM
Since 2002, the Citizens

Crime Commission of New
York Ci ty h a s prese n t e d
a series of Criminal Justice
Policy lectures sponsored by
Edward L. and Howard P.
Milstein through the Milstein
Brothers Foundation. Each
HOWARD P. MILSTEIN
event features a nationally
prominent speaker who addresses the Commission
on such issues as crime, criminal justice or terrorism.
The formal remarks are followed by a question-and-
answer period. Each meeting is open to the media.
Attendance is limited to 150 invited guests drawn

from the top ranks of the New York City business and
law enforcement communities. Each lecture is printed
and distributed to top business, civic and law enforce-
ment leaders.
The Citizens Crime Commission of New York City

is an independent, non-profit organization working to
reduce crime and improve the criminal justice system
in New York City. The Commission is supported by the
business community; its board of directors is drawn from
top corporate executives and members of major law
firms. The Commission was established in 1978.
Howard and Edward Milstein are prominent New York

bankers and real estate owners. They have a long record
of working with the New York City criminal justice system
to create and support innovative programs. They are also
active in national crime prevention issues.
Introduction by
Howard P. Milstein
TOM REPPETTO: Good afternoon. My name
is Tom Reppetto. I'm the president of the
Citizen's Crime Commission of New York
City. And I would like to welcome you to the
Milstein lecture and to thank JP Morgan
Chase and company for hosting this event.
For those of you not familiar with our

format, after our speaker concludes his
remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask
questions, both by the audience and the
press. And I will stand off to the side and
signal to those who are asking questions to
be recognized.
I would now like to call to the podium

Howard Milstein, who is the sponsor of
today's lecture. Howard is the founder of
Milstein Brothers Capital Partners and
Managing Partner of Milstein Properties,
among many other successful business
ventures. He is equally well known for his
philanthropy and the special commitment
he has made to law enforcement. He was
recently honored with the Federal Law
Enforcement Foundation's Humanitarian
Award. And I have just learned that he has
made a major grant to the National Crime
Prevention Council to create a new child
T
safety website. Howard, we're very proud
to have you with us today.
hank you for your kind words, Tom.

My brother Edward and I are proud to
support the great work you're doing
with Citizen's Crime Commission of New
York City. We've been honored to sponsor
the Milstein Lectures since 1997.
Each year our speaker has been top-notch.

But perhaps no speaker has been as timely as
today's speaker and no speech more impor-
1
tant. The tragic events of September 11th
changed our world in so many ways. We've
experienced shock and loss and fear in ways
never before experienced in America.
The whole concept of domestic security

has changed and with it the role of the FBI.
The FBI, through its capacity to both detect
terror threats and to arrest those involved, is
in a unique position to protect us.
But it cannot do the job alone. As a citizen

and businessman I think I speak for many in
the private sector when I say that 280 million
Americans stand ready to help the FBI and
all our law enforcement agencies. As a citizen
and businessman, I'm ready to put my time
and resources into creating the kind of public/
private partnerships that give every American
ways to participate in homeland defense.
Giving ordinary citizens a useful role

will strengthen the bonds of community and
shared national commitment to our great
country. Individual participation not only
bolsters our effectiveness against terrorism,
it also serves as an antidote to the fear and
uncertainty that can be so corrosive.
The time is right for community service for

homeland defense. And the time is right to
mobilize volunteers to work with government
agencies to respond to the threat of terrorism.
These are my thoughts as an amateur but
concerned individual.
Now let's turn to a more refined view.

I take great pleasure in introducing today's
speaker, the honorable Robert S. Mueller,
Director of the FBI.
Director Mueller was named to his current

post by President George Bush and confirmed
by the Senate in August 2001, just before the
terrible attacks of 9/11. Mr. Mueller's career
in public service began in 1976 with a long
stint at the US Attorney's office in Northern
2
California and in Massachusetts. He prose-
cuted fraud, narcotics, corruption and racket-
eering cases. But most important for our
situation, he worked major terrorism cases.
Bob Mueller moved to the Department

of Justice in 1989 where he served as an
assistant to then Attorney General Richard
Thornburgh. By 1990 he was placed in charge
of the Department of Justice criminal division.
Director Mueller earned his spurs in the

private sector as well, where he was associ-
ated with several leading law firms. A
Princeton graduate with an MA in interna-
tional studies from NYU and a JD from the
University of Virginia, Bob Mueller was
elected a Fellow of the American College of
Trial Lawyers.
And I shouldn't leave out that he is a

hero. He served in Vietnam as an officer in
the Marines, earning a Bronze Star, two Navy
commendation medals, the Purple Heart and
the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. It's an
impressive record Bob. And I'm sure you'll
need to draw on every bit of it as you steer
the FBI through these difficult times. Ladies
and gentlemen, please welcome Director
Robert S. Mueller.
3
Remarks by
I
Robert S. Mueller
want to welcome you all here and say
good afternoon to you. It's a pleasure to
be here. It's a pleasure to be here amongst
colleagues and friends. I'd particularly like
to thank Howard for the invitation, but also
for your leadership in the community.
Commissioner Kelly, to my former col-
leagues in the US Attorney's office, and I see
judges here also. Although I don't believe I
practiced before any of you, it's a pleasure to
see you here. It's a pleasure to see the District
Attorneys here, particularly Bob Morgenthau,
from whom I have learned so much over the
years. And Tom and everyone at the Citizen's
Crime Commission thank you so much for
hosting this event today.
With the end of the year coming upon us,
I thought it might be useful, it might be a
good time to take an accounting of where
we are in our mission to protect the country
against terrorism. And given the events of
September 11th and the inspirational lead-
ership that we've seen from all New Yorkers
since that terrible day, there is no better place
than New York City.
Someone once said that at moments of
crisis, words are hollow vessels. And once
again as I was coming in this morning,
remembering 9/11, I understood the truth of
those words. For those of us who've seen a
lot, even something like Vietnam, the day of
September 11th is seared into our memories
as a day that none of us will ever forget, one
of the saddest days of our lives. And my
heart and the heart of every FBI agent, every
FBI support personnel around this country
and around the world remains with the vic-
tims and the victims' families and with the
citizens and the people of this great city.
Remembering September 11th, we know
how all of us individually and collec-
4
tively have been changed by the events that
occurred here not too far away. We've all been
changed. But nowhere is that change I think
more apparent than in the FBI.
Let me start if I could with an update on

our war on terror. This is truly a war. And it
is a global war. It is a war that is fought from
Kabul to Karachi. From Bali to Mombasa. To
Sana, Yemen to New York City. And prevent-
ing terrorism in the course of this war requires
us to identify cells and disrupt their opera-
tions no matter where they might be, whether
it be in the United States or around the world.
And it requires all of us together, crippling

and dismantling those terrorist networks.
And we have to do it country by country,
operative by operative, dollar by dollar, so
that these networks no longer pose a threat
to the United States. Now reflecting back on
2002, we understand that in the first full year
of the war, much has been accomplished.
We have taken the fight to al Qaeda. To

where they train, to where they recruit. To
where they plan and to where they live.
And we have taken away their safe haven.
We have taken into custody more than 3,000
al Qaeda leaders and foot soldiers worldwide.
And here in the United States we have

charged nearly 2,000 suspected terrorist asso-
ciates with a variety of crimes. And world-
wide, we have come to understand that we
have prevented any number of terrorist
attacks on United States facilities, some of
them within the United States.
And I must say that these successes have

come because of the singular, united focus of
virtually everyone engaged in this war. Law
enforcement, intelligence, the military, our
diplomatic community and, I might add, the
private sector. Every level.
Federal, state, local, international has

contributed its unique set of skills. Perhaps
nowhere is that more evident than here in
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New York. And I must say that as it is in
finance, as it is in business, the city of New
York has been a leader in the war against
terror since the 1920 bombing of the JP
Morgan building located near here.
And that tradition of leadership continues
today under the auspices of Commissioner
Kelly, who has done just an outstanding job
leading the New York Police Department
since 9/11. And I also might add that
the new Counter Terrorism division that's
headed up by Frank Libutti and the newly
revamped Intelligence division headed up
by David Cohen are models for the rest of
the country.
Commissioner, my thanks to you, my
thanks to Frank, my thanks to David. And
most particularly, my thanks to the 40,000
officers and detectives who serve this city
so well. And New York's leadership also
includes the men and women of the FBI. And
I have with me today Kevin Donovan, who
was picked up as the assistant director in
charge. He picked up where the tireless Barry
Mawn, who many of you have known, left off
in the war on terror.
September 11th made prevention of ter-
rorist attacks the FBI's top priority and its
over-riding focus. While we remain commit-
ted to our other important national security
and law enforcement responsibilities, the
prevention of terrorism takes precedence in
our thinking and planning. It takes prece-
dence in our hiring now and in our staffing.
And it takes precedence in our training and
technologies.
And with this shift in priorities has come a
major shift in allocation of resources within
the bureau. We have doubled the number of
agents who are now devoted to terrorism.
We've hired nearly 300 new counter terrorism
translators, specializing in Middle Eastern
languages. And we have completely over-
hauled our counter-terrorism program at
headquarters. Centralizing coordination and
6
accountability, beefing up existing units, and
adding new capabilities.
But essentially to preventing future ter-

rorist attacks is improving our intelligence
analysis and predictive capability. Well,
the FBI has always been a collector of intel-
ligence in pursuing its criminal cases. With
a mandate of prevention, we now have to
restructure ourselves to provide the proper
analysis and dissemination of intelligence to
all of our partners in the war on terror.
We have taken a number of steps to build

that capacity within the FBI. Soon after
September 11th, we established the Counter-
Terrorism Watch, a 24/7, 365 day a year clear-
ing house for every terrorist threat that we
receive. And we have received and fielded
more than 3,000 threats since 9/11.
We have set up a National Joint Terrorism

Task Force, a FBI headquarters staffed by
representatives from 30 different federal,
state and local agencies. And this national
task force coordinates the two-way informa-
tion flow of intelligence between headquar-
ters and the joint terrorism task forces located
around the country. And we have quadrupled
the number of strategic analysts at headquar-
ters hoping to build to a coterie of more than
700 analysts nation-wide in the next year.
And as a result of these efforts, we are

now able to produce a greater quantity and
a greater quality of analytical product, and
to share that product more effectively with
policy makers, with the intelligence commu-
nity and with our law enforcement partners.
We're also completely upgrading our

information technology capability in the
bureau. It's sad to say, but our longstanding
problems with information technology are
relatively well known. What is less well
known at this point is what we are doing to
fix these problems and what we are doing to
add a whole new set of capabilities to FBI
operations.
7
And we have brought in some of the
best and brightest from private industry.
These individuals, along with a range of
outside experts, are bringing the bureau into
the digital age. From the roll out of the
new hardware to the upgrade of critical
networks, to the re-design of investigative
applications, we are making progress. And
thanks to these new initiatives, we will soon
have a system that we can mine for data
and analysis. And that will allow agents to
manage their case files electronically for
the first time in history.
In step with these institutional changes
have come important legal and cultural
changes that are enhancing our ability to
fight terrorism. Principal among these is the
manner in which September 11th has torn
down the legal walls between intelligence
and law enforcement agencies.
For those of you who followed the
September 11th hearings in Congress this
Fall, you may recall the meetings being held
between the CIA and the FBI where it was
unclear what information on a hijacker
could be legally shared under the arcane set
of rules and laws that was known in the
trade as the wall. And since September 11th,
that wall has been breached.
First, thanks to the Patriot Act. And sec-
ondly thanks to the recent FISA appeals court
ruling, we no longer have the legal obstacles
to the coordination and information sharing
between the law enforcement community
and the intelligence agencies. And law
enforcement officers can now coordinate their
approach to terrorist targets without running
afoul of the law.
In addition to the collapse of the legal
wall, we have also seen a collapse of the
cultural and the operational wall between
the FBI and the CIA. Those who focus on
stories of the feuding between the agencies in
the era of J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles
8
are overlooking the increased operational
integration between the two agencies since
September 11th.
For my daily morning briefings with
CIA officers and George Tenent and to the
widespread assignment of executives, agents
and analysts between the two agencies since
September the 11th, the FBI and the CIA
have become integrated at virtually every
level of our operations.
And the third wall we are tearing down
is the one between us and our state and
local partners. We recognize that our 11,500
FBI agents are a small coterie compared to
the nation's 670,000 state and local law
enforcement officers. We need every one of
those officers to be fully integrated into the
war on terror.
That's why we created the National
Joint Terrorism Task Force. And that is why
we've established joint terrorism task
forces in all of our field offices. And it's
also why we are standing up regionally
in favor of sharing operations that will
revolutionize the way we work together.
And these efforts are opening doors to
cooperation that simply did not exist prior
to September 11th.
Now the crumbling of these pre-9/11
walls brings us to the issue of whether
America should create a new domestic intel-
ligence agency similar to MI5, an issue that is
being discussed in Washington today. And
I'll say in my mind the idea is based on a
faulty understanding of counter-terrorism
that sees a dichotomy between intelligence
operations and law enforcement operations.
This misunderstanding has led some to
conclude that we should separate these two
functions and create a new domestic intelli-
gence agency. Now let me start by saying
we have just discussed how important it
is to break down the walls to enable the
sharing of information.
9
Building new walls is going in the wrong
direction. There is no reason to separate the
two functions of law enforcement and
intelligence. On the contrary, combining law
enforcement and intelligence, as is being
done in the NYPD, grants us ready access to
every weapon in the government's arsenal
against terrorists. We can now make strate-
gic and tactical choices between our law
enforcement options of arrest and incarcera-
tion and our intelligence options of surveil-
lance and source development.
And the wisdom of this approach has
been clearly borne out. Over the last year,
the FBI along with its state and local coun-
terparts has identified, disrupted and neu-
tralized a number of terrorist threats and
cells. Not only here in the United States but
overseas as well. And we have done so in
ways that an intelligence-only agency such
as MI5 could not.
Now why is this? Why is this? Because I
believe the FBI is uniquely situated for the
counter-terrorism mission. We have the per-
sonnel. And we have the tools and assets
needed to perform this mission. We have a
worldwide network of highly trained and
dedicated special agents. And we have the
intelligence tools to collect and analyze
information. And they are improving daily.
We have the law enforcement tools to act
against and neutralize these threats. And we
have the expertise in investigations and in
the recruitment and cultivation of human
sources of information. And we have long-
standing and improving relationships with
state and local law enforcement. And they,
state and local law enforcement, are the intel-
ligence gatherers closest to the information
we seek from each of our communities.
And finally, the FBI has nearly a century
of experience in working within the confines,
within the bounds of the Constitution. For
these reasons, I'm convinced that the people
10
of the United States are better served by
enhancing the FBI's dual capacity for law
enforcement and intelligence gathering and
analysis than by creating a new agency from
whole cloth.
And it is for these reasons that I believe

that at the same time in our history, estab-
lishing a new domestic intelligence agency
would constitute a step backward in the
war on terror, not a step forward. Now
there will come a time, and perhaps it is
happening today, when the majority of
Americans will move on to other concerns,
dreams, fears and challenges. And that is
understandable.
But for those of us, many of this room,

who are fighting the war on terror, such a
lapse would be a disaster. We are in a war.
And we will prevail over our foe only if we
are more determined, more relentless and
more resourceful.
It's a challenge that demands dedication.

It demands sacrifice. And I have to say that
I am tremendously proud of every man and
woman in the FBI who is working so hard
to meet this challenge. And the longer I'm
with the bureau, the more I appreciate how
privileged I am to call them my colleagues.
And how privileged I am to call not only
the FBI agents my colleagues, but my coun-
terparts in state and local law enforcement
my colleagues as well.
I want to close with a story that says a

great deal about the intangibles of teamwork
and courage that are so important to defeat-
ing terrorism. I've told this story before, but
it bears repeating, particularly here in New
York. And it is a story of Lenny Hatton,
special agent of the FBI who was one of the
many law enforcement officers who lost
their lives on September 11th.
Lenny was an exceptional agent and

a remarkable man. He was on his way to
11
work on September 11th when he saw the
World Trade Center on fire. He went straight
to the scene and started working with police
and fire fighters to evacuate the buildings.
Lenny was last seen helping a victim out of
one of the buildings and then rushing back
in to save more.
Several days after September 11th, I

attended Lenny's funeral mass in his home-
town in New Jersey. And the last speaker
was a close friend and colleague of Lenny's,
an individual by the name of Chris
O'Connell. Chris talked about how Lenny
devoted his life to serving as a Marine, as a
volunteer fire fighter, as an FBI agent and as
a husband and a father.
And he recounted how Lenny had served

until his last breath trying to evacuate people
from the World Trade Center. And at the end,
in tears, he saluted his friend, Agent Hatton,
with the words, "Until we meet again. My
partner. My friend."
And Chris O'Connell, you see, was Lenny's

partner. And Chris was and is a detective
with the New York City Police Department.
Lenny and Chris cared for each other. It
didn't matter that one worked for the FBI
and one worked for the New York Police
Department. They were a team.
Were he alive today, I think Lenny would

be proud to see the team that has come
together since September 11th. The team is
strong and is unified. And it is single-minded
in its determination to prevent a 9/11 from
ever happening again.
I'm proud to be part of that team. And I

thank all of you here today for your hard
work, your sacrifices and your dedication to
the cause of justice. Thank you for having
me today. Thank you for your leadership.
And God bless.
12
Questions & Answers
Robert S. Mueller
Q. Mr. Mueller. Barry Cunningham, Fox 5

television. Do you have any security con-
cerns over the architect's proposed plans
for rebuilding the World Trade Center,
particularly the height of some of these
proposed skyscrapers? And will the
Bureau be reviewing the architect's plans
for possible security risks?
A. I must confess that the only knowledge

I have of the plans is what I saw portrayed
on the front page of the New York Times
today. We are generally not in the business
of reviewing architectural plans. However,
as it goes down the road, to the extent that
the Bureau could help in any way, shape or
form, we would be certainly willing to do so.
I know I've followed from afar the debate on
what should replace the World Trade Center.
But I really am not familiar with the various
proposals that have been made.
Q. Mr. Mueller, you mentioned over the

weekend that the FBI has broken up 100
operations. Could you tell us, were those
imminent and where were they being
planned? In the US or elsewhere?
And if I could ask a second question, you
talk about the wall having been breached.
Could you mention a specific example of
cooperation between the CIA and the FBI
since that wall has come down?
A. Well, let me speak generally to the first

question. I was quoted in the papers as say-
ing that we have disrupted a number of
plans, plots around the world. Several were
within the United States, perhaps as many
as 100. I have not totaled them all up.
13
But when you look at the plans thwarted
by us - and by us I mean the FBI, the CIA, the
Defense Department around the world -, but
also by our counterparts, it would be at least
100. I can tell you in the last two days, we've
seen the French authorities take down a cell.
And yesterday, in the United Kingdom, in
London, they also took down a cell.
Now where a particular group is in its

planning process is often difficult to say. If
you look at the hijackers of September 11th
they had no explosives, they had no guns.
So if you had arrested one of them you
would find nothing except an innocuous
box cutter. But across the world, all of us
who are working together have disrupted
any number of plots.
In terms of the breaking down of the

walls, I'll tell you, 10 years ago when I was
at the Department of Justice, I had occasion
to travel overseas to I think it was Germany.
I was in the embassy with the Attorney General
at the time and the CIA was not speaking to
the FBI legat.
And that kind of day-to-day not working

together was somewhat prevalent amongst
our agencies. Now you go overseas and the
CIA and the FBI are working not only excep-
tionally closely together, but with our coun-
terparts, whether it be in Pakistan or Egypt
or Jordan or even Indonesia, Malaysia.
And so that sharing of information,

working together, I think it started with
Louie Freeh way prior to September 11th,
but has advanced substantially since
September 11th. In terms of the legal walls,
the sharing of information that is allowed
now or has been allowed by the Patriot Act,
has allowed us now to take the benefits of
our criminal investigations where we convict
somebody and they become a cooperator.
When we have grand jury testimony, there
are now provisions whereby we can integrate
that intelligence information that the CIA
14
may have on the same subject on a same
terrorist group in ways that we could not
do it before.
Q. Mr. Mueller, when you talk about the

war on terrorism and you mention the other
countries, one area that you didn't talk about
was South America. I'm reading a lot about
the tri-border region and how it may be
where a lot of al Qaeda may go, were they to
hide out. Is that an area of concern? Is that on
your radar screen?
A. We've got our eye on it. Yes, sir. I didn't

mean to take it from you Tom.
Q. Alvin Bessent with Newsday. Congres-

sional intelligence committees not so long
ago recommended a cabinet level post be
created for intelligence to coordinate the
efforts of all of the intelligence agencies. I
wonder what your view of the wisdom of
that kind of move?
A. Well, yeah I've been in Washington for

a year and a half, and I've picked up some
things in that period of time. But I don't
purport to be an expert in the intelligence
community.
And not being an expert in the intelligence
community, I'm somewhat reluctant to opine
as to the best structure for the intelligence
community. Suffice to say that I think we
have to improve our intelligence, analytical
and dissemination capability to be a bigger
part of that intelligence community, regard-
less of the structure that is ultimately decided
for the intelligence community.
I think around the country, we and our

state and local counterparts are reaching out
to business, particularly businesses that
represent part of the backbone of the country.
Whether it be financial, the rail system, or
chemical manufacturers.
15
Particularly those businesses that perhaps
could be targets. We have developed tremen-
dously close relationships, particularly since
September 11th. In terms of others where the
information from private citizens is impor-
tant, we have tried to develop mechanisms
so that we can get that information in.
Whether it be hotlines. Whether it be
meetings with security officers. I venture to
say that FBI agents have talked to the secu-
rity officers on any number of occasions
since September 11th. With just about every
large corporation and many of the smaller
corporations around the country.
In order to develop that liaison so if some-
thing comes to your attention, it is brought
to us. And if there is an episode or an attack,
we then have that liaison in place so that
we can react quickly. So I think that's hap-
pening around the country in ways that are
truly remarkable.
Q. Robert Laird from the Daily News.

There were certain things in the 1970s that
became issues. You know there were objec-
tions to having your agency being involved
in gathering intelligence in operations
in certain cases that could infringe upon
civil rights. Can you comment?
A. Since the 1970’s there have been a

number of changes in the way the FBI does
its business. We now have a FISA court,
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.
We cannot, do not, go out and utilize tech-
nical surveillance without the approval of
that court.
We have the Attorney General's guide-
lines that have been instituted that gives us
guidance, which we do follow with, in how
we conduct our investigations. And it is a
completely different world for the FBI now
than it was back in the '70s.
16
I may also add, many of you can recog-
nize it. There is Congressional oversight.
And so it is not that we do not go without
scrutiny. And consequence-- consequently it
is a different world in terms of the bureau
today in terms of the guidance that we
receive and the oversight that we receive
from the days of the '70s.
Let me also say that FBI agents are tutored
at length as to the importance of performing
an investigation according to the guidelines.
The average age in our incoming class is
about 30. The reason for that is we want per-
sons who have judgment and experience. If
you give those individuals a badge and a
gun, and the power to arrest somebody, we
want to make certain that those individuals
have the maturity and the judgment to
undertake that responsibility within the
Constitution, and appropriately.
The other thing I will say is one of the
things that Louie Freeh instituted. I think it
is tremendously important for every agent
to go to the Holocaust Museum for the pur-
pose of understanding what can happen if
you don't understand the limits of the
power that you have. And so the Bureau
today I think is a far different bureau than
you saw in the '70s.
But by the same token it is an aggressive
bureau. It is a changing bureau. And is a
bureau, it's not just agents, but every person
in the FBI I think understands now that our
principal role is to protect the United States
from the next terrorist attack. And we will
be aggressive and we will be hard charging,
but we will do it within the constraints of the
Constitution and the guidelines.
Q. Senator Shelby in Washington recently

said that the FBI's organizational institu-
tional culture is terribly flawed. And that
it's fundamentally incapable of protecting
Americans from terrorism. How can the FBI
17
go forward when it has lost the trust and
faith of the senior government officials?
A. Well, I would respectfully differ with

Senator Shelby's characterization. The people
talk about the culture of the FBI. The fact
of the matter is the culture of the FBI is hard
work and dedication and excellence.
Any one of you who know FBI agents
know that that is what you see when you talk
to, when you meet, when you work with an
FBI agent. Part of the argument is that, "Okay,
we are investigators. And we cannot shift."
The argument is that we look at everything
through the prism, as if it is a piece of infor-
mation admissible in court.
And the fact of the matter is often we do,
but we cannot afford to in the future. We are,
I think, some of the best information gatherers
in the world. In terms of going out and inter-
viewing people, pulling in records, reviewing
information. And that is information. It can
be used as intelligence or it can be used as
evidence in a courtroom.
And we have to understand that when we
are pulling in information, there are those
tool objectives down the road. Part of doing
that, if you think up to the intelligence side
between collection and analysis, I think we've
always been superbly trained investigators
and collectors of intelligence.
What we have not always had is the
analytical capability, but centralization of that
information, and the infrastructure to take
that information, analyze that information
and then disseminate it around the country,
and particularly within the intelligence
community.
And that is what we have to change. We
have to build up that analytical capability
that is in the CIA, that is in the military,
that will enable us to take that information
collected, distill it, and be more predictive
about where the next attack may come
18
from. And we are, so I respectfully, as I say,
disagree with the good Senator.
TOM REPPETTO: That is the more typical

type of question that is asked at the Crime
Commission.
A. It's a more typical type of question to

ask on the Hill.
Q. Since the creation of Homeland Security,

are there more walls and is the FBI seeking
to bring down the walls?
A. No, since Tom Ridge has been in, we

meet every morning. That will probably
continue, although he'll now be a cabinet
officer and the like. But the exchange of
information with Homeland Security as
long as it has been an office in the White
House has I think been very good.
There are meetings every day. And that
will continue. People will ask, "Well, what is
the role of the intelligence analysts at the
CIA versus FBI versus Homeland Security."
And the fact of the matter is, going back to
your question, we have the responsibility of
gathering information within the United
States. CIA is barred from doing that.
But we have that responsibility. CIA
has the responsibility overseas. We need
the intelligence analysis so we can take our
information, distill it, and send out leads as
that piece of information comes in. You may
need to interview somebody. You may have
to pull records. So it has to be a continuous
process of intelligence development. And
we need the analysts of the FBI to do that
and be more predictive within the FBI and
put out reports.
That will then go to Homeland Security.
And Homeland Security's responsibility
principally is to match the intelligence,
19
whether it comes from CIA or FBI, with
what it knows and understands about the
infrastructure in the United States and the
targets. And to match the intelligence that
we provide with what they know and what
they are doing in order to harden, whether
it be New York City or Washington, D.C. or
the electrical infrastructure.
And they need from their perspective,
the capability of assimilating what we have,
being together more predictive in a unified
fashion as to where those attacks might come.
But most particularly what we're doing to
protect against those attacks if it did happen
in a particular segment of the economy in
the United States.
TOM REPPETTO: There are other people in

the room who have responsibility for counter-
terrorism. With your permission, I would like
to know, if any of them have any comments.
Q. Director Mueller, what are the FBI's

restrictions in a terrorism investigation?
A. We are not precluded from going in.

The guidelines do not require that we have
reason to believe that a crime is imminent in
order for us to conduct further investigation.
The critical part of any investigation in my
mind is having the predication for the
next step of the investigation. And what the
Attorney General guidelines focus upon is
that as we go forward in an investigation we
have adequate predication for the next step in
the investigation, and appropriately so. Sam?
Q. The FBI had a senior Hammas leader

in custody in 1997 and let him go saying it
was better to track his activities. Now he's
been indicted for financing terrorism and one
of your own agents says letting him go was
a significant failure. How do you respond
to this criticism and was it a mistake to let
him go?
20
A. Well, I've got a number of judges here
who would understand when I say that
because the case is in the courts, I can't
comment on it. Right?
GROUP: Right.
DIRECTOR MUELLER: I could expect that

response. And not only right, but so ordered.
But generally speaking, one of the most
difficult things you have to do is determine
whether or not you detain somebody. Whether
it be on some criminal charge or an immi-
gration charge. Or you let the person run
for a while because you want to determine
whether or not that person has other associates
out there.
That is a very difficult question, and it
comes up in many of our investigations.
What you want to have under one roof as I
was trying to articulate earlier is the one
person looking at the advantages of either
side. If you believe that an individual or a
group of individuals are getting near to
committing some sort of terrorist attack,
then there has to be the one person. You can
have all of the intelligence in the world, but
there has to be a mechanism for neutralizing
them. Incapacitating them.
And generally you've got very limited
choices. You arrest him, one, for the crime of
say, material support to terrorism. You can
arrest them on some other crime if statutes
have been violated, whether it be state, local
or federal. Or if they're out of status, you
may be able to detain them on immigration
detention. But there has to be some capacity
to deter that activity.
It is a very difficult decision to make
whether you go forward, if you think there are
other co-conspirators out there, or you take
the group off. What you do want to have in
the hands of one decision maker is all of the
facts. In the past, we've had in certain circum-
stances and because of some of the legal walls,
21
the facts, in terms of the intelligence side of
the house, are on one side. Where the facts in
terms of what has happened on the criminal
investigation on the other. And they have not
been exchanged.
And that, I think, has been beneficial
since September 11th. Breaking down those
walls so the decision makers can have the
intelligence facts, or the facts from the intelli-
gence side of the house together with the facts
from the criminal side of the house to make an
appropriate decision as to which way to go.
TOM REPPETTO: Have other cities in the

United States organized their counter-terrorist
operations in similar ways to the NYPD?
A. There are a couple of things. I think

almost all of the cities in the United States are
facing the same problems with budget as
NYPD and other police agencies. Because of
this, last year in particular, in terms of threats
coming in and overtime and the like.
And so cities around the country are
being constrained in terms of their develop-
ment of, or reorganizations to address ter-
rorism. I think it's fair to say that New York
is on the cutting edge of setting up a counter
terrorism division and an intelligence divi-
sion. I think there are a number of police
departments, and Ray Kelly would know
better than I, that are wrestling with the
necessity for gathering intelligence in ways
that we have not been in the past because
we need that intelligence to prevent the
next terrorist attack. Although there are a
number of communities and cities around
the country who have disbanded police
intelligence units a number of years ago
because of perceived abuses.
I think New York is ahead of the game in
establishing these two divisions. And in
enlisting the support and the information
from just about every officer out on the beat.
22
Q. Regarding the investigation, if I remem-
ber back, there was a secret subpoena of
a reporter's home telephone records. I was
wondering if in hindsight if you now still
think that was the correct step to take when
you conducted or helped conduct that leak
investigation?
A. Now first of all, it's ancient history. And

secondly, you know I can't answer that ques-
tion. That was a nice try. And I know who you
are by that question.
Q. Are you concerned about the security at

these airports?
A. That's a good question as to what is

being done with regard to general aviation.
We have reached out a hand to each of our
field offices, to airports and companies that
provide charters and the like or provide haul
freight by aircraft.
But TSA also is looking very closely at that.
It has been working very closely with the net-
work of the larger companies that either char-
ter aircraft or move freight by aircraft, to
assure that those who are let into the cockpits
of these planes have some security check.
And we have to work closely with the TSA
on that. It's an ongoing issue, an ongoing
dialogue between us and TSA and an ongoing
dialogue between TSA and the general avia-
tion community.
Q. Sir, you said the FBI's top priority is

preventing the next terrorist attack. We here
in New York are waiting for the other shoe to
drop for nearly three months. Thank God it
hasn't happened. But we know we're at a
heightened threat level here.
We're code orange, I guess it is, and the

rest of the country is code yellow. Or maybe
23
it's the other way around. I don't know.
But is there anything that would make
you especially concerned that New York
could get hit again? Are there any links in
these recent terror risks to New York City?
What about security here during the holiday
season?
A. Well, it's yellow as far as I understand.

In terms of specific threats, there are none
that I am aware of. In terms of general
threats, I think you have to be aware that
al Qaeda's modus operandi is to go after
targets that they've hit before. And I think
you have to put that into your frame of
reference.
But nonetheless, I think in general and

New York in particular has made substantial
strides in protecting the city in ways it was
not protected perhaps prior to September
11th. I think we are much safer off, whether
it be New York City, Washington, D.C. or in
the country. We are much safer than we
were prior to September 11th.
Now I cannot sit here and say there will

be no further attacks, whether it be on New
York City and Washington. But we are much
safer. New York City is much safer. And I
do not believe there is any reason to be
concerned about an elevated risk of an
attack on New York over the holiday season.
Do you see it any differently?
Okay, thank you. Anything else?
TOM REPPETTO:
No further questions. We'd like to thank you
very much.
ROBERT S. MUELLER:
Thank you. Thank you very much.
24
HOMELAND SECURITY:
DETECTING VISA
OVERSTAYS AND
FALSE IDENTITY
PAPERS
Remarks by Asa Hutchinson,

Under Secretary
Border and Transportation Security
U.S. Department of
Homeland Security
October 29, 2003

THE MILSTEIN
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
POLICY FORUM

HOWARD P. MILSTEIN

ment leaders.


Introduction by
T
Howard P. Milstein
hank you, Tom. Good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen. My brother,
Edward, and I are proud to spon-
sor the new Criminal Justice Policy
series organized by the Citizens Crime
Commission of New York City. And
we’re proud to support law enforcement
at all levels of government.
Since the events of September 11th,

we’ve become particularly interested
in Homeland Security as our nation’s
most immediate need in preserving our
democratic society. As a businessperson,
I understand the impact terrorism can
have on our financial markets and our
economy. More importantly, American
lives and our way of life are at stake.
This is a challenge that every American is
prepared to address. When our leaders
create structures and ways for private cit-
izens to help with the war against terror-
ism, 280 million Americans will answer
the call.
Today, we have the good fortune to

hear from one of the people who is work-
ing to restore our sense of safety as
we go about our day-to-day business:
the Honorable Asa Hutchinson, Under
Secretary of Homeland Security for
Border and Transportation Security.
Secretary Hutchinson is a man with a
distinguished career.
In 1982, at the age of 31, Ronald Reagan

appointed him U.S. Attorney for the
1
Western District of Arkansas. He was the
youngest U.S. Attorney in the nation.
Elected to Congress in 1996, he served

as a U.S. Representative from Arkansas
and was a member of the Select Committee
on Intelligence and the House Judiciary
Committee. In 2001, after being re-elected
to his third term, Mr. Hutchinson was
appointed Administrator of the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA), where
he combined tough law enforcement initia-
tives with increased investment in treat-
ment and education programs.
This past January, after being appoint-

ed by President Bush, the U.S. Senate
unanimously confirmed Asa Hutchinson
as Under Secretary of Homeland Security
for Border and Transportation Security.
As Under Secretary, he leads a directorate
of over 110,000 employees and is respon-
sible for coordinating the enforcement
activities of our borders, transportation
and immigration systems. And these days,
I can’t think of a bigger job than that!
Please join me in giving a warm wel-

come to Under Secretary Asa Hutchinson.
2
Remarks by
Asa Hutchinson
Under Secretary
G
Border and Transportation Security
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
ood afternoon. I would like to talk

about some of our accomplish-
ments under the leadership of
President Bush and Secretary Ridge, and
with the dedicated work force of the
180,000 men and women from the 22
agencies making up this Department.
In nine months we have made very

significant improvements in security,
organization, and mission alignment, and
we have taken the lead of coordinating
homeland security among all the federal
agencies.
We have improved aviation security

by putting in place thousands of air
marshals; by requiring hardened cockpit
doors; and accomplishing 100 percent
screening of passengers and their bags.
Our borders are more secure. We have

hired more inspectors and border patrol
agents, and invested in more technology
on the vast stretches of land between the
ports of entry. And then by the end of the
year we will have installed at 115 airports
a means to electronically confirm the
identity of foreign visitors with visas.
This will be under U.S. VISIT and will
help prevent travel document fraud.
3
We have increased intelligence sharing
among the federal government and with
first responders and the private sector.
But each day we work, we are remind-

ed that in the land of freedom we must do
more to protect America and to give
America confidence and hope that we
are doing all we can to prevent another
terrorist attack.
Today I want to discuss two problems

that impact the security of our Nation.
The first is visa overstays – in other words
an alien who enters legally but stays ille-
gally; and the second is misuse of identity
documents.
The attack on America was perpetrated

by 19 hijackers who entered the U.S. on
visas – travel visas, business visas, and
student visas.
At least three of the hijackers had

expired visas. When they wanted to
attack America, why did they use the
visa process? Why did they not cross our
borders illegally? It is because terrorists
who enter our country need an identity.
They have to maneuver. They must have
access. They must work or go to school.
They must operate for a period of time
without detection.
To accomplish this necessity, they chose

to misuse our visa system and to be aided
by misuse of identity documents.
How have we responded to these vul-

nerabilities? The Department of Homeland
Security has taken substantial steps in
4
coordination with the State Department to
address vulnerabilities in our visa system.
We now require security checks for

applications; personal interviews; and as I
mentioned, biometric identifiers will be
taken in coming months under U.S. VISIT.
The U.S. VISIT system also helps us

address the second concern: misuse of
identity documents, fraud, and visas and
passports. Last year our border inspec-
tors detected over 60,000 fraudulent doc-
uments at our ports of entry. Under U.S.
VISIT, fraudulent documents will no
longer work because we confirm identity
biometrically.
But the problem goes beyond visas and

passports – we are also concerned about
the fraudulent use of driver’s licenses and
other forms of identity, including birth
certificates.
For example, as you know, an American

citizen can travel anywhere in the western
hemisphere, with the exception of Cuba,
without a passport. Historically, the state
driver’s license has been a principal form
of identity. But if states do not have stan-
dards of integrity in the issuance, then we
will have to reconsider any reliance on state
driver’s licenses for identification purposes.
Let me make some additional points.

The Department of Homeland Security
will work with the states to develop secu-
rity standards for state driver’s licenses
and other identity documents. If the trend
is not reversed, then America will need to
re-educate ourselves on the limited purpose
5
of a driver’s license, which is to verify
identity and residence.
Private entities need to take responsi-

bility for establishing standards to identify
and verify their business partners. If stan-
dards are inadequate, businesses run the
risk of facilitating criminal conduct.
Other actions at the Department of

Homeland Security are important in the
area of document fraud. First, training is a
critical part of protection, including the
training for our inspectors. The fact that
Secretary Ridge unified our inspection
forces will help us and increase our ability
to properly train our inspectors.
Now agriculture inspectors, customs

inspectors, and immigration inspectors
will all be unified. Their training will be
enhanced at the border. We will also train
the secondary inspectors to receive more
advanced training on document fraud
identification.
Secondly, the Bureau of Immigration

and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has a
very aggressive forensic document labo-
ratory that gives real-time assistance for
the inspectors in the field and provides
alerts to the field.
For example, we sent out an alert ref-

erencing stolen blank Filipino passports.
Another alert provides information on
counterfeit N-series passports that were
available in Turkey for $500 each. These
information circulars help our inspectors
identify fraudulent travel documents.
6
We have trained over 6,400 enforce-
ment officials around the world in more
expertise in document fraud detection.
Our investigations are also a critical part
of this effort.
Through an initiative with the U.S.

Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of
Virginia, we have joined with the FBI,
Social Security, IRS, Department of State,
Postal Service, Virginia DMV and others
to investigate large immigration visa and
identification fraud.
Here in the Washington, D.C. area,

we have had an investigation called
“Operation Card Shark” that goes after
counterfeit documents in the Adams
Morgan area. To date, we have identified
four document mills that have been
closed and the seizure of close to 2,000
documents with an estimated street value
of $155,000. Fifty aliens have been taken
into custody. Thirty have been removed.
Fifteen have been prosecuted. One has
been sentenced for 52 months.
In addition, I am very pleased with an

initiative of the Bureau of Customs and
Border Protection that has developed an
image storage retrieval system, which is a
Web-based system that provides 40 ports
of entry with access to the actual docu-
ments that aliens may attempt to use.
The Department of Homeland Security

is working to achieve a balance: a bal-
ance between security and the essence of
America as a welcoming nation; between
security and privacy; and between security
and the flow of commerce.
7
It takes a commitment to checks and
balances to achieve security without dimin-
ishing our values. But we can achieve this
balance.
Almost 100 years ago, the Princeton

professor Henry Van Dyke gave a series
of lectures, which were then collected
in a book called The Spirit of America.
Van Dyke described Americans this way:
“A people of idealists, set about to accom-
plish a very practical task.”
We are idealistic about our nation –

our freedoms, our values, and our future.
But today we find before us a very
practical task – protecting our nation
against the threat of terrorism. Working
together, this is a task that we can accom-
plish, and will accomplish.
Thank you for your continued support

and partnership. n
8
Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, Inc.
150 East 42nd Street, 2nd Floor
New York, New York 10017
212-733-8300
MASS
MARKETING OF
ABUSIVE
TAX SHELTERS
Remarks by Senator Carl Levin

November 10, 2003

THE MILSTEIN
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
POLICY FORUM

HOWARD P. MILSTEIN

ment leaders.


Introduction by
T
Howard P. Milstein
hank you, Tom. Once again, you’ve
brought together a stellar group of
leaders to meet with an exceptional
criminal justice policy maker. Today’s speaker,
Senator Carl Levin, is known as a lawmaker
who puts principle before politics. And he sure
knows how to get to the bottom of things -
whether it's tracing the web of deception
that led to the collapse of Enron, the manip-
ulation of gas prices in the US, or money
laundering schemes that have tainted parts
of our economy.
Senator Levin has been a leader in tough

investigations of the white collar crime that
can have such subversive and far-reaching
effects. As an advocate of public/private part-
nerships, he understands the limits of govern-
ment and the essential role the private sector
must play in improving our communities and
our society.
Senator Levin was elected to the United

States Senate in 1978. Prior to that, he practiced
law in his home state of Michigan. He served
as Assistant Attorney General of that state and
later as president of the Detroit City Council.
Senator Levin is currently the ranking

minority member of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, where he has earned a
reputation as a strong supporter of our nation-
al defense and an effective waste fighter. In
January 2003, the Secretary of the Navy cited
Senator Levin for "exceptional service to the
Navy and the Marine Corps," and presented
him with its Distinguished Public Service
Award – the highest award given to someone
not a member of the Navy.
Senator Levin also serves as the rank-

ing minority member of the permanent
Sub-Committee on Investigations of the
1
Government Affairs Committee. In 2002, as
chairman of that sub-committee, Senator Levin
led Congress's most in-depth examination of
the collapse of Enron. Senator Levin is also a
member of the Small Business Committee and
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Senator Levin is the author of the

Competition and Contracting Act, which led
to significant reductions in federal procurement
costs. His Whistler Blower Protection Act pro-
tects federal employees who expose wasteful
practices. He also helped alter the Taxpayers' Bill
of Rights, which protects individuals and
small businesses from IRS harassment.
Newspapers in his home state have

described him as "a thoughtful, probing law
maker," and, "the Senate's wise counsel on the
nation's most precipitous issues."
Aside from all Senator Levin’s public

accomplishments that he has achieved since
he first started out on the Detroit City Council
in 1969, there are a few sides to him that
particularly endear him to people like us.
Although he is magnificently qualified to

be the President of the United States, he is
one of the few members of the United States
Senate who does not spend his waking hours
telling everyone that he should be President.
Pictured left, Howard P. Milstein and

right, Senator Carl Levin
2
Instead, he simply undertakes the business
of the nation and performs his job as our
leading military expert in the Senate with
total competence and collegiality.
He has a great sense of humor and he

never takes himself too seriously. Come to
think of it, Carl, maybe you should run for
the Presidency. In a time of such rank parti-
sanship on both sides of the aisle, with mem-
bers of Congress almost coming to blows over
their differences, Senator Levin is from the
old school of politics. He works closely with
his Republican colleagues and treats them
with respect.
Senator Levin maintains his dignity in

the midst of the most rancorous debates of
our time. One has only to observe his rela-
tionship with Senator John Warner, the cur-
rent chair of the Armed Services Committee,
to understand one of the most important rea-
sons for his effectiveness in the Senate –
whether the Democrats are in or out of
power. I wish that more Senators went to that
same old school.
Maybe one of the reasons for his well-

documented humility has to do with being
the kid brother of another high achiever and
wonderful public servant. Some of you
might not be aware that there are two
extraordinary Levins in public life. Each of
them with a list of accomplishments that
would satisfy the most determined Jewish
mother in America.
Sandy Levin is a respected member of the

House Ways and Means Committee and has
served in Congress for more than 20 years.
Without diminishing GW and Jeb, Carl and
Sandy may be the greatest one-two family
punch in public life today.
It's my pleasure to introduce Senator

Carl Levin.
3
Remarks by
T
Senator Carl Levin
hank you for inviting me here today to
address this distinguished gathering.
You are a unique mix of law enforce-
ment officials and concerned citizens, leaders
in our legal and business communities and
public life. Your tradition of coming together
in this forum to put a spotlight on the critical
issues facing the law enforcement community
is truly a worthy public service.
There are a lot of financial scandals today
that pollute the business climate. Accounting
fraud. Mutual fund misconduct. Price manip-
ulation in energy markets. Phony corporate
offices opened in offshore tax havens to avoid
paying taxes while the corporation continues
to use American services. But I'd like to talk
today about a serious scandal that hasn't
received the attention it deserves, largely
because it is so complicated - namely, the
design and mass marketing of so-called "abu-
sive" tax shelters.
Unlike legitimate tax shelters, abusive tax
shelters are very complicated transactions
promoted to provide large tax benefits
unintended by the tax code. Abusive tax
shelters are marked by one characteristic:
there is no real economic or business rationale
other than a tax deduction. As Judge Learned
Hand put it in Gregory v. Helvering, they
are "entered upon for no other motive but to
escape taxation."
Crimes like terrorism, murder, fraud and
embezzlement produce instant recognition of
the immorality involved. Abusive tax shelters
are MEGOs - that means "My Eyes Glaze
Over." Those who cook up these concoctions
count on their complexity to escape scrutiny
and public ire. And the anti-tax climate con-
tributes to the lack of public anger. If tax is
spelled B-A-D in right-wing dictionaries, how
4
can concocting tax shelter schemes to avoid
paying taxes be bad?
But complicated or not, MEGOs or not,

the fact is that the mass marketing of abusive
tax shelters by respected accounting firms,
law firms, banks, and investment advisers
who are hawking these so-called "tax prod-
ucts" to thousands of people like late-night,
cut-rate TV bargains, is surely scandalous,
just as Enron was scandalous.
And it is massive. It involves tens of

billions of dollars each year. It goes on across
the country and around the clock. It under-
mines the fabric of American society by
depriving our government of funds needed
to strengthen homeland security, support
our troops, care for the sick, educate kids,
and more. It is corrupting some of our most
talented professionals in law, accounting
and finance. And it leaves honest taxpayers
to make up the difference.
Last year, the Permanent Subcommittee on

Investigations, of which I'm now the ranking
Democrat, opened an in-depth investigation
into the development and marketing of
abusive tax shelters by professional firms like
accounting firms, banks, investment advisors,
and law firms. I was then the Subcommittee
chairman and initiated this effort due to our
Enron investigation which, among other
misconduct, disclosed that company's use of
elaborate tax dodges.
In December 2002, the Subcommittee held

a hearing which examined an abusive tax
shelter known as Slapshot, which J.P. Morgan
Chase had designed and sold to Enron for $5
million. Enron had calculated Slapshot would
produce tax benefits exceeding $120 million.
As detailed in a Subcommittee report, this tax
shelter relied primarily on a sham $1 billion
loan that was arranged and financed by J.P.
Morgan Chase, and concealed within a mind-
boggling array of loans, stock swaps, and
5
structured finance transactions, many of
which occurred within minutes of each other.
The shelter's complexity was designed in part
to prevent tax authorities from finding out
what really happened.
We pierced the Slapshot veil only by sub-

poenaing hundreds of boxes of documents;
reading thousands of emails, conducting
numerous interviews, and spending months
unraveling how that tax shelter worked.
We figured out Slapshot. But it took a

huge effort. The larger issue, which we
have spent the last year investigating with
the full support of our new Subcommittee
Chairman, Senator Norm Coleman, is how
respected U.S. professional firms act like
schlock-houses, hawking shoddy, abusive
tax shelters and enlisting the help of other
professionals in the marketing effort.
Our investigation found what could be

called a target-rich environment - numerous
accounting firms, investment advisors,
banks, and law firms developing the internal
and external infrastructure necessary to
aggressively design, market, and implement
hundreds of complex tax shelters that people
would otherwise be unable, unlikely, or
unwilling to employ. These products are so
dubious that some of their developers even
had clients take out insurance policies in case
the IRS caught up with them! And they are
doing it in exchange for hundreds of millions
of dollars in fees and other compensation,
some of it contingent, while robbing the U.S.
Treasury of billions of dollars in revenues
each year.
The Government Accounting Office

reports that an IRS database tracking unre-
solved, abusive tax shelter cases over a num-
ber of years estimates potential tax losses of
$85 billion. The GAO also reports that the IRS
6
has identified almost 300 firms that appear to
have promoted abusive tax shelters and other
abusive tax products.
The scrutiny of abusive tax shelters has

been mainly on the taxpayers using the shel-
ters. If we are going to rid our tax system of
this abusive infestation, we must extend that
scrutiny beyond the taxpayers to the highly
skilled professionals who design and market
these schemes.
Many abusive shelters, for example, utilize

layers of corporations, trusts, and special
purpose entities that only a trained financial
professional could devise and establish.
Others rely on intricate financial transactions
involving derivatives, warrants, and little
known financial instruments that only a
sophisticated investment professional could
arrange. Still others utilize deceptive, multi-
million-dollar loans that only our largest
financial institutions could finance. And most
rely on complex and novel interpretations of
tax law, complete with obscure tax code ref-
erences and convoluted tax opinions, that
only a determined tax lawyer could construct.
Our investigation found that the profes-

sionals marketing highly questionable tax
shelters were trading on their reputations as
respected names in American business. Part
of their sales pitch has been to assure poten-
tial clients that they can use complex financial
transactions which those clients barely
understand to reduce or eliminate their tax
bills, and then rely on the firm's expertise,
vast resources, and reputation to fend off IRS
scrutiny and penalties.
Another thing we learned is that the

character of the professional tax shelter
industry has changed fundamentally. It
used to be that individuals and corporations
went to an accounting firm or lawyer to ask
how to structure their business affairs to
7
minimize taxes. In response, their tax advi-
sors would provide legitimate tax planning,
or in some cases, abusive tax shelters. This
tax advice was sought and provided on a
one-to-one basis.
That's not the heart of the professional tax

shelter industry today. Our investigation
found that it was not individuals and corpora-
tions visiting their tax advisors, but a horde of
tax advisors cooking up one complex scheme
after another, packaging them up as generic
"tax products" with boiler-plate legal and tax
opinions, and then devising and undertaking
elaborate marketing schemes to peddle these
products to literally thousands of persons
across the country.
Some of the professionals peddling these

tax dodges have the audacity to claim that
they are not tax shelter promoters. If they
admitted that they do what they so blatantly
but secretively do, they would be subject to
IRS regulations requiring tax shelter promot-
ers to disclose their activities. Listen to this
email from a senior tax professional to his staff
who just finished designing a tax shelter in a
company that denies it promotes tax shelters:
"I want to personally thank everyone for

their efforts during the approval process of
this strategy. It was completed very quickly
and everyone demonstrated true teamwork.
Thank you! Now let's SELL, SELL, SELL!!"
That's the tax shelter industry of today,

aggressively mass marketing its self-named
"tax products". We have uncovered disturbing
evidence of tax professionals convincing
clients to buy complicated tax schemes result-
ing in hefty profits for the so-called profession-
als. In too many cases, the firm pushing the
tax product advised its staff of tax profes-
sionals - I'm talking about CPAs and lawyers -
to use high-pressure sales tactics to close the
8
sales. Some firms are even using telemarket-
ing. For example, one firm that now claims
its tax products were specialized and avail-
able only for limited distribution, made cold
calls to thousands of people across the coun-
try to market one particular shelter. The firm
set sales goals for its employees and offered
rewards for those who met these goals.
These are the tactics you might expect of a
boiler room operation selling phony land
deals, but here they are coming from people
in our top professions.
Some people are trying to claim that the

worst tax shelter abuses are already over, so
there is no need for investigations, reforms, or
stronger laws. But that's not what our investi-
gation found. What we found is that, while a
few promoters are calling it quits, the tax shel-
ter industry as a whole is still going strong,
targeting new opportunities and market seg-
ments, intensifying the pressure on lawyers
and accountants to become tax shelter huck-
sters, continuing to cheat the treasury and, in
the process, victimizing tax professionals
who don't hawk these abusive tax products
but have to compete against those who do.
Next week in Washington, the Senate's

Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
will hold two days of hearings that will peel
back the curtain and provide an inside look,
with detailed case histories, at how respected
accounting firms, banks, securities firms and
lawyers develop, market, and implement
abusive tax shelters. We plan to present evi-
dence on the corporate culture and the per-
sonal attitudes involved, and what happens
when someone doesn't want to go along with
approving or peddling, such tax shelters. We
will also show the extensive, indeed highly
aggressive, marketing operations behind the
modern tax shelter industry and the push to
sell, sell; sell.
9
We are determined to do everything we
can to expose, condemn, and stop the unethi-
cal and illegal conduct involved in the ped-
dling of abusive tax shelters. Here are some
actions we need to take:
• First, we need to tighten the law on what is

known as the "economic substance" test.
This test involves examining whether,
from an objective standpoint, the trans-
action had a business purpose and was
intended to produce economic benefits
aside from a tax deduction. This test is
the primary anti-abuse tool that tax offi-
cials use to penetrate bogus transactions.
The Senate has twice passed provisions
offered by Senators Grassley and Baucus
that would codify and strengthen this
judicial doctrine to provide the IRS a
stronger set of tools to set aside transac-
tions whose only real purpose is tax
avoidance, but these provisions have not
yet been enacted into law.
• Second, we need to increase the penalties on

those who produce and peddle illegal tax
shelters. The current penalties are a joke.
$1,000 for promoting an illegal tax shel-
ter, $1,000 for aiding and abetting anoth-
er person's tax evasion. These are the
penalties on a firm selling a tax shelter
generating fees totaling hundreds of
thousands or even millions of dollars. In
one email we reviewed, a senior tax pro-
fessional advised his firm not to worry
about failure to comply with the shelter
disclosure requirements, because the
penalties for noncompliance with the
registration requirement were so low.
This so-called professional concluded
that an average deal resulting in fees of
$360,000 had a maximum penalty expo-
sure of only $31,000. That's some deal - if
you get caught stealing, you only have to
give back 10% of what you stole! It's not
hard to see where the incentive is.
10
• Third, we need to get rid of the conflicts
of interest that are so rife in this area.
Last month I introduced S. 1767, with
the co-sponsorship of Senator McCain
and Senator Baucus, to end the conflicts
of interest that now arise when an
accounting firm sells a tax shelter to
an audit client and then audits that
client's financial statements - in effect
auditing its own work. Our proposed
Auditor Independence and Tax Shelters
Act would bar an accounting firm
from auditing the books of a publicly
traded company to which it has sold
a tax shelter.
• Fourth, we need to increase enforcement

dollars for the IRS so they can go after
these abuses. Every dollar invested in
tax enforcement returns many times
over to the Treasury.
• Finally, the key regulators - the IRS, the

Public Company Accounting Oversight
Board, the SEC, and the bank regulators -
need to get together and brainstorm
about how they can use their existing
authority to put a damper on the mass
marketing of illegal or abusive tax shel-
ters. New regulations are needed, such as
prohibiting contingency fees, and doing
so on a nation- wide basis, as over 20
states now do.
Regulation, of course, is but part of the

answer, and it is not the ideal answer. We need
to restore professional pride. Professionalism
should mean high standards, codes of
conduct, avoidance of conflict of interest,
and a sense of fiduciary duty. Justice Louis
Brandeis, in speaking at Brown University's
Commencement in 1912, spoke about how a
profession differed from other occupations:
"A profession is an occupation in which

the amount of financial return is not the
11
accepted measure of success." He continued:
"[Recognized professions] select as their
test, excellence of performance in the
broadest sense-and include, among other
things, advance in the particular occu-
pation and service to the community...
In them a large income is the ordinary
incident of success; but he who exagger-
ates the value of the incident is apt to fail
of real success."
We also need our professionals to offer

their services to our communities by showing
leadership on the role of taxes in supporting
our civilization. I'm afraid the opposite mes-
sage was transmitted by former President
Reagan when he said in his State of the Union
Address in 1985 that "Every dollar the Federal
Government does not take from us...will make
our economy stronger, our lives more abun-
dant, our future more free."
Some tax dollars are wasted, Lord knows,

but not most. Taxes are a price of progress,
freedom and security. Some extreme anti-
tax activists would have us celebrate Tax
Freedom Day, the day of the year when all
dollars we earn are kept and no more goes
for taxes. This day should also be recognized
by more responsible people as the End of
Government Services Day. A Day without
clean air or homeland security. A Day when
we do not have the protection of our police or
firefighters or our air traffic controllers. A Day
when food is no longer inspected or our bor-
ders guarded.
But I'm not sanguine about this. Until all of

us share Franklin D. Roosevelt's belief that
"Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the
privileges of membership in an organized
society," there will be the hucksters and the
hustlers who peddle tax havens and tax
shelters. For them we'll need tough penalties
and regulations with teeth that have the full
support of our leaders.
12
And I frequently remember an incident
in my father-in-law's life, Barb's dad, who
recently passed away at the age of 101 who
was an immigrant. And who came to this
country with very little and he did all right.
Went into small business. Worked hard.
Ended up with an estate which was adequate
but wasn't gonna be enough to pay any
estate taxes.
And he knew that. And he decided he

owed so much to this country that he wanted
to make a statement. And so he left a bequest
to his Uncle Sam of $10,000. We gotta
remember what this country's all about to
immigrants particularly like my father-in-law.
But hopefully to all of us whether we're
immigrants, family of immigrants or other-
wise. We should be inspired.
I want to close by recognizing an unsung

group of heroes in this area. First, there are
those whose mission it is to enforce laws
governing business conduct. Folks like
District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who are tack-
ling issues as complex as many of these tax
shelters. And like William McDonough,
Chairman of the new Public Company
Accounting Oversight Board, who testified
before the Senate Finance Committee as to
just how troubling these tax shelters are to
the accounting profession. Their work is
aimed at more than enforcement - it is also
aimed at changing the cultural norms.
Our unsung heroes also include the many

professionals who struggle for meaningful
self-regulation inside their professions, those
who follow ethical principles, even when it
puts them at a competitive disadvantage.
And the professors who teach our future
leaders the principles of business ethics.
There are many of these unsung heroes in this
effort here in this room today. To each of you,
I say we are in your debt. Thank you. ■
13
Questions & Answers
T
Senator Carl Levin
hank you for the invitation. I'd be

happy to try and answer some ques-
tions on this subject. Or, perhaps to
the relief of many of us who are MEGOs
when they look at this, just about any other
subject you might want to throw at me.
Thank you so much.
Q. My question is this. When you have the

largest law firms and accounting firms
involved in this kind of misbehavior how do
you proceed?
A. Well, happily everyone isn't participat-

ing. Too many people are. But happily there
are some who refuse to participate in the abu-
sive tax shelters and limit their tax advice to
legitimate tax advice to people who want to
reduce their taxes in an honest way, which has
a business purpose or an intentional purpose
in the tax code.
We have a lot of ways in which people

can legitimately reduce the burden of taxes
on them that are intended or planned by the
tax code. So we're talking here about the ones
that are unintended and the transactions that
have no economic purpose at all except to,
again, reduce taxes. But you put your finger
on a huge challenge because of the complex-
ity of this scheme. Not this scheme, but of
these schemes.
The complexity makes it extremely dif-

ficult to pierce through the layers are clothing
that are put on these bodies in order to try
to hide what is not going on. If there is no
economic substance to the transaction, if
there's no economic business purpose to
14
the transaction, there are incredible lengths
which are taken to try to hide that fact and
to make it appear as though there is an eco-
nomic purpose.
And, again, there'll be three or four tax

shelters a few weeks from now that we will be
exploring and trying to analyze, laying out for
the public, before we have our witnesses try to
defend them. But I think there are just two
ways to do it that I know of, or three ways to
do it. One is inside the profession. That is, for
people to take action against those in their
own profession who are abusing the rules and
taking advantage of the difficulty and the
complexity to hide things they're doing,
which they shouldn't do. That's an internal
matter, internal to the professions. And pro-
fessions do that. Every one of our professions
has an internal mechanism to try to go after
the abusers.
We need to strengthen their hand, the

folks that make that effort. And there are two
ways that I know of to do it. Increase penal-
ties so that they are a deterrent. What we
have now in the abuse of tax shelter area - for
the aiders and abettors, the people who put
these together and market them - is a joke. A
$1,000 fine is completely irrelevant. And so
you have to have a deterrent that is real in
terms of the law.
And secondly, through our oversight

process and through making public what is
going on. Trying to get the public awareness
up to the point where people will - internally
in the professions; their clients and the public
itself, acting through elected officials and
appointed officials - take action against them.
So all three of those things are necessary. It's
a constant battle.
I think if we win this battle there'll be

someone here, probably speaking to another
group ten or 20 years from now, who have a
15
similar problem or problems. It's the reason
why you need the Morganthaus and the
Spitzers and folks like that, who are willing to
take on this kind of an issue - which is a dry
issue, complicated, and difficult to make come
alive for people.
Again, the difficulty is reinforced as I

mentioned in my remarks. If you're in an
environment which is, in this case, an anti-tax
environment, a lot of people's instinct would
be opposed to taxes. And that's fueled and
fed by some of our top leaders in this country
as a matter of fact. We're in that environment
where taxes are viewed by a segment of our
community and fueled by some of their lead-
ers, who I consider to be irresponsible in this
regard, and it makes it more difficult to do
what needs to be done.
And that's why you need the people who

talk about why taxes are the price of civiliza-
tion. But you need all that together. But you
don't go over the goal line for good. You don't
win this football game for good. This is the
annual football game between Michigan and
Ohio State or Notre Dame and Navy.
Q. Senator, I was really struck by your can-

did view of taxation in this country. I'm
wondering how a public official can promote
and espouse taxation without committing
political suicide?
A. Well, first of all, you make your speech-

es so damn dull no one can understand them.
It's so that no headline writer can say, "Levin
Favors Taxes." Actually, I voted against both
the Reagan and the Bush tax cuts because I
thought they were fiscally irresponsible and
deficit creators and so forth.
It's a challenge to survive in that environ-

ment. But I think if you're straightforward
16
and honest, you also let people who are pay-
ing taxes know that they're going to be left
holding the bag if folks who should be pay-
ing taxes don't pay their share. That connects
to that average voter, that average person
out there.
When people hear, "Hey, let's go after the

folks who pretend to open their new office
at some tax haven," they actually keep their
business here, thank God. But they aren't
paying taxes because they've created a new a
fiction that they're now totally owned by
some new entity that's off-shore and, there-
fore, don't pay taxes here – although they're
using our police and fire and schools and
everything else.
If you're willing to go after those, and

sometimes there's some powerful interests
there, then that average voter out there, when
you tell them, "Hey, I oppose this President
Bush tax cut because I think one, two and
three," they'll be a little more forgiving. Even
though they weren't otherwise inclined, they
think you're willing to go after some powerful
interests as well on the same subject.
But I think people like honesty. I really do.

There are a lot of folks. My colleagues will
tell you the same thing, how reassuring it is
in a way. How you look forward to the folks
who come up to you on the street and say,
"We don't agree with you on this issue but
we think you're honest." If I didn't get votes
from people who disagreed with me on a
lot of issues, but who voted for me anyway
because they thought I would tell them
straight what I was going to do or what the
issue was, I wouldn't be in the U.S. Senate.
I've taken an unpopular position on lots

of issues including taxes during the Reagan
years. But people thought I was being straight
with them. And I was also willing to take on
some of the powerful interests, which that
17
average voter wanted to be taken on in this
area. And that combination I think persuaded
enough people in a couple of my elections –
not by big margins, but enough people to
keep me in office.
Q. Senator, how deep do you think this

diseased part of our economic tree goes in
terms of the Enrons of the world? In other
words, I think there's a sense within busi-
ness communities that these are very bad
apples but that the barrel is sound. What is
your sense? Where do you sit in terms of
corporate ethics?
A. It's a deviling question. What we see are

the problems and it's hard for us to get the
whole picture. People who are in it, who are
honest, have a much better assessment as to
what the whole picture is than we do. But
what is particularly troubling to me, frankly,
are some of the major institutions in our coun-
try – the pillars of this country financially. I
mean Citibank, Chase Bank, Merrill Lynch
who are involved in Enron and schemes that
are deceptive schemes.
I'm not saying Chase and Citibank are

deceptive companies. I'm saying that they
were willing to engage. And we showed how
conscious, at least, the people who were
involved were and how they cover up stuff.
These are pillars of our community. These are
banks and you know that. You say, "My God,
that's where my account is." These are the
folks we rely on.
And these are some of the best names.

And I assume, for the most part, these are
honest companies. We had a major bank that
was engaged in helping some of the most
crooked leaders in the world hide their
money. Major institutions. Does that mean the
18
whole institution is polluted? No, I don't
believe that's true.
And yet when you've got some of the

names, these are proud names with huge
reputations that then will go about with lead-
ership cleaning up their act. Firing people
where they need to fire people and so forth.
But how deep it permeates? I cannot give
you an honest assessment, other than to say
there's too much of it. But I can't tell you it's
five percent, ten, 20, 30. I just don't know. I
guess, I'm like a police officer in this regard.
You know, somebody who sees bad things

going on all the time, sooner or later you just
wonder if you're a police officer. "My God, is
this the way the world is?" I mean, everyday
just constantly arresting the drug runners
and the bad guys. But that's not the way the
world is. That's five percent or two percent of
the world.
And yet to that police officer it's his life's

work. It's like the judge. You got a judge sit-
ting here who sees case after case after case in
front of her where there are bad things hap-
pening. And she has, somehow or other, got
to separate that from her world and her fam-
ily so that it doesn't affect that. But then she'll
make a judgment. If I asked Judge Uviller
right now, what percentage of the world are
like the people that come in front of her, I'd
be interested in her answer. But I'm not going
to embarrass her here because it would look
like I'm ducking the answer to the question.
But it's kind of the same thing, you

know? We all have to do that, whether we're
judging people or enforcing the law, or in
my position. I hope it's a small percentage.
But whatever it is - because of the tremen-
dous reputation of some of the institutions
that are involved here – it's too deep and too
discouraging.
19
Q. Senator, you mentioned the fine is
$1,000. Have you formulated what you think
might be a more appropriate penalty and can
you name a specific figure?
A. I have not. Actually, I've reviewed them

personally just in the last couple of weeks
as we're preparing for these hearings. We
look, and the taxpayer actually has some
real jeopardy here, the taxpayer himself or
herself – because there you can get the
money back. The IRS can get all the money
back and impose a penalty.
It's all the aiders and abettors – all the

people who concocted this scheme, peddled
them, marketed them, sold them to the
taxpayer - who get not even a slap on the
wrist, in terms of any realistic assessment.
And so I don't know what our bill will do
in terms of new penalties to try to deter
this kind of behavior by the accounting
firms and the lawyers and the investment
banks and so forth that participate in the
abusive shelters.
I don't know where we're going to land

on that, except to say what's there now is
totally inadequate. And it's something,
frankly, which shocked us. We should have
known it. I guess we should know every-
thing that's in all of our law books. But this
came as a real surprise to us. And I'd say of
all the things we've learned, I'd say that, plus
the marketing, including the telemarketing,
of these tax shelters.
The way in which, instead of the taxpayer

coming into the accountant seeking advice,
it's this peddling of these generic shelters
with cold phone calls going to thousands
of people. That is a pretty stunning shift in
the way tax advice should be given and used
to be given. ■
20
M I LS TEIN CRIMINAL JUSTICE P O L I C Y F O R U M Citizens Crime Commission
Remarks by
Chief Judge
John M.Walker, Jr.
Introduction by
Howard P. Milstein
March 8, 2005
THE MILSTEIN
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
POLICY FORUM

HOWARD P. MILSTEIN

ment leaders.


Introduction by
Howard P. Milstein
TOM REPPETTO: Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen. I am Tom Reppetto, the president of
the Citizen’s Crime Commission of New York
City. I would like to welcome you to the Milstein
Criminal Justice Policy Series and thank Verizon
for hosting this event.
I want to thank so many of you for coming out

today. It’s a great tribute to our speaker. I would
now like to call to the podium the president of
Verizon New York, Paul Crotty.
PAUL CROTTY: Thank you very much, Tom. It’s very

nice to have the Citizens Crime Commission here.
This is a great day for law enforcement. At lunchtime
we can have this wonderful lecture. And tonight we
can all join Commissioner Kelly at the Police
Foundation annual gala down at police headquarters.
But it’s now my pleasure to introduce the sponsor

of this series. He and his brother Edward are princi-
pals of Milstein Brothers Capital Partners and many
other successful ventures.
They carry on a long tradition of family philan-

thropy, and I was privileged once to serve as one of
the lawyers for the Milstein family. They are terrific
people, long time committed and loving and caring
New Yorkers. And so it’s a special privilege for me
today to introduce the sponsor of the lecture series,
T
Howard Milstein.
HOWARD P. MILSTEIN:
hank you, Paul. New sentencing policies

in the United States have usually emerged
in response to periods when heightened
levels of crime have led to an intensification of
public fear.
The 1960s and ‘70s saw an increase in crime,

and it quickly led to heightened public fears that
remained high. This sometimes led to legislative
enactments that increased sentence lengths and
1
eroded the rehabilitation ideal. By 1983, forty-eight
states and the District of Columbia had taken away
much of a judge’s discretion in meting out punishment.
In the past decade, we have seen much lower rates

in violent crimes that frighten the public most. In the
same period, white collar crimes have escalated to a
point where public outrage has led courts to be much
tougher on the corporate scoundrels and swindlers
who damage our society in insidious ways.
On January 1, 2005, the United States Supreme

Court handed down a long awaited decision in
the cases of Booker and Fanfan. The Court held that
judicially enhanced sentences violated the Sixth
Amendment right to a jury trial. In so doing, the
court invalidated the U.S. sentencing guidelines that
have been binding on judges for the past eighteen
years. But the ruling does allow the guidelines to
remain as advisory.
The response to that ruling has been mixed. On

the one hand, we have judges who cherish the flexi-
bility to handle individual cases with a whole range
of punitive options. On the other, we have legislators
who feel that the ruling “Flies in the face of the clear
will of Congress.”
Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer, one of the

architects of the federal guidelines, says that new
initiatives should come from Congress. It’s up to
them, he wrote, “to devise a long term sentencing
system compatible with the constitution.”
It’s against this dynamic backdrop that I’d like to

introduce today’s speaker, the Honorable John M.
Walker, Jr. Judge Walker has been in the forefront
of those urging the Supreme Court to render a clear
ruling on sentencing guidelines. He is the Chief
Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit – arguably the most important judicial
position short of the Supreme Court – from the court
where such luminaries as Judge Learned Hand,
Judge Augustus Hand, and Judge Henry Friendly
served, wields enormous and well deserved
influence on federal law. Judge Walker has had a
2
remarkably distinguished career, having previously
served as District Judge for the Southern District of
New York, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
for Enforcement and Operations, a partner at Carter,
Ledyard & Milburn in New York City, and an
Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division
for the Southern District of New York.
A graduate of Yale College and the University of

Michigan Law School, Judge Walker is an adjunct
professor at NYU Law School, a visiting lecturer at
Yale Law School, and on the faculty of the Institute
of Judicial Administration Appellate Judges
Seminar. Actually, that sounds like three or four
distinguished careers. Your Honor, it’s my distinct
pleasure to invite you to the podium.
3
Remarks by
Chief Judge John M. Walker, Jr.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a great privilege and
honor to be here today. And I appreciate the fact that
all of you came for these remarks. I’m not going to
detain you for too long.
Howard pointed out that sentencing changes

usually come in response to a wave of crime, or
perceptions of criminality. And some might argue
that the changes that we’re about to experience came
in the wake of Blakely and Booker, which to some,
was a crime. I don’t think so. I can understand the
series of decisions that have taken place. In the past
year since Blakely, and in the past few months in par-
ticular, we really have witnessed an upheaval in the
criminal justice system, as administered at the feder-
al level. We have a revolution on our hands, and like
most revolutions, we’re not sure how the revolution
is going to end up.
For seventeen years, we operated under manda-

tory sentencing guidelines. Under the guidelines, the
judge was required to follow a complex, reticulated
set of rules and regulations to arrive at the appropri-
ate sentence. This process now has been determined
by the Supreme Court to be, by and large, unconsti-
tutional because it deprived the defendant of his
right to have the facts that were used to increase his
sentence found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
So my goal in these remarks is briefly to tell you

how we got to where we are, say a bit about the
current state of sentencing, and to join you in specu-
lating a little bit about where we might be going in
the future.
Prior to 1987, which some of us in the room do

remember, federal judges enjoyed broad discretion in
sentencing. Judge Tyler, who spoke to me about
coming here, was a judge in that regime. Basically,
sentences were un-reviewable in the courts of
appeals. As long as a judge was within the statutory
limits, the statutory bounds, he could impose any
sentence he wanted.
4
As a result, similarly situated defendants could,
and often did, receive disparate sentences from dif-
ferent judges. In the 1970s as you know, there was a
lot of literature on this issue, particularly a noted
book by the late Marvin Frankel. A defendant con-
victed of a first drug offense in those days might be
let off with probation by one judge, while another
judge could send him away for the full five years, as
the sentence was at that time.
So the reaction was the Sentencing Reform Act

of 1984, which was designed to correct these dis-
parities and bring some order and consistency to
sentencing. The Act established the U.S. Sentencing
Commission with authority to promulgate the sen-
tencing guidelines. And for the first time, there
would be appellate review of sentencing.
Also, I might add that because judges, not sur-

prisingly, were perceived by Congress as being too
lenient — a perception that persists even to this
day — Congress used the guidelines, and the enact-
ment of the guidelines, to increase the general level
of punishment. We operated under this system,
largely without interruption, for seventeen years,
from November 1987, when they went into effect,
through the end of last year.
Now I know most of the lawyers here are familiar

with the system, and I’m not going to spend much
time on the system itself. But for those of you who
perhaps are not quite as familiar, let me just briefly
explain kind of how the guidelines worked. Under
the guidelines, a judge first fixed the base offense
level by referring to the crime of conviction; the
guideline would then direct you to a base offense
level. That judge was then permitted to conduct fact
finding on a fair preponderance of the evidence —
just the judge, not the jury — to decide whether or not
the base offense level should be moved up or down.
Then an adjusted level was arrived at, which was
then converted into a sentencing range by reference
to a set of tables, found at the end of the guidelines
book every year.
So for example, in the case of a fraud conviction,

the sentencing range would be adjusted upward
5
based on the amount of money lost, perhaps the
harm done to a financial institution, the leadership
role of the defendant, and the criminal history of the
defendant. But the range could be reduced, as well,
for mitigating circumstances such as when a defen-
dant accepted responsibility by pleading guilty or
played a minor role in the commission of the crime.
Overall, the most important point is that the judge
had the authority to alter the sentences up or down
based on simple fact finding by a preponderance of
the evidence. No jury was required.
The first hint of change to all of this came in the

year 2000, when the Supreme Court handed down
Apprendi v. New Jersey. Yet we did not, at that time,
foresee that this would directly impact the federal
guidelines. There, the defendant pleaded guilty to a
crime of firearms possession. Under the New Jersey
statute, he could receive a maximum of ten years.
The judge gave him two more years based upon
an enhancement because that judge found that
the conduct was racially motivated. The Supreme
Court set aside the sentence and held that, other
than a prior conviction, which did not require a
jury finding, any fact that increased the penalty for
a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum
must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a
reasonable doubt.
Now this was a landmark decision, there’s no

doubt about it. But we thought its impact would be
limited. Indeed, all the courts around the country did
because we interpreted the decision in a way that did
not apply to guidelines sentencing. After all, the
guidelines were within the statutory maximum. So
the guidelines could be applied by the judge within
the statutory maximum without offending Apprendi,
so we all thought.
The situation changed dramatically last year

in June of 2004, when the Supreme Court decided
Blakely v. Washington. The Court decided that a
Washington State judge exceeded his constitutional
authority under the Sixth Amendment, the jury trial
provision, by adjusting the guidelines upon his own
fact finding and enhancing a defendant’s sentence
within the statutory maximum but above the guide-
6
lines that would normally be authorized because the
kidnapping offense involved deliberate cruelty.
The Court said that such facts— such an upward

adjustment in the guidelines— had to be proven to a
jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Blakely held that the
maximum sentence that a judge could impose under
the Sixth Amendment, then, was that which was
legally permitted solely upon the facts found by the
jury or admitted by the defendant. Any higher sen-
tence under the Washington State guidelines required
a separate jury finding.
The immediate question for everyone was what

would Blakely’s likely effect be on the federal sen-
tencing guidelines? Justice Scalia went out of his
way in writing the Blakely opinion to say expressly
that this was not to be taken as casting any opinion
on the federal sentencing guidelines. However,
the dissenting justices felt otherwise. They saw the
tea leaves clearly. Justice O’Connor warned, “[t]he
consequences of today’s decision will be as far reach-
ing as they are disturbing… . The Court ignores the
havoc it is about to wreak on trial courts across
the country. It is no answer to say that today’s opin-
ion impacts only Washington’s scheme and not
others, such as, for example, the Federal Sentencing
Guidelines.”
The reaction of courts around the country was

anything but calm. We were thrown into what can
best be described as disarray, if not havoc, despite
Justice Scalia’s admonition, because the reasoning
of Blakely seemed to apply with equal force to the
federal guidelines.
As you know, the wheels of justice grind slowly

most of the time, but the reaction of the federal courts
to Blakely was anything but that. Less than a week
after the decision, some district court judges were
already writing opinions declaring at least parts of
the guidelines unconstitutional in light of Blakely.
And soon the circuit courts had divided on the issue.
In July of last year, a few weeks after Blakely, and

in the middle of this earthquake, the Second Circuit
decided to take an unusual approach. In the case of
7
United States v. Penaranda, all of our active judges
voted to go in banc quickly and to certify three
questions to the Supreme Court bearing on the
question of whether Blakely applied to the federal
guidelines. This certification procedure is rarely
used; I think the last time was about thirty years
ago. But we were using it in order to solicit what
we thought and hoped would be a prompt and
authoritative answer from the Supreme Court. We
also wanted to take the opportunity to educate the
Supreme Court about the uncertainty that Blakely
had created and to urge them to take immediate
action by reviewing this matter on an expedited
basis in order to calm the waters — hopefully, before
the beginning of the term in the fall.
The Supreme Court did not take our certification.

They granted certiorari, however, in Booker and
Fanfan. And they scheduled oral argument for the
first day of the term, the first Monday in October.
So we were then left with a period of uncertainty
once cert. was granted in those cases, which we
expected to last throughout the fall until the Supreme
Court decided Booker. So what were we to do?
The district courts were reaching different deci-

sions. They all had their own ideas. We, the judges
of the Second Circuit, felt that we needed to
give some assurance, some guidance. We basically
decided to adhere to the existing guidelines until
we were definitively told by the Supreme Court to
the contrary. And we issued an opinion to that
effect. But at the same time, we held the mandates
in all of our cases because we did not want to have
the cases go down and then have to be re-appealed.
We wanted to be able to recall them and to work
on them, if necessary, depending upon the outcome
of Booker.
Booker came out in January. In an opinion by

Justice Stevens, he held that Blakely did indeed apply
to the federal guidelines. Insofar as they provided
for enhancements based upon a judge’s finding on a
fair preponderance of the evidence, the federal
guidelines violated the Sixth Amendment’s jury trial
guarantee and the guarantee of proof beyond a rea-
sonable doubt.
8
So the guidelines largely would be unconstitu-
tional, certainly the enhancements portion of it.
Prior to the decision, we were speculating as to
how the Supreme Court would decide this. I mean
would they just hold the enhancements to be
unconstitutional? Would they strike down the
entire statute? How would they deal with this if
they came out this way? And it looked very clearly
that they might.
We were surprised, frankly, I think most of us,

by Justice Breyer’s remedial decision in tandem with
Justice Stevens’ in which he was able to get one of the
justices who was in the majority for Justice Stevens —
Justice Ginsburg — to come over to his side. Justice
Breyer said that if, in fact, the mandatory guidelines
are unconstitutional, then Congress never would
have enacted them on that basis. They would have
preferred an advisory set of guidelines to no guide-
lines at all. Therefore, by the simple exercise of
excising two provisions of the guidelines— that
which made the guidelines mandatory and that
which provided how the court of appeals was to
review sentences— the Court could render the guide-
lines advisory. And that’s what happened.
Justice Scalia commented on the irony of the sit-

uation. In other words, a decision that he signed
on to reduce judges’ discretion was turned around
to actually grant judges more discretion than
they’d ever had.
But that is the so-called remedial section, and

that is the section that we are working with now.
Essentially, it holds that the guidelines are advisory.
They are to be considered by the district judge in
imposing sentence, and appellate review is confined
to the issue of reasonableness. Perhaps if the system
had started off that way, way back in the early 80s,
we never would have needed the guidelines.
The decision was front page news across the

country, as you know — much more so than Blakely.
While the opinion was expected in some form,
we didn't anticipate Justice Breyer ’s remediation
opinion.
9
So now the task has fallen to my court and other
circuit courts around the country to interpret and
apply Booker as we define the sentencing landscape
today. Let me tell you briefly where we are right now.
One big issue that the Supreme Court left open

in Booker was how to review all of those sentences
which had been imposed since Blakely, or were
on direct review at the time of Booker, where the
defendant never raised an objection under
Apprendi or Blakely. Normally, such sentences are
reviewable for what we call plain error. The plain
error standard, which is tougher on the defendant,
requires a showing of prejudice by the defendant.
He has to show that there was error, that it was
plain, there was prejudice, and also that the error
interferes with, or impinges upon the reputation,
fairness, or integrity of judicial proceedings. But
it was a clear issue for all of these cases — and
there were hundreds of them that had piled up,
and a great number in our circuit and around the
country. What were courts of appeals to do under
these circumstances?
So far there have been three different approaches

that have been taken. The Eleventh Circuit and
a panel of the Sixth Circuit have simply found no
plain error, and they’ve affirmed. Other circuits,
including the Third, the Fourth and another panel of
the Sixth— they’re divided on this— have just auto-
matically remanded the cases for re-sentencing.
The Second Circuit took a more nuanced middle

ground. We thought there ought to be cognition of
the plain error standard. The best way to do that, we
thought, was to send the case back to the district
court to ask the district court whether it would have
imposed the same sentence had it known at the time
that the guidelines were advisory. If the answer to
that is yes, then obviously there was no prejudice,
and that could be the end of the case. If the answer
is no, there would be prejudice, and the district
judge could then re-sentence.
The first determination was whether to re-sen-

tence, whether the court would have given the same
decision. That would be based on the earlier set of
10
facts known to the judge, or that could have been
presented to the judge at the time of the earlier
sentence. And assuming that that hurdle was crossed
by the defendant, there could be re-sentencing based
upon new circumstances up to the present time.
These decisions are still playing out. Some circuits

have taken these decisions in banc. Others haven’t
completely decided where they’re going.
Our decision was handed down in a case called

United States v. Crosby, an opinion by Judge Newman,
in which the full court collaborated. We did not go in
banc. We all simply decided that this was a good
way to approach it, and the opinion was circulated
to everybody on the court. I think it is a testament
to our court’s collegiality that we were able to do
that. I’m sure some judges felt that they were giving
up something, you know, they were compromising
a bit. But we felt that it was important to get a deci-
sion out fairly quickly.
So now that we’ve established a process for han-

dling these hundreds of appeals that challenge post-
Blakely sentences, we now have to address some
other matters raised in Booker.
First, we’re going to have to decide what it means

to “consider” all of the factors that bear upon sen-
tencing now that the guidelines are advisory.
There’s a statute, which most of you are familiar
with, section 3553(a), that spells out a number of fac-
tors that are to be considered by a court in imposing
sentence. This provision preceded the guidelines. It
goes way back in time— back to the 1970s. But back
in those days, the meaning was never litigated
because pre-guidelines sentences within the statuto-
ry maximum were not reviewable by the courts of
appeals. As a result, nobody looked at whether the
district court was really paying attention to the fac-
tors set forth in this section. It simply wasn’t brought
up in court. They were there. Courts could look at
them or not look at them, and nothing would hap-
pen. There were no consequences. After the guide-
lines were promulgated, the guidelines trumped the
factors set forth in section 3553. The guidelines had
to be followed; they were mandatory. Section 3553
11
was not relevant then either. Even though it was on
the books it was not followed.
Now, after Booker, the section 3553 factors take on

a special force because they’re not trumped by the
guidelines, which are only advisory, and because
now there is appellate review — albeit for reason-
ableness. So these factors are going to be very impor-
tant in forthcoming cases. They’re not surprising,
and they won’t come as a surprise to you. I’ll just run
through them very quickly: the nature and circum-
stances of the offense, the history and characteristics
of the defendant; the need for the sentence to reflect
the seriousness of the crime, provide for punishment,
afford adequate deterrence, and protect the public;
the kinds of sentences available; the applicable
guideline range— because the guidelines still have
to be consulted — the need to avoid sentencing dis-
parity among defendants; and the need to provide
restitution to victims.
These are the factors that courts will now have to

consider. Whether and to what degree the judge con-
siders these section 3553 factors and how the judge
should do it will be the subject of future decisions
under the rubric of reasonableness review.
There is a second development that I think is fore-

seeable, and it’s related, of course, now that the
guidelines are advisory. What degree of guidelines
consultation will be sufficient and what weight
should be given to the guidelines now that they’re
advisory?
In Crosby, we’ve already explained that a judge

cannot do what I call a wave by, wave at the guide-
lines and say you’ve considered them. The judge
cannot satisfy his duty to consider the guidelines by
general reference to the entirety of the guidelines fol-
lowed by a decision then to impose a non-guidelines
sentence.
Some district judges, such as Judge Casell in Utah

who’s written extensively on this subject, have
already held that courts should give considerable
or heavy weight to the guidelines in determining
what sentences to impose. And the U.S. Sentencing
12
Commission has indicated its view that the guide-
lines should be given substantial weight. We will
have to decide whether and to what degree a judge
must explain how he has considered the guidelines,
particularly when the judge chooses to give a non-
guidelines sentence.
Obviously if the judge is giving a guidelines sen-

tence, the judge will have fully considered every-
thing in the guidelines. But what about when the
guidelines call for a particular sentence and the judge
just simply decides, “Well, they’re advisory, I’m dis-
regarding the advice”? How can the judge do that in
a way that convinces us that the judge has considered
the guidelines?
Third, we’ll have to decide what it means to

review a sentence for reasonableness. We’re familiar
with the standard of reasonableness. The Supreme
Court, in Justice Breyer’s opinion, was accurate in
saying that we’re familiar with that standard of
review. But we’ll still have to flesh that out.
In Crosby, we clarified that reasonableness is a

flexible concept. It’s not simply review for abuse of
discretion. So we expect to have to develop a stan-
dard that reviews not just the sentence itself, not just
the numbers — the number of months, the amount of
restitution or the fine — but also how the sentence
was arrived at — the process — in order to decide
whether the sentence was reasonable.
We’ll also have to confront the question of

whether sentences that are within the guidelines are
presumptively reasonable. One would think so, but
maybe there should not be a presumption. Maybe
there should be, and maybe that presumption
should be rebutable. Or whether it’s an actually
safe harbor, always reasonable if it’s within the
guidelines, will be another question that we’ll have
to look at.
Just briefly, then, I’d like to take a broader view of

sentencing in the federal courts now that we have
these decisions. I think it’s important to emphasize,
as have others who have thought about this deeply,
that we have, in no way, returned to the pre-1987
13
world of freedom of sentencing by district judges.
Some might call it lawless sentencing, where judges
were constrained merely by their own discretion and
were essentially free to do as they pleased.
Although the guidelines are now advisory, I think

that considerable and sufficient restraints are still in
place. First of all, I believe the vast majority of sen-
tences will continue to fall within the applicable
guideline range. This is so, because, if you think
about it, most of the active district judges on the
bench today were not on the bench prior to the intro-
duction of the guidelines themselves. They are there-
fore in the habit of imposing a guidelines sentence
and of using the guidelines. And in general, judges
have found the calculated ranges not to be too far off
the mark, to be fair and accurate generally.
We also ought to remember that advisory guide-

lines systems are in place in ten states, and they seem
to work. They seem to operate successfully. Now
before Booker, about two thirds of defendants were
sentenced within the applicable guidelines range,
while the other third were given departures outside
the range. It’s interesting that the early returns now
post-Booker are about the same: two thirds within the
guidelines, about a third outside.
Our Deputy Attorney General, who you all know

very well, the former U.S. Attorney here, Jim Comey,
has instructed federal prosecutors to continue to
seek sentences under the guidelines. He has also
extended the Justice Department’s requirement that
prosecutors report when sentences outside the
guidelines are imposed.
Also, the provision that requires district courts

to report to the Sentencing Commission the outcomes
of sentencing is still in place. So the Sentencing
Commission is still alive and well. The Sentencing
Commission is still going to be modifying guide-
lines, considering changes, and getting reports
from judges.
But the courts are not the only ones wrestling

with Booker. There are legislative proposals floating
around the Hill at this point. There is a proposal by
14
Professor Bowman that suggests moving the top
end of the guidelines range to the statutory maxi-
mum. That would obviate the Booker problem
because there would be no upper edge, upper limit,
to go over that would require a jury trial. Another
one simply raises the entire guidelines to the statu-
tory maximum and then allows for only down-
ward departures. Other legislation would add
more statutory mandatory minimums.
Now Justice Breyer indicated that the ball is now

in Congress’s court and that Congress would do best
to install a long-term sentencing scheme compatible
with the Constitution. When he did that I guess that
he anticipated there would be swift response by
Congress. I personally think that their hasty response
would be a mistake, and it should be avoided.
We are now in a new system, a new sentencing

season, if you will. It’s spring training, not October.
There is plenty of time to make adjustments and cor-
rections if legislative change proves to be necessary.
Justice Breyer’s solution, in my view, did not create
a stop-gap solution. Rather, he has delivered to us
an eminently workable system that should be given
a chance to play out. It should not be rejected pre-
maturely until we know that it’s not working.
This is a view that the ABA has taken and the

view that the Federal Judges Association has taken,
that Congress should take a wait-and-see approach
and should take legislative action only if the new
system is seen to be failing.
Also I think it’s important that any legislative

change be informed and deliberated, and be careful-
ly arrived at. It should not just simply be reactive to
the decisions of a particular judge that the staff of the
Senate or House Judiciary Committee takes issue
with. The system is much more important than that,
and it deserves the deliberation of careful minds and
full consultation.
In that regard, I want to say that this is not just a

matter for Congress. All of us should be involved in
any changes and in legislation that is considered for
a new sentencing regime. All three branches of the
15
federal government, including the U.S. Sentencing
Commission and the Judicial Conference of the
United States, as well as Congress and the executive
branch, should work together and explore and
develop revisions and improvements to this advi-
sory system, should they be needed. We need to
have dialogue among the many interested parties
in this matter.
I think that Congress can learn as much from the

courts as we can from Congress, and that groups like
this one here, and other citizens groups, should be
heard on the question. There should be full debate,
full deliberation, before legislative change is enacted.
None of us should forget that we all seek the same
result: sentences in the federal courts that are just,
fair, consistent, and adequate.
So in conclusion, let me just say that sentencing in

this country has undergone dramatic change over the
past twenty years, and particularly in the last year.
Prior to the guidelines, judges were constrained sim-
ply by their own discretion. But that was not good
enough. The mandatory guidelines that came in
worked to reduce sentencing disparity, raise sen-
tences to some degree, but now have been found to be
unconstitutional as enacted then. Blakely and Booker
have altered the sentencing landscape by rendering
the guidelines advisory.
We haven’t returned to pre-guideline times. As

the appellate courts fulfill their duty of crafting their
decisions in conformity with Booker, I urge Congress
not to throw the baby out with the bathwater with
rushed legislation. This is an historic time in the
world of criminal justice, and all interests will be best
served if we simply allow patience to rule the day.
I’d be happy to answer any questions.
16
Questions & Answers
Chief Judge John M. Walker, Jr.
Q. Under Crosby what standards will the circuit

courts set?
A. Under the standards set forth by Justice Breyer,

we will review for reasonableness. The government
can indicate, based upon the severity of the crime —
the nature of the conduct — that the sentence was
unreasonable. But there will not be the degree of
close review of sentences that are too lenient that
we had under the mandatory system. That does not
appear to be in the cards right now under the broader
reasonableness standard.
But, the guidelines themselves are still there.

They’re on the books. And the government will be
fighting very hard to have them adhered to.
I might say that if judges do depart downward

from the guidelines too much, the statistics will be
received by Congress and the likelihood of a
mandatory regime being re-imposed would be
increased.
Q. …Role of Section 3553

A. I couldn’t agree with you more. I think it’s
going to be difficult. And we are going to just have
to see how it plays out on a case-by-case basis, to see
how we determine to interpret that provision. It’s
very broad right now.
Q. Given the present political climate, what are the

chances that Congress will wait and see?
A. You know your ability to read the Congressional

tea leaves are as good as mine. I will just give you a
couple of bits of information.
17
I understand that there’s agitation in the House to
do something, to change it, to re-impose mandatory
guidelines, to some degree. The chairman of the
House Judiciary Committee, Chairman Sensenbrenner,
has expressed the view to one judge that I know
and I’ve talked to that there ought to be some ‘wait
and see’ as to what happens before they act. And
that indicates to me that there will be some period
of time before Congress steps in.
I think the Senate is taking a much more deliber-

ate wait-and-see approach to see how things play
out. So it’s not clear to me what will happen. One of
the staff members on the House side has indicated
that, should there be some really outlier decisions of
leniency on the part of the judges, it’s much more
likely that legislation will be forthcoming more
quickly. Yes, sir?
Q. Under the new rules how will prior convic-

tions be handled under the new three-strikes rule?
A. I don’t know about this decision itself. But there

was a decision that was handed down yesterday
by the Supreme Court. I’m not that familiar with it.
I read about it in the paper today.
But as I understand from the reports, the decision

basically took a very formalist approach towards
prior convictions. That is, they would have to be
clearly established based upon court records. And
the First Circuit was chided for having gone back
beyond court records to try and prove priors that
were not clearly delineated in the court records.
And it may well be that the Supreme Court will

re-address a case that is now an exception to
Apprendi called Almendarez-Torres, which says that
the fact of a prior conviction does not have to be
proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt at this
present time. It can simply be found by the judge.
I think there may be a majority in the Court

now to overrule that decision. Justice Thomas has
changed his position on this. If that’s the case, then
the government’s going to have to prove these prior
18
convictions beyond a reasonable doubt, which
would be more difficult for the government.
So you know, to that extent there is some ques-

tion about the prior strikes. The Supreme Court,
in recent years, has upheld the three-strikes-and-
you’re-out provision. I think it was in California
involving a couple of cases a few years ago. So
the actual system is not, I don’t think, in question.
Yes, sir?
Q. Yes, I just wanted to pick up on your opening

remark that we are undergoing a revolution in the
criminal justice system. Because I think one of the
other engines of this is Justice Scalia’s opinion in
Crawford. The subtext I get from his opinion is that
some justices feel that the judiciary has strayed from
some of the fundamentals protected in the Bill of
Rights. And I’m wondering if you agree with that
analysis and, if so, why we have strayed?
A. Well, I think that that’s an accurate description.

I think that there is a sense among Justice Scalia,
Justice Thomas, Souter, Stevens, and Justice Ginsburg
that the system has become lax, that rules have been
watered down, if you will— confrontation rules,
sentencing rules, rights that matter, that historically,
perhaps, have gone to a jury, are now being decided
by judges.
And as we all know one of the hallmarks of

Justice Scalia’s jurisprudence is not to give discretion,
to minimize discretion for judges and to have a clear
set of rules that will guide judges in their work, and
will also enhance predictability and stability in
the law.
And I think that is a theme of the Supreme

Court’s jurisprudence that goes— Crawford is an
example of that, this case— I think it was called
Chapman or Shepherd yesterday— the Booker decision,
and the Blakely decision, and so forth. So I think that
that is certainly a theme of the Supreme Court’s
criminal justice jurisprudence. Anything else?
19
Q. Even before Blakely, I believe the Congress was
collecting information on judges who they thought
deviated too far below the guidelines. It can be
seen as a harbinger of what the Congress is likely to
do. I took Justice Breyer’s statement as a warning
his colleagues, that having made this decision the
Congress is liable to move very swiftly.
What you’re saying today, though, causes me to

believe that the Congress will probably not move
very swiftly on this, that there will be some kind of
waiting period to see what happens.
A. I think that that’s accurate. I do think there will

be a waiting period. And we can only speculate as to
how long it will be. But I find it interesting that, very
often, Congress is reactive. They will react to a deci-
sion. If there’s some particularly outrageous decision
in terms of leniency, I think they’ll move. One staffer
has said, “I’m just waiting for the first guy who gets
probation for child pornography.”
Q. So you are telling me that I’d better schedule the

Congressional speaker sooner rather than later.
A. That’s probably a good idea. Yes.

TOM REPPETTO: Your Honor, on behalf of the
Crime Commission, we thank you so much for your
remarks.
CHIEF JUDGE WALKER: Thank you.
20
CONNECTING
COUNTER-TERRORISM
AND COMMUNITY
POLICING
Remarks by Sir Ian Blair

April 18, 2006

THE MILSTEIN
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
POLICY FORUM

HOWARD P. MILSTEIN
event features a nationally,
or internationally, prominent speaker who addresses the
Commission on such issues as crime, criminal justice or
terrorism. The formal remarks are followed by a question-
and-answer period. Each meeting is open to the media.

ment leaders.


Introduction by
I
Richard Aborn
want to thank you all for coming. And I
want to start tonight as I start many of
these events with a thank you – actually
a number of thank yous. I first want to start
with Tom Moran who can’t be with us
tonight. As you know Tom Moran is the CEO
of Mutual of America. Tom has time and
time and time again – arranged for us to be in
this space. Mutual of America is an incredi-
bly generous organization and Tom, himself
is an incredibly generous man. So I thank
him on behalf of the Crime Commission.
I also want to do another thank you. But

before I do that I want to start off this event
with an observation. It’ll come as no shock
to anyone that the theme of the talk tonight
is about terrorism and counter-terrorism.
And when I think about that issue at a very
broad level, not at an operational level, but
at a very broad level, I think it’s really about
three things. Three core values if you will.
The first core value is about courage. It’s

the courage that is spoken about in this town
and in London very frequently; but cannot
be said enough: The courage of so many
people that charged into the burning towers
on September 11th and charged deep into
the Underground in London during the hor-
rible bombings there. These brave individu-
als charged into those structures not know-
ing what else might be coming, men and
women in uniform who, without hesitation,
risked their own lives to help others. People
they did not know and they did it at a time
when probably every fiber in their body was
screaming, “I want to go the other way.” But
they charged in and they would do it again
and again. We owe an eternal gratitude to
those people, an eternal gratitude.
1
It is also about the courage to continue
this fight. To continue this fight working
long tireless hours, often in places away
from home. It sounds like a war and it is.
Often with people not knowing what you’re
doing. That’s a mark of courage; the mark
of courage of working without witness.
People who work and are never thanked. I
wish we could thank them, we do need to
thank them, even though they are almost
never recognized.
The second core value is about, in many

ways, creativity: The ability to take the tra-
ditional resources that belong to the police
and think about them in a very creative way
to confront this new issue in the United
States, an issue which is unfortunately a
much longer term problem in the United
Kingdom.
Our two commissioners, Commissioner

Kelly and Commissioner Blair, if I may say
our commissioners for this evening, have
done this in an exemplary way. They have
literally fought outside of the box. They
have fought outside of their own munici-
pal boundaries and in fact, fought outside
their own national boundaries. That’s to be
applauded.
And finally, the third core value is in

many ways about resilience. It’s about the
resilience of the policing forces of both cities.
It’s about the resilience of our governments.
And ultimately, and, I think, perhaps most
importantly, it’s about the resilience of our
people; of our citizens, the citizens of these
two great cities.
That is probably our greatest strength

in the fight against terrorism. Because that
message is clear. That message is that ter-
rorists will not win. You may harm us. But
you will not win. That’s the message that
2
London and New York have sent out with
resounding clarity, and that is to be
applauded.
It is that last notion, that last value, that

notion of resilience that I want to use to intro-
duce the man who is sponsoring tonight’s
event. That man is Howard Milstein who is
sitting in the front row. Howard and Edward
Milstein, (Edward unfortunately could not
be with us) comprise the Milstein Brothers
Foundation.
They are the founders and sponsors of

the Milstein Criminal Justice Policy Forum,
which is the event that we are having
tonight. For the past three years, Howard
and Edward’s generosity has brought you
the leading national crime figures talking
about very difficult and often cutting edge
criminal justice issues. They continue that
tonight, but tonight they take us beyond our
boundaries. They take us into the broader
world of counter terrorism by inviting Sir
Ian to join us.
It’s actually no accident that they should

be the sponsors of tonight’s event. As you
may recall, they have brought us such
speakers as Robert Mueller, the Director of
the FBI; Asa Hutchinson when he was over
at Homeland Security; Senator Carl Levin
who you all know and I’m sure you remem-
ber his presentation; and Federal Judge John
Walker.
They have all addressed the Crime

Commission under the sponsorship of
Howard and Edward. But they are generous
not only with their financial support; they
are also generous with their time, which is
absolutely wonderful. For the past 15 years
they have both been giving their time, skill
and resources to address all of the major
crime issues that face this nation.
3
Edward serves on the board of this Crime
Commission, and the National Crime
Prevention Council as well as the Police
Widows and Orphans Fund. Howard is
deeply engaged with the Federal Law
Enforcement Foundation. They co-chair the
New York City Police Foundation’s COPE
Campaign, which provides counseling for
first responders who were traumatized on
September 11th.
They don’t stop there. They have also

created innovative crime fighting strategies.
For instance, for one program, they had the
idea to go out and train the doormen of
many, many buildings so that those door-
men could become the eyes and ears of
NYPD, a program that continues to this
day. They have also helped the NYPD with
technological issues and they have helped in
building community relations programs.
I actually could go on for a long time

about Howard and Edward’s generosity.
As I said when I was talking about Tom
Moran, one of the really great pleasures
about this position is the ability to thank
people in public for all that they do for this
Commission and for this city. Howard, I
thank you from the bottom of my heart for
all the support that you give us.
You’ve been a long time supporter and I

can’t tell you how much we appreciate it.
Howard’s generosity doesn’t stop with crime.
He’s involved with cultural institutions, med-
ical institutions and with educational insti-
tutions. And the list goes on and on and on.
But I won’t.
Howard, with that in mind, thank you so

much. And would you please come up and
introduce our featured speaker.
4
Introduction by
I
Howard P. Milstein
t’s my honor to introduce to you a
renowned figure in the criminal justice
field. A stellar group of law enforcement
officials, business leaders and members of
the community have come together here
today to listen to, as Richard said a moment
ago, this evening’s speaker, Sir Ian Blair,
Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan
Police. Tonight broadens the scope of this
lecture series to the international community.
This widening of our perspective reflects

three crucial realities about our modern
world. First, London and New York are
cities with countless common cultural ties.
Second and equally important, there are
many economic ties that bond us. But the
third reality is that terrorism has greatly
impacted all members of our communities.
That is not solely because of the horrific

death and injury caused by such attacks.
Here in New York, we saw on September
11th, the true extent of the devastation that
terrorism can cause. And its effects still rever-
berate today, more than four years later.
London, too, has struggled with the

threat of terrorism for many years. Most
recently, in the horror of last summer’s
attacks on London’s mass transit system.
But, another destructive result of terrorism
is significant economic consequence, includ-
ing job losses amongst the most vulnerable
members of our society.
As truly international cities in a global

economy, we are continually aware of the
need to think beyond our municipal bound-
aries. At the same time, this global perspec-
tive requires us to focus on the ever present
5
Howard P. Milstein
menace of terrorism, which tragically is just

as international in scope as the economic
activity on which New York and London
thrive.
As a result, both of our cities have

learned the hard way about the need for
collective vigilance in our shared fight
against terrorism. It must be noted that the
business community has a key role in this
fight, as does an engaged citizenry.
Needless to say, law enforcement has a

decisive role to play in this process. Tonight’s
speaker has long experience in understand-
ing the issues involved in this difficult but
vital struggle. Sir Ian Blair has been London’s
Metropolitan Police Commissioner since
February 2005. In that short space, Sir Ian has
made significant strides towards his goals of
making the Metropolitan Police Service more
responsive to Londoners in achieving greater
operational efficiencies.
Sir Ian has also taken a strong leader-

ship role in handling the terrorist bombings
as well as another wave of attempted
attacks, which rocked London last summer.
6
He’ll discuss these at greater length today.
The Metropolitan Police Service has been
one of the world’s foremost police depart-
ments since its founding in 1829 by Sir
Robert Peel.
With over 31,000 officers and more than

15,000 additional personnel covering 620
square miles and a population of 7.2 million,
it’s one of the world’s largest police organi-
zations.
Sir Ian was educated at Oxford University,

where he studied English language and liter-
ature. He joined the Metropolitan Police in
1974 as a police constable in London’s Soho,
and quickly rose through the ranks. He
has served in many capacities within the
Metropolitan Police, working as a consta-
ble, sergeant and inspector. In 1991 he was
promoted to chief superintendent and
appointed staff officer to Her Majesty’s
Chief Inspector of the Constabulary based
at the Home Office.
He returned to the Metropolitan Police

in 1993 and in 2000 was appointed to
deputy commissioner, the second highest
ranking position in the force. He served in
that capacity until he became commissioner
last year.
Sir Ian is widely regarded as one of the

leading in-service advocates of police
reform. He played a key role in development
of police community support officers, who
now support regular police patrols in
London and elsewhere. He is also one of the
main spokespersons for the police service
about criminal justice reform.
In 1999 he was awarded the Queen’s Medal

for Distinguished Service. And he was
awarded a knighthood in 2003 for his servic-
es to policing. It’s my pleasure to introduce
Sir Ian Blair. Welcome to the Big Apple!
7
Remarks by
T
Sir Ian Blair
hank you very much indeed ladies

and gentlemen for being here tonight.
It’s a great honor to follow some dis-
tinguished speakers in this lecture series.
Relationships between New York and London
are very solid. We have much in common.
I spent some of the day with Ray Kelly and
I’m speaking to the FBI bureau chief tomor-
row. We have officers in place on either side
of the Atlantic. We understand the battle in
which we are involved and we are all involved
in it together.
There is effective liaison between New

York and London in terms of law enforce-
ment, particularly in relation to terrorism
that is probably closer, certainly from my
organization’s perspective, than with any
other city in the world.
I’d like to start by clarifying the theme

that I’m going to take tonight and it’s this, that
terrorism is a crime both unlike and like
every other crime. It’s unlike a crime in the
sense that we’re going to have to find new
resources, new laws and new processes to
deal with it. But it’s like in that the tradi-
tional methodologies of policing will be the
law enforcement tools to defeat terrorism.
In particular, it will be about basic “feet on the
street” detective work and about community
policing.
In that context, I want to make the point

that law enforcement is just like architecture,
medicine or engineering. It has fashions.
When I first came to the United States as a
police officer in the 1980’s, I never heard the
words community policing. All I heard about
was detection and response policing. When I
9
got here in the 1990’s, I didn’t hear about
anything except community policing. Now,
we talk about nothing except terrorism but
we actually need to focus on all of them
simultaneously. We need to answer 911 calls
effectively, we need community policing, we
need counter-terrorism. My particular belief
is that the fundamental answer to countering
terrorism from a law enforcement perspective,
is to work with communities in the tradi-
tional way that the police service has always
done — listening to their concerns and
responding to them. There are new roles and
responsibilities implicit in effective counter-
terrorism but the basics remain the same:
accessible, accountable policing builds the
confidence of communities to the point that
they feel able to tell us what we need to know.
A word or two perhaps about me and a

little bit about the Met. I’ve got 31 years in law
enforcement but, if I may I go back to a stage
when I was 17, I won a scholarship to go to an
American high school. There were 32 scholar-
ships on offer, 30 of them were on the East
Coast, 31 of them were in boarding schools and
one was a day school in Hollywood. I got the
day school in Hollywood and I had left an
English private school, which had been run by
people whom the Pilgrim Fathers would have
told to lighten up! I arrived in Hollywood at
the age of 17 with an English accent in 1971.
I had the most marvelous time imaginable and
it left me with a deep love of the United States.
I have spent time in the United States over

many years working with law enforcement
and now I see our two nations, as they have
been for a hundred years, fighting in the
defense of freedom across the globe, in Iraq,
here in New York and in London.
A little bit about the Metropolitan Police

itself and its relationship with a place called
Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard is the headquar-
ters of the Metropolitan Police. It is only a build-
10
ing but one that carries a reputation. I do
know the effect of that reputation because
I worked 20 years ago on a book on rape
investigation. I went to work in San Francisco
for a little while and worked with their sex
crimes unit. I took part in an interview with
a suspect. In those days, although it was
completely new to me, they were tape
recording interviews and everyone intro-
duced themselves aloud for the benefit of
the tape. I finally said that I was Detective
Inspector Blair from Scotland Yard and the
suspect went completely off the rails, say-
ing that in no circumstances had he ever
been to London, that this was nothing to
do with him and that he had no idea who I
was or why I was there! So I do know that
Scotland Yard has a certain reputation that
goes before it.
We are in essence a hybrid organization.

We are London’s police service but we also
have the responsibilities of part of the FBI,
part of the DEA and part of the Secret Service
because we hold national and international
responsibilities. We protect the Queen and the
Prime Minister and are responsible for extra-
dition from the United Kingdom. Above all, we
are the national counter terrorist organization.
We are very similar in size to the New

York Police Department, I have around 31,000
police officers and about 20,000 other
employees, so it’s it somewhere in the region
of 50,000 people policing a city of seven half
million citizens.
The Metropolitan Police was founded,

rather curiously, at six o’clock on a Tuesday
evening on 29th of September 1829, when the
first police officers walked out of that building
called Scotland Yard and laid the foundation
of policing by consent in the common law
tradition. It has had its scandals and its
triumphs over those 175 years. There is some
directly relevant history to our present situa-
11
tion. The first is the long struggle during the
1970’s, 80’s and 90’s against Irish Republican
terrorism and what that means for our under-
standing of Al Qaeda.
Secondly, the Metropolitan Police has

itself gone through a series of evolutions. We
began in 1829 as the most community-based
policing imaginable. Over many years, we
moved away from that and we are now
re-inventing community policing. As Sir
Robert Peel said, “The primary objectives of
an efficient police are the prevention of crime
and the preservation of public tranquility”,
everything else is secondary.
On 9/11, I had the experience of being in

London. The Commissioner at that time was
Sir John Stevens and he was half way to New
York on a plane when he was turned around.
With all that was happening at that stage,

I went to the Cabinet Office Briefing Room,
which is the government command network
in Britain. It was in that room, which is
about half the size of this open space here,
with big television screens running silently,
that I saw the Twin Towers come down and
realized we had entered a completely new
period of our history.
I am a graduate of the FBI’s National

Executive Institute Program and one of my
colleagues on that program was Fred Morrone
who was Superintendent of the New York
and New Jersey Port Authority Police. He
died on duty on 9/11. It’s a privilege for
me to be here and speak about this to some
degree in Fred’s memory.
What changed when 9/11 took place?

It was the first appearance of mass casualty
terrorism in the West without warning, with-
out a negotiating position and frankly, with-
out a claim. Compare that with the European
history of terrorism, whether Red Brigades
or Bada Meinhoff, the IRA or ETA, the differ-
12
From left to right: Richard Ciecka, Chairman of the Board
of the Commission; Sir Ian Blair, Commission President
Richard Aborn and Howard P. Milstein, sponsor of the
Milstein Lecture series.
ence is that all of those groups were bombing

their way to the negotiating table. Al Qaeda
are just bombing the table.
That’s a very different position, but we did

have knowledge of Al Qaeda and Osama Bin
Laden. We knew about the attacks on the
US embassies in East Africa in Dar Es Salaam,
in Nairobi in 1998. We knew about the USS Cole
in 2000.
On a personal note, I was travelling

through Italy with my two children who at
that stage were 14 and 12. The 12-year-old
said, “Dad, you’re a cop, this is a very long,
boring journey. Why don’t you tell us who the
worst criminal in the world is?” I told them at
that stage, in the summer of 2001, about
Osama Bin Laden. It was there.
Since 9/11, we’ve had the bombings in

Madrid, in Bali, in Casablanca and in Istanbul.
In London, between 9/11 and 7/7 we had two
major conspiracies, one of which is currently
on trial. We had the shoe bomber, Richard
Reid, who tried to blow up a transatlantic
jet using explosives hidden in his shoes.
We had, intriguingly and quite worryingly,

two young men from Britain who went to
13
mount a suicide attack in Israel. They tried to
blow themselves up in Tel Aviv. One succeed-
ed, one didn’t but then apparently committed
suicide.
Then we had July of last year and there

are two images that are worth remembering
because they are such a huge contrast. First
is the 6th of July and, while I have no desire
to gloat, that is the day when London won the
Olympics and it was an extraordinary day.
One of the best parts of it was the presen-
tation that the London Bid Team made in
Singapore, which represented London as an
open, diverse and modern city, which values
equality of opportunity and love of life,
including sport, as essential components of a
free society.
This is because London is not the London

of myth. 40% of the economically active com-
munity in London are from minority commu-
nities. Out of the 32 boroughs of London, in
two of those boroughs, the phrase minority
communities does not apply because minority
communities have become the majority.
There are 250 languages, at least, spoken in
London’s schools and if I could put it bluntly,
Mary Poppins it isn’t. London is a polyglot,
multicultural society
On the seventh of July, while your

President was in Scotland at the G8 event,
four young men: one 18-years-old, one 19,
one 22 and one 30, three of them born in
Britain and one who moved to Britain when
he was six months old, decided to undertake
the largest single act of murder in English
criminal history.
Fifty-two people were killed plus the four

bombers, 700 injured and some of those
injuries were totally life changing. You saw
all of that on the television. There are many
stories from that day about heroism. The worst
scene was at a particular subway station
14
called Russell Square. It’s the deepest tunnel
in London and among the young men and
women who were called to that scene were
half a dozen of our people who were on the
“Street Duties Course” as we call them. They
had left our training establishment less than
three weeks before and they weren’t yet
allowed to walk the streets by themselves,
but they went down into that tube, into the
darkness, into a scene of barbarity.
On the 21st of July, four other young men,

not born in Britain but all assimilated into
British society, are now accused of attempting
to do similar bombings. At the moment when
the news of the second set of bombings was
brought into me in my office, I can remember
looking out of the window, at this sort of
height across London, thinking that we were
facing the greatest operational challenge that
the Metropolitan police had seen since the
Second World War. This was London but not
as we had known or policed it.
Since then, we’ve had three further conspir-

acies. The allegations in these are as follows:
one is an individual who decided to buy a
surface-to-air missile from a police officer, the
second was a plan for a further suicide bomb-
ing in London and the third, perhaps most
chillingly, is a conspiracy between UK resi-
dents planning further atrocities. What we
know about the two individuals is that they
never physically met. A conspiracy across the
Internet has serious implications for the law
enforcement agencies.
So what conclusions can we draw? The

first is about the nature of the threat: it is
global in its reach, it is global in its method-
ology – in the sense that what is happening
in Iraq is now translatable elsewhere. It is
asymmetric. An example of that is a conspir-
acy in Paris by a group of North Africans who
wanted to blow up the Russian Embassy
there in retaliation for events in Chechnya.
15
I have just read John Gaddis’s book on the
Cold War and I think somebody will write
another book 20 years from now about these
terrorist events because we are facing a new
paradigm of equal length. Our situation will
not be quickly solved. Ultimately, the terror-
ists are not open to negotiation, there is no
bargaining position here.
I define the threats against our two coun-

tries like this: The main threat to the United
States is external and relates to American
interests abroad. The main threat to the
United Kingdom is internal, although it is
influenced by factors and events externally.
There is little comfort in considering the
implications of a closer convergence of those
two threats.
The nature of the British threat is very

difficult. The bombers on the 7th of July were
British born, those accused of the second set
were British naturalized. We have had visi-
tors, we have had combined British and non-
British. If we think that the next threat to the
United States will be more hi-jacked aircraft,
then I believe we are preparing to re-fight
the last battle.
The next battle is within and that will be an

enormous challenge for all of us because the
nature of Al Qaeda is not as an organization,
it is rather a facilitator. The best analysis of
their actions that I’ve come across is in a book
by Diego Gambetta, titled, “Making Sense
Of Suicide Missions”. It is a fascinating study
covering everything from kamikaze pilots
to Buddhist monks immolating themselves.
The first key aspect of his analysis is that

Al Qaeda is different from any other terrorist
organization in the world because, even if
you exclude 9/11 (which would push any
graph off scale), Al Qaeda’s missions kill
more people than any other organization in
total, they kill more civilians than other
16
organization and they kill more per attack
than any other terror group.
I have heard him lecture and the second

piece of his analysis is particularly perceptive.
He has profiled the suicide bombers in Iraq.
They are not Iraqis. They come from the rest
of the Middle East and they have no experi-
ence themselves of fighting the US, British
and other coalition countries. They are much
more like something from the Spanish Civil
War. They are dying for a cause.
His analysis then examined the attacks of

last July. The important point is that none of
those individuals had any direct experience
whatsoever of oppression, they had no cousins
in Israeli jails; they’re not involved in the
intifada. They are dying for an idea, for an
ideal of an Islam, not in the mainstream, but
at the very edge of that faith.
Diego Gambetta says that we have not seen

that for a century. The last time we saw people
dying purely for an idea were the anarchists
and nihilists at the end of the 19th Century
and the beginning of 20th Century. I would
like to read to you the words of Mohammad
Siddique Khan who was the principal bomber
on July the seventh. The words are taken
from the video that he released through Al
Jazeera. One of the most shocking parts for
the British people was his British accent. It
was not a Middle Eastern accent. It was a
broad Yorkshire accent, which is, I suppose, as
familiar as a Texan or Brooklyn accent to you.
“I and thousands like me have forsaken

everything for what we believe. Our driving
motivation does not come from tangible
commodities that this world has to offer.
Your democratically elected governments
continually perpetrate atrocities against my
people all over the world and your support
of them makes you directly responsible.
Until we feel security, you will be our targets
17
and until you stop the bombing, gassing,
imprisonment and torture of my people we
will not stop this fight. We are at war. I am
a soldier. Now you will taste the reality of
this situation”.
So what does this mean? If we’re fighting

an idea, what are the challenges for law
enforcement and what are the challenges for
an open society?
What should we do about terrorism that

is new and what do we do that’s traditional?
In terms of a new approach, there are three
tasks in relation to law enforcement. They are
to prevent it, to investigate it and to manage
the consequences if it happens.
I talked to Ray Kelly today and said that

there were three things we learned from those
events in July. The first is the significance of
preparation and of practice. We had prepared,
we did know what we were going to do. I
went before the television cameras an hour
and a half after the bombs went off and I said
to the media and to the people of London that
a long-prepared and well-rehearsed plan was
swinging into action. I felt very confident
about that. Knowing that we had specifically
planned for that eventuality was a strong
foundation.
Secondly, getting information out to people

was incredibly difficult. We have a unit called
the Casualty Bureau. It can be quickly set up
to deal with extraordinary events. A contact
telephone number is put onto TV screens that
people can telephone to find out about loved
ones. We had a problem because we got 42,000
calls in the first hour and there is no system in
the world that can deal with that volume of
calls from people desperate to get information.
The system failed. That left us in difficulty.
The third was that this was the biggest

story in the world and we were dealing with
a 24-hour news media. Being sure of what
18
we actually knew, being sure of facts — as
opposed to coming to believe what the media
were telling — us was a huge challenge.
In terms of investigation, I think most of it,

except in terms of scale, is pretty similar to
everything else that we do. However, the
main transatlantic challenge and difference
between us is CCTV. After the 21st of July, we
were able to put the photographs of the four
alleged bombers onto the screens of the world
and particularly onto the screens of Britain,
because we had television cameras in the
underground trains and in the buses. Without
that, we would have struggled. Some very
brave people came forward and said that the
alleged bomber was one of their own family.
Others came forward to say they knew where
they lived, and that led us to the bomb factory.
Without CCTV how much more difficult might
it have been to find those suspects?
When we look at prevention, the chal-

lenges become even more interesting. The first
issue is the timing of arrests and here I want to
go back to our experience with the IRA. I will
not portray the IRA as anything other than
what they were. They were killers, but they
had no agenda of total destruction, they cer-
tainly didn’t want to die carrying out attacks
and they had been heavily penetrated by intel-
ligence agencies. None of those things apply
to the new bombers. They do wish to cause
maximum atrocity and they are willing to
die. We haven’t penetrated them very much
and that means when we find that there are
conspiracies emerging, we have to move in
very quickly. We cannot take the risk of failing
to intervene with the result that they carry out
an atrocity. The inevitable consequence is that
we scoop up a whole group of people and a
raft of evidence.
In a recent inquiry, we had 860 separate

identities within a group of about 10 people.
We had 2500 separate SIM cards and encrypt-
19
ed computers, we had enquiries in foreign
countries. We had one computer hard drive
which had the equivalent of 66,000 feet of
paper had it been printed out. The key issue
is how long can you hold people while you
work your way through the raw informa-
tion — much of which is usually in a foreign
language, often a dialect? This is not yet evi-
dence. What you have is just a mass of data
and highly suspicious activity. We are unable
to charge them with a conspiracy to murder
when we are still trying to translate an
obscure dialect of Farsi on an encrypted
computer.
A forceful debate around how long the

police can hold people before charging them
in a court of law has been running in the UK.
Seven days, 14 days or as it now is, 28 days?
In my conversations with US law enforce-
ment, I am not sure that issue has quite been
grasped.
There are also challenges around legal

change. We have produced new laws on receiv-
ing or giving training in terrorism, which was
not an offense in Britain before. There is a
very interesting issue about the glorification
of terrorism. Is it right to allow people to say
terrorist activity is a glorious thing? Who
decides who is a terrorist and who a freedom
fighter? This has been a matter of significant
debate in Britain.
How should the police react to suicide

bombers? As you’re aware, on the 22nd of
July, the Metropolitan Police shot and killed
a young Brazilian man called Jean Charles
de Menezes who was entirely innocent. In
due course, that death will have to be the
subject of full public account. However, the
issue of suicide bombers remains. How do
we deal with deadly and determined attack-
ers? This is a crucial difference in this sce-
nario to all of the police shootings with
which I have dealt with over the years. In all
20
other cases, the armed officer makes a split
second decision based on the information
they have themselves.
In a suicide bombing scenario, the position

is maybe that the armed officer at the scene
does not have the information. The people
Sir Ian Blair and Howard P. Milstein
who have the information are at the NYPD or

the LAPD or the Scotland Yard headquarters
and they give an order to that individual offi-
cer to shoot somebody. That is a very differ-
ent scenario and one that a democracy finds
extraordinarily difficult to deal with even
though there is no other viable option.
There are only three choices if you have to

counter a suicide bomber. There is a very
small chance that you can isolate that indi-
vidual and you’ve seen perhaps a picture of
a 13-year-old being asked by the Israelis to
take all his clothes off with the bomb under-
neath, but they’ve got to be 100 yards away
from anybody else. The only other two options
are: a plain clothes officer getting close and
shooting them without warning or a sniper
from a distance.
All of these are highly contentious issues

in a democracy. They are matters which
represent a series of direct challenges to law
enforcement which stem from terrorism.
21
London is a city in which one in nine people
is a Muslim. They do not form one community
but many communities from all over the world.
There are differences within their faith. There
are challenges around the global issues of Iraq
and Iran, of Palestine, of Chechnya.
Our Muslim communities believe they

are much safer than the rest of our citizens.
They think policing is very good on safety-
related issues but a recent survey has
shown that 70% of them believe that life for
Muslims in London has got worse since 9/11.
53% of them believe that the cause is the
War on Terror and 28% believe it’s about
Islamaphobia. There is stronger concern about
and among young people. A survey of the
members of the Federation of the Student
Islamic Societies revealed that 28% of them
would not tell the police if a friend of theirs
was planning a terrorist atrocity, 4% would
not wish to condemn the 7th of July atrocities.
As a police officer and Commissioner, I

do not comment on foreign policy but I have
to take account of the fact that those issues
exist and they have an effect on the way we
can police. One of my colleagues, Sir David
Omand, who was the Cabinet security chief,
said in a recent speech: “Heavy-handed secu-
rity measures impact on the innocent and
the ill-intentioned alike and well-intentioned
steps taken for public protection can quickly
come to appear to be targeted on whole
communities and thus themselves become
radicalizing factors amongst those from
whom terrorism hopes to recruit.”
In other words, terrorism wants us to take

those kinds of measures and we are operating
in a situation in which too many Muslim
citizens in London feel that, despite being
law abiding, the new legislation, the new
powers, the new resources are targeted at
them and, therefore, we’ve got to refine our
approaches to these communities.
22
There are two new approaches that I
would like to outline this evening. The first is
the need to be very brave about how we
approach Muslim communities. We have
described it in London as a traffic light system.
Green, Red and Amber. Red is the fact that we
will, like every other agency in the free world,
act on intelligence and attempt to put agents
in place into suspected Al-Qaeda organizations.
Green is talking to the leaders of Muslim

communities, the people who run the
mosques, the elders that we have always tried
to engage in debate.
The key issue is amber, which is who are

you prepared to sit down with and to talk to?
The people who are influential with young
people are not necessarily the familiar
Muslim leaders. There are much more radical,
much more difficult but yet much more
influential leaders. An example is a man
called Al-Qaradawi, who has condemned the
7th July bombings but has views on the
Palestinian Intifada that probably would not
be very acceptable either here or in the UK.
He has views about the role of women in
Islamic society, which are not very acceptable
either. But, he can command an audience of
50,000 young people at the drop of a hat.
Are you going to talk to him or not? And

our view is, “Yes we are going to talk to him
however difficult that becomes.” I think that
some of the processes here in the US limit that.
There was a man called Zaki Badawi, now
dead, who received an honorary knighthood
from the Queen, whom Homeland Security
managed to turn round at an airport in the last
year or two because he was too dangerous to
enter the United States. If he was too danger-
ous, then you will be missing almost all of
the amber.
The second point is that terror is crime and

is like any other crime and that Muslim com-
23
munities are like any other community. The
only way that we are going to defeat terror
is not just through intelligence agents or
police but through communities themselves
feeling we can be trusted with information.
So, in London we are rolling out the largest
Community Policing program in our history.
London is divided into 32 boroughs, each of
those boroughs are divided up into wards.
We are putting a team of six people into each
of those 630 wards across the city. We are
entirely freeing them from any central targets
and bureaucracy, and getting them to be close
to their community, finding out what their
community wants and simply being there for
their community. The evaluation of the first
280 of those wards is astonishing.
We are seeing drops in crime rates and

rises in public confidence that we haven’t
seen before. It will be these people who are
the eyes and ears of the police service as it
tries to combat terrorism because the terrorists
have to live somewhere, they have to buy their
equipment, they have to buy their tele-
phones, they have to park their cars, they
have to sleep somewhere. People are at some
level aware of who is being radicalized – if
we take one of the 7th July bombers, a young
man called Tanweer he was a minor drug
dealer and while this won’t mean much to you
Americans, he was a cricket fanatic. He goes
on a trip to Pakistan and is reported to have
become intensely religious. Somebody must
have thought that had implications.
How do you enable that community to tell

you what’s happening? Trust is the answer
and there is an analogy for me with a differ-
ent community. In London there was great
difficulty 15 years ago with the first emer-
gence of Jamaican Yardies, as we knew them.
We did not know how to deal with that type
of criminality, black-on-black shootings. I
remember talking to one of the detectives
dealing with it who said that they weren’t
24
getting close to solving one in 20 of those
crimes. We now have a 60% clear-up rate
among those crimes because we are working
alongside and within the African-Caribbean
community to combat it.
That’s got to be the clue to how we deal

with terror in the Muslim community because
what has occurred and what is undoubtedly
being planned is a perversion of Islam. The
Muslim community want to resist it in every
way that they know how. We in law enforce-
ment have to help them to do so.
My conclusion is this: Terrorism is a glob-

al phenomenon, it is likely to endure. We are
going to have to design new law enforcement
processes, draft new laws and find new
resources. We are also going to have to combat
it, to the extent that law enforcement can com-
bat it, through the traditional methodologies
of detection and community work.
The man who founded the Metropolitan

Police and who, effectively, is the father of
policing across the world, was Sir Robert Peel,
Prime Minister and Home Secretary. One of
his most profound but probably enigmatic
observations was that, in the end, the police
are the public and the public are the police.
That, of course, refers not only to indigenous
communities but to Muslim communities as
well. That would be the thought that I would
like leave with you. Thank you very much. ■
25
Questions & Answers
Sir Ian Blair
RICHARD ABORN: Thank you very much,
that was terrific. Sir Ian has said he’d be
happy to take some questions. I would invite
questions from our Crime Commission guests
first. And then we’ll take questions from the
press.
Q. I read somewhere that your government

is beginning to budget for the training of
Islamic clerics, so that you don’t rely solely on
the Wahhabi training clerics from Saudi
Arabia and others from the Middle East.
A. This is an emerging picture.

Is that a fact?
It’s a long
negotiation I think here. In the same way as —
how would the Jewish community react to
the federal government deciding who could
be a rabbi.
We’ve got to, I think, tread gently here.

But there is certainly a mood— to ensure that
the imams speak English, have an idea about
British citizenship and so on. I think we have
not reached the level you described yet but
that is the direction to travel.
Certainly we are concerned and have been

concerned for some time about radicaliza-
tion in prison. Richard Reid the shoe bomber
is the classic example of a young white man
who was broadly just an ordinary every day
robber who then becomes an Islamic convert.
And as we all know in every religion, it is
converts who can be the most extreme. So
certainly that is a dire element.
Q. Is recruitment for the police service in the

Muslim community part of your strategy; and
if so, is it working?
26
A. It is working and it is very much part of
our strategy. The Friday eight days after the
7th of July when I went to a mosque in
London, which is particularly connected to
Pakistan, because that’s where the bombers
had some origins.
I talked about give me your mothers and

your fathers, your sisters, your brothers, your
sons and your daughters. Because when I go
to Pakistan, the police are Pakistani. And
when I go to Israel, the police are Jewish. So
where are they?
I think it is a huge challenge for us. We’ve

got about 300— police officers— who are
Muslim but if we look at London’s popula-
tion, that ought to be 3,000 of my officers,
from that population. It’s always going to be
slow I think. Many people in these communi-
ties are the second generation but I think it’s
the third generation point that we need to
reach to make a difference.
But that’s what we need. And one of the

great advantages we have at the moment is
that— over 50 percent of the people wanting
to join the Met are from minority communi-
ties. So it’s a great start but a lot of those are
not necessarily Muslims.
Q. The placement of cameras in the under-

ground is very successful. What branch of
government in the UK in London led that? And
A. Well there are two answers to that.

who really made that happen?
The
actual technical answer is that there’s a branch
called Transport for London. But it’s been
coming for a long time. It is true to say that
the UK is probably the most covered by cam-
eras of any nation in the world and there are
voices that say this is too much.
27
On the other hand, as I said, the events of
July made it absolutely manifest that if you
can actually see the bomber on the film with
the rucksack, you’ve got a fantastic advan-
tage. Some of it I have to say is also slightly
difficult because not every organization or
company keep their video cameras up to spec
and it is possible to recover lots of video that
actually appears to be a snowstorm rather
than anything else.
But it is certainly part of our environment

and we’re very pleased with it from a law
enforcement perspective.
Q. At least to this uninformed observer,

it seems that the terrorism is more centrally
directed than the picture that you paint; espe-
cially the part about somebody, in effect,
insuring these guys so that their families
get money, after they blow themselves up. It’s
just a comment. But I’d appreciate your
A. I do think we have to recognize that it’s

thoughts.
going to be different in different parts of

the world. I mean, certainly, some of the
Palestinian experience is exactly what you are
describing. In the UK, I think what we’ve
seen over the two events appears to be much
looser.
There’s a difference between an intuition

and evidence. We don’t have the evidence
that connects either of those two events
directly to AQ but all the intuition is it’s
inspired by and connected to. I think we
have to move away from what I describe as
sort of a Graham Green, novelist view that
there’s some kind of cell-like structure. That
is not how they operate, it seems to be about
inspiration facilitation but certainly it is net-
worked across the world.
28
Q. You mentioned the positive reception
that community policing has received in the
wards. I was wondering if that spilled over
into the youth who, as you acknowledged
before, were not willing to report on terrorists;
who were not very receptive. Has that affected
A. Well I think it’s too early to tell really but

them as well?
one thing I really want to make clear is this:

people are not doing community policing
which, is in some way separate from every-
thing else.
What they’re doing is just being with that

community to help them and there are two
stories on that. After 7th of July we pulled
all of these people into the center of town.
One of my senior officers in one of the areas
of very heavy minority population, reported
the comment from a mosque leader that said,
“We want our cops back. But actually we
don’t want any cops. We want ours back.”
That’s a really important message.
The second part of it is that if we don’t

reach out to those young people, if we’re not
there for them, then we’re not winning their
hearts and minds in the next few years.
It’s a long term strategy. It just doesn’t

seem to me to be possible that we separate
counter terrorism from everything else.
Q. In terms of the shift, in the U.S., the pos-

sible shift from an external threat to an inter-
nal threat that you suggested might be coming;
what are the sorts of warning signs that people
should look for?
In terms of your cooperation and talks and

what you’ve seen happening in the US: Are
there any of these clues beginning to emerge
here in New York that might ring some alarm
bells given your experience in the UK?
29
A. I don’t think I know enough about that.
I don’t think I would know how to advise
what’s happening in New York because I don’t
understand the community in the same sense.
What I would say is that the two countries

have got a lot of similarities in some ways.
The border controls here are much fiercer
than they are in the UK but the fact is this is a
global phenomenon and what’s happening to
both countries is likely to merge.
So I have no view about any warning signs

that are happening here. I have no idea if they
are. But the fact that these two bombings took
place in the United Kingdom without warn-
ing and from within, is part of the threat that
we face. And a part of the threat that we face
in terms of community cohesion. Because, as
I said before, the 99.99 percent recurring
Muslim community view is they want peace
and stability. And the one thing that we must
not allow to happen is those god-fearing and
law abiding citizens of a Muslim background
feeling that they are being targeted. These are
the issues that we’ve got to deal with.
Q. If I could follow up just a little bit on that

theme. You talked, laid out some percentage—
about 70 percent— feeling the life is worse
because of the war on terror. You talk about
this within versus without type of scenario.
I was just wondering, is there something

different that’s going on, perhaps in the
American community, versus what’s going on
in Europe? We’ve seen the riots in France.
We’ve seen some of the problems in London
and elsewhere in Britain. Is there something
different here that perhaps the Muslim com-
munity is better assimilated? Or do you think
the problems are parallel?
30
A. I think the answer to that is you probably
know that answer better than I do, okay? All
I can point to is the sense of unease in parts of
that community in the UK.
Perhaps it’s worth saying that the war in

Iraq has been, you know, a defining political
issue in the UK. There are very, very polar-
ized views around that, and that of course
will play into this issue.
But as somebody who was here as a

young man during the Vietnam war, one of
the things I am absolutely positive about is
that nobody else criticizes another country
inside that country, whatever’s happening.
Q. Well perhaps just a more sort of factual

approach to that. Do you see any evidence
of the people that you’re watching in terms
of the internal threat in the UK reaching out
A. I think I’d rephrase it.

to communities here inside the US?
If we look at our
experience in the UK it is clear that there are
links between ourselves,the US, Canada and
many other countries around the world.
RICHARD ABORN: At the beginning of

tonight’s program, I talked about three core
values and said that the second value is cre-
ativity. Sir Ian, you have certainly demon-
strated, by this talk, your creative thoughts
about how to approach this problem. We
greatly appreciate you sharing your thoughts
with us tonight.
SIR IAN BLAIR: Thank you very much. ■
31
217 Broadway
212-608-4700
THE INCREASE IN
UNGOVERNED
SPACE
Remarks by Sir Jeremy Greenstock

November 13, 2006

THE MILSTEIN
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
POLICY FORUM

York Ci t y h a s pre se n t e d
HOWARD P. MILSTEIN

ment leaders.


Introduction by
T
Richard Aborn
hank you all for coming. We really
appreciate it. You’re always stead-
fast supporters of this organization,
and that means a lot to us. I get to do
again today what I get to do so very fre-
quently, and it’s an ongoing testament to
their civic involvement, and that is to
thank Tom Moran and Mutual America.
They have hosted forums in this space,
breakfasts, lunches and dinners, for a long
time now. And I can tell you, as we were
getting started today, and I thanked Ed
Kenney who’s here on behalf of Tom for
once again hosting us, he said, “Any
time.” And that’s just wonderful. So I
really appreciate that, and we thank you
greatly for that.
I thought what I would do, which is a

bit of a deviation from what we normally
do is just maybe set the stage a bit for the
talk today, which I think is actually a very
important talk in this trans-Atlantic forum
that we’ve been having on terrorism
issues. You will all remember that we’ve
had three men come in and talk about ter-
rorism within their own context. The first
was our own commissioner, Commissioner
Kelly, who described, as you may recall,
what the NYPD was doing. And how the
commissioner was increasingly concerned
about terrorist acts that would be launched
from here, and how he found it necessary to
start sending NYPD officers abroad. And
we’re all very familiar with that discussion.
I won’t say it’s the first time the NYPD

did it, because it’s not. But it’s certainly the
first time in recent memory, and it is
1
absolutely the most sustained program that
the NYPD has done. He was followed by
Sir Ian Blair the Commissioner of Scotland
Yard who made two very broad points.
The first point was that communities

have got to be engaged with this issue. In
other words, community policing. How
ironic it is that Bin Laden may have done
more to revive community policing than
almost anything, how ironic, but how nec-
essary. He also made another point which
was that the U.K., for the first time, was
beginning to feel the threat of homegrown
terrorism, much more so then terrorism
being delivered, or organized rather, from
the Middle East. And he said that separat-
ed the U.K. from the United States.
I don’t like to disagree with Ian, but I

must say I respectfully disagree. And unfor-
tunately much more importantly, our third
speaker, Director Mueller of the FBI, came
in and said during that speech, that now the
FBI was more concerned, or equally as con-
cerned about homegrown terrorism, as they
were about terrorism coming in from for-
eign shores. This collective issue, the issue
of homegrown terrorism, raises numerous
concerns and numerous questions.
If homegrown terrorism is one of the

major threats that this nation and the
United Kingdom face, are the interventions
limited to law enforcement? And as we
think about law enforcement, for the first
time – at least the first time that I can think
of – how does the foreign policies of these
two respective nations affect what happens
domestically on the crime front. It’s a very
important issue and one which we’re going
to have to be very careful to examine.
Because we will feel the direct impact of
what happens here in this country.
2
And fortunately, or unfortunately,
depending on your perspective, the rhetoric
around this is becoming very sharp, very
sharp indeed. The term “Islamo-Fascism”
is gaining currency in the United States, I
don’t know about in the U.K., but certainly
in the United States. Is it a good term, or
is it a term that alienates some of the very
people that we are trying to work with?
Also, in the same rhetorical question,

what are we doing (as I’ve talked about
before) to support moderate Muslims?
What are we doing to engage in this joint
responsibility that we have, to resist
those Muslims that would radicalize
Islam? Are we doing what we can to sup-
port the moderate Muslim community?
Again, equally important questions.
And these are occurring at a time when

the ground is really shifting. We’re seeing
enormous changes taking place. In the last
ten days alone, just think about what’s
happened. In London, the head of MI-5
stood up, and in a speech that certainly in
the four years that I’ve been working with
the London police services, I’ve never
heard, she stood up and said that the U.K.
was facing as much as 30– investigating as
much as 30 homegrown terrorist plots.
That’s an astonishing number, and that’s
what she’s publicly saying. This was a
public statement by the head of MI-5, who
rarely to my knowledge speaks out.
We’re hearing this noise out of Palestine

from Hamas. Nobody’s really quite sure
what they’re saying during these past 72
hours, but there’s something moving there.
When the Prime Minister offers to resign,
what does that mean? What does it mean
when the Palestinians start talking about a
unity government? Still not subscribing to
3
the three conditions laid down, but there
is some movement there. Now the Arab
League is starting to make some move-
ment there, what is that all about?
The Iraqi government is talking about

a shift in its cabinet. This is all in the last
ten days. A shift in the cabinet, realigning
the cabinet post, trying to bring in a greater
political cohesiveness. In the U.K. there will
be a change in the Prime Ministership at
least — I think by no later then next sum-
mer, perhaps a bit earlier. What will that
mean in terms of labor policy, and what
will it mean in terms of greater policies
coming out of the U.K.?
And certainly the thunder clap heard in

the United States last week, heard around
the world when there was a shift in the
political spectrum in this country. These are
all important things that are taking place
that as much as they will impact what hap-
pens abroad, will certainly happen here.
These will have profound implications.
So those are the kinds of things that

we’re going talk about today. And I’m
actually delighted that Sir Jeremy has been
able to join us. In order to introduce Sir
Jeremy, I’m going to introduce Howard
Milstein, which is an absolute pleasure for
me to do.
Howard is part of the Milstein Brothers

Foundation. Howard and his brother
Edward, the other half of this dynamic
duo, has brought vision and resources and
genuine commitment to the pressing
issues of our time. Not just on crime
issues, but they’ve been very concerned
about crime issues for a long time, and
homeland security is a particular focus of
theirs right now.
4
It is no secret that we have to fight ter-
rorism and maintain order. It is the first
and foremost responsibility of many of the
people in this room. But perhaps equally
and more importantly, it is the responsibili-
ty of all citizens. And Howard has taken a
lead in trying to promote that very notion.
Howard believes that the private sector, the
business community and the citizenry at
large, must lend a firm hand to assist law
enforcement and sure up the nation
against this potential threat.
He believes that systems and structures

need to be created that encourage people
to take part in safeguarding their commu-
nities and to share the responsibility for
promoting local, state and national security.
Howard has a quote, which Howard I hope
you don’t mind, I’m going to steal from
you because I think it’s a wonderful line.
He says, “We are a nation of optimists and
doers. We always have been and we
always will be. But now is not the time for
fear or complacency, now is the time for
action. Now is the time for us to get on
with things.”
Howard doesn’t just talk. He has put

part of his money there. Over the past ten
years – and I must say over the past ten
years, in other words before 9/11 and
before the July bombings in London, he’s
put over $4 million into law enforcement
efforts and into crime prevention. Let me
just give you three of the bullets of things
he’s done. For many years, again before
9/11, he was helping the NYPD to
upgrade their computer and surveillance
systems. He was raising money for sub-
way security. Providing pro bono expert
advice of an IT company to assist the
NYPD in upgrading its MIS systems. And
he has also provided substantial funding
5
for NYPD officials to attend conferences
all over the U.S., and I think abroad, to
attend conferences on technology and
increasing the efficiency of local policing.
Cities, I believe, thrive because they

have the deep commitment of the civic
community. And I think Howard, in many
ways, personifies, and he has for many
years, that commitment. I’ve known
Howard for 15 years, I consider him a dear
friend. And I’m very happy to invite you to
the podium to introduce Sir Jeremy.
6
Introduction by
T
Howard P. Milstein
hanks, Richard. Has it been 15 years
already? I’m proud to say that we’ve
done some good things together
over those years. My brother Edward and
I are pleased to continue our support of the
Citizen’s Crime Commission, under your
leadership, Richard. As with all that you
do, you put your own special stamp on
this work.
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.

In recent months we’ve expanded the
scope of this lecture series to include a
global dimension. As conventional street
crime and other threats of the past have
receded, terrorism has quickly risen to the
top of the law enforcement agenda. As we
know all too well, terror threats aren’t con-
fined by national borders, they are bred by
a myriad of interlocking organizations that
now span the globe. So this is the right
time to change our focus here as well.
New Yorkers, those of us in business

and those of us involved in crime fighting,
need to begin to think globally about ter-
rorism, its roots, the ways in which it
spreads and how it impacts so many coun-
tries around the world. At our last forum
Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police, shared many impor-
tant insights about these questions with us.
Now as we continue to be bound together
by the events of 9/11 and 7/7, we again
look toward our allies in the struggle for
additional answers.
Today’s speaker, Sir Jeremy Greenstock,

is well positioned to offer them. After
studying at Harrow and Oxford University,
7
Sir Jeremy spent most of his eminent
career working for the British Diplomatic
Service. Among his many foreign service
posts, he served for five years as Britain’s
permanent representative to the U.N. here
in New York. He later worked for the
Foreign Service in Washington D.C.
From these two important posts Sir

Jeremy came away with a profound
insight into the special relationship that
exists between the U.S. and the U.K. Sir
Jeremy also gained a great deal of experi-
ence in Middle Eastern affairs during his
years in the foreign service. He studied
Arabic at the Middle East Center for
Arab Studies in Lebanon, and spent several
years posted in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
Following his work at the U.N., he was
named the U.K. Special Envoy for Iraq
where he served until 2004.
In Iraq Sir Jeremy got a first hand look

at the hurdles faced by both us and Great
Britain, as they seek to transform a war
torn, authoritarian regime into, we hope,
a stable democracy. It remains a daunting
challenge. Today Sir Jeremy is Director
of the Ditchley Foundation, the renowned
international affairs institution founded in
the 1950’s to promote serious discourse
between Great Britain and America on
issues of important mutual interest. Since
then, the foundation’s focus has been
broadened to include the participation of
many countries around the world. Please
join me in extending a warm welcome to
Sir Jeremy Greenstock.
8
Remarks by
T
Sir Jeremy Greenstock
hank you for being one of my least
diplomatic audiences this year, to talk
to. I want to go into what I would call
the big picture that surrounds your busi-
ness, as the practitioners in, and the sup-
porters of the Citizen’s Crime Commission
of New York. And from what I’ve heard
from Richard and from Howard, I under-
stand that what you do, what you are trying
to do, the reaching out that you achieve is
an exact parallel with what I’m trying to do
with the Ditchley Foundation. Which is to
talk about those things that are not well dis-
cussed, debated or analyzed publicly. And
which need civil society, people beyond
government, to understand if the problems
of the world are to be solved.
I’m going to talk to you about what I call

the increase in ungoverned space. And let
me explain that quote. In an article earlier
this year, Ambassador James Dobbins of
Rand wrote about the U.S./E.U. relation-
ship and the limits on unilateralism in a
changing world. And he briefly described
that change. He said, “Across the globe, the
continued fragmentation of nation states,
the increase in ungoverned space, and the
unwanted immigration, disease, crime and
terrorism that these conditions breed con-
tinue to compel attention.”
Perhaps we all feel nervous that the

identifiable foundations of stability and
cohesion in our societies appear to be erod-
ing. That is one of the effects of the vast
and rapid changes that Richard was just
talking about. I want to talk briefly about a
number of factors in this trend, relate them
to our defenses against organized crime
9
and terrorism and not so much draw some
conclusions, as point to some work that
now needs to be done so that we under-
stand the reactions to these trends that we
need to take up. And then I hope that we
will have a discussion.
Let me quickly, and perhaps a little bit

crudely– give you my view of what’s hap-
pening in the world in terms of geopolitics
and the big trends. And I start with one very
important tension. Globalization, which we
talk about endlessly, covers a number of
things but it doesn’t cover everything.
We’re seeing globalized exchange, in terms
of commerce and economic activity, and
information and technology and travel and
communication and individual connectivi-
ty. And that is immensely important.
But what we are not seeing is the glob-

alization of political structures or of cul-
tures. What we are seeing in politics and
culture is polarization, partly as a product
of globalization. We are not globalizing in
everything, we are dividing in some
things. Part of this is due to the spread of
freedom. Let me just explain the paradox
that comes from the spread of freedom and
democracy that has been promoted above
all, and Western Europe is particularly in
the debt of the United States for this, comes
from the American people and the values
that they stand for.
But in spreading freedom, you are to

some extent, diluting traditional power,
bringing more people into freedom of
choice. Allowing a wider spread of people
to express themselves in ways that may
include disagreement with, or even hatred
of the United States. You have opened up
that possibility through your spread of
freedom. But at the moment you are
10
expecting too much in terms of gratitude
for that, from the peoples who have bene-
fited from it. It is not necessarily going to
happen that way.
In fact, with freedom, if you feel stability

and security and prosperity around your
own space as an individual, as a family
man, as a corporate man, as a professional,
as a citizen, you also narrow your horizons.
If you don’t need big government to keep
away big enemies, your identity narrows
its horizons to the people you really identi-
fy with, the people you live with, you meet
for lunch with, you work with, occasional-
ly but not that often, the people you vote
for, your identity narrows. That is part of
the polarization I’m talking about.
And with this spread of opportunity

and freedom of choice that comes with
globalization and the values your country
is transmitting, come new sources of
power. If power is spreading out, there are
new people grabbing hold of it, in econom-
ic terms, in communication terms, in hard
power terms in the building of armies and
new weaponries. And some of that power
is expressed in symmetrical forms that we
find it quite easy to deal with, because we
have the structures for that. But some of
that power is being expressed in asymmet-
rical forms, which we do not readily under-
stand and which we do not easily relate to
or react to.
Another absolutely familiar theme to

you, but let me just– before I get into the
rest of what I’ve got to say– mention one
important aspect of asymmetrical power
that comes from small groups or criminals
or fanatics or terrorists. That power does
not choose to fight on your battleground.
We, the West, NATO, the U.S. /U.K. Alliance,
11
are brilliant at fighting on the big battle-
field, with big platforms, with technology,
with highly trained soldiers, police, agents
of other kinds. We are very good at it. They
are not going to choose to meet us head-on
on our battlegrounds. They are going to go
somewhere else, and I’ll come back to that
as I get through my remarks.
There’s something else about globaliza-

tion and the spread of our values and our
freedoms, and that is that government is
getting harder. The monopoly that the state
has, in history, normally had in human
affairs, monopoly over the use of force and
the carrying of arms (although of course, I
recognize that that is not necessarily the
case in the United States) the monopoly
over information, or certainly official infor-
mation, the monopoly of leadership in the
community is leaking away from govern-
ment, leaking away from what we normally
regard as the head of the state institutions.
With that the relationship between governed
and their government is changing.
The spread of individual freedom and

choice and individual capacity to act, and
the availability of knowledge and of infor-
mation makes people think that they can
look after themselves without paying so
much attention to government. And for
those who are less enamored of what is
going on, the capacity to express anger and
to show resentment is that much greater in
modern society. Small non-state groups
have access to those things for which state
had a monopoly, particularly to lethal
weaponry, but also to instruments of propa-
ganda, communication and information.
And the response to that, frankly, has

been quite slow. Government is not adapt-
ing, constitutions are not adapting, meth-
12
ods of seeking political power or of putting
together political parties are not changing.
And it’s my view that politicians and elec-
torates and democracies are drifting apart.
Politicians and peoples in non-democra-
cies are beginning to drift apart and think
differently. Leadership and followership
are changing and politicians are not neces-
sarily realizing how much they’re changing.
I’ll just give you one example in a non-

democracy, and I’ll come back to one or
two facets of the Middle East, but we can
discuss this later. The rise of Hezbollah in
Lebanon and indeed elsewhere, and the
enormous popularity of Sheik Nasrallah
the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon is indi-
cating that the fed-upness of peoples with
their governments, their ineffective, self-
serving, unchanging governments in the
Middle East is leading ordinary people to
look for other sorts of champions. And if a
private sector champion, like Hezbollah,
comes into the scene and has money to
spend, and seems to represent values better
then their government does, then you’ve got
an alternative pole of government, which is
very difficult to bring into government, as
the discussions in Lebanon over the past
week have shown.
This is a very important new phenome-

non and the Hezbollah example will not be
the last one that you witness. So that you
can see with these remarks about govern-
ment, I’m beginning to describe ungoverned
space, space that governments can’t reach
to. People think they need government less.
Now most people, those who respect the
law, take the advantages and the opportuni-
ties from globalization, from freedom, from
increased prosperity, and they feel more
empowered, and they feel reasonably
secure for a while. But those who don’t
13
respect the law have found that they’ve got
an advantage. They’ve got a greater choice
of channels to use to pursue their own
objectives. They have a wider range and a
more powerful range of instruments. They
have more hiding places then they might
have done in previous society.
And the lawmakers and law enforcers

who are reacting to that can also, of course
adapt their powers and their methods, but
they do so later, because they do it as a
reaction and they do so slower. The people
who tend to get at the open spaces when
there is change, are those with the most
intense motivation to profit from those
open spaces. They tend to be criminals and
fanatics, before the law abiding people and
the law abiding structures get there. So just
in time of reaction to change, the criminals
and fanatics get there quicker, move faster,
innovate and are more effective in execut-
ing what they’re trying to do.
Before I give you some examples of that,

let me just say a quick word about the reac-
tion to the U.K. government in particular, to
the trends that I’m talking about. A very
popular government that came in in 1997,
that won two subsequent elections by large
majorities, a very compelling central figure
in Tony Blair, but they’ve come up against
the resistance of the British people to their
giving the priority to exactly the things that
I’m talking about. There’s been a very big
debate, as I’m sure there has in the United
States, about the balance between freedom
and security.
But what happened in the U.K. was that

the government, a very centrist, soft left
government, wanted to react very firmly.
They have legislated massively in this area
and in the area of business and corporate
14
responsibility, when the criminals have also
been quite active over the past decade.
More legislation, in terms of the pages of
it, have been enacted in Britain in the last
ten years, then in all the statutes from
Parliament in history up to 1997. That is the
amount of legislation that has come out of
the British system as a reaction to national
and international change.
We’ve also become, as you may have

heard, the number one surveillance society
in the world. We cannot move for more then
four minutes, outside our houses in the
U.K. without being on camera somewhere.
Big Brother has really hit us. And most peo-
ple think, “Well that’s quite a good thing,
because we don’t mind being filmed, the
criminal does. We’ll catch the criminal.”
And to some extent that has happened. But
we have become a surveillance society, and
it’s beginning, just beginning to be resented.
Government then complains that the peo-

ple don’t seem to understand that the firm-
ness of reaction that we’re putting in place,
and the need to survey that we are putting
in place is absolutely essential for the indi-
vidual’s interest. No, that’s not what people
are thinking. They do not want their socie-
ty changed so much that the risk of vio-
lence is brought down to zero. They do not
want to change as they see their interests
spread, at this moment.
And as a result the government loses

popularity, loses legitimacy to some extent.
And they end up less able to control the
space then they were at the beginning. It’s
a very strange phenomenon when all the
way through government has been hon-
orably acting in the citizen’s interest. The
examples of what I’m talking about are
absolutely clear in your minds in the pro-
15
fessions that you represent in this gather-
ing. They are of course, in the increasing
crime figures, across the range of crime
that crosses borders, drugs, money laun-
dering, other sorts of trafficking, small
arms trade, explosives, embezzlement and
fraud, proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. The figures in all of those are
going up, although the capacity to control
these areas should also have been going up
in this period.
Juvenile crime, on which Richard has

written recently, is also rising alarmingly.
As young people who are disaffected from
their society, who don’t feel that they have
the same interests as the older generation,
look for the opportunities to suit their own
interests in their own way. And some of that
is criminal. In new territories that break up
the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, we have
clearly seen the criminals and the exploiters
get there before the law enforcers, and the
law abiding people. Absolutely clear exam-
ple in those two places.
It is also of course happening in Iraq

and in Afghanistan. And I’m not going to
go into Iraq. I’m absolutely delighted, for
once, not to be talking about Iraq. But if
there are questions later, let’s get into that.
Iraq is going to go further downhill
before– if ever– it repairs itself.
And of course talking about hiding

places, an increasing number of states are
unable to govern themselves. Where the
government is too weak for the size of
territory, or the number of tribes, literally
or metaphorically, that there are in that
nation. Then the opportunity for hiding
there, for developing new groups there, in
Somalia or in the Great Lakes region, or in
Sierra Leon or in Sudan, as far as Africa
16
is concerned, in Indonesia, in Philippines,
elsewhere, you know the countries where
this has been happening, in Latin America
to some extent.
The environment for globalization and

for these changes is global. But the individ-
ual pieces of trouble that come to hit our
interests and our societies are coming out
of some local area in these places that I’m
talking about. And the Middle East, of
course, is one of them or concepts and reli-
gious extremism that’s flowed from the
Middle East, or has to do with politics in
the Middle East– must be included in this
conversation. But the source of each of
your particular problems, whether it’s
Al Qaeda, whether it’s Colombia drugs,
whether it’s poppy growing in Afghanistan,
or whether it’s criminal gangs in the cau-
cuses, come from a particular locality, for a
particular reason.
Terrorism has, to some extent, mutated

into a global phenomenon. But terrorists
are local. And you will not eradicate ter-
rorism, or these other sources of crime
unless you persuade the populations
where they had, that they must not toler-
ate these people in their society. That they
must not tolerate violence within their
society. Of course we need the homeland
security, the military defense, the diplomat-
ic instruments, the government-to-govern-
ment exchanges. But I learned, as chair of
the U.N. Counter-terrorism Committee, that
unless you persuade each people in each
locality that they must not allow the law to
be broken on their territory, or it will come
back to haunt them. This is an absolutely
necessary part of constructing a global
coalition against terrorism. And if we leave
that part out of it, if we leave the engage-
ment, the persuasion, the diplomacy, the
17
relationships out of our defense against
terrorism, we will not be able to eradicate
this particular scourge.
So what should governments do? I think

that the number one requirement on
government is to analyze correctly what is
going on. All sorts of things flow that are
of no use to our interests, if governments
fail to analyze exactly what they’re dealing
with. And remember that age old human
phenomenon, those in power do not want
to admit that the context for their power is
changing. They are conservative to the
extent that they want things to go on as
they are. And they can very easily get into
a state of denial that they’re changing. And
yet adaptability is very important part of
holding on to power.
Governments also have to focus resources

on to those areas that are affected. That
sometimes happens, it sometimes doesn’t.
The military always think in terms of
hitting the enemy’s center of gravity. I
haven’t yet heard a debate that has clearly
explained to me where the center of gravity
is for the terrorist group, or the potential
terrorist or criminal enemy whom we’re
defending against. If you just think of that
term, where is his center of gravity? You
start thinking differently about what you’re
defending against, and where your stiletto
needs to reason.
The third thing that government has to

do is to explain to the citizens what is
going on. Unless people understand that
their interests are caught up in the trends
that are being correctly analyzed by gov-
ernment, if that is the case, then they will
respond properly. They have to have these
things explained to them. In the United
Kingdom, there is actually a great accept-
18
ance of the need for government to have
power in their interest, and to do certain
things. But it has to be done in a way
which is honestly explained and transpar-
ently explained, and does not seem to be
connected to the business of holding on to
power politically. That does not always hap-
pen in our societies.
We have to improve, domestically, the

intra-national coordination of all the agen-
cies and actors who are dealing with these
things. Going beyond the military and the
paramilitary into the societies that deal
with the particular groups inside a country.
Intra-national coordination has been okay
in the United Kingdom, we tend to be team
players. I don’t know enough about the
United States to know where it’s been a par-
ticular strength of the U.S. system. But my
suspicion is that intra-national coordination
is only just beginning to improve from a
pretty low base in this country.
It’s not for nothing that the British

Embassy has access in Washington.
Because it has learned how to take informa-
tion and advice and analysis from one
department of state to another, because
they’re not talking to each other. It’s very
often the British government official who
tells one government department what
another government department is doing.
It seems to me that intra-national coordi-
nation, in the United States, can go on
improving.
But it is particularly important to have

international coordination. Going beyond
the easy coordination with allies, and going
through to work with people who are
not easy to talk to, about the threat
which we actually share, and about why
we should be cooperating. There are of
19
course limits to rational explanation in all
of this. People will remain complacent if
the bombs aren’t coming through their
windows. Short-termism is a feature of
democracy and strategic planning is at a
premium in our countries. Nevertheless,
leadership on these things is vital and long
term planning is absolutely vital.
What we’re beginning to do on climate

change, to give clean air and water to our
grandchildren, has also to be done in terms
of strategic planning and explanation, in
the area of security, crime, terrorism and
the bringing together of communities. And
the individual, what should he and she do?
Four things. Understand the importance of
the state, don’t underestimate the impor-
tance of the state. Second, look for and
elect strategic leadership. It really matters
to you as an individual. Thirdly, invest in
education in society, and get the education-
al field and civil society institutions filling
some of the gaps of ungoverned space.
Government cannot do it all, even if you
respect government. And fourthly, cooper-
ate with government in cracking down on
criminality– and violence in your commu-
nity, wherever you are. And that should be
the outreach message also, from govern-
ments to their allied governments and
beyond. Don’t just leave it to government,
they cannot do it all. You must contribute
as an individual.
So I leave you with three or four under-

analyzed trends which this group, I believe,
should be investing in the taking forward
of. First of all, the disaffection between gov-
ernments and the governed. Almost a taboo
subject, it really matters. Where is loyalty to
the state in the modern age? What is the
state that we are loyal to in our own minds?
What are our children going to under-
20
stand from loyalty to the state? It’s not a
question that is often asked.
Secondly, understand the limits of hard

power. There has to be hard power. The
Europeans are too wedded to soft power
without hard power, there has to be both.
Hard power passes the asymmetrical
enemy by on the other side.
Thirdly, we have to analyze the capacity

of people to understand the limits of free-
dom. The need to adapt and allow our gov-
ernments to exercise power without resent-
ment. But there has to be explanation and
transparency.
Fourthly, and if there was ever a taboo in

this society it may be this one, constitutions
are not necessarily fully adapted for the
modern age that I’ve been trying to describe
to you. Be brave about constitutional evolu-
tion to suit yourselves, not as a rebellious
republic, but as a single super power. This
too now needs some discussion within your
own community.
Space is better if it’s governed. The ele-

ments I’ve been trying to bring to you and
to explain to you are the elements of a soci-
ety that understands why and how space is
to be governed. And we all have to con-
tribute to making that possible. Thank you
very much.
21
Questions & Answers
Sir Jeremy Greenstock
RICHARD ABORN: Sir Jeremy I think

maybe just delivered the 21st century ver-
sion of Broken Windows. And if George
Kelling were here, he’d probably name it
Broken Governments, so it’s something to
think about. Sir Jeremy has kindly offered to
take questions, should you have any. Who
can I call on first. Howard?
Q. I was curious as to how the end of the

Cold War influenced the new terrorism that
A. The end of the Cold War brought in

you’re talking about. bi n N N :N v:O
a period of huge relief, redirection of

resources and heightened expectations.
The most important of those three, in
terms of the evolution of geopolitics since,
and of the nature of society’s reaction,
to the peaceful world they live in, has
been heightened expectations. It’s essential
for human societies to understand that
although there are not going to be any more
world wars, there is no end to violence.
We have to tolerate, in one sense, in our

minds and not be fazed by the continuation
of violence at some moments in our socie-
ty. I fully understand, I was in New York at
the time, the fully shocking phenomenon of
the collapse of the Twin Towers. I watched
New York put itself together in the months
after that, in a way that Londoners– even
Londoners admired. But I worry for the
United States if something like that or
worse happens again. The absorption
capacity of American society to understand
that is going to happen now and then, and
22
society is bigger then that, and we must
count and bless the dead– and remember
them, but we must move on without react-
ing as our attackers want to react, has got to
be part of the modern American, modern
British, modern French, modern developed
societies.
We thought when the Cold War ended,
that it was the end of history. It was the
beginning of another history in which a
new form of violence– and a much more
difficult one to defend against, is actually
going to be what we worry about. Russia
is currently not much help in all of this.
Russia has gone introspective. I don’t criti-
cize them for that. The European Union
has gone introspective. But there is regres-
sion in Russia, as far as the democratic
evolution of the Russian Federation space
is concerned.
They’re worried about keeping the fed-
eration together more then they’re worried
about the expansion of the economy or the
engagement with the outside world. And
some stories have worried them– Kosovo
and Iraq– and NATO’s outward reach and
weapon systems have given Russia quite a
difficult time over the past ten years. We
haven’t always handled them as well as
we might have done. But Russia is putting
Russia and Russianness first, and that is
uncomfortable for us, and will be for some
time to come.
Q. You spoke about the role of Hezbollah

and Lebanon, and you touched upon where
we can anticipate Hezbollah type of organi-
zations taking over from legitimate govern-
ments who may have lost the confidence of
their people. Can you elaborate on that and
tell us where we’re going and what we have
to look forward to?
23
A. What is happening in non-democracies,
in some ways is running in parallel with
what is happening in democracies in the
development of civil society. But if you
develop civil society, institutions, in a non-
democratic context, and those institutions
have very narrow and quite extreme objec-
tives, the process can be the same, in terms
of the appeal to society, because civil society
supplies, in a sense, what government does
not. But the results can be very different.
And the people who should be worrying
most about Hezbollah are the governments
of the countries where Hezbollah or like-
minded institutions are beginning to form.
I think we’re in for a generation of quite

considerable trouble in the Middle East. At
the moment, the feelings of frustration
amongst the Arab peoples for example, who
believe that their real potential as human
beings is not being fulfilled is against the
outside world, those who invented global-
ization and increased wealth around them,
without giving them any. And when you
are talking with them, when we are talking
with them they will direct their anger to the
outside. But when you’re not there, when
they’re talking together, when they’re at
home with lights on and eating their sup-
per, they’re talking about what’s happening
in their immediate community and how
they’re not getting what they need from
their own immediate government.
And that is where the real tension is,

between the stagnant old, and the newly
motivated movement within Arab and
Islamic societies. They’re looking for some-
thing else, they’re looking for a champion.
They are, if you look, spectators or mem-
bers of a football club whose club hasn’t
scored a goal in the last 50 years, let alone
24
won a match. They are angry, they want
management change, they want changes
in circumstance. Hezbollah are picking on
these motivations, these psychologies, and
beginning to feed them.
And of course the aftermath of the

Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon was a
natural opportunity for Hezbollah. It’s
beginning to happen with the Iranian proxy
movements in Iraq. It’s beginning to hap-
pen within Syria and Jordan, and societies
fear in Saudi Arabia. Although, the Saudi
security system is much tighter then in
some of these other countries. And so,
we’re beginning to see, in that context, one
of the examples of governments losing
power, losing their persuasive legitimacy,
and it’s going to lead to change in the
Middle East.
Ideology plays a role in the appeal of the

extremist movements like Al Qaeda, to the
radicals coming in, that there are two moti-
vations. One is, that an already radicalized
young mind will want to find a group to
join. The other is that an empty young
mind will want to find something to do,
will want to find a captain to follow, a
champion to follow. They don’t really mind
what it is, but they hate being unemployed,
inactive and undervalued. They want to
find a place where they are valued, even if
their value is to be expressed by blowing
themselves up and becoming a martyr.
It’s the emptiness that I think we should

be addressing as well as the already radical-
ized, hostile criminal if you like because
they’re potential assassins, psychology. It’s
not actually our job to affect these people,
it’s their own people’s business. It’s their
government, their families, their education-
al systems, they’re all deficient if they are
25
not giving each individual an opportunity
to play a valued role in society that is with-
in the law rather than outside it.
The governments who are responsible

for that have largely tried to turn this accu-
sation outwards on to the United States, on
to the U.S./U.K. coalition, on to the people
who support Israel against Palestine, on to
the people who invaded Iraq. But actually
those are labels and excuses. What is hap-
pening in their societies is something that
would be happening even if there weren’t
those instances to point to. It’s the fact that
their societies have not given them some-
thing valuable within the law to pursue.
And that is becoming very dangerous

for us, because although the origins of their
motivation are local and political and social,
within their own tribe or their own commu-
nity, globalization is exploding that out
through awareness of what the Great Satan
is doing to Iraq, or what the great super
power is doing with Israel. In their mental-
ity it’s transferred outwards so their anger
and their capacity to do harm is globalizing,
but what they really want is local. And
we’ve got to make the connection between
those two, and help the governments either,
frankly– to change or to do what they
should be doing in society, without our help
and with our understanding. Indeed with a
deeper understanding then we’re showing
at the moment.
Q. Sir Jeremy, you made reference to the

need for communities which shelter terror-
ists, themselves to be convinced that that’s
unacceptable within those communities.
And I’m wondering whether there might be
a model in Northern Ireland, where grass-
roots religious leaders negotiated ceasefires
26
with the IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries,
by convincing them that this violence would
not be– should not be accepted within their
own communities, at the grassroots. Is
there a model there that can be used by
A. You answered the first bit of your

extension, in other areas of armed conflict?
question, with your second bit. Because I

immediately said, “I must bring in
Northern Ireland to this one.” The British
military could not, and the Northern
Ireland police, could not eradicate vio-
lence– in Belfast in Northern Ireland, in
South Amma until the Irish people, the
Northern Ireland community, the Catholics
in that community, the women in that com-
munity started to say, “We’re exhausted by
violence and this is not right. Violence is
not bringing the answer. We do not want
our children just brought into this culture of
violence.”
For 25 years before that happened, from

1969 through to 1990– it was really impossi-
ble to eradicate a violence that was so deter-
mined to take up the cause, that each new
recruit would follow any particular arrest.
And that is happening in spades in Iraq
and in Afghanistan, the Taliban are begin-
ning to come back. The societies in these
two places, and there are also many others,
have not yet decided that they’re exhausted
by violence. And you will not eradicate vio-
lence in Iraq until the people themselves
choose to decide they’re exhausted by it.
And by that analogy, they’ve got 20 years to
run in Iraq before they become exhausted.
Q. You invited a question about Iraq. I’m

not sure we can let you leave without asking
it. There is no question that within the next
six months, maybe the next six weeks, the
27
continuation of coalition forces in Iraq will
be front and center on the political stage.
This is really a hotly debated issue. In terms
of the impact on terrorism, I wonder – it
seems to me there are two core ideas. One
is that if we withdraw– if the United States
and the U.K. withdraw from Iraq, that may
take the wind out of the sails of terrorists,
because they’ve removed one of the moti-
vating factors, one of the incentives, one of
the acts of encouragement by which other
terrorists can be recruited.
The other argument is that much like the

Mujahideen in Afghanistan with Bin Laden
there, and maybe Hezbollah in Beirut–
experience a surge in activity, because they
tasted victory. They felt, in the case of
Afghanistan, that they’ve chased out the
super power. I wonder if you have any
thoughts about should the U.S. and the U.K.
start to withdraw, how that will impact
A.
terrorist recruiting?
I’ll say straight away that I am not an

advocate of withdrawal, and I’ll tell you
why. There are two things that will follow,
two main categories of things that will
follow, from a defeat in Iraq and a with-
drawal by the coalition forces. One is that
the violence and the sectarian divisions in
the Iraqi community will immediately get
worse, even worse then it is now. And the
place will break down, not into three
parts, it’s not possible to partition Iraq into
three parts and see it stay at three stable
parts. It will go on breaking down in the
localities under the local militia, under the
local political boss, under the local gang.
Each street will look for its own protector
in a way in which we haven’t really seen
in our society since the anarchies of the
middle ages.
28
But saying that won’t actually prevent
that happening, except in a much slower
time. And therefore there is a rationale for
withdrawal, because there is a reaction
within society against the presence of coali-
tion troops. But there’s another category of
consequences and that is that the icon of
defeat that withdrawal would be, and the
motivation of those who have wanted to do
us harm and continue to want to do us
harm in our territories, from what they’ve
learned against us in Iraq and from the
space they will have to occupy for training–
and for grouping and for launching terrorist
attacks outside Iraq, is directly against our
interests. Both the motivation and the prac-
titioners opportunity that will be increased
by withdrawing from Iraq is a direct
U.S./U.K. coalition, national interest.
And that is why we must not withdraw

from Iraq, unless we do so in staged agree-
ment with the elected Iraq government. If
they want us to go, if they’re ready to take
over, if they will help to deal with a phe-
nomenon of non-Iraqi terrorism in Iraq,
then we’re ready to leave. If we leave
before that we will double the cost of our
defeat.
Q. My question is what advice do you have

for responsible global business, in light of
the movements and forces you’ve talked
A. One of my part time jobs is special

about?
advisor for the BP Group who I advise on

geopolitical trends as well as on political in
the Middle East and elsewhere. And there
are all sorts of answers to give to your
question, according to the nature of your
business. But there are two or three things
that I think are worth saying. Expect this
29
next period, we can’t look forward I sup-
pose, much further then ten years, but
expect this next period to be very disturbed.
Make sure that you have the reserves to
hold your breath if you’re doing business in
the particular community, in the particular
part of the world that is likely to be part of
the disturbance.
Secondly, that the economic opportuni-

ties will go on growing. There is a reason
to be in business, there’s a reason to be
active, so long as you understand the con-
text within which you’re working. And
thirdly, particularly for big business, for
the big multi-nationals, create your rela-
tionships beyond your immediate business.
Know what’s going on in particular capitals
through having country heads who under-
stand the political environment around
your business. Business has to be linear,
you have to have a bottom line, and that is
what most executives are working for.
They often leave it to the C.E.O. himself,

the big boss, whoever he is, to have the
global understanding and the rest of us
are just there to deliver to the boss. That’s
not good enough any longer. Everybody’s
got to be aware of what is happening later-
ally, because the crosswinds are going to be
very strong.
Now whether that means, in your busi-

ness– diversify or hedge or get out or
whatever, is entirely up to you. But you’ve
got to analyze how these disturbances, how
the pace of change is going to affect you.
Because there is one new element in power
in this age, whether you’re a government or
a business with commercial power, adapt-
ability is part of that power. You will lose
the power without adaptability. I’m not try-
ing to be gloomy about this, I’m just trying
30
to be sensible about the capabilities which
decision makers need to have both in the
public sector and in the private sector. And
awareness and adaptability and relation-
ships have to be part of our business.
RICHARD ABORN: Well Sir Jeremy I knew

you would be an enlightening speaker, you
far exceeded my expectations. That was just
wonderful. And I can’t thank you enough.
Thank you very much. ■
31
217 Broadway
212-608-4700
32
COUNTERING TODAY’S
TERRORISM:
SEARCHING FOR A
MORE SUBTLE
APPROACH
Remarks by Sir Richard Dearlove

Introduction by Richard Aborn
April 17, 2007

THE MILSTEIN
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
POLICY FORUM

HOWARD P. MILSTEIN

ment leaders.


Introduction by
A
Richard Aborn
s you know, our speaker is Sir
Richard Dearlove, the former chief
of MI6. The formal name, the Secret
Intelligence Service, or as more commonly
called, MI6, provides the British government
with a global covert capability to promote
and defend the national security and economic
well-being of the United Kingdom. MI6 was
founded at the turn of the 20th century, in
1909. It was the first time that Britain had
formalized its intelligence capability. And it
was formed, in part, because of the growing
perceived threat, and actually real threat, of
German military and naval expansion prior
to the First World War. The bureau was
subsequently divided into a home section,
MI5, and a foreign section, MI6.
Sir Richard served as chief of MI6 from

August of 1999 until retiring in July of 2004.
During those years, and as I understand, it
continues, MI6 priorities continued to expand,
and now encompass counter-terrorism,
counter-proliferation and international crime
fighting. And, needless to say, Sir Richard
had to take on the task of also focusing on
Islamic terrorism.
His work at MI6 provides him with a

unique vantage point to which to observe
the global war on terrorist networks, as
well as a build up to a war in Iraq and
other related issues. Sir Richard began
working at MI6 in 1966 following his
graduation from Cambridge. His postings
have included Nairobi, Prague, Paris,
Geneva and Washington. Since 2004, since
leaving MI6, Sir Richard has served as
master of Pembroke College at Cambridge
University.
1
As Master, Sir Richard plays an important
role in the life and progress of Pembroke,
the third oldest college in Cambridge. It
was founded in 1347. It is my pleasure to
welcome Sir Richard Dearlove.
R
Remarks by
Sir Richard Dearlove
ichard, thank you for that extremely
accurate introduction. You’re clearly
a lawyer who does his homework.
The first thing I want to say is, as Deputy Vice
Chancellor at Cambridge — because I’m also
a Deputy Vice Chancellor of the university —
I want to express my condolences for the
deaths at Virginia Tech. I find that event
particularly shocking. That it should take
place, within a sanctuary of learning. One
feels very strongly about such an issue.
I’m very conscious that there is a high

degree of expertise in this audience. And I
think maybe much of what I want to say
will be known to many of you already. But
I hope I present it from a slightly different
perspective. And I think on these occasions,
anyway, the questions very often get down
to the meat of what we want to discuss.
And I’m very happy to answer any questions
that you want around this very complex
and wide ranging subject. Our time is
limited.
So I am going to present in shorthand

some of the issues that I’ll speak about.
Obviously, here in New York City, the point
at which we start, is 9/11. It is definitely a
defining event.
It is on one of those lines in history,

contemporary history, or even in the longer
term. It’ll be seen as a barrier of which
2
there’s a before and an after. And there’s
no question that it brought a large number
of issues into very sharp focus.
They were defined on that day. And it

caused the U.S. and other western govern-
ments to radically revise their foreign
policy, and domestic security priorities.
And, interestingly, I think it’s true, if we
travel backwards from 9/11, many of the
elements that came together on that dreadful
day were actually known about.
Particularly by the intelligence and

security communities of what I will loosely
refer to as the west. Though they were, at
that stage, still, I think, poorly understood.
And not seen really as a set of cohesive
issues profoundly affecting overall national
security policy. Yes, they were considered
important. But they were not considered to
have overwhelming importance. Similarly,
if we travel forward from 9/11, the issue
of confronting and fighting terrorism,
which, to the international community,
seemed such a logical and straightforward
necessity in the immediate aftermath, has,
I think, been obscured now and confused
partly because of the consequences of the
policy decisions engendered by our responses
to 9/11.
But, also, of course, because of the

complexities of the politics of the Middle
East. In short, I believe that in fighting or
countering terrorism, we have lost clarity of
purpose and execution.
9/11 has also inspired a massive out-

pouring of academic, journalistic and
political writing and speculation about the
phenomenon of terrorism, and the terrorism
inspired by fundamentalist Islam in
particular and also, about the Middle East
3
and the nature of Islam. Time was, if you
walked into a book shop, it was hard to
find any books on terrorism or on Islam at
all. Now they’re prominently placed. And
there are hundreds of them. And I hope
this won’t cause offense. Time was, if you
were a Londoner, it seemed that Americans
were not particularly stirred or interested
by terrorism, per se, when it had an Irish
label on it.
But times have changed indeed. And

the aim of my talk today is, I hope, to cast
some light on the issues of how our
societies might best deal with the continuing
terrorism from both a practical and
commonsensical standpoint. And I think,
also, to try to see through some of this
excessive amount of often ill informed and
over complex commentary that we find on
the phenomenon.
My credentials for giving this talk you

heard about, I was an operational intelligence
officer for a large chunk of my career, before
I became a senior manager. And, in that
capacity, I was involved both in dealing
with the Irish problem, but also, of course,
with the appearance and development of
what we now refer to, by the shorthand, of
al Qaeda. I might just add I was the 13th
Chief of SIS, as you said, founded in 1909.
I’m the 53rd Master of Pembroke College
Cambridge, founded in 1347. Both jobs have
a certain amount of continuity and stability
about them. All my predecessors as Chief
died in their beds. One of my predecessors
as Master of Pembroke, was actually burned
at the stake. I leave you to decide which is
the riskier position.
Now, some basic contextual points about

the phenomenon that we refer to as al Qaeda.
It is one of the extreme emanations of
4
political Islam. And is part of a broader set
of developments across the Middle East in
which the Arab nationalist and socialist
governments which characterized the 1950s
and 60s, and longer than that in some
countries, have had to come to terms with
and adapt to Islamic revivalism, producing
a wave of fundamentalist movements
across the whole region. Perhaps the most
influential of these has been the Muslim
Brotherhood, founded by Hassan al-Banna
in Egypt in 1928, which has spawned,
by following the twin paths of political
participation, and violent revolutionary
jihad, both peaceful reformers and very
violent terrorists.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s influential

and important deputy, is a direct product of
this movement in Egypt. Now the reason I
mention that is that, today, let me mention
another incident that we’ve largely forgotten
about. And that occurred on the 20th of
November, 1979, the dawn of Islam’s 15th
century. A group of 300 terrorists, including
many different Arab nationalities, took over
the grand mosque in Mecca, condemning
the house of Saud for its corruption and
un-Islamic lifestyle. And as has been written
by academics, the house of Saud was being
judged by the very Islamic yardstick that it
used to legitimize itself. At the time, these
events were not much understood in the west.
And not really given very much attention.
It’s only perhaps today, when we are

caught up inexorably in their follow on, that
it’s easier to see them in a broader social
and political context, and understand their
significance. Islam has a rich history of
cleansing movements which have sought,
often violently, to lead Muslims back to
appreciation of an attachment to, allegedly,
the prophet’s original values, purging Islam
5
of alien influences. And today we are clearly
in the throes of another such series of events,
of which 9/11 was one, albeit of particular
symbolic importance, both for the perpetrators
and those attacked.
However, it is essential to realize how,

with the benefit of hindsight, that al Qaeda,
if we look at the circumstances surrounding
its emergence, is not, or should not be
regarded, in my view, as a particularly
surprising phenomenon. However much its
activities may shock us and threaten us.
And it is the depth of its roots in the political
and religious history of the Middle East that
makes it, now, so formidably difficult to
deal with.
So let us narrow the focus to al Qaeda

itself. As modern terrorist movements go,
and there are many of course, it is essentially
religious and ideological in character. Most
other terrorist movements I can think of are
active to achieve very specific political, and
usually territorial, objectives. Palestinians,
Irish, Armenians, and so on. If al Qaeda
had specific political objectives, and I think
it may have done at its inception, the
destruction of the house of Saud being one,
and the removal of western forces from the
Middle East being another. These, I believe,
have now been completely superseded.
Superseded by quasi-mystical objectives
that are essentially religious in character.
Such as the creation, which is quite impractical,
of course, of a new caliphate.
Actually, this does make al Qaeda, in my

view, qualitatively different from every
other terrorist movement we have experi-
ence of dealing with. It doesn’t really have
political handles. And what I mean by that
is even if you wanted to negotiate with al
Qaeda, I’m not sure that at the moment,
6
would be possible. Another characteristic
it acquires from its religious inspiration I
think is a lack of restraint. And what I mean
by that is that if you think of a movement
like PIRA in comparison, the Provisional
IRA, there are certain terrorist incidents and
outrages that PIRA would never have even
considered committing.
Now it is this lack of tangible political

substance, and its primary espousal of reli-
gious values that makes al Qaeda such a
formidable ideological influence as well.
And gives to it the character of a movement
rather than the rigidities, weaknesses and
formal structures of an organization.
I think that’s a very important distinc-

tion. Al Qaeda, in its early active stages, was
much more organized than it is now. When
it moved from Sudan to Afghanistan, given
sanctuary by the Taliban, it was almost a
mini-state within a state. Providing the
Taliban with its best shock troops. It was
located in well organized camps. It ran its
own hotels which had signing in books.
You may be surprised by that. It created
documentation. It researched in laboratories.
And, you know, it trained jihadis and terrorists.
At that stage, al Qaeda had a distinctive

military aspect. And it was during this period
that the attacks on the U.S. embassies in east
Africa were elaborately planned. Similarly,
the attack on the USS Cole.
And all of these events were highly

organized conspiracies. Large amounts of
time, significant numbers of people, were
involved. The organization which planned
and carried out those attacks was not really
under much pressure from, as it were,
opposing forces. And it does point to the fact
that our intelligence coverage of al Qaeda
7
at that time, and our insights, were frankly
not very good at all. In June 2001 — I don’t
know whether this is in George Tenet’s book
or not, but I’m going to tell you nonetheless,
George Tenet and I had an intelligence
summit on Bermuda.
We actually planted two trees in the

governor’s garden, because it’s a tradition
on Bermuda to plant trees for such meetings.
I hope they’re thriving. We spent the first
two hours talking about something terrorist
and big being planned. We didn’t know
when, we didn’t know where.
Of course the rest is history. And I’m

going to move on now. I mention that
because I think people overlook the fact, now,
following the report of the 9/11 commission,
the depths of concern and the focus in the
intelligence community during that summit,
and the latter part of that summer. After the
invasion of Afghanistan, and I think that
was a brave and correct decision by the Bush
administration, al Qaeda was at its most
vulnerable. And, in the two to three years
following the invasion, the U.S. led war on
terror, and that’s a phrase which I personally
don’t think adds to our understanding of the
problem, but I use it nonetheless, the war on
terror had significant success.
Much of al Qaeda’s infrastructure was

dismantled and its leadership detained.
However, this success, though significant
with great beneficial short term results, was
not sufficient to excise the cancer.
It became evident that one of al Qaeda’s

most essential strategic qualities has been
its ability to mutate in response to our
success against it. I think this has something
to do with its, what I would describe as its
genetic make up. And, by that, I mean it is
more of a movement than an organization.
8
And this mutation has almost happened
spontaneously. And as Richard referred to
in his introduction, al Qaeda, at that point,
moved in the direction of becoming a sort
of brand.
An inspiration in which local terrorist

groups, as it were, joined the franchise.
And there were a number of attacks which
I think carry that character: In Morocco,
in Indonesia, in Turkey, in Spain.
These were a spate of attacks probably only

loosely linked with al Qaeda’s leadership.
And establishing a direct organizational
link, as opposed to an inspirational link,
has proved very difficult. And I’ve already
mentioned the name of Zawahiri. But if, I
think, that there was a degree of strategic
involvement, it’s much more likely to have
come from Zawahiri as a strategist than
from Bin Laden. Because I think that Bin
Laden has, to an extent, almost been pushed
to one side like a living icon and a symbol,
rather than a direct planner or strategist.
Which I feel sure is Zawahiri. However,
this franchised and decentralized concept of
al Qaeda has, I think now, in the view of the
experts, probably run its course.
A possible reason is the success of

security and intelligence organizations in
disrupting local groups. But I also think it is
perhaps the difficulty of having strategic
impact globally if you, as it were, promote
or push your program through using local
organizations.
And what’s interesting now, I think, is

the July 2005 attacks in London, which we
originally thought to be locally organized
conspiracy without primary links to al
Qaeda— are subject to reassessment. And
some of you will know there have recently
been arrests. I don’t have the detail on that.
9
But it does show compelling evidence of
a direct connection back to al Qaeda in
Pakistan. And, in fact, the experts now talk
about al Qaeda reconstituting and reasserting
its leadership. Some experts go as far as to
say that al Qaeda is very much on the
march again. Alive and well on the Pakistani
Afghan border, particularly in Waziristan,
largely beyond the effective reach of the
Pakistani government. Witness the failure
of the local tribal leaders to respect the
recent agreement conducted with the
Pakistani military to control foreigners in
this sensitive area.
So I think we may be facing a situation

where al Qaeda has almost gone full circle.
And is back again in the northern part of
Pakistan and southern Afghanistan. Not,
of course, with the same infrastructure
that it had before. But with a very effective,
and protected, base area. This, to me, is a
significant development, and I think a
surprise. Because I had always thought
that we would look into Saudi Arabia for
al Qaeda’s, let’s say, ideological engine.
But the Saudis have been surprisingly
effective in suppressing the phenomenon.
They haven’t done much to solve the
problem but the Saudi security service has
been much more efficient and has reached
further into the problem than any of us
anticipated.
And I think that’s also maybe one of the

reasons why you now have this Pakistani
focus. One of the consequences of this
Pakistani focus is that it does put the U.K.
in the front line in terms of the risk of a
major terrorist attack, given the evidence
of the links which exist between radical
fundamentalist Muslim leaders in Pakistan
and the youth susceptible to radicalization
10
in the U.K. The statistics on visits to
Pakistan by young Pakistani males from the
Pakistani community in the U.K. are quite
staggering. And many of those visits exceed
a month in length. And it is clear that we
do have a major problem of radicalization.
The numbers are not necessarily very great.
But they don’t have to be very great to
cause a significant problem.
And the U.K. based plot dismantled by

the arrests of August 2006 to blow up ten
U.S. airliners simultaneously over the
Atlantic using liquids explosives is, I think,
symptomatic of these relationships. The
serious security problem that the U.K. is
now facing is very serious.
As I said earlier, the war on terror has

had significant success. A number of major
attacks have been prevented. And it has
been, in my view, a real achievement to stop
another major attack on the U.S. mainland.
However, I would say that this has been a
largely tactical success.
When it comes to striking at the causes

of terrorism, the eventual removal of the
risk itself, rather than its symptoms, we
actually, in my view, have made little
progress. The complexities of the problem
we face probably accounts for this.
The fact that it is as much a Muslim on

Muslim problem, a struggle for the soul of
Islam, as it is a confrontation between
Muslim values and western values. After
all, it took the west many years to climb
onto the moral and political high ground
in the Cold War. Despite the fact that this
was a much more straightforward and less
nuanced confrontation of opposing ideologies
and political systems.
11
But maybe it is still too early in this
crisis for us to expect to have made strategic
progress. Now, unquestionably 9/11 has
had a massive impact on U.S. government
in all its aspects. Judicial, legislative and
executive. It has also profoundly influenced
policy. That this should have happened is
thoroughly understandable.
That it is as desirable in the way that it

has happened, I think, is questionable. The
war on terror was not a bad idea at its
inception. I would in fact argue that it was
probably a necessary response which met
the implicit wishes of the vast majority of
the American people. It was also, initially,
successful. But where I part company with
the policy is its failure to adapt in response
to the threat. The policy has, in practice,
lacked subtlety.
You do not carry out brain surgery with

a blunt knife. We did start out attempting
to amputate, in rather basic fashion, bits off
from the main body. But we’re now into
something much more subtle, sophisticated,
delicate.
Yet there is still too much emphasis on

what I would describe as the use of blunt
instruments. From time to time, they may be
still required, they are not and they should
not be at the core of our counter-terrorist
efforts. Terrorism is no more or less than a
desperate act of political communication,
a resort to extreme violence when other
political means of attracting attention to or
consideration of the cause it supports, is not
going to work. The terrorist aims to force
himself upon our consciousness, to oblige
us to take account of him.
Now if one accepts this premise, one of

the basic principles of counter-terrorist
12
policy should be, over time, to avoid
amplification of the terrorist message.
Much counter-terrorist policy in the U.S.
I strongly support. But where the U.S. differs
from the U.K. is that I fear the balance has
tipped in the U.S. towards giving terrorism
too much attention. And, thus, amplifying
rather than minimizing the terrorist message.
Now perhaps the complex checks and
balances within the political system make
this inevitable.
But the polarization of the U.S. political

scene has created a situation where counter-
terrorist actions and policies have become
intensely partisan issues. And you could say
that Bin Laden has succeeded in inserting
the al Qaeda virus into America’s political
bloodstream.
The U.K. has been more successful,

despite the currently greater al Qaeda
internal threat, at not allowing itself to be
affected to the same degree. Or I should say
infected to the same degree. Perhaps years
of bipartisan solidarity on countering Irish
terrorism has made it easier. Maintaining a
sense of proportion about terrorism, and by
that I mean not investing the terrorist threat
with excessive importance, is difficult. But it
is very important even following an event
like 9/11. We have yet to cross a threshold
where that sense of proportion should or
could be justifiably abandoned. And what I
mean by that is we haven’t yet faced an
incident where it would be, as it were, logical
to abandon a sense of proportion.
And I’m thinking in terms of a CBRN

incident. Which I think would change our
perceptions. One of the most undesirable
longer term effects of 9/11 has been the
distortions it has created governmentally.
In the legislative process, in the use of
13
executive power. In the influence of the
9/11 Commission, and Rob Silverman on
the reorganization of the U.S. intelligence
community. Time is limited this evening.
So I will restrict my comments to the
one area which I do know something
about, which is the reorganization of the
U.S. intelligence and security community.
The something-must-be-done; reaction in
Congress, and in the Senate, which followed
9/11 and Iraq, has, in my view, achieved
poor results. And I hope I’m not causing
offense but I thought if I was going to give
a lecture to this group, I should state my
views clearly.
Judge Richard Posner has written

excellently and sensibly about this in his book
Uncertain Shield. But at the very moment
when the U.S. requires a strengthened and
more highly focused and secured community,
it has achieved no more than compounded
an already over-complex bureaucracy. The
departmental leviathan which is homeland
security still, in my view, lacks its essential
new element. Which is a proper domestic
security service. And the position of DNI
has been created with two fundamental
flaws: No overall control of intelligence
budgets, and, two, overriding but conflicting
responsibilities. One being management
and coordination of the whole intelligence
community without the control of the budget.
And at the same time ultimate responsibility
for giving analytical advice to the president.
To do both jobs effectively for the world’s
remaining superpower is certainly, in my
view, beyond the competence of a single
individual, however well served and staffed
he might be.
Which brings me, finally, to the nature

of the current terrorist threat, and our
14
response to it. I see little evidence that Islamic
extremism and militancy is in decline. Read
today’s article on page 61 of the current
Economist which touches on many of the
things that I have been talking about.
Potential recruits to Islamic fundamentalist

terrorist movements are not in short supply.
And there appears to be no significant change
in the base conditions in the Middle East.
And in the Muslim diaspora beyond the
Middle East, especially Europe, where the
preconditions exist that dispose mainly
young males between the ages of 18 and
32 to become terrorists. The threat, therefore,
remains serious and unlikely to decline.
And despite our success in disrupting it,

I am sure that al Qaeda is still pressing hard
to attack its main targets. And a successful
attack on the U.S. mainland, or against the
U.S. infrastructure elsewhere, must remain
its primary objective. What I believe is also
worrying is the likelihood that eventually
terrorists will tire of using conventional blast
technology and attempt to use unconventional
weapons against us.
This could be chemical, biological, radio-

logical or nuclear. For the moment, I believe,
this risk is still low probability with a
possible exception of a contamination device.
That is the use of a radiological dispersal
device in an urban area. Not necessarily
designed to kill great numbers, but quite
literally to terrorize and to disrupt life for
possibly thousands by causing the evacuation
of a significant part of a western major city.
Now the longer our successes against the

al Qaeda phenomenon is merely tactical, and
we make little strategic progress against the
problem as a whole, the greater the risk of
more catastrophic terrorist attacks become.
15
If the threat and the success of terrorists
remain more or less on the same level as
they are now, we can probably continue
to manage the problem without it escaping
our ability to retain the sense of proportion
that I spoke about in dealing with it.
However, we cannot be complacent of the
threat on account of the possibility that it
could mutate through the abuse of the
technologies to which I have referred.
Which presents us with far, far more serious
considerations. The means that we now use
to counter this problem, and in the longer
term, are of huge importance. And, as I have
hinted in this talk, well actually I haven’t
hinted, I’ve said it rather bluntly, I think
that the U.S. has placed itself, albeit inad-
vertently, at a disadvantage.
Effective and sustained counter-terrorist

policy requires a subtle balance of different
means and instruments of which the most
important is probably intelligence capability.
And the least relevant, large scale military
capability. Time is short to get this balance
right. And it is certainly not so at the
moment. And time is short, generally,
for moderate Islam and us, the allies of
moderate Islam to get to grips with the
fundamental causes of the problem rather than
exhausting our precious resources by being
bound to chase after every tactical threat
that we learn about. Thank you very much.
16
Questions & Answers
Sir Richard Dearlove
RICHARD ABORN: Well, that was certainly
a sobering, somber, and provocative conver-
sation, and I greatly appreciate it. As is our
custom, Sir Richard has agreed to take some
questions from all of us. So, I will look to
the first volunteer. They’re always very shy
at first.
Q. Some of us had the privilege of having

dinner some time ago with Bernard Lewis,
and he suggested to our group that what we
were dealing with was another crusade that
has nothing to do with Israel or oil. And we
talked about that today. What do you think
is a solution to this problem if in fact that is
what we’re dealing with?
A. I don’t know if I really agree. What

we’re dealing with is a crisis — within
Islam between Muslims, and if you accept
that premise rather than the Lewis premise
of a clash between Christianity and Islam,
I think a certain logic would stem from this
analysis. I mean I do spend quite a lot of
time in the Middle East, and my contacts
with Middle Eastern leaders and influence
makers inclines me to think that their position
on this issue is hardly different from mine
or yours, and that they are just as worried
and as threatened by it. And the difficulty
I think for moderate Islam is intimidation,
and the difficulty of speaking out and taking
a strong position.
But I think that the longer term solutions

lie in empowering our moderate Muslim
allies without compromising them in the
eyes of fellow Muslims. Now that is not
straightforward. It’s a complex and difficult
17
task. But I have encountered two small,
but I think significant initiatives recently
which I think may show the way forward.
I was recently in Singapore where they

have a very — in typical Singaporean
fashion— a very highly developed program
for rehabilitating or reconverting radical
youth who had been led astray into
extremism. And they take it very seriously
indeed.
Interestingly, last time I was there the

head of the Saudi program doing the same
thing was visiting Singapore to compare notes.
And I understand that the Saudi program
is beginning to show some positive results
and influence.
This has been practiced also for a

considerable amount of time in Egypt, and
in Algeria as well. These may only be very
small green shoots. But I think it does give
you an indication of having a strategic
approach to the problem rather than a
tactical approach.
You know, the implementation of the

strategy is not for intelligence and the
security organizations. It’s for governments.
We’re talking about large scale movements.
But I don’t agree with Bernard Lewis’s rather
messy and depressing idea of a major
confrontation.
I much prefer the theories of Olivier Roy,

the French intellectual who writes about
Islam. And he characterizes the problem as
Islam having come to terms with secular
government. That’s a great simplification of
his thesis. And in a religion where there is
no separation between church and state,
what is the fate of that religion as a matter
of private conscience only.
18
And I think that we’re seeing this crisis.
And we are dragged into this crisis. And it
will take some time to resolve. And it may
be that the Muslim diasporas in Europe
which are having to find their place within
secular states and live successfully within
those states. There may be found seeds of
an important solution.
Q. A lot of people began to point the finger

at the firewall that had been directed to the
United States between law enforcement
operations on the one hand and intelligence
operations on the other. They pointed to
specific incidents in which law enforcement
was in session and information which might
have prevented the al Qaeda attacks who
were unable to share this intelligence and
vice versa.
Now we see the pendulum heading back

in the other direction as some journalists are
concerned about letters that had been issued
to retrieve telephone data about Americans
ostensibly for the purpose of fighting terror-
ism when in fact it was for other purposes.
Do you have the sense that America has
struck the right balance in raising or lowering
A.
the firewalls or where we should go?
Well, I think as I indicated, I don’t

think it has yet come up with the right
solution. And I’m, you know surprised by
some of the things that have happened.
I don’t want to go into technicalities. But
let me just make a general point about the
U.S. security structures. It is intended as
compliment.
I think for someone brought up in

European security traditions, this is a really
important point. The United States’ great
achievement domestically is to create
19
Americans, which it does very successfully.
It creates, in a way that no other country is
able to do.
It has never, except for one or two odd-

ball incidents like Sacco and Venzetti, never
had a tradition of spying on its immigrant
communities. And this is a remarkable
achievement. I think one of the worst aspects
of 9/11 is that it threatens that concept of
American identity. In Europe, let us take
France for example. France has a furiously
efficient security service, the DST. And it
also has another rather bizarre police
service called the Renseignement General.
And the degree of intelligence, within a
democracy collected on their own citizens,
is significant. It’s a tradition that goes way
back in time.
And frankly, 9/11 could never have

happened in France because a conspiracy
of that nature, would have been detected
by either the R.G. or by the DST. And
similarly, even in the U.K., although we’ve
now had to revise our ideas about the scope
and breadth of what needs to be done.
And I think that there is a completely

different tradition and mental attitude. The
U.S. should be very pleased in many respects
that it doesn’t have it. It doesn’t have it for
obvious reasons. But then the question is if
you have this dreadful terrorist problem,
how do you create an infrastructure to deal
with it domestically?
Actually, I don’t think that the domestic

threat within the U.S. is very great. It’s much
more likely to be an imported virus here
than it is, let’s say, in the U.K. I’m not saying
it doesn’t exist, but I mean I’ve dealt with
your question sort of tangentially, but I
think you can see what I’m driving at.
20
Q. I have to disagree with you in your
appraisal of France. And I wouldn’t say this
on the street because the media being what
it is today, it could be very troublesome.
We Americans, in a way, need to be thankful
that our illegal immigrant question has to
do primarily with people who are coming
here to seek jobs. And we have to deal with
that issue, but they’re primarily coming
here to seek jobs and integrate into the
country. They are not doing that in France.
The reason they don’t attack France is
because they can get what they desire
without attacking France.
The question I’d like to ask you is how

is it a good outcome when we allow a group
of Imams to go on an airline and then create
a false case to entrap Americans?
How is it a good outcome when at will

the government of Iran can kidnap anyone
and we consider the freeing of these captives
without any punishment for the government
of Iran to be a positive outcome? How is it
a positive outcome when in Britain your
educators will not teach the Holocaust to
their students for fear of angering Muslims
who have been taught Holocaust denial in
the home? We can go across Europe, and
across America, across anywhere we want,
unless you have one degree of civility, we’re
not winning this, we’re losing this.
A. Well, effectively, I don’t really disagree

with what you’re saying. And I mean all
I’m saying about France is that it has a
very efficient security service. And you
know, whatever else you say about it, that
is true.
And it’s very, very active internally

within France. But I don’t argue with the
21
points you make at all about, as it were,
the consequences of, let’s say, intimidation,
in the way that people may behave. You
know, let’s not get into discussion of the
Iranian issue. I’m sure a lot of people
would love to punish Iran, and it is being
punished by the international community.
It’s not just being punished in terms of the
specific incident. But I haven’t answered
that very well.
Q. A quick question about the finances of

al Qaeda. What’s your point about how it’s
being financed?
A. I don’t think it’s being financed by

foreign governments. Al Qaeda doesn’t need
much money. And, you know, this isn’t an
organization with a massive infrastructure.
Initially, there’s no question that some of the
money came from the production of opium
in Afghanistan.
I think the Taliban originally had sources

of money in the Gulf, some of which may
have links back to influential families.
But I think the main source of funding, to
the extent that al Qaeda needs large
sums of money, has been through Wahhabi
charitable organizations in Saudi Arabia,
and similar organizations in other Muslim
countries. And there hasn’t been, hitherto,
significant control by governments like
Saudi Arabia on the and distribution of
these funds. But that is changing. I don’t
see the starvation of cash to al Qaeda as
being a way to solve the problem because
it will always have a sufficient trickle of
funds still to be extremely lethal.
22
Q. My question is to the issue that poverty
is considered to be a breeding ground for
terrorism. If you look at those involved in the
terrorist plots in the United Kingdom, they
were solidly middle class, second generation
British citizens. And I’m wondering, in terms
of the war of ideas whether in fact the United
States’ greatest ally, Britain, has ceded its
ideas of sovereignty to embracing a multi-
culturalism which actually encourages this
type of terrorism because we don’t do a very
good job of saying why our ideas are better
than their ideas.
A. They’re certainly concerned about

that in the U.K., and about the way that
the government has not asserted national
identity. But I think the link between
poverty, deprivation, and terrorism is a
tenuous one. Obviously it’s easier perhaps to
find foot soldiers in deprived communities.
But in essence, I think the problem is

much more about cultural identity and the
difficulties of second and third generation
immigrants. The characteristic shape, in the
U.K. and Europe, is that the parents arrive
and want very little to do with where they
came from. They want to be seen to be as
local as possible. But at the same they never
actually lose touch with the original home
country.
And in the second and the third genera-

tion, they have adopted the identity of the
new country in terms of language and
day-to-day cultural influence. But they’re
still not part of it, particularly when there’s
a failure to be absorbed in a thorough way
into their new society.
23
And at that point to, as it were, re-identify
yourself, one of the ways to do it is to go
back to your parents former origins and,
re-emphasize your identity by excessive
religiosity. And this is certainly one of the
phenomena I think which explains what’s
happened both in France and in the U.K.
because of the failure of both countries
policies. I think you will find it has cer-
tainly been the theme in the French
elections. It’s certainly been a theme with
Gordon Brown, that there is going to be a
much more aggressive and confident set of
policies about asserting British, French—
identity, to attempt to counter this failure,
really, to absorb the immigrant particularly
after two or more generations.
And, of course, the program in the U.K.

to confront the problem of radicalization, is
not a security and intelligence program.
That’s just finding out about the problem.
It’s about education, it’s about local govern-
ment, it’s about integration, it’s about the
composition of our societies.
And one shouldn’t neglect the fact that

in certain areas there’s a lot of success in
these fields. So, one is certainly not without
hope. The problem is you only have to have
a handful of failures and a handful of
perpetrators of terrorist events for the
situation to look very different indeed. ■
24
217 Broadway
212-608-4700
CRIME AND
COUNTER-TERRORISM:
OPPORTUNITIES AND
CHALLENGES
Remarks by Dr. John Reid

Home Secretary
United Kingdom Home Office
June 20, 2007

THE MILSTEIN
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
POLICY FORUM

HOWARD P. MILSTEIN

ment leaders.


Introduction by
G
Richard Aborn
ood morning. I am Richard Aborn.
I am the President of the Citizens
Crime Commission and I’m delighted
that you are all here this morning. I have to
tell you I feel a bit like the airline agent
that confidently overbooks expecting some
number to drop off, and that didn’t happen.
So we had a bit of a sell out. The John Jay

College is offering some compensation for
anybody who wants to give up their seat.
This is a very special event for us on a

number of levels. Clearly having the Home
Secretary of the United Kingdom is a great
pleasure for us. It is also a special event
for the Crime Commission, frankly for me
personally, to be here at John Jay.
Jeremy Travis has been a long time friend

to law enforcement, an active participant in
law enforcement. I don’t want to embarrass
him by saying he is one of the better thinkers
in law enforcement. And on a personal level,
a good friend of mine.
I’ve always appreciated that friendship.

We’ve been through many a battle together,
both in Washington and here, and mostly
successfully. And I’m sure we’ll have many
more coming up. So Jeremy, I thank you for
hosting us. And I thank your staff in particular.
They’ve been wonderful to work with.
I really appreciate that. Thank you for having

us. I also want to thank up front the staff of
the Home Secretary’s Office and the British
Consulate. I welcome all of our friends from
the United Kingdom, and I greatly appreciate
the support of both the Consulate staff and
the Home Secretary’s personal staff in putting
this together.
1
I must say you’re an absolute pleasure to
work with. So now let me get to the program
for today. We will run today the way we
always run our Crime Commission events,
which is I’ll make a few introductory comments
and introduce the man who has brought
this lecture series together, who will in turn
introduce the Home Secretary.
The Home Secretary will make some

remarks of whatever length he chooses, and
then we will have what I hope to be an active
Q and A. I’ve had the pleasure of spending
some time with Dr. Reid and I can tell you he
is terrific at answering questions.
He’s an engaging speaker and engages

well in the Q and A process. I don’t know why
that is. He may have had some experience with
that somewhere along the line. But he certainly
has honed that skill to a very high level.
And I’m sure it serves his nation and

perhaps the world quite well. After that, I
will invite questions from our guests. And
that’s where we will have the Q and A and
then I will invite questions from the press.
And I would just ask that the questions try
and remain on topic.
Let me set this up a little bit and then

introduce Howard. Those of you that have
been with us for one or all of the speakers
that we’ve had in this series, I think would
agree, that perhaps the common theme that
has emerged, not articulated, but nonetheless
a motif, has been the idea of transitions.
How is policing transitioning? How is

government national and foreign policy
transitioning because of the new threat of
terrorism? New in some ways to the U.S.,
not as new, tragically, to the UK. The idea of
transitioning, however, is certainly not new
to policing.
If you think in very large chunks, going

back to the mid 20th Century, patrolling had
2
already been replaced by the advent of the car.
But the 911 system was introduced which tran-
sitioned from normal patrolling into response.
We began to time response. How quickly

could we get from a 911 call to a scene? That
lasted up until probably the early ’90s when
actually in this City, there was a tremendous
amount of work done in response to the
very high crime rates around using the
emerging computer technology to apply
that to crime fighting.
How can we take the amount of data that

we were gathering out there and use it in a
format that will allow us to hold police officers
and their commanders accountable? But at
the same time develop sessions, Compstat,
that transferred knowledge from senior
commanders who were highly experienced
to field commanders who had problems in
their commands and needed a venue in which
to discuss them. And those of you that know
New York Compstat, I use discuss in quotes.
It was more than just a discussion at

times. Compstat really took hold in this
nation, and to some extent around the world,
and really became the dominant police
accountability, police management tool.
We then, tragically, I might say, because

of the attacks here in the United States and
to some extent because of the history of the
UK, transitioned into taking that basic
computer model and really focusing a lot on
the information that we were gathering.
And then converting that information into

intelligence. Meaning, what lessons are we
deriving from the information? Until we now
have a model that the UK has had for a while
and we now have in the U.S. which is really
intelligence led policing.
I can say with confidence that the police

forces in this country, certainly in the UK, are
at this point, at the top of their game. We are
3
seeing crime fighting capabilities throughout
the Western world. There are unprecedented
and, frankly, sustained declines in crime.
And the United Kingdom announced some

astonishing numbers regarding their declines.
So now, what is the next transition? And I
think we are probably coming up to one.
How do we take those core policing services

and apply, to use a military term, force multipliers?
How do we get beyond just using traditional
police and look at the other resources that
government has, the resources that industry
has and resources that the citizenry has
and marry those into more effective forces?
And you see this beginning to emerge

around the world as well. Real quickly, I was
in North India just a month ago working
with the police in Rajastan as they convert
from their style that frankly has had a lot
of problems with corruption, into a more
community oriented process.
I was in London just last week where I do

a lot of work with the British Transport Police
and the Met and Transport for London, thinking
about the issue, of the fear of crime in public
transport systems in London. How do you
tackle the fear of crime?
Not the reality of crime, but the fear of crime.

Because the London transport systems have
extremely low rates of crime. It’s unbelievable
how low they are. But yet there’s a high level
of fear.
So how do you approach that fear issue?

That psychological issue, both in a policing
environment and in a broader environment?
And we now have to ask those same questions
about terrorism.
How do we take the forces we have, inter-

nationally, military, nationally police and
intelligence agencies, use that information but
also multiply that to get at some of the thinking
4
behind why people radicalize? And then how
do we get them to de-radicalize, to use the
emerging term?
And if you think about that, that actually

transcends not just terrorism, but all the issues
of traditional crime fighting that we deal
with. Why do people become gang members?
Why do young kids become shooters? Why
do people coming out of jail recommit?
How do we stop those? That’s a different

question than we’ve asked in the past. So
it’s these transitions. And both the UK and
the United States are entering periods of
transition in their political apparatus. So with
that thought in mind, that has been, I think,
the theme of the series that Howard Milstein
has brought us.
Howard, as I’ve had the great pleasure of

introducing a number of times for you, is
truly one of the great philanthropists in town.
He is well known for that. He is extremely well
known for his business acumen. But what I
want to make sure is crystal clear is what a
tremendous friend to law enforcement he
has been, both at the Federal level and at the
State and the local level.
And I could go on for half an hour about

the things that he’s done. But he hasn’t just
given of his time and his resources. He’s also
been out there thinking about this issue. He is
actually one of the first people to call for the
citizenry to mobilize in a way that acts as
second responders, if you will, and helps police
and emergency services in response to national
events. Both in natural and intentional events.
And Howard, as you know, has been the

sponsor of this series. Without him, we would
not have had the Milstein Criminal Justice
Lecture Series. We’ve had a terrific series of
speakers. So Howard, I thank you for all that
you’ve done and I’d invite you to introduce
the Home Secretary. Thank you very much.
5
Introduction by
I
Howard P. Milstein
t is truly a special honor and privilege
for me to introduce today’s Criminal
Justice Policy Forum lecturer. Since the
days of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston
Churchill, Americans have spoken of a
“special relationship” between the United
States and the United Kingdom. While we
may be separated by a common language…
we are uniquely united in our heritage,
our traditions, and our deep commitment
to freedom and democracy.
In times of great historic global challenges,

there are no two countries closer in spirit or
commitment. From World War II through the
Cold War, from the iron curtain to the war on
terror, Britain has been led by truly great
statesmen who have forged close relationships
not just with our American presidents, but
also with the American people. Churchill…
Thatcher…and for a few more days, Tony Blair.
Few people have served Tony Blair with

such distinction or breadth of experience as
today’s speaker, Dr. John Reid.
Dr. John Reid, Britain’s Home Secretary,

has been a key ally and leader in the effort to
restore domestic security and international
tranquility in these difficult times. The Home
Office, as it is called in Britain, is responsible
for homeland security, counter-terrorism,
civil emergencies, and the day-to-day effort
against crime — and Dr. Reid has been a
friend and partner with the U.S. in these and
in so many other areas. Having also served
as Secretary of State for Health and for
Defense, there’s hardly a topic he cannot
address nor a question he cannot answer.
Of particular interest are Dr. Reid’s outreach

efforts to the Muslim community, his views
6
about the balance between state security
and individual liberty, and what America,
Britain and the world can do together, in
partnership, to reduce global tensions and
increase international dialogue.
But don’t let his pleasant Scottish demeanor

fool you. When it comes to fighting criminal
behavior, this man is tough as nails, and
deadly serious.
Please join me in a New York welcome for

an international statesman, Dr. John Reid.
7
Remarks by
T
Dr. John Reid
hank you very much. Don’t believe a
word he says. I’m from Glasgow. I’m
one of those delicate flowers from the
West of Scotland. Can I say I’m absolutely
delighted to be here today. And I give my
thanks to Jeremy, who I met this morning.
To Richard for his kind words in introduction.
And particularly to Howard there.
I’m delighted that you have confessed that

you are involved in what you called a sell-out,
Richard, and I’ve been accused of that by
the left-wing of my Party for decades now.
A continual process of selling out, they said.
I’m also delighted to be here in New York.
I had an interesting time in Washington.

I met a range of people. Michael Chertoff,
Alberto Gonzales, Fran Townsend at the
White House and Condi to discuss all of these
issues as well as a lot of practitioners in the
whole area of counter-terrorism and policing.
But I always like to come to New York.

Because I think, and what we have had to
face in the United Kingdom, there are so
many points at which we have related to, in
common effort, the people of the United
States and in some occasions, specific with
the people of New York.
We came through on July 7th two years

ago, some of the anguish that you felt. Not in
the scale. I always think that like experiencing
war, until you have come through something
like a tragedy of that nature, you can’t really
understand what it’s like.
And after, the bonds that are forced in the

crucible of adversity and tragedy are more
lasting than perhaps other bonds of friendship.
And also because in many endeavors we
had during the difficult times Howard, you
8
mentioned the struggle for the resolution of
the problem in that beautiful island of Ireland.
People in New York were staunch, some-

times not uncritical, friends of the efforts
we made. And I was Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland for a couple of years. It was
a huge experience. They give you a castle.
I don’t know about you, but I had never had
a castle before.
And they give you an experience which

it’s hard to describe. For somebody like me —
I’m a sort of mongrel. My grandfather was a
good Scottish Presbyterian. My grandmother
was a staunch Irish Catholic, and a bit of a
rebel at that.
So to have gone through that and then to

have ended up on my birthday on the eighth
of May standing installment watching Ian
Paisley and Martin McGinnis, that dream
ticket, become the First Minister and Deputy
First Minister of Northern Ireland, I have to say
to you is one of the most moving experiences
of my life.
I often think that if the government had

never done anything else, just to bring to an
end eight centuries of war and terrible, terrible
tragedy on that beautiful island, it would’ve
been worth having a labor government just
for that.
And certainly it was one of the things

that makes me think that my contribution,
however modest, and my participation in
that government was worth all of the effort
that we made. Next week, Tony Blair stands
down. It will come as no surprise to anyone
in the United Kingdom when I say I think
he’s been a fantastic Prime Minister.
I’m proud to have served with him. And

I will stand down with him. So I’m very glad
to hear Richard say you can do business
with me. My staff will give you my phone
number from next Friday.
9
I felt it appropriate to step down when
Tony has stepped down. You won’t know it
from his accent, but he’s a Scotsman. You
probably don’t know it from my cultured BBC
accent, I’m a Scotsman.
The new Prime Minister who’s coming in,

a great friend of mine, Gordon Brown is a
Scotsman, but we’ll be sure to give some of
the minor posts to the English just to balance
out the situation. In the meantime, I have
had the task, the latest task after defense of
dealing with some of the great issues that
confront all of us.
Managing in a world of huge mobility,

migration in a fair and effective fashion.
Reducing crime, which is the blight of the life
of ordinary people. And countering terrorism,
which is the threat to our freedoms and our
liberties and our livelihoods.
As well as to our lives. And I believe that

there are no more important issues which face
the people of all countries, certainly, than the
great challenges of that world. I would have
wished that with the end of the Cold War we
could’ve looked forward to a period of more
serene and less insecure challenges.
But alas, that is not the case because in

a perverse sense, those great glaciers of
the Cold War held everything frozen. It
suppressed old rivalries. Ethnic tensions.
Religious extremism.
It stopped mobility of people. It stopped

mobility of criminality as well. And one of
the things that’s happened after it, is we’ve
gone from a static world to a very fluid
world. But with that fluid world comes
not only opportunities, great opportunities
economically and travel and experience— but
assisted by transportation and the internet,
great challenges as well.
And that is the nature of progress, isn’t it?

It’s the nature of what was called transition.
10
That as we move from one face to another,
that dynamism that takes us there affords
great opportunities for individuals. But almost
always brings another side of the coin, which
is great dangers and challenges as well.
And that’s basically what I want to say

today. Now, I want to keep it now from now
on as tight as possible. But let me just spend
a few moments saying a couple of things
about this issue of transition, dynamism.
Particularly following on in sequence

from what was said there, Richard, I noticed,
talked about the policing input. The people
on the ground doing things with technology
and so on. Howard is associated with saying
“yes”, but on it’s own, that isn’t good
enough. Because you’ve got to liberate the
whole community, whether it’s in counter-
terrorism or whether it’s fighting crime and
bring them into it.
The question of both of those, I want to

go slightly further, particularly in crime, and
suggest that actually is not just producers and
providers of order. It is not just the citizenry
but actually sometimes the manufacturers
and producers of the commodities which
enhance the attractions of crime in a demonic
world where consumers are consistently
producing more commodities which give
great opportunities to ordinary citizens, new
inventions.
New gadgets. New information models.

But the very things that give the opportunities
and the attraction to the citizen become a new
arena and a new attraction for the thieves.
For the criminals. Whether it’s the internet
being used by international terrorists or
whether it’s the iPod and the phone being
used by the criminals themselves because a
new market opens up.
So what I’m going to suggest in the course

of what I say is that it is not only the providers
of law and order that matter, it’s not only the
11
citizenry who are the consumers, if you like.
The beneficiaries of that order. But it’s also
those in the market and the manufacturers
who are producing beneficial commodities
but also commodities which play into the
growth of new crime areas.
The dynamism of this transition. So every

time we catch up, I think it was Gladstone who
said, “The problem with the Irish question is
every time the British put forward with an
answer, the Irish change the question.” That
may or may not be true.
But it certainly is true in the field of

crime. That every time we find a solution to
one, then the criminals shift on to another.
Because they’re as ingenious as the best
marketing man. Now, we can struggle with
that, but we do not struggle as isolated towns,
cities or individuals or indeed nations.
We face it together in so many ways. And

that’s why I’m glad to be here in New York,
because you share, not only the capital city,
but with other cities in the United Kingdom,
so many things. You have to deal with
criminality, very successfully. You have to
deal with a terrible, terrible terrorist attack
as London has.
And to raise the morale of people after-

wards. So that is appropriate for the British
Home Secretary to be here with those challenges
that we face together. And some of them, we
have, insofar as our culture and our history
allows, forward parallel tracks in a sense,
because one of our great successes in Britain in
tackling crime in recent years and immensely
popular has been the reintroduction of
neighborhood policing.
Getting police out of the back offices, out

of cars and onto the streets. And the few words
I use are visible, accessible and responsive.
That is what people want. Supplementing it
with police community support officers who
are even more entrenched in the community
12
and wardens so that you form neighborhood
policing teams.
Get it out there. And the fascinating thing

about them is it tackles— and I know that
that’s part of getting out into the communities
being part of the policing here. But in our
case, it’s addressed a second, sort of similar
phenomena, that questioned neighborhood
policing because here you’ve had to deal
with the time lag between the reality of better
policing and crime reduction and then the
perception of it by the public.
And, in New York, it’s probably taken

eight, nine, ten years before it became fully
appreciated. In Britain, the fascinating thing
is not so much the time lag differential, it
is the differential in perception of security,
between those areas that have neighborhood
policing and those that don’t.
In short, even in areas where you have an

equal reduction of crime — in two different
areas, where you have that accompanied by
neighborhood policing in the streets, people
believe there has been a reduction in crime.
There’s a reduction in fear and an increase in
the feeling of security.
In areas where you have a reduction of

crime but it’s not accompanied by neigh-
borhood policing, by people seeing the
police on the street, they’re far more likely
to tend not to believe there has been a
reduction in crime.
So you reduce it in reality but from the

point of view of the citizen, the citizen doesn’t
feel any more secure or any less fear than they
previously did. And that is a differential
phenomena I think in which there is some
overlap between our experience and that of
elsewhere. And then this question of the
dynamism.
There are probably not that many cities

which are at the forefront of new commodities.
13
Hip, new gadgets. You know, being “with it”
than New York and London. Because you
know, when I come here, the thing that I
notice is everybody sounds to me alot like
Robert DeNiro.
You know, the first time I came to New

York the policeman just met me and he was
sort of dynamic. There was this throbbing
sort of dynamism about this town that I
just love. And part of that is people have
been with it, with gadgets, the latest sort of
technology that’s put at their disposal.
And to some extent that’s the same in

London as well. And we are going through a
transition in policing partly because we’re
going through unprecedented rate of change
in the world. Particularly in what you could
call the Western world. Now, I mean we’ve
been around in this planet about 500,000 years.
And yet, half of the knowledge has been

gained in the last 50. So we have increased
our knowledge base in the last 50 years by
as much as we did in the first half a million
years. And that is leading to a plethora of new
commodities which, again, as I said earlier,
increase the challenge.
So the unprecedented speed of change

and development in the 21st Century provides
us with those unique opportunities. We’re
wealthier. We’re more mobile. We’re more
knowledgeable than before. But as citizens
benefit from those opportunities, so do the
terrorists who exploit them or the criminals
who find new paths.
And that then presents us, in cities like New

York and London and in both our countries,
with hitherto unknown challenges. And
I just want to say something about that, about
the significant nature of the challenges
we face and how we, public and private
sectors, can address these challenges as we
go forward.
14
The threat we face from international
terrorism is unprecedented in scale but also
in its approach and its complexity. For the
first time, probably, the world is engaged in
a struggle with an aggressor whose identity,
motives and tactics are often unclear or
unknown. This is not like old conflicts where
there are definable enemies, the states with
definable areas and territories and a definable
time period, at the end of which there will be
a definable de-engagement and we will all
abide by the rules of the Geneva Convention
and transfer prisoners and so on.
This is a conflict that really is new in its

character as well as in its scale. It’s a new
type of struggle. But however you face this,
through military security, policing, armed
forces, intelligence, security agencies, let me
make my position absolutely clear. At heart,
this is a struggle for values.
It is a struggle for ideals and values. Two

competing sets of them. Now in case you
think that is just the idea of some sort of UK
liberal which will be the first time in my life
that has been given to me, let me just remind
you of the phrase that everyone knows but
very few people actually understand of
that great student of war and conflict, Von
Clausewitz.
He said in a much quoted phrase, “War is

the extension of politics by other means.”
What he actually was asserting was the
primacy in strategic terms of politics. The
engagement of ideas and values. And that
war was merely one way in which that gets
fought out when you can’t resolve the strategic
issue at the center of it.
So however we’re fighting, whether it’s

armed forces in Afghanistan or Iraq, whether
it’s our security and intelligence forces in
London and New York, at heart this is a clash
of values. It is people who want to impose
upon us a set of values that we do not want,
and by the way, want to impose on everyone;
15
including Muslims that don’t agree with
them, who will be branded betrayers of the
Muslim faith. And they will be massacred just
as surely as some people were when the witch
hunts were being carried out or the crusades
which started against Christian heretics.
That was the first crusade. So this isn’t a

new phenomena. But you know it is a battle
at heart for values. And it’s the commonality
of our cause with everyone including the
vast majority of Muslims that is necessary in
order to defeat that enemy. Having said all
that, it is of a complexity in character that
we’re not used to and therefore we’d better
be under no illusion.
It will be a long and a wide and a deep

struggle. It will be generations in length.
It will be fought at every single level, but at
heart it will be a battle between us and others
over this essential series of values which
you could, I suppose, talk about in terms of
toleration of other people’s point of view.
Freedom of speech and expression and

argumentation within the law. Equality of
all the citizens, including women. There’s
no second. With no one backing any of
these, you can’t compromise in any of these,
just because you claim you’ve got better
conscientious views than everyone else.
And the resolution of our difficulties and

disputes and arguments through democratic
means. That is a set of values which are worth
defending from those who would impinge
upon all of them. Now, if I just say something
briefly on the crime side. It would be naive to
look at terror as a threat which is independent
of the other challenges we face in the world.
It is international— and organized crime

very often supports and fuels the actions of
terrorists. And only by addressing all of these
issues can we defeat the terror threat. And
particularly, aggressors exploit so called white
collar crime.
16
Identity theft. Credit card fraud. Financial
conspiracy. All of that is increasingly being
linked to the terrorist’s struggle against us.
And one of the people I met that I didn’t
mention earlier, but at the request of Prime
Minister to be Brown, I met with Henry
Paulson at the Treasury, Secretary Paulson—
to discuss some of these issues.
Now, I don’t need to tell you here, in

New York, I’m absolutely certain the vast
majority of people here are aware that the
9/11 hijackers used 30 false identities. In
one case to obtain credit cards and $250,000
worth of debt. And I don’t need to tell you,
either, of al Qaeda’s threat to bleed us to
bankruptcy.
So there are a number of fronts in this,

including the link between criminality fraud
and terrorism and the alleged plot last year
in August, which fortunately we managed to
foil. Which had been not only an attempt to
take life but to destroy the commercial and
business confidence of the world and the UK
and the United States. And certainly to make
sure that people did not want to travel to
those two countries if that alleged plot had
been successful.
So there is an element of a linkage between

massive organized crime, white collar crime,
and terrorism itself. So how do we combat
this going forward? How do we ensure the
security? People combat the criminals and
the terrorists and ensure their values and
their economies are safer than they would
be. How do we develop a response that is fit
for the 21st Century?
I have refocused the Home Department

towards immigration, counter-terrorism and
crime and international crime. We used to
do lots of things. The Home Office, which I
have the honor to preside over, has been
around for 227 years.
17
Some people think that’s a very good
reason not to change it. I think if you’ve been
around for 227 years with the same format it
would be an idea just to update occasionally. So
we have readdressed and refocused the Home
Office towards those three great challenges.
But we have to basically make sure that

the characteristics of the threat against us,
which is that it is seamless. It is a long term
generational. It is politically driven. It has a
core mission based on a misrepresentation of
history but it’s about values and politics there.
Above all, it is innovative. The terrorists

constantly look for new ways of attacking
us, that that is replicated in our response.
And that’s what I’ve tried to do within the
new Home Office and the formation of the
Office of Security and Counter-terrorism,
within which there is a research information
communications unit.
That is a unit capable of arguing, of

addressing the big battle of ideas and values.
So the only way we will identify, understand
and ultimately defeat the challenges and
threats we face is by continuously evolving
our approach to stay one step ahead of
our opponents. And that’s the point about
transition.
We are trying to do that in terrorism. We

also have to do it in terms of crime. And that’s
when I come to the private sector. Not just the
police and the authorities, but those who are
the manufacturers of those things which are
leading to increased crime.
That is, the producers, the manufactures.

Industry themselves. They are the people
who, through a public-private partnership can
help us to get ahead of the latest crime wave.
The creativity and commercial knowledge of
business must be utilized in our efforts to
combat international terrorism but also
organized crime.
18
Because with a larger range of prevention
methods and detection techniques, a finger-
print— tips, the public will rightly expect us
to use them to reduce crime and ensure their
protection. I know in some areas these are
controversial. Identity cards. CCTV. But I
firmly believe that if we are not using the
latest means of technology which will
improve independent of politicians, the
great driving force of technology knowledge
will go on. And it will be deployed and
when it’s deployed it will be used by our
opponents, that is the terrorist and the criminals.
And if we’re not prepared to use it as part
of our armory of weaponry to defend the
ordinary citizens, then we will fail in our
duty. And that’s why when I formed the
Office of Security and Counter-terrorism, to
strengthen our counter-terrorist effort, I made
the involvement in the private sector a key
objective.
It is why, for instance, in the United

Kingdom, we’ve already launched the Security
Industry Suppliers Council as a vehicle to
encourage innovation within the commercial
sector to combat terror. And the organized
crime which fills it.
And it is also why, at a more street level

oriented arrangement, we have already
joined with Telecom’s Network Providers in
the UK to ensure that stolen mobile phones
are unusable by the thief. Not just the SIM
cards but the phone. Because if you can not
use a phone within 48 hours of it being
stolen, the market for thieving phones just goes.
And therefore by using the technological

means of switching off a phone, you actually
combat the impetus to crime in the first place.
To design out crime. Design it out. In the new
commodities, the way we designed it out so
successfully in many areas by working with
car manufacturers. We have now done that
with phone providers, who can switch off
telephones of a mobile nature within a
19
couple of days. We’re heading for an 85 percent
success rate and I’m sure it will be a major
weapon.
But now we face a new technology. Here

in the United States next week we’re launching
a new phone. A smart phone. A multi-function
phone which will allow you to photograph,
telephone, download music. I mean in my
day you sang in the bath.
Now you can talk to someone while

playing music and photographing anything
you want to do. The minute that comes onto
the market next week, there will be a huge
new expansion of the criminal direction
towards stealing it. Because they went from
mobile phones when we designed it and
now they go to Sat-Navs in cars. Now they
will go to that.
So if we’re going to do an effective job in

protecting that, the engagement has to be a
two-way business. The United Kingdom
government is keen to engage with business
and industries on how we can tackle crime
on the local, national, international scale.
Because only by working together with

industry can we get ahead of the criminal
himself. So we rely on those working in
industry to work with us. A recent forum on
mobile phone theft was pretty well attended
by key players in the industry. However,
I would like to have seen there Samsung,
Panasonic, NEC and HTC who are key to
develop a range of the people that we’re
working with.
And I believe that this is now a crucial

opportunity for these big organizations, you
may be associated with some of them, to
come together with the authorities to help us
to get one step ahead of the criminal by
designing out crime. And is a classic public
private partnership for the benefit of all of
our citizens.
20
And of course when we do that, we
need to learn from our international partners
because when new technologies and products
are introduced abroad before the United
Kingdom, like here, we rely on our friends
to share their potential. How can they help
us to stay ahead of the curve but also to
warn us about how they have been targets
by the criminal element. So manufacturers
on one side but also people like yourself,
Howard, and all of these who are here today.
Integrated between the providers and

the citizens, but I also believe private and
often small industry are the driving force of
innovative thought. That means working
together right across it.
Culminating in meeting Mayor Bloomberg

who has done me the favor of making a big
announcement today. I just want to ensure
you that this meeting is not so that I can
announce that I’m leaving the Labor Party.
But that would start rumor mills running
everywhere in the world.
21
Questions & Answers
Dr. John Reid
You now have the opportunity to question,
criticize, abuse, give me a standing ovation…
No, no, I didn’t mean it. Seriously.
But I do thank you in advance and I’m

going to take some questions now go ahead.
Fire away.
Q. Mr. Secretary, I’ve got to tell you first of

all, I’ve seldom heard this kind of clarity of
thought on this issue maybe since I’ve heard
the Prime Minister of Australia say that we
live with our plurality but if you want to live
by Shapia you have to get out. He said it. And
you have a similar clarity of thought. But
what I want to ask you is the following.
Obviously in your position, you need to

be optimistic. But if you have a situation where,
certainly I can tell you as a Trustee of the
University in observing academia nationally
and in particular the British union of professors
of late, I’m not overly optimistic that the
political leadership rises to this occasion
because I think they are more like the Lord
Mayor of London than they are like you. And
therefore, I’d like to ask you, do you think
that the world political leadership in the
West can rise to this occasion the way the
A. Well, I have a great respect for John

Prime Minister of Australia has?
Howard. I’ve met with him a couple of times

and he is an outstanding politician. No question
about that. There is an old phrase which I’m
quite fond of which I think is a good guide to
the way we should approach this.
It is “Pessimism of the intellect, Optimism
of the will.” I think we have to be big enough
to face up to the fact that when we talk about
the nature of this threat and the potential
22
duration of it, that we are not scared. When
we talk about the implications of losing in
this, that we aren’t doing it for the purpose
of depressing people, but we are doing it for
the purpose of being realistic and measuring
the scale of the challenge which faces us.
But accompanying that realistic appraisal,

which is the pessimism of the intellect, I have
always believed in optimism of the will and
the capacity of human beings ultimately to
rise to the challenge to defend that which is
of a higher moral value than those which
aren’t. And I think there are people who have
done that, who have articulated it.
And one of them is my own Prime Minister,

Tony Blair. I have to tell you on these great
issues, the one we discussed that are in the
cabinet table, I was party to those decisions.
I was there.
I took the decision. On Iraq. On Afghanistan.

I had the impression at the time that there
was lots of other people around the table.
That may be wrong, I understand now. Some
of them may have been making telephone
calls or having coffee outside or didn’t quite
know what was going on.
I did. And when you take that decision,

yes, you go through a very difficult period
because it’s in the nature of conflict that there
are deep dark valleys as well as sunny glens.
And sometimes that conflict goes on for a
long time. And I understand how difficult
it is for people in your country and in my
country to understand in the middle of that,
the assuredness of winning through it.
But I think we have to and that leads me

to a second quote which is a favorite of
mine, and I think it applies to politicians as
well as to soldiers to whom it was originally
applied by Napoleon. Napoleon once said
that the chief characteristic of a soldier
ought to be not courage, though that was
important, but endurance.
23
The capacity to keep going when things
look very difficult. I think that in the West
we have that capacity. I think at times others
may doubt it. Others may think that we
are weakened by materialism. That we are
unprepared to continue a long struggle to
protect non-material things, like a way of
life, a freedom of speech and so on. I think
that is wrong.
But the front thing is this, that I think it’s

a common threat to all who support those
values. Not just to Christians or Jews but to
the vast majority of Muslims who appreciate
and stand by that set of values. Because in
my reading, they’re not just British values or
U.S. values or human values.
They’re also Koranic values as well. It is

not for me to say that. That is for the Muslim
people themselves to debate. To discuss. But
those set of 21st Century values I believe
have, in general, given the condition of
human beings greater liberty and greater
dignity than ever before.
And I think that ultimately is what will

inspire us to go through. Now I know that
Gordon Brown takes the view about the
battle for values, indeed I think in one of our
newspapers this morning he’s repeated, some
of this in almost exact terms. So I think there
will be the courage and the character among
politicians to go to, and I give to you that
although I’m stepping down from govern-
ment, as Jerry Adams once famously said of
the IRA, “We’re not going away, you know.”
So I’m not going away either. Because I

think there’s an obligation upon all of us,
whether it is citizens, business leaders.
However humble the task we are doing, to
stand shoulder to shoulder with each other
and to defend that corpus of values that
gives us such meaning to our life. Because
without it, all the material benefits we have
are very little.
24
If you don’t have that. And we’ve seen
that sometimes in some of the worst
episodes of European history. So, we’re not
going to go back to that.
Q. What you said about technology as a

facilitator of our opponents in the struggle is
very important. Hard wires are relatively
stable and invulnerable to modern technological
disruption. Has any thought been given to
the value of old technology from a security
A. I don’t know if everybody heard that,

point of view?
but basically the old methods of transmitting,

like wired telephones and so on, make us
less vulnerable to a complete intervention by
terrorists or whatever who can destroy a
whole system. Well in a sense every system’s
vulnerable.
You know, I suppose you can shoot down

pigeons. So any way of sending messages
can be disrupted. But you are right, there
are two problems of the huge advance in
and reliance in technological systems of that
nature. One is that they become so integrated
and diffuse and absolutely necessary to
carry out the whole business and so on of a
nation that you become hugely vulnerable
by dependency on them.
Ironically of course, this is one of the

reasons we started off with the transmitting of
messages through ISP and the internet, which
was to make sure there was no vulnerability
to an intervention in the order chain for the
use of nuclear weaponry. I think. Probably
now have to get shot because I breached
some great secret. But I think I’m right in
saying just the same way computers were
developed by IBM, you know, with particular
security motivations.
That that was also part of the reason

for developing the sort of voice over ISP
25
type system for the chain of command. So
originally they were brought in to give a
degree of security from that vulnerability.
But of course the utter dependence in the
Western electronic communication means
that we are very vulnerable.
And yes, thought has been given to that.

There is another area in which thought is
being given and that has implications for ways
in which messages are transmitted from you
to me. It no longer is possible just to listen to
me talking to you on the phone increasingly
because it will go by various other routes.
So all I can say without going too deep in

this is yes, like most technological advances,
it has huge benefits for civil society, but offers
huge opportunities to damage civil society by
those who are of a malevolent disposition.
And a lot of thought has been given to it.
I’m not sure we’ve got the answers to it

all yet, but you’re absolutely right. You’re
hanging on to your old land line, are you?
Yeah, you don’t keep pigeons as well, do you?
I know, you’re on iPod’s now. We used to use
these things.
Q. Two questions. First, it’s a hot button

issue here in New York, the implementation
of a security camera system like they have in
London.
Do you think New York is missing the boat
on this and the benefits of implementing such
a security system outweighs any concerns
A. Look, all of us have got to decide how

about restrictions of civil liberties?
to use technology. Commensurate with their

own history and culture and public opinion.
That goes without saying.
So I can’t tell you what you should do in

New York. All I can tell you is what happens
in the United Kingdom. And that is we are
probably the first government, certainly in
26
modern history, where, at the point at which
the Prime Minister leaves after ten years, we
have achieved a 35 percent reduction in crime.
That is a huge reduction. There’s all sorts

of reasons for that. But one of them, I think,
is our use of anti-social behavior orders to
intervene early. It doesn’t go as far as your
zero tolerance policy, but it’s the same sort of
idea. Early intervention.
The second one is better, more efficient

use and effort by our policing better use of
technology. Now, you here, you’ve been
issuing Blackberries to people for communi-
cation. Great ideas. We don’t do that, but we
use CCTV cameras more widely. Point one,
they are greatly welcomed by the vast
majority of people.
If you look at subjects like ID cards in the

United Kingdom, you know, biometric ID cards,
we got 75 to 80 percent support of that. Because
most, what I would call punters, though I
believe that has a different connotation in
the United States— it just means members of
the public in Britain, take the view, “Well, if
this safeguards us, why wouldn’t we want to
do it and why are those people who are
against it so against it if they are not doing
anything they ought to be ashamed of?”
Now, that’s a very simple way of saying

what the public think, but that is what the
public think. And therefore they take the
same view in the United Kingdom about
CCTV cameras. We have a lot of Closed
Circuit Television Cameras.
They are immensely popular by ordi-

nary working people. Middle class people.
Particularly in areas like urban areas and the
middle of cities. I’m absolutely certain that
they have contributed towards a reduction in
crime. And even more, I’m absolutely certain
they have contributed to a feeling of greater
security.
27
Because if you’re going out in the city at
night and you know that there are CCTV
cameras around, you do feel a bit more safe
than would otherwise be the case. Indeed,
in one city, they’re so popular that they have
combined CCTV cameras with an audio so
that if you’re beginning to give somebody
hassle in the middle of the city, you’re liable
to hear a voice saying, “Please sir, don’t do
that. You know, otherwise you’ll end up in
trouble.”
If you’re throwing beer cans in the street,

the voice will say, “Would you please pick
that up and put it away?” If you’re asking
awkward questions at a breakfast, it’d say—
not yet. Not yet. Now, this is in one city.
And it’s being tried as a pilot.
But it’s immensely popular. Now, on the

other hand, the Westminster elite— they find
this all very difficult to understand. Which is
fine because they get protection. They get
chauffeur driven cars. They don’t stand in
bus queues and have people abuse them.
So there is something of a difference you

know, there’s an ongoing debate, but all I
would say is that for the vast majority of
people in the UK, this is something that they
don’t overly worry about. It is the job of
politicians always to make sure that when
we strengthen any form of surveillance,
however, that we, even where it is on such a
potentially disastrous crime as terrorism,
that we try and buttress strength and powers
with strength and scrutiny.
So that, you know, in the case of CCTV

and the United Kingdom, this would be
taken by the local elected representatives
who are nearer to the local people, who can
be removed more easily, in conjunction
with the local police. It isn’t, you know, the
central government that is saying that this
will be done.
28
So it’s been done in response to local people.
It’s very well supported. It’s contributed
towards the reduction in crime. And it’s also
contributed towards an increase in feeling
of security.
But it’s for New York to decide what

happens in New York. You know, I wouldn’t
dream of telling you. You wouldn’t dream
of listening to me anyway. You know, this
is New York. You do things your way. But
that’s how we feel in the UK.
Q. In the United States now, a big issue is

immigration. And as some reporters say,
illegal immigration. In the UK, if you have
illegal immigrants enter the country, are they
given, quote, amnesty if they’ve been there for
a period of time?
What do you do with them? Do you send

them back to the countries where they came
from? Depending upon the size and the
number of people who are, quote, illegal
immigrants? This is a very, difficult issue
A.
now for many people.
Okay, it is a difficult issue but it’s one

which has got to be faced up to. And I
mentioned Mayor Bloomberg this morning.
I’ll be meeting him later today. And I mean
I think that he’s been a highly successful
mayor. I think whatever party you’re in, he’s
a man of considerable standing and stature.
And that won’t be affected by his party

affiliation. And one of the reasons I’m
delighted I’m seeing him today is because I
think he faces up to big questions like this.
Whether it’s, you know, climate change or
immigration or guns and their effect. And
we all as politicians have a duty to face up to
these questions.
In the United Kingdom, that is reinforced

by the fact that if you ask people what are
their biggest concerns, ten years ago when
29
the Labor Government came in, the biggest
concern was unemployment. The fear and
insecurity of unemployment and economic
failure.
Now, the good news is that unemployment

and its associated ills is still the highest
concern of everyone in France. But not in
the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom,
it has gone down hugely. And whereas we
used to worry about that issue, people now
rightly, wrongly, worry about immigration
and insist that it is the top priority that be
managed fairly and effectively.
Second, by the way, is reducing crime and

countering terrorism and foreign affairs
defense associated issues. So we have to face
up to this. And we have an unknown quantity
of illegal immigrants in this country. Ever
since the last conservative Home Secretary
admitted openly that we didn’t have a figure
for it.
Because, almost by definition, it was

difficult to count. But no one has suggested is
anything like the problem in terms of numbers
here I’ve heard figures of 11 million and so
on mentioned here. So I’m not suggesting at
all that anything that we think about this
issue somehow can just be replicated here.
I understand that you are having a lively

debate. I met Ted Kennedy yesterday among
others and I’ve discussed immigration with
Michael Chertoff. And I know the discussion’s
going. You must make that decision here in
the context of the United States.
A country that’s been based on immigrants

coming. A country that has been hugely
dynamic in terms of its economy where
immigrants have played a huge role. So the
circumstances here are different from ours.
But in my country, the key it is the truth that
up until a few years ago, we had a huge
influx of potentially illegal immigrants.
30
Some of them claiming asylum on false
grounds which is not only a threat to our
system of managing fairly and effective
immigration. But also I believe was a danger
to our genuine wish to protect genuine
asylum seekers and genuine refugees which
is what we would all do.
And if the system was misused and

brought into disrepute on a wide scale, then
we would begin to lose that possession—
with the public guaranteeing protection for
asylum seekers and genuine refugees. So we
have brought in stricter controls. Reinforced
the borders. New technology.
Exported our borders so that people

have to have biometric passports or visas.
Fingerprint. All this is before they come to
our country. So when they arrive in the
United Kingdom, they can’t just claim
they’ve lost all their papers. Because you
have an identity. Something they can identify
when they come in.
And in the course of that, all of that reno-

vation, people have suggested to me that we
should have an amnesty. I have rejected that
and I’ve rejected it primarily because in the
United Kingdom situation, I think it would
send a signal to the world that says all of
these measures that we have just taken to try
and diminish the misuse of our system of
immigration, actually they don’t really matter,
because if you do manage to come here and
stay for a while illegally, then we’ll just
incorporate you within the UK.
But as I say, that isn’t necessarily to say

that this is a solution to your question here.
You have to decide it on U.S. grounds. And
I know that John McCain, Ted Kennedy,
all sorts of people have been trying to get
this through in a way that balances right
across the political spectrum.
31
Q. You talked about the need to address
why people become radicalized in the context
of terrorism. In Pakistan in the last few days,
they’ve been very angered by the British
decision to award a Knighthood to Rushdie
and somebody even said that this was likely
to fuel terrorism. How does these kind of
decisions work in the international arena and
A. Well, as I said, I think we have a set of

what do you think of that reaction?
values that accord people honors when they

contribute towards literature, even when
we don’t agree with their point of view. I
think it was one of the great figures of the
enlightenment said I don’t agree with your
point of view but I’d die for your right to
express it. That is our value.
That’s what we stand by. And a lot of

people were upset when John Cleese made
The Life Of Brian. A lot of Christians were
upset. A lot Jewish people were upset when
Mel Gibson made a film. So we have to be
sensitive to the views of people of religion.
People who have very strong views. Of

course we do. But I think that we all appre-
ciate that in the long run, a protection of the
right to express your views in literature, in
argument, in politics is of overriding political
value to our societies. Always within the law
and within that legal frame that we in the
United Kingdom are actually more strict
than, say, the United States.
We have very strong laws against promot-

ing racial intolerance. Encouraging violence
against others. We have introduced new laws
against glorifying terrorism. So it isn’t a free for
all. We have thought very carefully about it.
But wherever possible, what ought to be

protected is the right to express your opinion.
The tolerance for each other’s points of view.
And that is a central part of our beliefs. And
I don’t think we should apologize for that.
32
Q. Dr. Reid, in New York we have a pro-
gram— it’s a campaign, if you see something,
say something. And despite 9/11, now there
still seems to be an apathy concerning New
Yorkers and trying to change their mindset
to actually engage in that area. There have
been some wonderful initiatives, for example,
where community members are trained to
engage other individuals in the event of an
emergency. But in addition to that, do you have
some suggestions on how we could internalize
A.
that type of concept for New Yorkers?
Well, I don’t have any magic bullet to

do that. On one occasion I went to engage
with members of a Muslim community in
an area in London. And found myself being
screamed and shouted at by one of these
bullies who do not want other people to be
able to express their opinion.
And they did it. Well, whether or not they

did it to frighten me, that isn’t going to work,
but I suspect it was actually to intimidate the
members of the Muslim community them-
selves, including women. And I believe that
we have to create the space where members
of the Muslim community are helped to
stand up against the bullies in their midst.
And that is particularly true of women who
would suffer most in the deprivation of their
equal citizenship if some of these people had
their way.
Not true Muslims. Not the majority of

Muslims. But the fanatics who want to
impose their views on others. And that leads
me to the center part of your question. And it
is my profound belief that while intelligence
and security forces and police are necessary
to defeat terrorism, it will never be sufficient
unless the whole community is engaged
against the terrorist.
And it is our job to unite that community.

To get everyone to recognize that this threat
33
is common to all of us. And it will only be
defeated by a response that is from all of us.
And there are two groups of people who
want to divide as we are trying to unite.
And both of them are of fascist disposition.

On one wing are the apologists and advocates
of al Qaeda who want untruthfully to argue
that there is a war by everyone else on Islam.
That it’s everyone against Islam. It is untrue
but that’s their narrative.
And then you’ve got the mirror image in

certain parts of Europe, including in our
country where the more traditional European
fascists who argue that the great problem is
that there’s a war by all Muslims against the
rest of us. That it’s Islam as a whole and
everyone in it who wants against us.
Who want to defeat us. That is absolutely

untrue as well. But the irony here is that if
both of those extremes are actually arguing
the same thing in order to divide us. And we
have to assert very profoundly, continually,
that this is a common threat of all of us
against the extremists.
It is not a battle between civilizations.

It is a battle of civilization against those
who would destroy all the civilized tenets
that we have come to recognize as being true
human values.
And that is the answer to your question.

Yes, whether it’s New York or London or
anywhere else, we will only truly defeat
those who wish to impose their views upon
us by blind force, including impose their
views on other Islams, if all of us stand
shoulder to shoulder together against that.
And that must be our primary objective.
And in doing that, I come back to the

phrase I used at the beginning. Yes, I think
it can be done. I think we can endure. And
I think we can come through it in the end.
34
And it is proper that we look pessimistically
and realistically at it, but have optimism in
the world because the indomitable nature of
human spirit and the protection of our central
values and our freedoms is immeasurably
stronger than the bombs and bullets and
terrible atrocities of the terrorists.
They may win the minutes in this place

or that place, but eventually, that set of values
that we represent will win through.
Thank you very much indeed for the

chance to come and give you that picture.
RICHARD ABORN: Well, I don’t think any-

one could have more eloquently explained
the fight that’s in front of us and the best
tool we have to fight. Now Home Secretary,
I just can not thank you enough for your
remarks. They were truly wonderful, incredi-
bly comprehensive and very thoughtful.
Thank you all very much. And thank you

all for attending. I wish you all a good summer
and we will see you again in the Fall. Thank
you for being with us. ■
35
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212-608-4700

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M I LS TEIN CRIMINAL JUSTICE P O L I C Y F O R U M

Remarks by Robert S. Mueller,

Citizens Crime Commission

Since 2002, the Citizens

Attendance is limited to 150 invited guests drawn

The Citizens Crime Commission of New York City

Howard and Edward Milstein are prominent New York

For those of you not familiar with our

I would now like to call to the podium

hank you for your kind words, Tom.

Each year our speaker has been top-notch.

The whole concept of domestic security

But it cannot do the job alone. As a citizen

Giving ordinary citizens a useful role

The time is right for community service for

Now let's turn to a more refined view.

Director Mueller was named to his current

Bob Mueller moved to the Department

Director Mueller earned his spurs in the

And I shouldn't leave out that he is a

Let me start if I could with an update on

And it requires all of us together, crippling

We have taken the fight to al Qaeda. To

And here in the United States we have

And I must say that these successes have

Federal, state, local, international has

But essentially to preventing future ter-

We have taken a number of steps to build

We have set up a National Joint Terrorism

And as a result of these efforts, we are

We're also completely upgrading our

And it is for these reasons that I believe

But for those of us, many of this room,

It's a challenge that demands dedication.

I want to close with a story that says a

Lenny was an exceptional agent and

Several days after September 11th, I

And he recounted how Lenny had served

And Chris O'Connell, you see, was Lenny's

Were he alive today, I think Lenny would

I'm proud to be part of that team. And I

Q. Mr. Mueller. Barry Cunningham, Fox 5

A. I must confess that the only knowledge

Q. Mr. Mueller, you mentioned over the

A. Well, let me speak generally to the first

Now where a particular group is in its

In terms of the breaking down of the

And that kind of day-to-day not working

And so that sharing of information,

Q. Mr. Mueller, when you talk about the

A. We've got our eye on it. Yes, sir. I didn't

Q. Alvin Bessent with Newsday. Congres-

A. Well, yeah I've been in Washington for

I think around the country, we and our

Q. Robert Laird from the Daily News.

A. Since the 1970’s there have been a

Q. Senator Shelby in Washington recently

A. Well, I would respectfully differ with

TOM REPPETTO: That is the more typical

A. It's a more typical type of question to

Q. Since the creation of Homeland Security,

A. No, since Tom Ridge has been in, we

TOM REPPETTO: There are other people in

Q. Director Mueller, what are the FBI's