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Skriven 2007-02-20 23:31:10 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0702206) for Tue, 2007 Feb 20
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Remarks by the President at the Ceremonial Swearing-In for the Director of
National Intelligence
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 20, 2007

Remarks by the President at the Ceremonial Swearing-In for the Director of
National Intelligence



REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT

AT THE CEREMONIAL SWEARING-IN

FOR THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Bolling Air Force Base

Washington, D.C.

10:16 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thanks for the warm welcome. Good morning. I'm proud to be
here at Bolling Air Force Base to congratulate Mike McConnell on becoming
our nation's second Director of National Intelligence. I'm really pleased
that Mike's wife, Terry; his four children, Erin, Mark, Jennifer, and
Christine; their grandchildren; his sister -- (laughter) -- and other
family members have joined us. It's a big deal to watch your dad and
granddad get sworn in to a position of this importance.

I appreciate members of my administration who have joined us, in particular
the Secretary of Defense, Bob Gates; General Michael Hayden, Director of
the CIA; Bob Mueller, Director of the FBI; and other important figures to
numerous to mention. Thank you for serving our country.

I appreciate the members of the intelligence community who have joined us.
Part of the reason I have come is to honor this good man, and part of the
reason I have come is to honor your good work. (Applause.) This nation owes
you a debt of gratitude.

The Director of National Intelligence holds one of the most difficult and
important positions in our government. In this time of war -- and we are a
nation at war -- the President and his national security team must have the
best intelligence about the plans and purpose of the enemy. And the job of
the Director of National Intelligence is to ensure that we do. The Director
of National Intelligence is the President's principal advisor on
intelligence matters. He is also the leader of our entire intelligence
community. He advises me about the national intelligence budget. He
oversees the collection and analysis of intelligence information. He works
to ensure that all of our intelligence agencies and offices work together
as a single unified enterprise.

These are enormous challenges, and Mike McConnell has the experience and
the character and the talent to meet them. He spent most of his adult life
working in the intelligence world. He served as the executive assistant to
the Director of Naval Intelligence, as the Chief of Naval Forces division
at the National Security Agency, as Director of Intelligence for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff during Operation Desert Storm, and as the Director for the
National Security Agency. He's got a solid resume.

He also earned our nation's highest award for service in the intelligence
field. He not only has got a good resume, he backed it up with good action.
His work over a career spanning three decades is earning the admiration of
his colleagues, the respect of the intelligence community, and a reputation
in Washington for personal integrity and effective leadership. In short,
you're going to like working with him, and so am I.

Mike's long experience gives him a unique understanding of the threats we
face in this new century. He knows that the terrorists who struck America
on September the 11th, 2001 are determined to strike our nation again. He
understands that the enemy uses the tools of our modern economy -- from
rapid transportation, to instant communications, to global finance -- to
spread their extremist ideology, and facilitate new attacks.

He knows that his task as the Director of National Intelligence is to make
certain that America stays ahead of this enemy and learns their intentions
before they strike. He knows that we must stop them from harming our
citizens; that the most important task of this government of ours is to
protect the American people.

In his new position, Mike builds on the work of an outstanding leader of
our intelligence community: Ambassador John Negroponte. The creation of the
Director of National Intelligence was one of the most important reforms
enacted in response to the attacks of September the 11th. John Negroponte
was the first person to fill this new and essential position. He did so
with talent and distinction.

During his time in office, John established the DNI as a core member of my
national security team. He increased the unity of our intelligence
community. He helped strengthen our national counterterrorism capabilities
and improved information sharing between our intelligence and law
enforcement communities.

John's vision and vigilance helped keep the American people safe from harm.
I appreciate his leadership as America's first Director of National
Intelligence, and I thank him for agreeing to continue to serve our country
as Deputy Secretary of State.

Mike McConnell will expand on the vital reforms that John Negroponte set in
motion. I've asked Mike to focus on several key areas. I've asked him to
better integrate the intelligence community, making our different
intelligence agencies and offices stronger, more collaborative, and better
focused on the needs of their customers.

I've asked him to improve information sharing within the intelligence
community and with officials at all levels of our government, so everyone
responsible for the security of our communities has the intelligence they
need to do their jobs. I've asked him to ensure that our intelligence
agency focus on bringing in more Americans with language skills and
cultural awareness necessary to meet the threats of this new century. I've
asked him to restore agility and excellence to our acquisition community,
and ensure that our nation invest in the right intelligence technologies.
I've asked him to ensure that America has the dynamic intelligence
collection and high-quality analysis that we need to protect our country
and to win this war against these extremists and radicals.

As he carries out his new duties, Mike McConnell will be relying on the
thousands of dedicated intelligence professionals who work day and night to
keep us safe. They are America's first line of defense against the
terrorists. And while many of their accomplishments must remain secret to
our fellow citizens, those accomplishments are known to me. And they're
doing good work. You're doing good work. And the American people owe you a
strong debt of gratitude. I appreciate your willingness to take on the
difficult and dangerous assignments. And you just need to know, you've got
the full support of this government and the American people.

Our intelligence community is going to have an able leader in Mike
McConnell. I want to thank Congress for swiftly confirming Mike to this
vital position. I look forward to working with him as a key member of my
national security team. I'm anxious to have him in that Oval Office every
morning. (Laughter.) I hope he's anxious to show up. (Laughter.)

He'll find that I value the intelligence products that you create. He's
going to find that the intelligence product is an important part of my
strategic thought, and important part of helping me get this government to
respond to do our most important duty, which is to protect you.

I look forward to working with Mike. I'm comfortable in knowing this is a
good man who cares about one thing only, and that's his country. And I
thank his family for supporting him as he returns to government service.

And now, I ask my Chief of Staff Josh Bolten to administer the oath of
office. (Applause.)

(The oath is administered.) (Applause.)

DIRECTOR McCONNELL: Thank you. Thank you very much for that warm welcome.
Mr. President, indeed, we thank you for being here this morning. We, your
intelligence community, are honored by your presence.

I also want to thank Mr. Bolten for swearing me in. I'd like to take a
moment to acknowledge Secretary of Defense Gates, my friend for more than
15 years, and a predecessor who held this position as the Director of
Central Intelligence under another President Bush.

My esteemed colleagues, and of course, my family, thank you for being here.

Last month, I was honored by the President to be nominated to serve as the
nation's second Director of National Intelligence. Today, that honor is
matched only by the excitement I feel in taking on the work before us now,
to further reform and integrate America's intelligence community for better
collaboration as the President has charged.

I am most grateful for the hard work and the many accomplishments of
Ambassador Negroponte. The President, the Secretary of Defense -- Secretary
of State Rice, the State Department, and indeed, the nation are fortunate
to have him serving as the Deputy Director of -- the Deputy Secretary of
State, pardon me.

For a person who began a public service career 40 years ago this summer as
an ensign serving in Vietnam, this is an opportunity and a privilege of a
lifetime. Mr. President, I am humbled by your trust, and I'm most
encouraged by your continued commitment to the transformation of the
intelligence community, to not only serve you better, but to better serve
our national leadership in the future.

It is your commitment and your resolve that excites our community of 16
intelligence organizations. After only a few days on the job, I can tell
you, it is a commitment that is shared by the dedicated men and women who
make intelligence service to the nation their chosen profession.

We take on this work of strengthening and reforming the intelligence
community at a challenging time in our nation's history. Many of the
developments that have made America so productive and prosperous -- the
rise of globalization, rapid transportation, global connectivity, and ever
advancing technology -- also have made us more vulnerable to threats such
as terrorism.

Taking advantage of these advances in technology, today's threats move at
increasing speeds. The time needed to develop a terrorist plot,
communicated around the globe, and put it into motion has been drastically
reduced. The time line is no longer a calendar, it is a watch.

While the threats have changed, our responsibilities endure. Mr. President,
on behalf of the intelligence community, I accept the charge you have given
us, and we will dedicate ourselves to making the needed changes for more
effectiveness in serving you and in serving the nation. We will focus on
our people, our policies, our collection, our technology, our analysis, and
our operational results in a way that provides accountability to you, the
Congress, and the American people.

To that end, we will revamp security and workforce policies of past. Our
nation requires that we have the best and brightest of our citizens in our
ranks to fight a very different enemy. The old policies have hampered some
common sense reforms, such as hiring first and second generation Americans
who possess native language skills, cultural insights, and a keen
understanding of the threats we face.

To meet these threats at home, we need an intelligence community that
effectively merges foreign and domestic intelligence, something that my
generation was restricted from doing before the tragedy of 9/11. With the
FBI's national security branch fully integrated into the intelligence
community, we need to apply community-wide standards to human intelligence
collection and dissemination, and work more effectively to share across
organizational boundaries at the federal, state, local, and tribal level.

Of course, in this work, we will continue to conduct ourselves consistent
with the Constitution, our nation's laws, to protect privacy and guarantee
civil liberties of our citizens. In this area of technology, we need to
recapture the acquisition excellence of the Cold War. In that era, drawing
on bipartisan consensus for funding and for program stability, and using
the Director of Central Intelligence's special authorities for acquisition,
the community was able to move with agility and speed to create new
technologies and new capabilities that were only imagined earlier. We must
create an acquisition environment in this community that will continue to
make American intelligence the most effective in the world.

Finally, Mr. President, I want to say a few words about the people in this
community, America's intelligence professionals. Tom Brokaw used the term
"the Greatest Generation" when he wrote of Americans who served in World
War II. That was a time when the country and our allies were fighting
another ideology: fascism. Both of our fathers were members of that
Greatest Generation, your father fighting in the Pacific, and mine fighting
for four years in North Africa and in Europe. They both fought so that
others may know freedom.

If Mr. Brokaw were writing another book today, he might call those who
served and prevailed in the Cold War, "the Second Greatest Generation,"
working to help the free world defeat another ideology: communism.

I would like to salute the members of the intelligence community who have
served in the long Cold War, lasting almost five decades. From human
intelligence to creating new space-based technologies, the men and women of
the intelligence community of that era served the nation in silence to
provide the information our leadership needed to prevail. I would like to
challenge our new generation of intelligence professionals to become "the
Third Greatest Generation" in serving the nation to defeat today's threats
to our freedoms and our way of life. I know that you're up to it. I would
ask that we reflect on the service and sacrifices of those who went before,
and to provide the information and service so vital to the nation's
leadership.

Mr. President, you've given us a charge today to make the intelligence
community more effective in protecting the nation. On behalf of the men and
women who make up this community -- the Third Greatest Generation, if I may
-- we pledge to do all in our power to make the nation safe.

Thank you, and God bless America. (Applause.)

END 10:35 A.M. EST

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