Remarks by the Honorable Michael E. Leiter, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, before the Aspen Institute, Washington, DC, April 9, 2009   [open pdf - 140KB]

These are the remarks by the Honorable Michael E. Leiter, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, before the Aspen Institute, Washington, DC, on April 9, 2009. From the text: "It is very nice to be here today, and I want to split my talk -- which I've been assigned 15 to 20 minutes and I will really try to honor that. It's in three parts. Very, very quickly I do want to give an overview of what I do at NCTC because although we've been around now for coming up on five years -- not yet five years -- I think it's important to remind people what we do because frankly, even the people with whom I work on a daily basis aren't always sure. Second, I want to focus most of my comments on the terrorism threat that I see today -- how it's changed, how it's morphed, and what we're facing I think into the future. And finally I want to at least touch on some of the challenges that I think we see in the coming years and how I think that the new administration is relatively well-postured to respond to those. And I think that will also be a good starting point for the questions, and I'm sure some folks especially, like Pam and Eric on my left have for me today."