So without getting into the specifics, I can tell you that to the extent that investigation is a relatively important investigation and meaningful, the president would have been periodically briefed.

People talk about the Patriot Act that was passed immediately in the wake of September 11. What the Patriot Act did was break down the walls between the various agencies.

All I'm going to tell you is investigations, whether it be this and others, where you have partial facts, analysts, agents are always trying to interpret what those facts mean, extrapolate from them what they mean.

And so every one of us in the FBI, I don't care if it's a file clerk someplace or an agent there or a computer specialist, understands that our main mission is to protect the public from another September 11, another terrorist attack.

I think around the world, our agents are the best collectors of information you'll find.

But since September 11, we have made every effort to try to work closely with state and local law enforcement.

I didn't know the organization, but the one thing you can say about the FBI, it's tremendously professional.