Prior to the passage of the Patriot Act, it was very difficult - often impossible - for us to share information with the Central Intelligence Agency, with NSA, with the other intelligence agencies, and likewise, for them to share information with us.

I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war.

In the context of September 11, there were so many that lost their lives that - how do you single out one person? There were so many acts of heroism that day from so many people, whether it be firemen and police officers in New York and our agents also.

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

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.

In the last 10 years, in narcotics task forces, in a number of violent crime task forces, we've worked very closely together with state and local law enforcement.

We had to address information technology in the ways we had not before and give the agents the tools that they need to do their job more efficiently and more expeditiously.