US President Announces Details of New Counter-terrorism Center

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, February 15, 2003

US President Announces Details of New Counter-terrorism Center

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US President George W. Bush on Friday announced details of a new Terrorist Threat Integration Center, saying that counter-terrorism analysts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency will work under a single roof to detect and prevent terrorist attacks.

"The goal is to develop a comprehensive picture of terrorist activity," Bush said in a speech at the FBI headquarters. "We're collecting a lot of information and we're going to share it in a way that enables us to do our jobs as you expect us to do."

The new US counter-terrorism center, which was announced by President Bush last month in the State of the Union address, will begin working on May 1 at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in northern Virginia.

The center is responsible for analyzing foreign and domestic intelligence collected throughout the country to prevent future terrorist attacks, according to the White House.

The center "will have unfettered access to all terrorist threatintelligence information, from raw reports to finished analytic assessments, available to the US government," the White House saidFriday.

The center will be moved to a yet-to-be chosen facility and itsstaff will increase from 60 to 300, according to a fact sheet of the White House.

The center will report directly to CIA Director George Tenet, but the FBI employees working there will remain under the authority of FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Bush said the FBI and the CIA are cooperating as never before and that the FBI understands that its first responsibility is "to prevent the enemy from hitting us and hurting us."

"We're trying to protect you. We're doing everything in our power to make sure the homeland is secure," he said in the speech.

"Across the world, we are tracking and confronting and defeating international terror. Within our own country, we're taking unprecedented measures to protect the American people."

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