Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo at the University of Texas Annual National Security Forum

October 12, 2017

Good afternoon everyone. It's great to be in Texas, and a privilege to be with you here at UT Austin. I very much look forward to our conversation today with Stephen Slick and to taking your questions.

Espionage—the art and science of running assets and stealing secrets. This professional activity is at the heart of the organization I am now privileged to lead.

In America, we don't do espionage for fun, although it often does bring joy and professional satisfaction. We don't do it to help American businesses or to gain information about Americans.

No, in our Republic, the CIA's espionage is aimed at the singular purpose of collecting foreign intelligence to keep America safe. Period. Full stop.

I raise this, because while it may seem trite, or even pedantic, it is, as I will share with you today, central to the effectiveness of the team I lead. So that will be my first point: the effectiveness derived from conducting espionage that is solely focused on supporting America's national security.

The second thing you must know is that the CIA, to be successful, must be aggressive, vicious, unforgiving, relentless — you pick the word. We must every minute be focused on crushing our enemies and providing unfair advantage for our diplomats, our military and our President.

This too may seem obvious, but it has not always been so straightforward. Today, I want to share with you why this matters and how we are punishing our enemies in order to defeat them.

But before I return to why the purpose of CIA's espionage is so central to our success and to the fact that unceasing risk-taking is foundational, a quick reminder...

At this very moment, there's a CIA team preparing for a mission in a very dangerous part of the world. There's not much of a US footprint there, nor is it a place where our brothers and sisters in the military can operate.

The infrastructure our officers will need there will be built by the Agency's support specialists, who can set up shop anywhere on the planet. The communications and surveillance equipment they require will be provided by our science and technology experts, whose achievements are legendary. And if there's a need for cyber support, our Directorate of Digital Innovation staff will troubleshoot for them.

The point is that CIA wouldn't be adding much value to the national security effort—or providing value for American taxpayers—if we confined ourselves to the relative comfort of world capitals and fancy embassies. The secrets of greatest utility are typically the ones embedded within the most rugged and hostile environments and possessed by those who do not share American values. If President Trump is to make the right policy choices there, he needs to understand the facts on the ground in the grittiest back alleys, densest jungles—in the hard places.

Every day, including this one, CIA officers take extraordinary risks to put crucial intelligence in the hands of our President. A few weeks back I was with an officer a bit younger than most of you in this room, had early that morning come back from an operation that would be rejected as implausible by any worthy publisher. The President rightly counts on us to answer his questions about global threats, trends, and hotspots. And if we do our job right, we give an enormously unfair advantage to him and his top policymakers when it comes to dealing with foreign challenges.

Now that our heads are collectively set in the world in which the CIA operates, back to the main mission for today.

The CIA's Purpose and Why It Matters—A Comparison

So, why do we do what we do? I don't mean simply why do we conduct intelligence. That's obvious.

The important question is: For what purpose do we conduct espionage? This purpose matters. Let me show it by comparing our efforts with those of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

At our founding, Americans were deeply skeptical of collecting intelligence, leaving the United States alone among the great powers in being reluctant to even get into the spy business. It took two world wars before CIA was established in 1947 as America's first comprehensive peacetime intelligence agency.

Like all other elements of the US national security community, we take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. We strictly abide by our nation's laws. We're subject to oversight by the elected representatives of our fellow citizens.

And as I said, because we conduct espionage that is solely aimed at supporting our country's national security, we work with a sense of duty, purpose, and righteous resolve—and we're a lot more effective because of it.

Let's compare this with the intelligence service of the world's largest state sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The MOIS and IRGC intel services simply can't be as effective as the