world of politics all at your fingertips. also stay current with the latest episodes of washington journal and find scheduling information for c-span and c-span radio, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. c-span now is available at the apple store and google play. download it for free today. c-span now, your front row seat to washington anytime, anywhere. tuesday, pga tour executives testify on the group's partnership with liv golf, a go lf tour owned by saudi arabia. watch the subcommittee hearing live at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3, c-span now, or onlin at c-span.org. >> fbi director christopher wray talked about the bureau's values and mission during his speech at a fourth circuit judicial conference in greenville, north carolina and the importance of democratic principles and the

rule of law in the work of the fbi. director wray once served as a law clerk to a fourth circuit judge in the early 1990's after graduating from yale law school. >> good afternoon. if i could have your attention -- is this working? good afternoon, everybody. if i could have your attention please. thank you very much, everybody. if i could please have your attention. we want to go ahead and get started with the program this afternoon. for those of you who do not know who i am, i am albert deas, one of the judges of the u.s. court of appeals for the fourth circuit. judge gregory is safe and sound in the front and will be for the next week or so. and will be for the next week or so. my job this afternoon is to

introduce the person who will introduce our guest speaker, fbi director chris ray. you may think that is odd, but you will see why i'm doing this in a moment. this morning, she spoke about this hope in respect to the new generation of lawyers and young people who will hopefully change and write many of the wrongs that she correctly identified in her remarks. as judges we have a unique opportunity to nurture and mentor young people, our law clerks. one of the great joys of being a judge is the ability to work with such a talented group of young people who are truly committed to the notion of justice. it is even more rewarding to see and they go out and accomplish great things. that is part of the reason i'm

here today. william miller who is to my far right was in the group of law clerks that i had when i came on the federal bench. he had been in practice for a few years and came to join me for the first 18 months as i sat for a federal circuit judge. the judges in the audience, if you remember the first year of the event, you are trying to figure out which in this up, where the bathrooms are, where you will sit and where you will live. you don't have a lot of time to mentor your law clerks. they have to be a little bit on their own. i didn't have any issues with respect to william. he even back then was much more mature beyond his years. i think that he has aged since then and his current role as the counselor and senior advisor to fbi director wrey.

before he took that job and left his clerkship with me, he worked in north carolina and he argued a number of cases before the fourth circuit and lived to tell about it. and then he went to d.c., where he served and continues to serve indirectly in the public corruption unit in the department of justice and they offered him to director wray, and i think that it will be a lifetime term. not that there is anything in d.c.. a sleepy job with what you have time to relax. i think he is going to the beach with his family today for a long overdue vacation. it is my distinct pleasure and honor to introduce my former law clerk, william miller. [applause] >> thank you, judge diaz, for those kind words.

good afternoon. it is an honor for me to be here and have the opportunity to introduce today's speaker, my boss, fbi director chris wray. i have been blessed throughout my career to have tremendous mentors like judge diaz and director wray and many in the room whom i got to catch up with last night. although there has been more than a decade from when i clerked for judge diaz and my start with the director, i remember having a similar reaction at the beginning of both jobs. in my mind, one of the things that makes a great mentor is the mentor's ability to quietly push others to be their best.judge diaz and director wray, as anyone who knows them can attest, are smart and near impossible to outwork. with both of them i realized early on that i would have to bring my a-game if i would keep up. with the director wray, i

remember getting ready for one of my first meetings to review some report. this was early in my time and i didn't have a lot to distract me. i was reading the report forwards and backwards. trying to learn every detail so that i could impress the director with my mastery of the all of the details. when i got to the meeting, the director raised a point that i had not even thought about. when he raised it it was immediately obvious why it was important. the director then proceeded to describe what page that point appeared on and the column that it was and without a glance at his report. i remember thinking, uh-oh. how am i going to be helpful to this guy? i did what any grown man would do when faced with professional disappointment. i went home and called my mom. [laughter] she said one of those classic lines that only a mom could

deliver. she said william, don't worry. if the director is as smart as you say he is i'm sure that he is used to being disappointed by now. [laughter] thanks, mom. since that time, my respect and admiration for the director and the judgment and integrity that he brings to the job has only grown. before he became the director he worked in private practice and in government in several positions in doj leadership. as some in the room will know, the director began his legal career with the fourth circuit as a law clerk. director wray was sworn in as the eighth director of the fbi in 2017. in my unbiased opinion he has served admirably ever since in that role. join me at in welcoming, fbi director, chris wray. [applause]

dir. wray: that was a great introduction. a two-parter. i speak and get introduced a lot. one of the funnier introductions that i got was a couple of months into the job. it was an internal large fbi gathering. i came in from the side. someone had forgotten to give the person at the podium the cue the director was coming in. all she said into the microphone was, uh-oh. i thought, wow? really? i was hoping for a little better than uh-oh. maybe that is a comment on what it is like to be the fbi director in this environment. i went to one of my colleagues and told them the story. they started chuckling and said, don't worry about it.

one of your predecessors was once introduced as, now a man who deserves no introduction." now it is starting to sound better. it is an honor to be here with such a distinguished group of judges and members of the bar. as william mentioned, i began my own legal career as a law clerk in this circuit. i remember, even back then, being struck by the fourth circuit's distinctive commitment to collegiality. to a feeling almost more like a family and not just a court. it is clear to me this afternoon that the warrant an -- warmth and family feeling i felt back then still exists many, many, many, many years later. thank you for welcoming me back

into your court family for this years judicial conference. i was pleased to hear that your focus for this year's conference is on how democratic principles and the rule of law continue to shape the legal profession and criminal justice system. those bedrock principles have always been essential to the fbi's mission of protecting the american people and upholding the constitution. but in today's world, i think that it is particularly important to highlight them. to our own people, absolutely. also the people we do the work with and do the work for. there is no question that these are challenging times. in some ways come historically challenging times. not just for the fbi, but the country as a whole. we are in an environment where pretty much every major institution is under attack. whether it is law enforcement, business, the military, and even the judiciary. all too often in today's world,

people's standard for whether something was fair or objective, talking about an fbi investigation, a court case, or even an election, is whether they like the result. whether their side won or lost. too many people profess to value independence and objectivity until they don't like the results, the outcome. worse yet, when something doesn't go their way there is a tendency to attack the motives and legitimacy of the institution. that's not healthy, productive, or how independence and objectivity work. given the judiciary's critical role as a referee, i suspect many of you in the room can

relate. like you, at the fbi, we are not on either side. we are all in the constitution's side. because of that, our focus has to be on doing the right thing the right way every time. that means that every case we are involved with, no matter who or what we are investigating. what i'm constantly trying to drill home to our people is when the second guessing and complains about the results of an investigation come our way, which they inevitably will, we have to be sure that we rigorously stuck to the process. while no one likes to see the organization that they have dedicated as their careers, their lives to, unfairly criticized, i will sleep fine at night if the talking heads and armchair quarterbacks are reduced to complaining about the results of an investigations

as long as we can stand behind the professionalism, the rigor, and the objectivity of the work itself. now, i am human. as are the 38,000 men and women of the fbi. sometimes it is hard not to be dragged down by the cable news and social media environment that we find ourselves in. in some respects, this is actually not that new. late last year, i shared a few quotes from prior fbi directors with a room full of retired agents about this size. given how much words still resonate that group was surprised to hear that the quotes came from prior eras and not today. i think many of you might be surprised as well. let me take one. i'm quoting.

" to my amazement there are voices that claim repression by government and fear of government. these claims have been aired by some and given wide coverage. federal law enforcement officers in particular have been described as thugs by some advocacy groups. sadly, i am astounded at these developments, as i think most americans are. " with that -- with that -- would that tries you to know that was 1995 describing the police that had motivated timothy mcveigh and a small noisy portion of the public who sympathized with him after the oklahoma city bombing? another example. this one is a message to one of our national academy classes. i am quoting.

"this class has been in session during a time of turmoil and confrontation. unfortunately, we must expect to cope with a climate of unrest and disputed authority. with the accompanying instances of civil disobedience, rioting, and wanton vandalism for a long time to come." that was director hoover in 1971. a final example, and i will give you the answer upfront. reflecting on the public corruption investigation from the 1970's, director webster described the ensuing controversy and negative press coverage saying, i'm quoting, "this was an extraordinarily sensitive thing as it was going on. congress was shocked. the executive was attacking the congress when point of fact we

were only following the leads that came to us." part of this quote is actually most significant that comes next. director webster made a very telling and important point about the aftermath of that investigation. he said, i quote, "by the time we had finished with the trials, nobody questioned that we knew what we were doing. they found that we had broken no laws. we had violated no principle. and we had done some good." director webster's words reflect the same aspects of the fbi's work that i was mentioning a few minutes ago. and that persists to this day. that is the critical importance of doing the right thing in the right way every time. focusing on our mission and our core values.

going about the vital work of protecting the american people and upholding the constitution. simply talking about these concepts is not enough. fbi directors over the years have realized that there is no comparison to experiencing the impact that these principles and values have on our work and the people we serve. to reinforce these concepts, fbi directors over the years have required all new special agents and intelligence analysts to visit some specific historical site together as part of their initial training at the fbi academy in quantico. the u.s. holocaust memorial museum to reinforce the need for vigilance in preserving our democratic values. the martin luther king jr.

memorial to underscore the importance of unwavering commitment to our democratic and constitutional principles. and the 9/11 memorial museum at ground zero to drive home the stakes of our work when democracy itself is under attack . the first of those visits started in 2000 win director free first asked all of the new agents to visit the holocaust memorial museum, a requirement that director molar later expanded to include all intelligence analysts as well. the visit to the holocaust museum requires our new agents and analysts, as it does all visitors, to reflect on how the systematic state-sponsored persecution of 6 million jews was even possible. the holocaust museum opened

almost directly across the national mall from fbi headquarters in 1993, which was the same year that louis free became the fbi director. one of director free's personal heroes was a holocaust survivor and nobel laureate and writer. free understood from eziel's work how much the nazis depended on the acquiescence and corruption of law enforcement in germany to help them seize power and commit atrocities. he committed a course of instruction for new agents that took place inside of the holocaust museum taught by museum staff and the anti-defamation league. while we went back recently and looks at the course evaluations written by that first you agent class that went through this specific course at the holocaust museum more than 20 years ago.

they are pretty striking. one of the new agents wrote, "as a human being, the museum forces us to ask ourselves how we might react should we be personally confronted by these questions." another observed that the jewish leaders believed that they had "no reason to be fearful because the judicial system would protect them." another quote, "the part that lingers in my memory is the photo of the police officer and german ss officer standing side-by-side. the police officer was failing to protect his own citizens." the new agents also drew inspiration from the visit. one wrote that our "greatest duty was to preserve human right and protect civil -- preserve human life and protect civil rights."

those observations pertain as much now as then. throughout their career agents and analysts will face some of the worst, ugliest parts of our world. that could mean walking into a horrific crime scene, dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack, or tracking the cyber trails of sex traffickers and those who prey upon children. the visit to the holocaust museum puts all of that into perspective and reminds our trainees of the need to be willing to stand up to evil and never get complacent. we have to make sure that our trainees understand how grave the consequences could be if they don't do their jobs the right way. th -- in 2013 director comey

added a visit to the martin luther king jr. memorial in downtown d.c. this year we move that to the national museum of african-american history and culture to broaden the trainee'' understandings of those lessons. the program that trainees go through is entitled law enforcement and society. it maintains the focus on the fbi's core values, respect, compassion, fairness, integrity, accountability, leadership, diversity, and rigorous obedience to the constitution. the newest members of our workforce learned about director hoover's request to wiretap dr. king and attorney general robert kennedy's approval of the wiretap, as well as the fbi's interactions with dr. king that followed. that fbi wiretap application, by

the way, was five sentences long and did not present any evidence. it simply referenced "the communist influence in the racial situation." needless to say, that is a far cry from the title iii applications that agents now prepare that many of you review, which as you know spans dozens, if not hundreds of pages laying out facts and legal justifications and sometimes excruciating detail. the reason those applications require such rigor is to avoid a situation where somebody concludes that the ends justify the means. it is why instead of talking about doing the right thing for the right reasons, i'm am trying to emphasize doing the right thing in the right way. when i talk to our people about following process, i mean the

way that we do our work. consistently following our own rules, policies, procedures, and best practices. pursuing investigations dispassionately without prejudice and staying true to our core values and the best traditions of the fbi. just as critically, learning from our mistakes. i don't think that any organization can aspire to have an unbiased loyalty to truth if it is not willing to turn the spotlight around and look at itself. which is something that we work hard to do. the visit to the museum also provides an opening for new agents and analysts to talk about topics like race and the way that we interact with our communities and people we are sworn to protect. those can be difficult discussions but are important to have. organizations are more effective and make better decisions when

they have the benefit of different perspectives. to be credible, with the diverse communities that we serve the fbi needs to understand and reflect the diversity that is such a strength of this country. a big part of that comes from understanding our own history. that brings me to our last visit. in 2019, i added the third. a visit to the 9/11 memorial and museum in new york. now, i think within two months of my swearing in to this job, i was invited to speak at the memorial. i took a tour of the museum with my wife and our daughter, who was 22 at the time. as we took the ramp down under the foundations of where the world trade center buildings had stood, i kept an eye on our

daughter. she had been in elementary school in 2001. too young to meaningfully remember and understand the attacks. on the tour, we looked at artifacts recovered from ground zero. we saw images of the victims. heard audio recordings of the witnesses. saw the structural beams where each airplane impacted the buildings. the emergency vehicles crushed when the building collapsed. and the seawall that nearly held back the east river from flooding the subway system. it seemed every time we turned a corner my daughter had another aha moment, where you could see the light old going on -- lightbulb going on. i could see for the first time her experiencing the gravity of

that day. i watched as it all became much more real for her. i realized that evening that i needed to take my experience watching her experience that day back with me to the fbi somehow. like most of you, i will never forget exactly where i was and what i was doing when the planes first struck the twin towers, the pentagon, and later crashed in pennsylvania. i spent most of september 11, 2001 as a relatively new justice department official in a packed fbi operation center and headquarters with the former director and attorney general ashcroft. although it was, by any measure, a chaotic and shocking time, it was also a time of palpable, incredible solidarity. the days and weeks and months

that followed, we were united in our resolve to find out who attacked us and in our desire to support and heal our country. and most importantly, in our determination to prevent an attack like that from ever happening again. the events of 9/11 and our country's response inspired a whole generation of people to pursue publicit certainly inspii suspect inspired you in this room. we have employees joining the fbi who, like my daughter, were only in elementary school when the 9/11 attack happened. in very short order we will be hiring folks who are not even alive on that fateful day. i want our new agents and

analysts to not only remember 9/11 as an important historical moment, but to have their own version of those ah ha moments i saw and my daughter's face. so many of the lessons learned from 9/11, the emphasis on intelligence, the importance of partnerships, and the focus on disrupting threats are second nature to today's agents and analysts. i want our folks to understand not only up here but in here what is behind those changes that have made us all safer and to feel a personal connection to just how much is on the line. today's threats are more complex and move more quickly than ever before. tackling them requires the same urgency, focus, and drive that

we all felt after 9/11. in just the past year or so, for instance, we developed a program to dismantle one of russia's most sophisticated cyber espionage tools by effectively turning it on itself, depriving the federal security service, the fsb, of a tool they have been using to steal sensitive information from the united states and our allies. we investigated a chinese spy who was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison for trying to steal advanced aviation technology from ge by corrupting insiders with access to sensitive data and cordoning with hackers back in china to target the same data and cover their tracks. we disrupted a plot directed by iran to kill an american journalist right smack in the middle of new york city in retaliation for her criticism of

the iranian regime. that doesn't begin to cover the hundreds of investigations we have got into the leadership of the cartels trafficking fentanyl and other dangerous drugs in communities all over this country. or the work we're doing shoulder to shoulder with thousands of state and local officers on our fbi task forces to go after violent criminals and child predators. even on the counterterrorism front, in just the past few years we have disrupted violent extremists with a host of ideologies plotting to attack everything from a crowded beach on a holiday weekend to a fourth of july parade, to houses of worship, even a hospital right in the middle of the pandemic. the demands placed on the men and women of the fbi have never been higher and our fellow

citizens are looking to us to protect them from all those threats and a whole lot more. at the end of the day we have to be focused not on the noise but on the work. who we do the work with and who we do the work for. when the news programs wrap up in the social media scrolling comes to an end with the public will remember is we worked hard to protect the varick and people and uphold -- protect the american people and uphold the constitution, and we have done it in the right way. as i tell all of our new graduates at quantico, the legacy of the fbi is not built only on results, on all of our victories -- although i will stack our win record against anybody. it is built on the way we have done it. with rigor. with respect. with objectivity. it is sustained by the thousands

of men and women who continue to dedicate their careers and their lives to service over self. i am proud of the way our people have integrated the lessons of our 115-year history into their commitment to carry our mission forward today. standing here as a member of the fourth circuit family i could be prouder to be prouder of our fbi family as well. thank you. [applause]

>> wednesday, fbi director christopher wray testifies at an oversight hearing for the house judiciary committee. watch live at 10 a.m. on c-span3, or video app or span.org. >> order your copy of the 100 18th congressional directory now available at c-span shop.org. it is your access to the federal government with bio incontact information for every house and senate member in important information's on committees, president cabinet, federal agencies and state governors. order your copy today or go to c-spanshop.org. it's $29 90 five cents plus shipping and handling and every purchase supports our nonprofit operations. >>