I just marked the anniversary of my first year as Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. And it has been a year of learning. I’ve spent a lot of time on the road meeting with both trade and law enforcement partners. I believe I now have a firm handle on where we are and where we need to be to protect our country—and accomplish our mission—of securing our borders and facilitating trade.

During the past year, I’ve learned a lot from my meetings with the trade community. I am involved in COAC, the Commercial Operators Advisory Committee. I have met with the Trade Ambassadors and TSN’s Leadership Council, and with many in the trade community. I spoke at the ACE Exchange Conference in Arizona.

I have also spent some time overseas visiting our CSI ports, and I just returned from China where I had meaningful discussions with the China’s Customs Ministers and other Chinese officials on a number of important trade issues, including Intellectual Property Rights.

When I spoke with you last December, I talked about the SAFE Port legislation, which had just been passed into law, as well as our progress on ACE. Today, however, I’d like to talk to you in broader terms, and share with you my priorities for the next year and a half.

As you know, since 9/11, it seems a white light has been focused on the issue of border security—with such national legislation as the SAFE Port Act and the hotly debated immigration reform bill that looks like it may be resuscitated in the Senate.

CBP’s mission is two fold—and it’s a tough balancing act. We have to secure our country, but do it in a way that doesn’t shut down our economy. What was done after 9/11 was nothing short of extraordinary. You had to rethink the way we managed our borders. You had to find ways to secure our borders, but also keep them open to legitimate trade and travel.

This is why CBP—then U.S. Customs—developed our strategy that extends our borders beyond our physical borders, a strategy that allows us to target for risks—and inspect, if necessary—cargo and passengers arriving in the U.S.

And, certainly while this strategy was being developed, we continued to carry out our traditional missions against smuggling of illegal drugs or people, harmful agriculture products, or IPR violations

It’s been almost six years since 9/11, and we’ve accomplished a lot to build a layered defense, pushing borders out, beyond physical borders

Many of you could recite the five parts of our strategy by heart: collecting advance information of cargo and passengers; analyzing that information for risk of terrorism; using sophisticated technology to detect for radiation and anomaly, and partnering with other countries and with the trade community.

Many feared that the tighter security after 9/11 would “throw sand in the machinery of global trade,” but in fact, according to a World Bank survey, the opposite has happened. It’s actually greased the wheels of commerce, making it faster and more efficient.

When I came on board, I felt that this was a sound strategy. I believed it was the right strategy and that the agency was moving in the right direction. In the year I’ve been Commissioner, I haven’t had any epiphanies that have changed those initial thoughts.

Coming on board, I knew I needed to take those initiatives to the next level—and we are doing that. We are moving ahead on the elements of our strategy.

More Information, Earlier
We are working with the trade community to get more information, earlier in the process. Through what we call “10+2,” we are determining what additional data elements we need to better screen cargo for risk of terrorism—and what the best way is to obtain that data.

We are moving ahead with our international partnerships. CSI is currently operational in 51 ports, covering 82 percent of the maritime containerized cargo shipped to the United States. And we are expanding CSI to seven more ports by the end of the year, bringing the number of CSI ports to 58, and the coverage of cargo to 85 percent.

We are also implementing the Secure Freight Initiative—or SFI—which integrates radiation detection and container imaging. Information from this technology, combined with our normal analysis of manifest data, will provide a comprehensive, real-time approach to assessing the risk of every container bound for the U.S.

SFI will be deployed in three terminals around the world: Port Qasim, Pakistan; Port Cortes, Honduras; and Southampton, United Kingdom.

And, we’re making progress on implementing the WCO Framework of Standards that would protect international trade and the global economy. We’ve created a Capacity Building strategy, and CBP is actively supporting capacity building efforts in 10 countries.

We’ve also created a Private Sector Consultative Group, which is modeled after COAC—the Commercial Operations Advisory Committee—and serves as the consolidated trade voice on Framework development and implementation.

I’m particularly pleased that the U.S. has significant representation on the Private Sector Consultative Group, and that an American company chairs the group. That partnership is critical to the Framework’s success.

We are also making progress with what is arguably one of the largest and most successful public-private partnerships to come out of 9/11—and that is C-TPAT—Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism.

Beginning with seven members in 2001, today C-TPAT has more than 7,000 certified partners who span the gamut of the trade community—importers, carriers, brokers and forwarders, terminal operators, and manufacturers. These 7,000 plus companies account for more than 45 percent of what is imported into the United States.

We’ve validated over 65 percent of those certified partners and expect to reach 100 percent by the end of the year. Once we finish the first validations this year, we will begin to re-validate companies. This will ensure that our partners have adopted stronger supply chain security measures across their international supply chains.

Clearly, we are making progress on our dual missions—to secure and facilitate trade.

My Vision—Three Priorities
But, today, I also want to talk to you about my three priorities—which apply across our dual missions—and relate to both our law enforcement roles and our trade functions.

A Fully Integrated Intelligence Organization
My first priority is intelligence. I want to transform CBP into a fully integrated, intelligence-driven organization.

“Intelligence” isn’t just about hypothesizing about where Bin Laden is or using sophisticated and top-secret technology to intercept enemy communications in Iraq or Afghanistan.

In my mind, intelligence is very simple: it is any type of information, from any source, that can be analyzed and interpreted to help the operator in the field do a better job. And, intelligence goes both ways. As an agency, CBP needs to be both consumers of our own intelligence, and we also need to be good providers of intelligence for the greater good of our country and our allies.

We must make sure that intelligence drives our operations. This means taking information and putting it in the hands of officers and agents who can use it.

CBP possesses a wealth of unmined information. Everyday, all across this agency, we collect intelligence, from pocket litter…to checkpoints…to our border clearance operations. Broadening our approach to intelligence and pulling it all together will help us identify trends, and it will make us smarter at identifying potential future threats.

We need to capture a CBP-level intelligence picture that will feed into the larger national and international picture.

Maintaining Integrity In All We Do
My second priority is integrity. It is the soul of any law enforcement agency.

I am proud of the high integrity of our frontline workforce. But, as noble as our intentions are, temptations abound. In fact, I have a hard time imagining a job where the potential rewards for straying are as high or where the bad guys are as motivated to move us from our principles.

In today’s environment, we are expected to be 100 percent successful 100 percent of time, but of course, we are dealing with fallible human beings, not “automatons.”

But, as we make progress in shutting down the borders, smuggling organizations will look for new ways to get their products in. Dropping thousands of dollars towards someone who has the power to literally wave them through a port or look the other way in the middle of the night is nothing to those who prey upon the innocent and provide poison to our society.

And, unfortunately, some among us will stray from our higher goals of serving our country, protecting the American people, and working cooperatively with our colleagues from other agencies. And, some will simply make bad decisions.

Each day, our officers and agents face situations that test their moral and ethical standards. Each day, they are put in situations where they are called upon to resist temptation and corruption.

The lure of money and power can be a powerful draw that, if answered, will ultimately lead to the destruction of careers, families, and the trust of partners.

I believe so strongly in the issue of integrity that one of my first actions as Commissioner was to create an Internal Affairs office within CBP. And since that office was established, we have developed a Comprehensive Integrity Strategy that focuses on prevention, detection, and investigation of corruption and misconduct in our workforce.

We are responding to integrity concerns in a timely fashion. We are cooperating in investigations by sharing information and resources. And, we are building an investigative workforce.

Together: Making the Most of Partnerships
My third priority is partnerships. Homeland Security is a team sport. It’s the smart way to work in today’s global environment. This is a lesson I learned early on as a young Secret Service Agent. Law enforcement is most effective when we work together—whether it’s federal, state, local, tribal, international, or private sector.

In the serious business of protecting our nation against terrorists, illegal aliens, drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises operating across our borders, requires that we work together.

None of us can go it alone.

We must all work together and pool our resources, and I want CBP to be on the forefront of this cooperative spirit—with all our partners whether it’s international or private sector, whether it’s our government partners or our relationship with Members of Congress.

We must share our resources, information, and most importantly, we must all—government and private industry—have a shared commitment to protect our nation by securing our borders.

TSN has been a model of this kind of partnership. Your commitment to working with us and sharing information and ideas with us is one of the primary reasons we have been able to accomplish as much as we have to secure our country—and protect trade.

Update on ACE Successes
Each of these priorities I’ve mentioned impacts the work we all do, and that includes the modernization of our business management processes. And, I’d like to briefly touch upon our progress with ACE and our other systems that are integral to securing our border and facilitating trade and travel.

ACE has gone from plans on paper to an integrated system that helps you run your business—and helps us secure our borders.

Think of the progress we’ve made so far to streamline our business processes.

Through Periodic Monthly Statements, for example, ACE offers importers a way to pay duties and fines on a monthly basis. In the 3 years it has existed, we have collected more than $12 billion in duties and fees through this new feature of ACE.

We currently have 32 agencies participating in the International Trade Data System—or ITDS, which offers one window into government for trade data. One standard set of trade data…submitted one time…in one electronic format to meet all government requirements.

Perhaps one of the most successful features of ACE is providing a way for truck carriers to send electronic manifest. We now average more than 80,000 e-Manifests a week.

ACE truck processing capabilities are now operational at 94 of 99 land border ports, including every land border port on the Southern Border. We have implemented the requirement to file electronic manifests at all southern land border ports and are in the process of implementing this requirement across the Northern Border.

When you couple e-Manifest with our FAST—Free and Secure Trade—program, for the first time, the officer in the booth, the carrier, and the ACE data come together. And, this helps us use the information to target high-risk shipments, while we facilitate the low-risk FAST shipments.

We thank you and congratulate those trucking firms that have invested the time and resources to make the transition to e-Manifests.

I also want to mention our Trade Ambassador program—the 30 TSN members who have offered their valuable advice and experience on modernizing ACE. CBP is grateful for your participation and your investment of time and money in ACE development.

In order to be part of the Trade Ambassador program, I understand you went through our background investigation process, and I thank you for doing that.

I’d like to recognize our Trade Ambassadors. Will you please stand?

I also want to acknowledge the critical support we have received from our longstanding partners in the Trade Support Network. Your recommendations and expertise continue to be of utmost importance as we move forward in redesigning our commercial systems. We cannot build this system without you.

Conclusion
The progress we’ve made to modernize our IT systems, improve our trade functions, and put into place systems that both secure and facilitate trade is phenomenal.

Six years after 9/11, with no terrorist attack on U.S. soil, it’s tempting to let the urgency of this threat fade to the background with all the other news swirling around our nation and the world.

I know I don’t have to remind you that the threat is ever present. It is real and the enemy is constantly looking for any loophole and any weakness in our defense.

I frequently tell my employees that as dedicated and committed as we are, our enemies are just as dedicated, just as committed, and just as passionate about achieving their goal—which is to attack us in our homes, in our workplaces, in our places of worship, and to attack our leaders.

Our job is to make sure that the terrorists don’t succeed in their mission. I believe we are safer now than we were before 9/11, but we are not yet safe. And, we should never allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security.

For me, it’s about my 12 grandchildren, and I will do everything within my power to make sure that they inherit an America that is safe, secure and open. An America where all of our children can grow up to realize their hopes and dreams. For me, anything less is unacceptable.

* Commissioner Basham reserves the right to edit his written remarks during his oral presentation and to speak extemporaneously. His actual remarks, as given, therefore, may vary slightly from the written text.