Hearing to Consider the Nomination of Mr. Nicholas J. Rasmussen
to Serve as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center
Mr. Nicholas J. Rasmussen
Acting Director, National Counterterrorism Center
Statement for the Record
November 20, 2014
Chairman Feinstein, Vice Chairman Chambliss, and members of the Committee, let
me start by thanking you all very much for considering my nomination to be the next
Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. I also appreciate the efforts of the
Committee staff, as I know there is a tremendous amount of preparation and review that
goes into any confirmation hearing. Given the Senate’s busy schedule and the many
competing demands you face, it is clear the importance you bestow upon this position and I
am grateful.
I would also like to introduce my parents, Mary Jo and Gary Rasmussen, and my
wife, Maria Rasmussen. Their love and support means everything to me and I am very glad
they are here with me today.
I have briefed this committee several times in closed, classified session in my
capacity as NCTC’s Deputy Director, but this is my first opportunity to testify before you in
open session. I truly welcome this opportunity today. On several occasions I have cited
this summer’s report from the 9/11 Commissioners and its encouragement of government
officials to speak openly and publicly about the threat we face and the actions we’re taking
to prevent terrorist attacks. I consider this public hearing to be one such opportunity and
look forward to describing the threat and the challenges we face in a few moments.
I am honored by the President’s trust and confidence in my ability to continue to
serve our nation’s counterterrorism enterprise. Public service came naturally to me as I
had to look no further than to my own family for example and inspiration. My father Gary
and my mother Mary Jo moved to northern Virginia in 1962 from Wisconsin so that my
father could pursue a career in public policy. He was a career federal employee, beginning
at the Department of Agriculture, then working here on Capitol Hill for a short time as a
junior staff member, and retiring almost 40 years later as the most senior career official at
the Department of Education. My mother was -- for a time -- a public school teacher in
Fairfax County, while playing an active role in our local church as well as serving for over a
decade on the board of the Northern Virginia Community College. Among my siblings, I
have one active duty military officer with two tours of duty in Afghanistan and another who
proudly serves his community by working in local government and by volunteering in his
church community. Again, everything I ever needed to learn about public service and
commitment, I’ve learned first-hand from my immediate family.
Although I have long way to go before serving as long as my father, I am currently on
year 23 of my public service career. While a student at Wesleyan University, I started my
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federal government career as an intern in the Department of Defense, working for thenAssistant Secretary for International Security Affairs Rich Armitage on the Korea Desk in
the Office of the Secretary of Defense. After finishing graduate school at Princeton’s
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, I joined the Department of
State as a Presidential Management Intern just as the United States was liberating Kuwait
during Operation Desert Storm. My first portfolio was focused on the Arabian Gulf region.
I was humbled to work alongside some of our country’s most talented and dedicated
national security practitioners as they focused on creating a stable security architecture for
that critical region.
Throughout my tenure at the Department of State, I was given many extraordinary
opportunities, whether it was working on efforts to dissuade the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea from continuing its nuclear ambitions, establishing a structure to
implement the Dayton Peace Accords in Bosnia, or working towards a lasting resolution to
the Arab-Israeli conflict. Then in mid-2001, I accepted a position on the National Security
Council staff working for Richard Clarke, the National Coordinator for Security,
Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism at that time. My first day on the job was
Monday, September 17, 2001, six days after the 9/11 attacks.
Since that day thirteen years ago, I have been singularly focused on our nation’s
counterterrorism efforts every day, moving between career positions at the White House
under Presidents Bush and Obama, and at the National Counterterrorism Center under
Directors Brennan, Redd, Leiter, and of course Matt Olsen who selected me as his Deputy
in June 2012. Over these years, I have seen vast improvements in our counterterrorism
capabilities, structures and policies. That said, significant challenges remain.
The United States, working with allies and partners across the globe, has made great
strides in dismantling the al-Qa‘ida organization that attacked us in September 2001, but as
the 9/11 Commissioners noted in their July report, “the terrorist threat is evolving, not
defeated.” In fact, the President said as much in his May address to the graduating class at
West Point, noting that, “For the foreseeable future, the most direct threat to America at
home and abroad remains terrorism.” This is what makes the work of the men and women
at the National Counterterrorism Center so central to our national security, and why I
would very much like the opportunity to lead and serve alongside them as their Director.
As this Committee is well aware, instability in the Levant, the Middle East, and
across North Africa has accelerated the decentralization of the al-Qa‘ida movement. The
movement’s once global focus under the direction of Usama bin Laden is now increasingly
being driven by local and regional factors and conditions. All across these regions, we are
confronting a multitude of threats to the United States and our interests and allies
overseas: from longstanding established terrorist groups to new and much more loosely
connected networks of like-minded violent extremists that operate without regard to
established organizational norms or national borders. As I noted in public testimony
before another Senate Committee in September, this less centralized, more geographically
dispersed threat is likely to result in more frequent low-level attacks against U.S. and
Western interests overseas.
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Most notably, the threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant—or ISIL—
persists, with that ISIL threat being most acute in Iraq, Syria, and the surrounding region.
But attacks either linked to or inspired by ISIL in Belgium and Canada, and recent arrests in
Europe and Australia demonstrate that the threat beyond the Middle East is real, although
thus far limited in sophistication. However, if left unchecked, over time we can expect
ISIL’s capabilities to mature, and the threat to the United States homeland ultimately to
increase.
In addition to ISIL, we are also very concerned about the threat from the Syria-based
Khorasan Group. The counterterrorism community is continuously updating our
assessments on the threat posed by the Khorasan Group to account for the impact of our
military strikes. We remain particularly concerned about threats to commercial aviation
from this group as well as from al-Qa‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula, which has tried three
times in the past five years to take down commercial passenger and cargo aircraft destined
for the United States.
In addition to the high priority groups and networks I have already mentioned, the
counterterrorism community works every day to understand and counter threats from a
range of other terrorist groups, many of which receive less public attention. These include
Sunni terrorist groups active in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, as well as Shia-aligned
groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian-backed Qods force.
Despite the array of threats we face from international terrorist groups, our analysts
at NCTC have assessed for the past three years that the most likely immediate threat here
in the United States is that of a relatively unsophisticated attack from a homegrown violent
extremist (HVE), probably inspired or motivated by the Sunni extremist narrative that is so
pervasive on the Internet. HVEs make use of a dynamic, evolving online environment to
connect themselves virtually to a global movement of Sunni violent extremists. The threat
these individuals pose to Americans here at home is being fueled by the conflict in Syria
and Iraq and is proving particularly difficult to disrupt.
Thus, the terrorist threat persists, and challenges abound. Further complicating the
threat picture are losses in collection as the result of unauthorized disclosures, the spread
of extremist messaging via social media, and the need to balance technology-based analytic
tools with people-intensive eyes-on analysis. If confirmed by the Senate, I look forward to
helping the counterterrorism community overcome these challenges in the months and
years ahead.
Madam Chairman, I have been part of the NCTC family since its inception in 2004.
Even when serving on the National Security Council staff at the White House, I still felt
personally connected to this remarkable organization, its vital mission, its uniquely
qualified workforce, and its terribly critical place within the Intelligence Community.
There is no place in government where I would rather serve.

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Ten years ago, when Senators Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman first put a pen to the
paper that would become the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004—
effectively codifying the existence of a National Counterterrorism Center—the country still
believed a large-scale, catastrophic attack was possible, even probable in the near term.
Earlier this year, as NCTC commemorated its 10th anniversary, we were honored to host
both Senators in our auditorium, where they spoke to the workforce about the many
obstacles they faced in bringing about true intelligence reform. For NCTC, they envisioned
an integrated and motivated workforce with broad access to information in support of a
single counterterrorism mission. Ten years later, I firmly believe we can declare their
work to have been a success. That vision has taken hold, and I believe it is growing
stronger every day. Yet this is no time for complacency or self-satisfaction, either at NCTC
or elsewhere in the counterterrorism community. Our terrorist adversaries are persistent
and adaptive, and so too must we learn and change and improve every day.
In my current position, I am reminded of 9/11 and the threat we face every day. If
confirmed, I would bring the focus and urgency born of that day to all of my efforts as
Director. I would continue to build upon the joint nature of the Center and improve our
information sharing at the federal, state and local levels and with key foreign partners. I
would ensure the best and brightest continue to fill our ranks, and are equipped with the
tools and training they need to meet the terrorist threat. They—and their colleagues
throughout the intelligence, law enforcement, diplomatic, homeland security and military
communities—are our best defense as a nation.
In my 23 years of government service, I’ve worn a number of hats: intern, State
Department and NCTC officer, NSC staffer, and now most recently, Senior National
Intelligence Service officer. But none of those labels means as much to me personally as
does the label “member of the Counterterrorism Community.” I am privileged every day to
work with truly outstanding friends and partners all across that CT Community—at FBI,
CIA, NSA, at the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, State, and Treasury,
with our state and local partners, with our international partners, at the White House and
here on Capitol Hill as well.
The job for which I have been nominated demands much, but I am thankful for the
loving support of my wife Maria and the rest of my family, who have been and will continue
to be there to support me.
Chairman Feinstein, Vice Chairman Chambliss, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for
your consideration of my nomination, and I look forward to your questions.

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