Testimony
Chairman Rubio, Vice Chairman Warner, and Members of the Committee — it’s an
honor to appear before you today as the President-elect’s nominee for the Director of
National Intelligence.
I particularly appreciate your holding this hearing today in light of the searing events of
the last two weeks. The fact that you have not allowed those events to interrupt the
work of the Committee on behalf of the American people and that you continue to
operate on a bipartisan basis — something this committee is known for — is a
testament to all of you and an example I profoundly admire.
I am also very grateful to Senator Coats for his kind introduction, for his extraordinary
service and his wise counsel during this period, and for standing with me in support of
an institution and a community that we both love.
Finally, I just want to say how eternally grateful I am to my husband, David, who is with
me today -- for his love, his support, his wisdom, his patience and perhaps most of all,
his wonderful sense of humor over the last twenty-nine years.
If I have the honor of being confirmed, I look forward to leading the Intelligence
Community on behalf of the American people — to safeguarding their interests,
advancing their security and prosperity, and to defending our democracy, our freedoms
and our values.
This role comes with clear responsibilities:
Advising the President and his senior advisers to inform their consideration of critical
national security issues;
Synchronizing and prioritizing collection, analysis, and counterintelligence efforts across
the Intelligence Community;
Ensuring that our intelligence work is effectively integrated and focused on the threats of
today ​and tomorrow​;
Responsibly stewarding and allocating our resources;
Promoting strong national security relationships with both our allies abroad and our
partners here at home; and

Engaging directly and regularly with the Senate and House Intelligence Committees on
each of these priorities.
All of these responsibilities are essential to a strong and effective national intelligence
program.
But perhaps the greatest challenge to be faced by the next DNI — internally and
externally, including with the workforce, this committee, and the public — is building the
trust and confidence necessary to protect the American people.
To be effective, the DNI must never shy away from speaking truth to power — even,
especially​, when doing so may be inconvenient or difficult.
To safeguard the integrity of our Intelligence Community, the DNI must ​insist​ that,
when it comes to intelligence, there is simply no place for politics — ​ever​.
The DNI must prioritize transparency, accountability, analytic rigor, facilitating oversight
and diverse thinking — not as afterthoughts, but as strategic imperatives that bolster our
work and our institutions.
To be trusted, the DNI must uphold our democratic values and ensure that the work of
the Intelligence Community, mostly done in secret, is ethical, wise, lawful, and effective.
I commit to you, if confirmed, that I will live in accordance with these principles and the
ethos they represent -- with the aim of restoring trust and confidence — both ​within​ the
Intelligence Community ​and​ among all those we serve and protect.
I will also seek to support and elevate the workforce and the mission.
The Intelligence Community is made up of people with unparalleled dedication and
expertise.
Public servants who are mission focused and who play an indispensable role in
protecting the country from the most dangerous threats -- without fanfare or fame but
simply through diligence.
I’ve had the great honor to work with them before, to see their extraordinary skill,
bravery, and patriotism up close, and it would be the honor of a lifetime to lead them.

My intention would be to sustain and build on the tremendous work of intelligence
professionals by recruiting and retaining diverse talent, promoting innovation in every
aspect of our work, and fostering a culture that is ethical, nonpartisan, accountable, and
aligned with the values we share as a country.
The DNI ​must also​, in my view, set a strategic vision for the work of the Intelligence
Community that looks beyond the immediate horizon to ensure we are well postured to
address developing threats and take advantage of new opportunities as they arise -promoting national resilience, innovation, competitiveness and shared prosperity.
This means ensuring that the Intelligence Community has the capacity to understand,
warn, protect and defend the United States against the threats we face.
This includes threats from traditional state actors, ​as well as​ evolving and critical
transnational threats, including climate change, cyber attacks, terrorism, global
organized crime and corruption, disinformation campaigns, and more.
Our capabilities must be aligned, strategically prioritized, and integrated to be effective.
For instance, we should provide the necessary intelligence to support long-term
bipartisan efforts to out-compete China — gaining and sharing insight into China’s
intentions and capabilities, while also supporting more immediate efforts to counter
Beijing’s unfair, illegal, aggressive and coercive actions, as well as its human rights
violations, whenever we can.
At the same time, the DNI should see to it that the Intelligence Community’s unique
capabilities are brought to bear on the global COVID-19 crisis around the world, ​while
also​ addressing the long-term challenge of future biological crises — enabling U.S.
global health leadership and positioning us to detect future outbreaks before they
become pandemics.
And here at home, we must strengthen our cybersecurity, safeguard our critical
infrastructure, and turn the ongoing technological revolution from a threat to an
advantage by integrating new technologies to improve the capacity and superiority of
our intelligence into the future.
Of course, none of these aims can be achieved without a foundation of trust, which
requires accountability, including through a support of the Inspector General function,
the protection of whistleblowers, and transparency.

I believe deeply that the American people should know as much as possible about what
their intelligence agencies are doing to protect them, consistent with the need to
safeguard sensitive sources and methods. If I am confirmed, I will strive to achieve that.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, Members of the Committee, if afforded the
opportunity to serve as the Director of National Intelligence, I vow to be a true partner to
you — to respect your critical oversight role and to cultivate a relationship of trust. It is a
promise that I extend not only to this Committee and your colleagues, but also to the
American people — every one of whom deserves a government worthy of their trust.
I look forward to earning that trust — and to answering your questions today.
Thank you.