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“TRIBUTE TO BRIGADIER GENERAL FRANCIS XAVIER TAYLOR” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S589-S590 on Feb. 1, 2017.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO BRIGADIER GENERAL FRANCIS XAVIER TAYLOR
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize an extraordinary public servant and a dedicated leader of the U.S. intelligence community, Brig. Gen. Francis Xavier Taylor, the Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, I&A, at the Department of Homeland Security.
I had the pleasure of presiding as chairman of the Intelligence Committee for the confirmation hearing for General Taylor in 2014 and have witnessed his leadership over the past 2 and a half years as I&A has made perhaps the most impressive progress of any intelligence agency over this time.
After nearly 40 years of honorable service to our Nation, Under Secretary Taylor retired on the last day of the Obama administration.
Prior to his work at DHS, Frank Taylor served for 31 years in the U.S. Air Force and at the U.S. Department of State as an ambassador for counterterrorism and head of diplomatic security. He also served as vice president of security at General Electric. For the past 2 years, he has applied the leadership skills, understanding of security at home and abroad, and his close personal friendship with Secretary Jeh Johnson to transform the Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
I&A's mission is to equip the Homeland Security Enterprise with timely intelligence and information it needs to keep the homeland safe, secure, and resilient. It provides critical intelligence to the leadership of the DHS and its components; State, local, tribal, and territorial governments, and private sector partners. The office itself was formed after the creation of DHS through the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and has seen significant change and disruption in its short lifetime. Due to Under Secretary Taylor's leadership, I&A is much further along on its vision of becoming a premier element of the IC, driving information sharing and delivering unique predictive intelligence and analysis to operators and decisionmakers at all levels.
During his confirmation hearing, General Taylor was asked why I&A needed to exist, given the domestic mission of the FBI and the analytic work of the National Counterterrorism Center. He was asked to justify the office's existence if it produced one analytic product per employee per year. Members questioned him on the need for State and local fusion centers and the support provided to them by the Federal Government. I focused my questions on why an intelligence agency should have more than 60 percent of its staffing come from a contractor workforce.
As we begin 2017, those questions are no longer applicable. Under Secretary Taylor has transformed the organization. He removed internal I&A stovepipes and realigned the organization to more closely reflect the intelligence cycle. Where homeland intelligence analysis had too often relied on repackaging products from other members of the IC, DHS collection now forms the basis of I&A production. Under Secretary Taylor also ordered that finished intelligence include DHS and State-
local-tribal Partner data. Within 1 year, the organization achieved great success on this front, ensuring 80 percent of finished intelligence in fiscal year 2016 included unique homeland-derived data. Under his leadership, I&A is fulfilling the unique homeland-focused role that Congress intended. The contract workforce is below 25 percent and the office is producing valuable intelligence analysis, tips to law enforcement, compiling and improving the quality of DHS data for intelligence purposes, strengthening our watch listing capability, and lending expertise to decision makers from the President down to the cop on the beat.
Under Secretary Taylor has worked tirelessly to mature and strengthen the Department's relationship with the State and local fusion centers and make information sharing a priority, changing the way the IC analyzes the domestic threat picture. When I have visited my local fusion center in San Francisco, I receive nothing but praise for the support that I&A provides and the importance of local, State, and Federal information sharing. The most recent example of this partnership is the Field Analysis Report, FAR, an intelligence report written by State and local intelligence analysts in coordination with I&A for the State and local audience. This is an important development from intelligence handed down from intelligence agencies inside the Federal beltway that, at times, misses the mark of what the local customer needs. FARs are among the most highly rated finished intelligence products coming out of I&A and are a direct result of General Taylor's vision.
Under Secretary Taylor also took to heart the need to invest in the workforce and address extremely low employee morale. He has restructured the workforce, drastically reducing the ratio of supervisors to workers, streamlining management and developing what he calls ``seed corn''--young, junior intelligence professionals brought in to rejuvenate the organization and help develop a truly homeland-
focused workforce. Besides shifting the balance of the staff, Under Secretary Taylor focused on hiring, growing, and investing in the workforce and ensuring that inherently governmental work is done by governmental employees and clear communication between the workforce and the leadership.
Members of the Intelligence Committee spend most of our time on international events and the often controversial practices of the CIA, NSA, and FBI. We have had the luxury in the recent past not to have to worry on the intelligence coming from and provided to our homeland security professionals because of the leadership and uncommon skill of Under Secretary Frank Taylor. We owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude. I wish to thank Under Secretary Taylor for his decades of exceptional service to our country and to wish him and his wife, Connie, the very best in the days and years ahead as he retires for the fourth time.
Thank you.
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