Remarks as prepared for delivery.

Thank you, Chris (Wray) for that introduction and thank you for your leadership at the greatest investigative agency in the world.

I am also grateful to the Marine Corps Color Guard for presenting the colors and to the Marine Corps Band for that rendition of our National Anthem.

It is an honor to be joined by Ambassador Al-Kalifa of Bahrain and to be joined here onstage by members of FBI leadership.

Above all, I want to congratulate the 256 graduates of the 276th Session of the FBI’s National Academy.

I also want to congratulate the families of today’s graduates. It is difficult to be a law enforcement family. You shoulder the stresses and challenges involved in your loved one’s profession. You make a sacrifice, too. So, I want to thank all of you here today.

Today’s graduates come from 49 states, the District of Columbia, and a record-high 35 foreign nations across six continents.

Our graduates today come from a wide variety of backgrounds, but you share a common mission and a record of excellence.

Admission to the National Academy is highly competitive and selective. You all represent the best of the senior ranks of law enforcement in this country and around the world.

One thing that we can all be proud of in law enforcement is the high level of professionalism that we have achieved over the past four decades. You exemplify this professionalism.

By focusing on training, technology, best practices, and above all, cooperation, law enforcement in the United States and among our allies has reached new levels of excellence and allowed us to achieve historic reductions in crime.

Of course, we are always striving to reach even greater heights – and the National Academy remains at the center of that effort.

I think you all know that the experience here is not all about learning from your instructors. It is about all of us learning from each other and building relationships and trust. We are building a national and worldwide network of law enforcement excellence – a network that, through cooperation, allows us to meet the challenges we all face.

Going back to my first tenure as Attorney General 28 years ago, I have always believed that none of us can succeed in our responsibilities without cooperation. In those days, violent crime was at all-time highs. My priority was addressing this by building a tight partnership with our state and local colleagues. Over the past three decades, violent crime has been halved in the United States. It has been our cooperation and joint operations that has allowed us to do this.

In those earlier days, I had an office of several professionals dedicated to communicating and coordinating with state and local law enforcement. When I returned to the Department, it was no longer there. Last month, during Police Week, I ordered that the office be re-established, and it was stood up this week.

Also, 30 years ago we set up an Office of International Affairs in the Department and expanded the FBI’s legate program. We built up a web of bilateral and multilateral agreements to facilitate our cooperation on international law enforcement matters – including drug trafficking and the emerging threat of terrorism.

I learned firsthand just how valuable it is to have law enforcement allies around the world.

For example, in the aftermath of the Pan Am 103 bombing, the Department worked closely with the Strathclyde Police on one of the most complex and exhaustive investigations in history. The Scottish police, along with the FBI, conducted a brilliant and unrelenting investigation.

The crime scene was 845 square miles in area. Scottish authorities searched it inch-by-inch, month after month – through fields, forests, lakes, and towns.

This painstaking search led to key evidence, including fragments smaller than a fingernail that were decisive in proving our case.

The United Kingdom and several other countries helped us to reconstruct how the bomb reached the plane in the first place — and ultimately that led us to the perpetrators.

It was an unprecedented cooperative effort, and one that has left a deep impression on the Department of Justice and on me personally.

Over the years since then, international cooperation has only become more important.

Nearly 100 years ago, John Maynard Keynes marveled that, on the eve of the First World War, “[t]he inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages.”

Little could Keynes have imagined the interconnected digital world of today. Transportation costs and communication costs have never been lower.

That bears directly on the work of law enforcement. Just as it has never been easier for us to work together – it has never been easier for criminals to work together, too.

In a matter of seconds, a terrorist in India can communicate with a sympathizer in Indiana. A gang leader in El Salvador can order a killing in Boston. Funds can be moved with the click of a mouse.

The gravest threats to society — such as terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking, cyber threats, and even elder fraud — are increasingly national and even international in scope.

This makes close international cooperation more important than ever before. And that is why the relationships, the shared understanding, and the trust that are built here at the National Academy are also more important than ever.

By building this global network of excellence in law enforcement, we all benefit.

And so, to today’s graduates: thank you all for your willingness to serve your communities, your commitment to this rigorous training, and for your partnership with us at the Department of Justice.

We all serve on the same team. We stand for justice. We stand for order. And we stand for public safety.

As we return to this work today, we will press on together – shoulder-to-shoulder.

Rest assured, as Attorney General Sessions frequently said, that “We have your back; and you have our thanks.”

God bless you all.