The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has transformed into an organization with intelligence as its core of operations, according to its director. This approach strengthens the bureau’s traditional activities of crime solving, and it enhances its work protecting the country against enemies within its borders.

In a closing plenary speech, FBI Director James Comey described these activities at the AFCEA/INSA Intelligence and National Security Summit 2014, held September 18-19 in Washington, D.C. Comey explained that the bureau built on reforms begun by his predecessor, and they give the FBI increased strength in all its operations.

“We are a national security and law enforcement organization that collects and uses intelligence in everything we do,” Comey declared. “We always have been in the intelligence business.”

The FBI took its intelligence directorate out from under the national security branch and created a separate intelligence branch that covers criminal, national security and cyber issues. Comey wants FBI intelligence specialists to work with others across the bureau to understand operations in a broad scope. Operating as a single intelligence entity allows lessons learned in one endeavor to be applied in other areas, which may be the key to solving some crimes and preventing others, he pointed out.

“I want our intelligence people to look across the entire domain,” Comey stated. “What have we learned in these drug cases, these child pornography cases, that could be applied elsewhere?”

Comey cited the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL) as one example of a threat that has metastasized into a national security issue. “I’m very concerned about the travelers,” he said of Americans who have departed for the Middle East to join the radicals. “I’m far more concerned about their coming—they will come back. We are trying to understand who is going and who is coming,” he stated.