The Hill News

The head of U.S. counterterrorism efforts on Wednesday said the recently leaked diplomatic documents jeopardize national security and put Americans at risk of being killed or injured.

“It will undoubtedly endanger lives, undermine U.S. national security and make it more difficult to have the candid conversations that we must have with our allies,” said Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).

Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C., Leiter said the revelation of the documents by WikiLeaks, which laid bare many of the U.S.’s secretive opinions and policies as the relate to diplomatic relations, has spurred security agencies to re-evaluate how they share information.

“It has certainly driven individuals in the intelligence community and beyond the intelligence community to at least reexamine information sharing and ensure that we are still getting the right information to the right people but we’re not getting excess information to the people who really don’t need it,” said Leiter.

“Within the counter-terrorism community, we are in a relatively healthy place with information sharing. In many ways the counter-terrorism community is ahead of where some of the other elements of the U.S. intelligence community are because forced by the circumstance of 9/11 we examined those priorities and how we would protect that data a little bit earlier on,” he said.

Leiter went on to discuss the state of the country’s security, saying that although he has all of the resources he needs to fight the current threat, there is bound to be an attack in the future that intelligence and law enforcement officials will not be able to thwart.

“I can tell you, certainly at NCTC, and I’ll speak for the entire counter-terrorism community, we aim for perfection [but] perfection will not be achieved,” said Leiter.

“Just like any endeavor, we will not stop all of the attacks…[which] is certainly not to say that we are not trying to stop all of the attacks. We are. It is certainly not to say that any attack is OK…we have to be honest that some things will get through.”

However, the threat and likelihood of a major attack’s success in the U.S. is “significantly lower” than it was in 2001, he said.

If a successful terrorist attack does occur in the near future, Leiter said, U.S. government, intelligence, and law enforcement officials should look to see where the information and defense system broke down. And then officials should hold terrorists accountable while supporting a resilience among Americans and maintaining a positive dialogue with the Muslim community both domestically and abroad.