Marking a 26-year career between the nation’s Foreign Service and State Department, Ambassador Cresencio “Cris” Arcos Jr.’s work spans from the Cold War to the post-9/11 era.

“The environment has changed,” Arcos said during a recent telephone interview. “But, has the United States retooled its national-security apparatus to reflect the post-Cold War period? Many pundits say we have not changed enough.”

Arcos, the featured speaker at this evening’s meeting of the Billings Committee on Foreign Relations, has titled his presentation “Security, Intelligence and the Media.”

Among his long list of credentials, Arcos served as ambassador to Honduras from 1989 to 1993 and as assistant secretary and director of international affairs at the Department of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2006. The Texas native was also a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board during the administrations of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Shaped by that experience, Arcos advocates dramatic change in how the United States deals with today’s threats.

He describes the current global situation as “asymmetrical,” where the world’s last superpower is confronted by terrorism, drug and weapons cartels, human trafficking, money laundering and other crimes that “are much more insidious.”

It took only 19 men to kill 3,000 people as they brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center, he points out. Their financing, roughly $400,000, was probably equivalent to the cost of one tactical rocket.

Arcos believes more civil police work will be needed to counter terrorism and crime in the post-9/11 era. The military and intelligence are primarily strategic; law enforcement is more tactical, he said.

“We need to understand each role and use them the best that we can,” he said.

Ideally, he envisions a change in approach rivaling the National Security Act of 1947, which created the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. All told, the overhaul involved the reorganization of more than a million people — compared to the 200,000 positions restructured by the creation of Homeland Security.

“We continue to operate pretty much the same as we did in the Cold War,” he said. “What’s been a big challenge for me is waiting for the retooling.”

Regarding the interrelated topics of his talk — security, intelligence and the media — Arcos notes how the balance between those factors has shifted significantly in the past decade. Security still relies on intelligence, but with the advent of the Internet, the public now has virtually instantaneous access to information.

“How do you deal with errors and what’s intentionally distorted and misleading and shouldn’t be out there?” he asked. “You can’t stop it, it’s out there.”

The Billings Committee on Foreign Relations is a nonpartisan organization that brings to Billings a diverse range of speakers and ideas.

---

Details

To attend Thursday's dinner presentation, call JoAnne Berringer at 670-5967 or e-mail her at bcfrmt@gmail.com for reservations. Cocktails begin at 6:15 p.m., followed by dinner ($20) and a presentation at 7 p.m. at the Petroleum Club in the Crowne Plaza.