Intelligence Community Quotes Page 2

In order to be successful against each of these threats, we have to have a presence overseas, work closely not only with our counterparts in the law enforcement community, but also with the intelligence community.

I don't want to talk about intelligence matters.

I will say, however, that intelligence-community estimates should not become public in the way of this city and in the way of Congress.

We have lots of challenges around the world, and I have no doubt the intelligence community will continue to watch them, monitor them, and report on them. The issue is, with all of our other distractions here in Washington, particularly, will the appropriate attention be paid to each one of these issues?

I don't think the intelligence community itself institutionally is losing its focus; it will continue to do its job; continue to be vigilant on all issues that are besetting us. I think the greater danger is just the preoccupation of the policy community, and how much attention they pay to what the intelligence community is telling them.

If I had lost the popular vote but won the electoral college and in my first day as president the intelligence community came to me and said, "The Russians influenced the election," I would've never stood for it. Even though it might've advantaged me, I would've said, "We've got to get to the bottom of this." I would've set up an independent commission with subpoena power and everything else.

It is a little bit difficult to talk about things that do involve classified matters in public. But I think the public needs to know that there are multiple oversight layers, including the FISA Court, congressional oversight, internal oversight within the FBI and intelligence community, that protects Americans from - under - their - their privacy rights while targeting terrorists and people who are trying to kill us.

Obama found a lot of people that think just like he does, and he put them in the intelligence community. Can you imagine? When you think of the intelligence community, don't you think of super patriots, don't you think of people out there even risking their lives to defend and protect the Constitution and the people of this country and this country itself as founded? No. That's not the kind of people Obama put at the CIA.

I don't care what you want to call it.

You can call it the deep state. You can get specific and you can say that it's members of the permanent government and there are plenty of those, that are in the intelligence community that simply will not accept the results of the Donald Trump election.

If there is an exoneration of Donald Trump and collusion with the Russians to affect the outcome of the election, you think that's gonna make the Democrats go away? Do you think that's gonna make the deep state shut down? Is that gonna stop people in the intelligence community trying to overthrow an elected president? Because that is what is going on here.

Donald Trump rejected charges of ties between his campaign and Russia, blasted the intelligence community for leaks, and repeatedly attacked the news media. The president said he inherited a mess at home and abroad, but he dismissed the notion of a White House in turmoil.

Trump doesn't understand the counterintelligence process.

Take, for example, Carter Page. He's been appearing on television and acting as though the U.S. intelligence community monitoring his activities in Russia and suspicions that he may have been in league with Russian intelligence is an affront.

Our failure was that our intelligence community thought [Saddam Hussein ] had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. That was a mistake. There is fallibility in human intelligence and in human decisions.

The intelligence community is very professional, they do their jobs well, they're the best intelligence gatherers in the world. They're dedicated, patriotic Americans. They will work with any president. They want to have a good relationship with every president.

I was under police security for 15 years because I was on their hit-list.

I opposed Khalistan because I thought it would be suicide for the Sikh community to demand a separate state, and they heard me because they knew I was one of them. I think I turned round at least the intelligent Sikh's point of view and that gave me enormous satisfaction.

The idea that you know more than the intelligence community knows, it's a little like saying, I know more about physics than my professor.

Woe to you who insults the intelligence community, if you're president.

I have a running war with the media. And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community.

People sometimes say I broke an oath of secrecy - one of the early charges leveled against me. But it's a fundamental misunderstanding, because there is no oath of secrecy for people who work in the intelligence community. You are asked to sign a civil agreement, called a Standard Form 312, which basically says if you disclose classified information, they can sue you; they can do this, that and the other. And you risk going to jail.

The government would assert that individuals who are aware of serious wrongdoing in the intelligence community should bring their concerns to the people most responsible for that wrongdoing, and rely on those people to correct the problems that those people themselves authorized.

The [Barack] Obama administration almost appears as though it is afraid of the intelligence community. They're afraid of death by a thousand cuts - you know, leaks and things like that.

A political decision has been made not to irritate the intelligence community.

The spy agencies are really embarrassed, they're really sore - the revelations really hurt their mystique. The last ten years, they were getting the Zero Dark Thirty treatment - they're the heroes. The surveillance revelations bring them back to Big Brother kind of narratives, and they don't like that at all.

One concern I had while I was working actively in the intelligence community - being someone who had broad access, who was exposed to more reports than average individuals, who had a better understanding of the bigger picture - was that the post - World War II, post - Cold War directions of societies were either broadly authoritarian or [broadly] liberal or libertarian.

I do believe there needs to be an investigation of the intelligence community's findings, classified findings, in order to ensure the electoral integrity of our system moving forward.

I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.

For Donald Trump to dismiss out of hand the intelligence community's fact gathering is, frankly - doesn't bode well for him protecting our country.

Reports the CIA has concluded that Russian hacking of Democratic emails was aimed at helping Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, a step beyond the intelligence community's earlier finding that Russia was simply trying to cast doubt on the integrity of our elections.

You listen to the intelligence community, they say, listen, maybe it's ISIS today, it's somebody else tomorrow. We'll deal with the caliphate, but it's going to take years to be able to handle this.

When many people start practicing yoga, they are amazed to discover that their body isn't just something used to carry their head around - their body has intelligence too. We start to feel how our actions affect the lives of others - this could be described as becoming political, because the word politic means the "greater body" - it refers to the community of others with whom we share the Earth.

The intelligence community, in particular the FBI, have been sounding alarms about this for more than a year. So to argue that suddenly we have to do this because of the San Bernardino case doesn't really pass the straight-face test. I mean, they've been talking about this. And to say, well, it will only apply to this case, that just - that doesn't wash. This is a major piece of public policy.

Intelligence communities are very closed communities, but at the same time, you don't only learn how to fight terrorism. You need to learn about life, about West and East, geography, history, culture, there are many, many things that you learn in order to be able to solve puzzles.

You've got a huge American population, you've got a small, small, small subset that is radicalized, and you have an even smaller subset that actually takes action. And you can't cover everyone who has some contact, someone bad. What you need is offense overseas, defense at home with intelligence and law enforcement, and really deep engagement with these communities.

Before Bin Laden did everything but advertise.

Yet he had to blow up the Twin Towers just to get the attention of anyone outside the intelligence community. So what did we do? We invaded the wrong country, killed the wrong madman, and too often used the wrong interrogation techniques on the wrong people-all because our leaders lost contact with the truth.

In other words, people should be placed in parks within ecosystems instead of parks placed in human communities. We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference. We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.

In order to do vigorous oversight, the leadership of the intelligence community has got to be straight with the American people and straight with the Congress. For there to be vigorous oversight, the intelligence community's got to be straight with the American people and the Congress and that has not been the case.

The Patriot Act removed major legal barriers that prevented the law enforcement, intelligence, and national defense communities from talking and coordinating their work to protect the American people and our national security.