This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed,

This has only succeeded in buying time against an increasingly dangerous threat. The difficulty in destroying this threat lies in the fact that our efforts will not be enough to overcome the fundamental causes of...

When I came to the CIA in the mid-’90s, our graduating class of case officers was unbelievably low. Now, after years of rebuilding, our training programs and putting our best efforts to recruit the most...

time and again uncovered plots that are chilling.

The only people that ever stand up and tell the truth are who? Intelligence officers. Because our culture is, never break faith with the truth. We’ll tell you, you don’t have to drag it out...

We assess that Iraq continues to hide critical (weapons of mass destruction) production equipment and material from U.N. inspectors,

When people use the word ‘failure,’ failure means no focus, no attention, no discipline, and those were not present in what we or the FBI did here or around the world,

I am greatly saddened by the death of Cord Meyer, a passionate defender of freedom around the world,

By definition, intelligence deals with the unclear, the unknown, the deliberately hidden. What the enemies of the United States hope to deny we work to reveal.

I’m in the middle of a big debate,

Because we viewed the reporting on such acquisition attempts to be inconclusive, we expressed reservations about its inclusion, but our colleagues said they were confident in their reports and left it in their document,

By no stretch of the imagination am I going to tell you that I’ve solved all the problems of the community in terms of integrating and in lashing it up, … But we’ve made an...

We protect the rights of Americans and their privacy, … We do not violate them and we never will.

Cord defined the concept, doctrine and implementation of covert action on behalf of the security and interests of our nation,

To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days.

I have analysts in my building who are convinced that that’s exactly what they were, … and analysts with the Defense Intelligence Agency who tell me the opposite.

[THIELMANN: When it came to presenting the intelligence community’s formal judgment on matters White House officials had already publicly addressed–] especially Iraq’s nuclear weapons capabilities … defended very stubbornly the erroneous CIA interpretation.

another five years to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs.

The background … makes it even more troubling that the 16 words eventually made it into the State of the Union speech, … This was a mistake.

What we learned in the five or six weeks leading up to the New Year’s celebrations, … that there is an infrastructure out there that is perhaps bigger than we anticipated.

The President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound… These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.

We know that they will continue to plan, … We know that they will hurt us again. We have to minimize, we have to minimize, we have to minimize their ability to do so because...

[What I learned…or was reminded of, because I probably heard all this when it first came out…is that George Tenet felt his job was to present the facts but NOT to add any commentary regarding...

haunts all of us to this day.

You must expedite our access to the current list of outstanding documents and interview requests.

Over the next 15 years … our cities will face ballistic missile threats from a wider variety of actors — North Korea, probably Iran and possibly Iraq,

I’m Greek, and we’re conspiratorial by nature.

last chance to exact vengeance.

[At the CIA, Director George Tenet issued a statement saying,] Our role is to call it like we see it. … That is exactly what was done.

Three thousand people died, … No matter how hard we worked or how desperately we tried, it was not enough. The victims and the families of 9/11 deserve better.

still dedicated to striking the U.S. homeland.

[The fact that the United States is] arguably the world’s most powerful nation, … a larger target for those who don’t share our interests, values or beliefs.

As a nation we have, over the past seven years, been rebuilding our intelligence with powerful capabilities that many thought we would no longer need after the Cold War. We have been rebuilding our clandestine...

Let me say this. I’m the Director of — I’m the Director of Central Intelligence. The President of the United States sees me six days a week, every day. I tell him what the American...

The Tenet work plan requires a 100 percent effort by Chairman Arafat to end the violence and the terror, and I would expect the 100 percent effort to begin immediately.

There was no lack of care or focus in the face of one of the greatest dangers our country has ever faced,

There is a presence in Baghdad,

Admiral Jeremiah is the perfect person to lead such a review, … His credentials are impeccable and his credibility is unquestioned.

Iraq… has also had contacts with al-Qaida. Their ties may be limited by divergent ideologies, but the two sides’ mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal family suggests that tactical cooperation between...

lawless zones, veritable no man’s lands … where extremist movements find shelter and can win the breathing space to grow.

If one side does something, and the other side does something within the span of a security meeting, we can say we are into Tenet.

We didn’t steal the secret that told us what the plot was, we didn’t recruit the right people or technically collect the data, notwithstanding enormous effort to do so,

In 1999, the Germans gave us a name — ‘Marwan,’ that’s it — and a phone number, … And we didn’t sit on our hands, and I’m not going to go through the rest of...

rendered 70 terrorists to justice.

Here’s the teaching point, if you’re teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions, and it doesn’t absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of...

No one told us what to say or how to say it, … We will always call it as we see it.

raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues. Some of the language was changed.

… we will neither be completely right nor completely wrong.

one of the most immediate threats the United States is likely to face.

Iran’s success in gaining technology and materials from Russian companies, combined with recent indigenous Iranian advances, means it could have a medium-range missile capability much sooner than I assessed last year.