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.

I am convinced the next major attack against the United States may well be conducted by people with Asian or African faces, not the ones that many Americans are alert to.

and those debates were spelled out in the estimate.

Foreign nations have begun to include information warfare in their war college curricula with respect to both defensive and offensive applications.

the system was blinking red.

His network is now answering to the world for years of nuclear profiteering,

Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days, … But these times demand it because the alternative — politicized, haphazard evaluation without the benefit of time and facts —...

We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period.

We must eradicate these organizations by denying them the source of financing, their sanctuary and eliminating their ability to hijack charitable organizations for terrorist purposes. We must be prepared for a long war, and we...

When I took on this job I had a set of conditions to do it because I was essentially taking on the moral hazard, as I’ve referred to it, for the CIA. That is, it...

I think the declassified answer, is yes, they can do that,

You know, at the end of the day, the only thing you have is trust and honor in this world. That’s all you have. All you have is your reputation built on trust and your...

at that time that was what we thought.

We discovered the extent of Khan’s hidden network. We tagged the proliferators. We detected the network stretching from Pakistan to Europe to the Middle East to Asia offering its wares to countries like North Korea...

I still lie awake at night thinking about everything that could have been, that wasn’t done to stop 9/11. To the 9/11 families, I said, you deserve better from your entire government. All of us.

this is the largest release of formerly classified CIA documents ever. It reflects my commitment to be as forward-leaning as possible in releasing information that with the passage of time no longer needs to be...

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.