Intelligence Community Quotes

Everyone I know who used to be in the intelligence community is moving into the corporate world. ~ Tony Gilroy

When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That's not what this program is about ... What the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers, and durations of calls; they are not looking at people's names and they're not looking at content ... If the intelligence committee actually wants to listen to a phone call they have to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation. ~ Barack Obama

I do have concerns about the current efforts to restructure our nation's intelligence community. ~ Ted Stevens

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. ~ Warren Christopher

In some cases the intelligence community could subsidize commercial and academic sources to ensure specialized or additional expertise for surge situations. The key challenge in these cases is that, although experts in academia and the media are likely to be eager to assist the government, they may be reluctant to have direct association with intelligence organizations. U.S. intelligence will need mechanisms that keep these experts at arm's length. One alternative could be to work through agencies such at the State Department and National Security Council, or private organizations such as the National Science Foundation. Moreover, these buffer mechanisms will need to be real, and not just a cover story. A few stories about how such-and-such organization is a 'front for U.S. intelligence' will ensure not only that the organization will lose its access to experts, but that the experts themselves will be less likely to offer their services to the government in the future. ~ Bruce D. Berkowitz

The desert is an unpredictable place. One day you're sweating, the next you're freezing. One moment the air is damp and cloudy like when the tide is coming in, the next the entire world is orange and dusty. The desert must be a woman. ~ Dianna Skowera

This self-reflection, this willingness to examine ourselves, to make corrections, to do better, that's part of what makes us Americans. It's part of what sets us apart from other nations, the United States is the most professional, most capable, most cutting-edge intelligence community in the world. ~ Barack Obama

I believe that reforming our intelligence community is one of the most important things that we can do in order to ensure that our country is in fact safer, stronger and wiser. ~ Richard Shelby

By tearing down the wall between law enforcement and the intelligence community, we have been able to share information in a way that was virtually impossible before the Patriot Act. ~ John Ashcroft

It is abundantly clear that a total review of all intelligence programs is necessary so that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are fully informed as to what is actually being carried out by the intelligence community. ~ Dianne Feinstein

We must remain mindful of the potential impact of over-correcting the authorizations of the intelligence community. ~ James R. Clapper

The intelligence community gets hurt through sequestration. ~ Lindsey Graham

In addition, the long shadow of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews perished - going, as the younger generation in Israel is constantly reminded, 'like lambs to the slaughter' - touches every family in the new homeland. Pride in being Jewish and determination to prove that never again will they let their defences down has its effect upon everybody in the service, from the youngest recruit to the most experienced veteran. For such reasons, the men and women of the Israeli intelligence community are more dedicated than their equally patriotic colleagues who work in the same line of business in other countries on behalf of the CIA, KGB or MI6. The ~ Ronald Payne

Terrorists continue to exploit divisions between law enforcement and the intelligence communities that limit the sharing of vital counterterrorism information. ~ Jim Sensenbrenner

All officers of the Intelligence Community, and especially its most senior officer, must conduct themselves in a manner that earns and retains the public trust. The American people are uncomfortable with government activities that do not take place in the open, subject to public scrutiny and review. ~ Dennis C. Blair

The intelligence community, for the most part, has no accountability at all; to the Congress, to us the American people, and so they feel that they above the law. ~ Gloria Naylor

You coordinate intel from the alphabet soup that serves our great nation's intelligence community. Oxymoron if ever I heard one. Now, I know I'm an ignorant yokel compared to a fancy DC suit like yourself. But that is your job description, yes?"
"Yes, but - "
"So there's a question on my mind, John. How the hell did you coordinate this into such a colossal goddamn shit-show on wheels? ~ Andrew Warren

The 9/11 commission recommended the appointment of a national intelligence director with budgetary authority to better coordinate the work of the intelligence community and resolve differences. ~ Ronald Kessler

The umbrella assertion made by Team B - and the most inflammatory - was that the previous National Intelligence Estimates "substantially misperceived the motivations behind Soviet strategic programs, and thereby tended consistently to underestimate their intensity, scope, and implicit threat." Soviet military leaders weren't simply trying to defend their territory and their people; they were readying a First Strike option, and the US intelligence community had missed it. What led to this "grave and dangerous flaw" in threat assessment, according to Team B, was an overreliance on hard technical facts, and a lamentable tendency to downplay "the large body of soft data." This "soft" data, the ideological leader of Team B, Richard Pipes, would later say, included "his deep knowledge of the Russian soul. ~ Rachel Maddow

Treasury remained something of a passive consumer of intelligence. Its intelligence office was little more than a message center that delivered packets of information from the intelligence community to offices in the Treasury. This was a nineteenth-century model in dire need of an update for the twenty-first century. Together with ~ Juan Zarate

Ever since Roberta Wohlstetter's pathbreaking study of why the United States was taken by surprise at Pearl Harbor 50 years ago, both academics and members of the Intelligence Community (IC) have made significant progress in understanding intelligence failures. About how to correct these errors and do better we know much less, however, and it is to this subject that this volume makes a major contribution. --Foreword to Cases in Intelligence Analysis: Structured Analytic Techniques in Action ~ Robert Jervis

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. ~ Richard North Patterson

We can no longer expect an Intelligence Community that is mostly male and mostly white to be able to monitor and infiltrate suspicious organizations or terrorist groups. ~ Jane Harman

In the intelligence community, a rumor was almost as good as a confirmation. ~ Kenneth Eade

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. ~ Robert Mueller

Because of the terrorist threat, the FBI and CIA have become as important as the military in preserving our freedom. Yet while thanking our military is standard practice in American life, no one thinks of thanking the FBI, the CIA, or the rest of the intelligence community for keeping us safe since 9/11. ~ Ronald Kessler

ISIL presents a growing threat not only in Syria and Iraq, but throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and now in the United States as well, terrorists and their enablers will continue to receive the unwavering attention of law enforcement and the intelligence community. ~ Devin Nunes

Put in the bluntest possible terms, what I discovered was that the U.S. secret intelligence community was collecting only information it considered secret, while ignoring the eighty to ninety percent of the information in the world, in all languages, that was not secret. ~ Robert David Steele

It doesn't matter that Bush scares the hell out of me. What matters is that he scares the hell out of a lot of very important people in Washington who can't speak out, in the military, in the intelligence community. ~ Seymour Hersh

Our intelligence community needs better coordination of operations and exchange of information, and that's why we need an overall director of national intelligence and a national counterterrorism center. ~ Jim Ramstad

I know," Julia said. "It is so difficult rebuilding an intelligence community from scratch. One must make do with the materials at hand. Their youth, their inexperience, and the openness they've come to expect from living their whole lives on the Internet - all are inimical to doing things as they ought to be done. That is why we need more experienced hands - people who have learned the right instincts. ~ Neal Stephenson

There are lots of examples of routine, middle-skilled jobs that involve relatively structured tasks, and those are the jobs that are being eliminated the fastest. Those kinds of jobs are easier for our friends in the artificial intelligence community to design robots to handle them. They could be software robots; they could be physical robots. ~ Erik Brynjolfsson

The Homeland Security department doesn't have tasking authority in the intelligence community. They can ask for stuff, but they can't direct anything except inside their bureau. ~ David Hunt

The U.S. intelligence community is palsied by lawyers. When we were going to capture Osama bin Laden, for example, the lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden's safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him. We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair. They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn't irritate his beard. The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community. ~ Michael Scheuer

The challenges posed by threats like terrorism, proliferation, and cyber attacks are not going away any time soon, and for our intelligence community to be effective over the long haul, we must maintain the trust of the American people and people around the world. ~ Barack Obama

The president doesn't order the military to seize political opponents. He doesn't order his intelligence community to lie about national security for political purposes. He uses the military or intelligence communities to protect the United States and our citizens, not to help him win elections. ~ Kathleen Troia McFarland

Love is heavenly.
Expression of love gives us the sweetest joy and deepest fulfillment. ~ Debasish Mridha

Love is a thread that ties us together. Separation makes this thread much stronger. ~ Debasish Mridha

What makes community organizing especially attractive is the faith it places in the ability of the poor to make decisions for themselves. ~ Paul Wellstone

Love strangles intelligence, even in the best of us. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

Artificial Intelligence leaves no doubt that it wants its audiences to enter a realm of pure fantasy when it identifies one of the last remaining islands of civilization as New Jersey. ~ Godfried Danneels

Then, in 333 B.C., he turned south through the Cilician 'Gates' on the direct route towards Syria, where Darius III was concentrating to oppose him. Here, through the failure of his intelligence service and his own assumption that the Persians would await him in the plains, Alexander was strategically out-manoeuvred. While Alexander made a direct approach, Darius made an indirect-and, moving up the higher reaches of the Euphrates, came through the Amanic Gates onto Alexander's rear. He, who had been so careful to secure his chain of bases, now found himself cut off from them. But, turning back, he extricated himself at the battle of Issus by the superiority of his tactics as well as of his tactical instrument-no Great Captain applied this unexpectedness of indirectness more in his tactics. ~ B.H. Liddell Hart

Believe in better is one of the most powerful words you can use in the business community. ~ Frank Luntz

Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into Heaven, it has been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. ~ Wendell Berry

It seems that the increased number of scientific workers, their being split up into groups whose studies are limited to a small subject, and over-specialization have brought about a shrinking of intelligence. There is no doubt that the quality of any human group decreases when the number of the individuals composing this group increases beyond certain limits ... The best way to increase the intelligence of scientists would be to decrease their number. ~ Alexis Carrel

I don't know, I think that if I had any regrets, that would cancel out the great people that I have in my life. All the tough stuff that I've gone through that I don't wish on no one else has brought a beautiful community to me. ~ Lemon Andersen

First, we must do our own personal work, then we tend the necessary work of our family, then our community, then the world. ~ Laozi

Do you have the humility to continually grow, to learn from your failures and get back up? Are you utterly relentless for your cause, ferocious for your cause? Can you channel your intensity and intelligence and energy and talents and gifts and ideas outward into something that is bigger and more impactful than you are? That's what great leadership is about. ~ Brent Schlender

Make your failure the stepping-stone for success. ~ Debasish Mridha

It is interesting to find that those whom I like, they also like me. ~ Debasish Mridha

In my community everyone seems to listen or have an interest in what I have to say, what I'm wearing, or what I'm doing. They just follow what I do, I don't tell them to. I just try to lead by example. ~ Fashawn

I love you as the rain loves the earth. ~ Debasish Mridha

We have to change every day to survive, but we fear change the most. ~ Debasish Mridha

Plant the seeds of love to enjoy the beauty of life. ~ Debasish Mridha

Intelligence, adaptability and talent. And by talent I mean the capacity for hard work. Lots of girls come here with little but good looks. Beauty is a valuable asset, but it is not the whole cheese. ~ Ginger Rogers

Positively, the delinquent behavior seems to speak clearly enough. It asks for what we can't give, but it is in this direction we must go. It asks for manly opportunities to work, make a little money, and have self-esteem; to have some space to bang around in, that is not always somebody's property; to have better schools to open for them horizons of interest; to have more and better sex without fear or shame; to share somehow in the symbolic goods (like the cars) that are made so much of; to have a community and a country to be loyal to; to claim attention and have a voice. These are not outlandish demands. Certainly they cannot be satisfied directly in our present system; they are baffling. That is why the problem is baffling, and the final recourse is to a curfew, to ordinances against carrying knives, to threatening the parents, to reformatories with newfangled names, and to 1,100 more police on the street. ~ Paul Goodman

People who are starving and dressed in rags don't want to hear someone read a list of propositional "good news." They want to see the good news in action. The church doesn't hold revival meetings and call it a day - we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, dig wells, and staff medical clinics. Social action isn't an optional part of evangelism; it is evangelism. This is an important correction to the overspirituality that dominated evangelical Christianity just a generation ago. But the both/and of holistic mission still misses the heart of Jesus if we don't see that the church needs the poor as much as the poor need the church. Jesus didn't embrace the poor only because he pitied them or because he knew he had the resources to help them. Jesus embraced the poor because they were rushing into the kingdom ahead of the scribes and Pharisees - those who called themselves God's people. Jesus welcomed people who knew poverty because they were ready to receive what he had to offer. Religious people, he said, could learn something from them. Our spiritual lives are linked to the material conditions of our life. When we feel like we don't need much materially, we often have trouble remembering why we need God. We comfortable Americans can go through an entire day without thinking of God. But Jesus gave the poor more than food to eat and relief from their sickness. He restored them to God's beloved community. ~ Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

You can enjoy the journey of life in two ways: you could be the passenger or the driver of life. ~ Debasish Mridha

If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him. ~ P.D. James

Research shows that for jobs of all kinds, emotional intelligence is twice as important an ingredient of outstanding performance as cognitive ability and technical skill combined. ~ Daniel Goleman

With the wings of love, fly
in the imaginative and joyful blue sky. ~ Debasish Mridha

I have nothing against a community that is made up of people who are Polish, or who are Czechoslovakians, or who are French Canadians or who are blacks trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods. This is a natural inclination. [..] Government should not break up a neighborhood on a numerical basis. As soon as the Government does, the white folks flee. ~ Jimmy Carter

Intelligence, like fire, is a power that is neither good nor bad in itself but rather takes its virtue, its moral coloring, from its application. ~ Roger Kimball

The threshold of the Dream Act is not high enough. One year of community college is not enough ... No, I do not support the Dream Act. ~ Michael Baumgartner

But the real cause was, that the people, in electing their representatives to the grand council, were particular in choosing them for their talents at talking, without inquiring whether they possessed the more rare, difficult, and oft-times important talent of holding their tongues. The consequence was, that this deliberative body was composed of the most loquacious men in the community. As they considered themselves placed there to talk, every man concluded that his duty to his constituents, and, what is more, his popularity with them, required that he should harangue on every subject, whether he understood it or not. There was an ancient mode of burying a chieftain, by every soldier throwing his shield full of earth on the corpse, until a mighty mound was formed; so, whenever a question was brought forward in this assembly, every member pressing forward to throw on his quantum of wisdom, the subject was quickly buried under a mountain of words. ~ Washington Irving

Love is such a powerful force. It's there for everyone to embrace-that kind of unconditional love for all of humankind. That is the kind of love that impels people to go into the community and try to change conditions for others, to take risks for what they believe in. ~ Coretta Scott King

Yeah, one of my approaches with my community, my friends, the companies I represent, has been to take the attitude of what I bring instead of what I can get. What can I give? ~ Kelly Clark

The new science takes us from a colonial vision of nature as an enemy to pillage and enslave, to a new vision of nature as a community to nurture. The right to exploit, harness, and own nature in the form of property is tempered by the obligation to steward nature and treat it with dignity and respect. The utility value of nature is slowly giving way to the intrinsic value of nature. ~ Jeremy Rifkin

Love, its power and authority, always gets there first, comes to believe first, and always waits for the others, especially the leaders, to catch up! This is the reality of what happened among the disciples and the community of the Beloved Disciple, John, and those closest to Jesus, called His friends. They mature and develop differently from other disciples, and the community of the Church has to struggle with the fact that the last one anyone thought would be the leader was the one who betrayed Him and contributed to the dissolution of the disciples when Jesus was arrested and crucified. ~ Megan McKenna

We must continue to have voting rights in the state, not to politicize this, but they must have a voice in the rebuilding effort in the community from which they have been displaced. ~ Marc Morial

Doing your best, you are going to live your life intensely. You are going to be productive, you are going to be good to yourself, because you will be giving yourself to your family, to your community, to everything. But it is the action that is going to make you feel intensely happy. When you always do your best, you take action. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz

It's our job to do everything possible to keep the international community's focus on MH17. That's our obligation to the victims and their loved ones. ~ Sergey Lavrov

As I witness and participate in our visionary efforts to revitalize Detroit and contrast them with the multibillion dollars' worth of megaprojects advanced by politicians and developed that involve casinos, giant stadiums, gentrification, and the Super Bowl, I am saddened by their shortsightedness. At the same time I rejoice in the energy being unleashed in the community by our human-scale programs that involve bringing the country back into the city and removing the walls between schools and communities, between generations, and between ethnic groups. And I am confident just as in the early twentieth century people came from around the world to marvel at the mass production lines pioneered by Henry Ford, in the twenty-first century they will be coming to marvel at the thriving neighborhoods that are the fruit of our visionary programs. ~ Grace Lee Boggs

Always try to earn with an intention to return. ~ Debasish Mridha

If you know the answer then you have knowledge, but if you know why the answer is right, how to find the answer, and what is the implications of the answer, then you are educated. ~ Debasish Mridha

A man with courage has fear but he isn't afraid of fear and he knows how to deal with it. ~ Debasish Mridha

Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute. ~ Ayn Rand