National Security Day Quotes & Sayings

Every portal coming into this country is being attacked by those who would harvest information, both national security secrets and just the common information of private individuals and private individuals. That crime is going on, every day, on a single entity known as the Internet. — Darrell Issa

Bob Gates is really emblematic of the modern CIA. He joins it in 1968, just a day before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. And, of course, he rises very quickly. In less than six years, he's on the National Security Council staff, at the closing weeks of Richard Nixon's presidency and then on into Gerald Ford. — Roger Morris

Islamic terrorists are the greatest security threats to the United States, both domestically and abroad. We need to be vigilant every day. Now, every citizen has to be vigilant because they are vital links in the national security chain. — Ralph Abraham

The New START accord cuts the strategic nuclear arsenals on each side to 1,550 warheads. Can any of its critics make a case that our security would be imperiled if, the very next day, Obama and Medvedev made moves to take the levels down to 1,000 - then to 500?
If so, come show us the math. If not, it may be time to stop making arms control so politically complicated - time to stop letting arms control get in the way of disarmament. — Fred Kaplan

A trial is a powerful vehicle to explain things. It is the most time that anybody spends really thinking about one thing. Unless you are the analyst on the National Security staff that's assigned to monitor Putin, and that's all you do, day in and day out, very few people ever spend the time on a single subject that is spent during trial. — David Boies

The attorney general also spelled out some of the authorities the FBI would use under the Patriot Act, which passed the Senate that same day: capturing e-mail addresses, tapping cell phones, opening voice-mails, culling credit card and bank account numbers from the Internet. All of this would be done under law, he said, with subpoenas and search warrants. But the Patriot Act was not enough for the White House. On October 4, Bush commanded the National Security Agency to work with the FBI in a secret program code-named Stellar Wind. The — Tim Weiner

The message from too many Democrats and Republicans alike remains that we should not let facts get in the way of our day-dreams. It's so much easier to fantasize about an alternative and ideal world, rather than making the hard and unpopular decisions that are necessary to deal with the complicated and frustrating one in which we live. It is so much easier to imagine that world as a blank slate on which America can draw as it wishes, rather than to recognize that limits on American power, and recalibrate strategy accordingly. If Americans fail to reexamine their fundamental attitudes toward that world, then the risk for the future is that failure in Iraq will make the United States more cautious, but not wiser. — John Hulsman

When the National Security Agency recruited me, they put me through a day of lie detector tests. They found out all my weaknesses and immediately seduced me. They used the strongest drugs in our culture, sex, power and money, to win me over. — John Perkins

A prophet's task is to reveal the fault lines hidden beneath the comfortable surface of the worlds we invent for ourselves, the national myths as well as the little lies and delusions of control and security that get us through the day. And Jeremiah does this better than anyone. — Kathleen Norris

One half of the world's people live on less than two dollars a day. This should concern our national security policy as well as our conscience. — Lee H. Hamilton