U S Intelligence Quotes & Sayings

That was the moment I gave up on decision analysis," said Danny. "No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story." As Danny and Lanir wrote, decades later, after the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency asked them to describe their experience in decision analysis, the Israeli Foreign Ministry was "indifferent to the specific probabilities. — Michael Lewis

The authorization I propose would provide the flexibility to conduct ground combat operations in other more limited circumstances, such as rescue operations involving U.S. or coalition personnel or the use of special operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership, it would also authorize the use of U.S. forces in situations where ground combat operations are not expected or intended, such as intelligence collection and sharing, missions to enable kinetic strikes or the provision of operational planning and other forms of advice and assistance to partner forces. — Barack Obama

Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty's past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40's intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania's path; given Cunard chairman Booth's panicked Friday morning visit to the navy's Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy - the question remains, — Erik Larson

According to intelligence contacts of Sauncho's, it had been common CIA practice for a while to put Nixon's face on phony North Vietnamese bills, as part of a scheme to destabilize the enemy currency by airdropping millions of these fakes during routine bombing raids over the north. But Nixonizing U.S. currency this way was not as easily explained, nor sometimes even appreciated. — Thomas Pynchon

On the battlefield, (the U.S. war in Iraq) cannot be considered a success. It's a struggle. We're doing what we can to support them with equipment, assistance, training, and sharing any intelligence. — Robert S. Beecroft

Someday we'll learn the whole story of why George W. Bush brushed off that intelligence briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' But surely a big distraction was the major speech he was readying for delivery on Aug. 9, his first prime-time address to the nation. — Frank Rich

I hoped to offer U.S. intelligence agencies the opportunity to even place CIA officers in NOC (non-official cover) jobs in our company working under our Libyan contract. With agency officers in place with rock-solid "cover for status" - that's the lie that explains who you are pretending to be - and "cover for action" - that's the lie that explains what you're doing while you're there - the United States would have direct access to people in the seedy, murky underside of Libya, people whose motives and alliances were now unclear. The goals were a tall order, but don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon, because as my dad would say, you never hit high aiming low."

Excerpt From: Jamie Smith. "Gray Work — Jamie Smith

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

Iran has been calling for it for years, and the Arab countries support it. Everyone except the United States and Israel support it. The U.S. won't allow it because it means inspecting Israel's nuclear weapons. The U.S. has continued to block it, and in fact blocked it again just a couple of days ago; it just wasn't widely reported. Iran's nuclear program, as U.S. intelligence points out, is deterrent, and the bottom line is that the U.S. and Israel don't want Iran to have a deterrent. — Noam Chomsky

Recent events in the Middle East and North Africa clearly show just how dangerous the world is, and how great the challenges facing the intelligence community are going to be in the future as threats to U.S. national security continuously evolve. The U.S. intelligence community did not foresee the sudden collapse of the pro-U.S. regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, the eruption of a civil war in Libya, and the escalating wave of street protests across the Middle East. Then again, no one else in the U.S. government or among our allies abroad did either. — Matthew M. Aid

The total funding of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) in the U.S. is 0.0003 percent of the tax monies spent on health and human services. And it's not even tax money. The SETI Institute's hunt for signals is funded by donations. — Seth Shostak

I suspect the I.Q., SAT, and school grades are tests designed by nerds so they can get high scores in order to call each other intelligent ... Smart and wise people who score low on IQ tests, or patently intellectually defective ones, like the former U.S. president George
W. Bush, who score high on them (130), are testing the test and not the reverse. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

U.S. intelligence has the legal right to monitor foreign communications as they go through to U.S. service providers. However, even though something is legal doesn't make it right. I'm not American; I don't really care about what data is being collected about American citizens. I'm worried about us, the foreigners. — Mikko Hypponen

You got any experience? (Carlos)
I'm former army intelligence, Special Forces, on contract to the U.S. government now for national security. That good enough for you, amigo? (Stoner)
It'll do. (Carlos) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The United States has an unfair advantage, as most of the popular cloud services, search engines, computer and mobile operating systems or web browsers are made by U.S. companies. When the rest of the world uses the net, they are effectively using U.S.-based services, making them a legal target for U.S. intelligence. — Mikko Hypponen

Founded by President Truman at 12:01 A.M. on November 4, 1952, the NSA had been the most clandestine intelligence agency in the world for almost fifty years. The NSA's seven-page inception doctrine laid out a very concise agenda: to protect U.S. government communications and to intercept the communications of foreign powers.
The roof of the NSA's main operations building was littered with over five hundred antennas, including two large radomes that looked like enormous golf balls. The building itself was mammoth
over two million square feet, twice the size of CIA headquarters. Inside were eight million feet of telephone wire and eighty thousand square feet of permanently sealed windows. — Dan Brown

Despite the obvious intelligence and security failures that contributed to the attack against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, the reality is that in one night, an al Qaeda-affiliated group destroyed a diplomatic post, killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, and forced an end to clandestine U.S. activity in the area. — Jack Keane

U.S. intelligence services routinely use collection methods against foreigners that foreseeably - with certainty - ingest high volumes of U.S. communications as well. — Barton Gellman

Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by U.S. intelligence? No, it's not like that. It's simply that U.S. intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure on them. And it's costly for them to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them. — Julian Assange

As far as U.S. intelligence knows, Iran is developing nuclear capacities, but they don't know if they are trying to develop nuclear weapons or not. Chances are they're developing what's called 'nuclear capability,' which many states have. That is the ability to have nuclear weapons if they decide to do it. That's not a crime. — Noam Chomsky

Obama was apparently relying, at least in part, on intelligence disclosed more than a year earlier by a senior CIA official who, according to the Wall Street Journal, "told a meeting of utility company representatives in New Orleans that a cyberattack had taken out power equipment in multiple regions outside the U.S."47 Later that year, CBS News identified one of the countries involved as Brazil, which reportedly suffered a series of attacks, one of which "affected more than three million people in dozens of cities over a two-day period" and knocked the world's largest iron ore producer off-line, costing that company alone $7 million. The utility's later assertion that the blackouts were caused by routine maintenance failures are difficult to credit. — Joel Brenner

The truth was, neither the Central Intelligence Agency nor any of the other official and unofficial U.S. intelligence organizations have ever been some kind of all-seeing, all-knowing, global illuminati. For starters, we never hand that kind of funding. — Max Brooks

You become an anti-Semite. And as powerful as the Israeli lobby is, the Saudi lobby is just as powerful. In fact, the Saudis probably have more money to throw around, and they suborn former U.S. intelligence officials, former ambassadors, former generals to support them from within by lobbying the Congress and other American institutions. — Michael Scheuer

There is no denying that Snowden's dramatic disclosures, despite the damage they did to U.S. intelligence, accomplished a salutary service in alerting both the public and the government to the potential danger of a surveillance leviathan." (p.299) — Edward Jay Epstein

The intelligence services would probably be in a better position to make an assessment of the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program than Podhoretz or Ledeen. They don't have access to any specific information. So for them to dismiss it has no great value because they have no authority whatsoever on this issue. For them to push forward with their efforts to get a war started between the U.S. and Iran, you certainly cannot say that Iran does not have a nuclear program. If you say that, then the justification for war has basically been eliminated. — Trita Parsi

The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaida, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan. — Barton Gellman

However, what Article VI [of the U.S. Constitution] does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. — Mike Huckabee

You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest. — Junot Diaz

That is why, as one who values the U.S. - Israel relationship, and loves Israel, I was near tears throughout the Prime Minister's speech - saddened by the insult to the intelligence of the United States as part of the P5 +1 nations, and saddened by the condescension toward our knowledge of the threat posed by Iran and our broader commitment to preventing nuclear proliferation. — Nancy Pelosi

The intelligence community is so vast that more people have top secret clearance than live in Washington. The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence because under torture a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop, ... Second, mistreatment of our prisoners endangers U.S. troops who might be captured by the enemy ... And third, prisoner abuses exact on us a terrible toll in the war of ideas because inevitably these abuses become public. — John McCain

We worked to develop our own operations to advance U.S. counterterrorism objectives by penetrating terrorist safe havens and collecting intelligence that would inform policy and enable our own operations. — Cofer Black

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

And I believe only with a strong America will we defeat this radical group, this apocalyptic group called ISIS. That's why when I'm president we are going to rebuild our intelligence capabilities. And they're going to tell us where the terrorists are. And a rebuilt U.S. military is going to destroy these terrorists. — Marco Rubio

The Brotherhood's campaign to intimidate and silence officials in Washington who link Islam and terrorism is working brilliantly. The 9/11 Commission Report used the word jihad 126 times, Muslim 145 times, and Islam 322 times. A decade later, they have been virtually banished from official U.S. government documents. The FBI's Counterterrorism Analytical Lexicon and the 2009 National Intelligence Strategy have zero mentions of jihad, Muslim, or Islam. Instead, they refer to "violent extremism" in general. — Glenn Beck

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

When I resigned, I put the U.S. Government on notice that I'm going to stick to policy issues, that I have no intention of going out and blowing the cover off of the intelligence operations, that those are truly sensitive and they should not be exposed. — Scott Ritter

Mr. Steinmeier's meeting with Mr. Kerry, expected to take place Sunday in Vienna on the sidelines of nuclear talks with Iran, would be the highest-level face-to-face meeting between the U.S. and Germany since a year-long controversy over U.S. intelligence activities in Germany erupted anew last week. Authorities have launched investigations of a Federal Intelligence Service worker and a Defense Ministry official both suspected of passing secrets to the U.S. — Anonymous

Indeed, these are the great lingering questions of the Lusitania affair: Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty's past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40's intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania's path; given Cunard chairman Booth's panicked Friday morning visit to the navy's Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy - the question remains, why was the ship left on its own, with a proven killer of men and ships dead ahead in its path? — Erik Larson

In GTMO, interrogators are taught more about the potential behavior of detainees than about their actual Intelligence value, and so the U.S. Interrogators consistently succeeded in missing the most trivial information about their own detainees. I'm not speaking about second hand information; I'm speaking about my own experience. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

They describe SIGINT capabilities on these unconventional battlefields as "poor" and "limited." Yet such collection, much of it provided by foreign partners, accounted for more than half the intelligence used to track potential kills in Yemen and Somalia. The ISR study characterized these failings as a technical hindrance to efficient operations, omitting the fact that faulty intelligence has led to the killing of innocent people, including U.S. citizens, in drone strikes.12 — Jeremy Scahill

Since 2001, the Patriot Act has provided the means to detect and disrupt terrorist threats against the U.S. Prior to enactment of the law, major legal barriers prevented intelligence, national defense, and law enforcement agencies from working together and sharing information. — Roger Wicker

I had been involved in U.S. intelligence in Berlin, Germany, while in the military and had worked with a contact with the Central Intelligence Agency office there. — George J. Mitchell