Sibel Edmonds Quotes

Well, our position, and our chairman has talked about this extensively, is that we had a lot of intelligence prior to 9/11. We knew that two al Qaeda operatives who ultimately participated in the 9/11 disaster were in the United States. We didn't find them.

Our intelligence community was extremely poorly prepared before 9/11.

Preventing terrorist attacks is of the highest important, but trashing the Constitution is not the right way to do it.

Once the attacks occur, as we learned on Sept. 11, it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive ourselves of an important, and legal, means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death with al Qaeda.

If you stop one terror attack in the U.S., it may be connected to multiple other plots out there that are connected. If you reveal that you stopped one plot, it may tip our hand.

I think a lot of programs, policies have been put in place since 9/11, have prevented a 9/11-style attack. On the other hand, I think the threat has become greater, not lesser.

After the horrific attacks of September 11th, it was evident that our Government needed to be transformed to meet the new challenges of this dangerous world.

Since September 11, the U.S. has significantly improved its security to prevent another attack.

You know, as director of the CIA, I got an awful lot of intelligence about all the horrible things that could go on across the world.

Terrorists and criminals are increasingly adept at exploiting cutting-edge technologies to carry out or to mask their crimes. To counter current and emerging threats, the FBI actively deploys a wide range of technology-based tools, capabilities, and training that enable and enhance intelligence, national security, and law enforcement operations.

Despite constant vilifying by the media and congressional threats to take away the tools needed to uncover plots, FBI agents and CIA officers work silently around the clock and risk their own lives to keep us safe.

In the fight against terrorism, national agencies keep full control over their police forces, security and intelligence agencies and judicial authorities.

As a former career intelligence professional, I have a profound appreciation for the value of intelligence. Intelligence disrupts terrorist plots and thwarts attacks. Intelligence saves lives.

In the United States, it's the mandate of the FBI to gather information relating to terrorism, go out and collect it, to do the interviews, to do the investigative work.

A number of the major terrorist captures we have made, the terrorist operations designed for the United States that we have interrupted, were enabled by the terrorist tracking program.

Since the tragedies, the Department of Homeland Security was established to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, and most importantly, to share intelligence information among government agencies and departments.

I think soon after I became director of the CIA - President Obama pulled me into the Oval Office and said: 'Look, I just want you to know that your top priority is to go after Osama bin Laden.'

I think they should take everyone who works for The National Enquirer and the Star, and everyone who works for Us Weekly, and put them all to work looking for terrorists. I think they would find the terrorists. All of them. It would be genius!

More needs to be done to take the fight to the enemy and secure our borders against the terrorist threat. We need more protection on land, sea and air.

The actions we took in the aftermath of 9/11 were harsh but necessary and effective. These steps were fully sanctioned and carefully followed. The detention and interrogation of top terrorists like Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi yielded breakthroughs which have kept this country safe.

There is no priority higher than the prevention of terrorism.

As we have all said, we understand that electronic surveillance is a vital tool in the war on terror. We all want to know when Osama bin Laden is calling: when he is calling, who he is calling, and what he is saying.

Governments in countries across the world have a duty to do everything possible to keep the public safe from terrorist attacks.

The country was not focused on terrorism before September 11th.

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.