Ronald Kessler Quotes

To me, you couldn't write a character like J. Edgar Hoover and have it be believable. I mean, he was a crock pot of eccentricities. We couldn't even fit all his eccentricities into [ the same named] movie.

The inability to access evidence or intelligence despite the lawful authority to do so significantly impacts the FBI's ability to identify, investigate, prosecute, or otherwise deter criminals, terrorists, and other offenders.

In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" - exactly what, pray tell, is that? - to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.

If you're a history buff, you know about J. Edgar Hoover. He was likely the most powerful man in the US. If you start reading about him, the books contradict each other constantly. I was often left with very little sense of the man personally. I had a sense of what he did and didn't do and what people disagreed about whether he did this or didn't do this or that, but I was like, "Why? Why was he doing all of this?" That was my big question.

As a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, I know that the CIA, Treasury Department, National Security Agency, and others work closely to keep tabs on the IRGC's operations.

The homegrown terrorists are the most significant because any fighter returning from Syria to the United States would likely be identified and detected by our intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Al Qaida changes; Al Qaida adapts. We have to adapt as well. We rely on resources to do that. Reducing resources beyond a certain point will make us less able to adapt as our enemy adapts.

As one grows their company and brand, you have to learn to be a leader, and there's no formula.

The important thing is that government gives the security services the tools that are necessary to keep us safe.

One of the biggest challenges for any Home Secretary - indeed, any government - is how we deal with emerging threats.

To be a dean, you have to be a salesman as well as a scholar.

As has been the case throughout the history of terrorism, government anxiety centres on what to do about those against whom there may be intelligence but no usable evidence.

I am very committed to the FBI being agile in its tackling of foreign threats. But I believe you can be agile and still scrupulously follow our rules, policies and processes.

When I was director of public prosecutions, from 2008 to 2013, I had a first-rate counter-terrorism team, who worked closely with the police and the security and intelligence services to defeat and disrupt terrorism.

Just as our adversaries evolve, so, too, must the FBI.

The problem is that the same technological tools we use to thwart terrorists can also be used against the people whose job it is to stop them.

I know firsthand that it's difficult to get a FISA warrant. From 2002 to 2005, when I was an F.B.I. agent conducting counterintelligence investigations in New York, my FISA applications went through many layers of approval and required very strong evidence.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has long been regarded as our nation's premier federal investigative agency.

If we have intelligence on the location of terrorist training centers, it is insane not to act.

When it comes to public safety, I listen to police chiefs and cops, not to a cable-news station.

The men and women of the FBI are deployed around the clock, all over our country and around the world, identifying and disrupting threats, and pursuing those who would do us harm.

We can give our intelligence and law enforcement community the powers they need to track down and take out terrorists without undermining our commitment to the rule of law, or our basic rights and liberties.

We've evolved a lot since 9/11 also, in terms of our law enforcement capabilities, our intelligence capabilities, military, counterterrorism.

But what I would say to my successor is that it is important not just to shoot but to aim. And it is important, in this seat, to make sure that you're making your best judgments based on data, intelligence, the information that's coming from your commanders and folks on the ground and you're not being swayed by politics.

We have to have better intelligence. We have to have better interdiction capabilities. And so the issue is not how much we spend or how hard we try; the issue is are we doing it the right way? Are we being smart about it?