Barton Gellman Quotes

In the urgent aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, with more attacks thought to be imminent, analysts wanted to use 'contact chaining' techniques to build what the NSA describes as network graphs of people who represented potential threats.

The terrorist uses surprise and stealth, and the only way to defeat that is by having accurate and timely intelligence.

We will have to continue to improve our human intelligence system-something that was, unfortunately, lacking in the years which led up to September 11. This is going to be a continuing process of change.

The FBI's principal priority right now is protecting the United States against another terrorist attack.

It is necessary secretly ---and urgently---to prepare for terror. And on Tuesday we will decide whether it will be through the SNK or otherwise

In the difficult fight against the new menace of international terrorism, there is nothing more crucial than timely and accurate intelligence

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

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, it became clear that the FBI's number one priority must be the prevention of another terrorist attack.

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.

With terrorist groups like al Qaeda, you can't learn what you want to learn about their capabilities and their future plans by taking a picture of it, and they've learned not to use the telephone.

I did not want to provide a blueprint or roadmap for the terrorists, saying 'Here are our new security procedures'.

And so every one of us in the FBI, I don't care if it's a file clerk someplace or an agent there or a computer specialist, understands that our main mission is to protect the public from another September 11, another terrorist attack.

But clearly, this is what this is about. It's about pushing the security bubble out. It's about rooting out every last guy, so that there's not even somebody who can fire a single, solitary RPG round from some little qalat out here.

The use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work.

In a brave new world, a post-September 11 world, anyone is going to make certain mistakes. The mistakes that have been made on homeland security, on protecting our Nation from another terrorist attack, are mistakes of omission. We are simply not doing enough.

The plan we developed to deal with al Qaeda depended on developing sources of human and technical intelligence that could give us insights into his plans at the tactical level. This is easy to say but hard to accomplish.

While the CDC is focusing on how our enemies could attack us, our military is focused on who may attack us.

But it is equally incontrovertible that if our intelligence gathering process is seriously flawed, we had better find out and find out fast if we are to avoid another Sept. 11.

Prior to the PATRIOT Act, the ability of government agencies to share information with each other was limited, which kept investigators from fully understanding what terrorists might be planning and to prevent their attacks.

I do think we need more cameras. We have to stay ahead of the terrorists, and I do know in New York, the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which is based on cameras, the outstanding work that results from that.

We're told another large-scale terrorist attack is inevitable by those people who have committed so many resources to preventing it. They likely know what they're talking about.

Look, we constantly live looking at the issue of the threat of terrorism.

We could have prevented the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon if we had 20,000 troops shoulder to shoulder.

We have a reliable computerized network devoted to counterterrorist activities.

Secondly, not only have we put additional agents on counterterrorism, but we've also built up our analytical structure so that we're better positioned to analyze the information we have.