Scott McClellan Quotes

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.

I’m a Verizon customer. I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States. I don’t think you’re talking to the terrorists. I know you’re not. I know I’m not. So we don’t have anything to worry about.

I'm very grateful that Barack Obama as president very much put protection of privacy on the agenda today, due to the fact of Islamist terrorism all over the world.

We do have to balance this issue of privacy and security. Those who pretend that there's no balance that has to be struck and think we can take a 100-percent absolutist approach to protecting privacy don't recognize that governments are going to be under an enormous burden to prevent the kinds of terrorist acts that not only harm individuals, but also can distort our society and our politics in very dangerous ways.

The Patriot Act has increased the flow of information within our government, and it has helped break up terror cells in the United States of America and the United States Congress was right to renew the terrorist act. The Patriot Act.

We barely missed killing Bin Laden. There were numerous findings issued by the President to kill him. We rolled up terrorist cells. We stopped the millennium bombings.

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.

I think this conflict [against terrorism] is going to require a suspension of freedom and rights unlike anything we have ever seen, at least since World War II.

The key question: will the NSA continue to monitor hundreds of millions of people without any suspicion? Under Obama's proposals: Yes.

Effective immediately, we will only pursue phone calls that are two steps removed from a number associated with a terrorist organization instead of three.

The War on Terror has been and continues to be, above all, a war on the most basic liberties and political safeguards that we're all taught are what distinguishes the US and keeps it free.

I think that the government has an obligation to monitor communications that could reveal a plot to murder millions of Americans. Monitoring bowel movements? I'll leave that to some of the gay bloggers, that's much more their style.

We're now more than a year since my NSA revelations, and despite numerous hours of testimony before Congress, despite tons of off-the-record quotes from anonymous officials who have an ax to grind, not a single US official, not a single representative of the United States government, has ever pointed to a single case of individualized harm caused by these revelations. This, despite the fact that former NSA director Keith Alexander said this would cause grave and irrevocable harm to the nation.

The intelligence activities undertaken by the United States government are lawful, necessary and required to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.

I can assure you, this is not about spying on the American people.

Accusations fit on Greenwald really sounds like he's against all surveillance unless you can find a guy with the Al Qaeda card, wearing an Al Qaeda baseball cap, an Al Qaeda uniform.

I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs. My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards. But my assessment, and my team's assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks. In the abstract, you can complain about 'Big Brother' and how this is a potential program run amok. But when you actually look at the details, then, I think we've struck the right balance.

After 9/11 we were prepared to use military force. We were prepared to go after not only the terrorists, but those who sponsor terror and provide sanctuary and safe harbor for them. We were prepared to use our intelligence assets the way we would against an enemy that threatened the United States itself, to put in place, for example, things like the Terror Surveillance Program and to have a robust interrogation program on detainees. Those are the acts you take when you feel you're at war and that the very existence of the nation is threatened.

It's critical how we want to use these spy programs, these electronic capabilities, where we want to draw the line, and who should approve these programs, these decisions, and at what level, for engaging in operations that could lead us as a nation into a war.

We need to find a way forward to make sure that we can stop terrorists while protecting the privacy, and liberty, of innocent Americans.

I'm glad that the NSA is trying to find out what the terrorists are up to overseas and in our country. I'm glad that activity is going on, but it is limited to tracking people who are suspected to be terrorists and who they may be talking to... Yes, I am sure that that's what they're doing.

Should any terrorist strike or act of war occur in which American lives are lost, we must be on guard for any attempt by the government to turn that tragedy into justification for sweeping action.

I'll tell you what's funny about it [NSA wiretapping]: They tell us we got to cut the budget; we have to have budget rollback. We're going to cut the budget on air traffic control, and every once in a while your plane is going to be delayed for three hours. But we do have the money laying around to hire people to read your emails and listen to your phone conversations. That just doesn't make any friggin' sense at all.

One of the things we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy. Because there are some trade-offs involved. I welcome this debate, and I think it's healthy for our democracy.

I don't think there's any question that America is safer as a result of the bin Laden operation.