Tom Cotton Quotes

Providing classified information to a foreign agent of the People's Republic of China is a real and serious threat to our national security.

No one's interested really in knowing what policies or diplomatic initiatives or arms negotiations might have been compromised by me.

The United States strongly condemns the illegal disclosure of classified information. It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security, and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.

It would be extremely naive to conclude anything other than the following: America's most vital secrets are in the hands of our adversaries because Secretary Clinton intentionally avoided using official government communication systems.

I do not agree with what Mr. Snowden did. He has damaged American international relations and compromised our national security. He leaked classified information and may have jeopardized human lives. That must be condemned.

Leaking of classified material is a concern.

But the technology was accessible, which suggests incompetence on the part of our counterintelligence community and the Clinton Administration, and may in fact rise to the level of treason.

I do not want to respond to leaks that concern things that have to do with state secrets of the first degree.

It borders on inconceivable that Clinton didn't know that the emails she received - and, more obviously, the emails that she created, stored and sent with the server - would contain classified information.

I'm dealing with Mexico, I'm dealing with Argentina. We were dealing in this case with Mike Flynn. All this information gets put into The Washington Post and The New York Times, and I'm saying, what's going to happen when I'm dealing on the Middle East? We've got to stop it. That's why it's a criminal penalty.

The U.S. government knew that China wanted to acquire sensitive U.S. technology, and instead of implementing a policy to prevent them from acquiring the information, the government all but gave them an invitation to take our equipment and designs.

Edward Snowden may not be a Chinese mole, but he might as well be. He's just handed Beijing a major score, while the NSA struggles to pick up the pieces - and the rest of us pay the price in terms of future national security.

It's sad to think right now, but probably the Russian and Chinese government know more about Hillary Clinton's e-mail server than do the members of the United States Congress. And - and that has put our national security at risk.

I will not, nor will I ever, publicly divulge sensitive intelligence sources and methods. For when that happens, our national security is endangered and lives can be lost.

Intelligence gathered by this government leaves no doubt

Secretary Clinton was warned repeatedly about her duty to secure classified information and that her unsecure server did not meet that standard.

I can't take classified information that I get as a senator and give it to someone with no consequence.

Everybody has a hacking capability. And probably every intelligence service is hacking in the territory of other countries. But who exactly does what? That would be a very sensitive piece of information. But it's very difficult to communicate about it. Because nobody wants to admit the scope of what they're doing.

Here's my problem: Hillary Clinton has been found grossly negligent of classified information. Period. She should not have any security clearance. That should be taken away from her.

For his own vindictive purposes, Jeffrey Sterling carelessly disclosed extremely valuable, highly classified information that he had taken an oath to keep secret.

The consequences of leaking sensitive information is that Americans and coalition forces die, and we lose trust with foreign spies, and our national security is put at risk.

There are some episodes in the history of Israel that are still kept under the strongest secrecy thick veil possible. Some of them are 40 years old, 50 years old, and are still under thick, thick secrecy, and anyone violating this secrecy would be thrown into jail himself.

If my son or your son handled classified information the way that Hillary Clinton did, they'd be court marshaled.

We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be.

I don't think I'm prepared to give away my technique to Great Britain. Are you crazy? All I can say is there was a ninja and a fire truck involved, and a great deal of coersion.