Clarence J. Brown Quotes

I've yet to meet a President who controlled the CIA.

American political elites feel very empowered to criticize the American intelligence community for not doing enough when they feel in danger, and as soon as we've made them feel safe again, they feel equally empowered to complain that we're doing too much.

I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.

There is no part of the executive branch that more exists on the outer edge of executive prerogative than the American intelligence community - the intelligence community, CIA, covert action. My literal responsibility as director of CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval, to inform.

It's inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with all the overt orders of the government.

My husband [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] always said the President of the United States had the best information in the world on which to base the government's decisions as to policy in foreign relations. Part of this was because of the efficiency of the intelligence reports he received. Over the past few years, however, the CIA has become an agency not for gathering information and reporting it to those who make policy and take action, but it has itself made policy and taken action. And by so doing it has involved the government in situations from which no administration could quickly extricate itself.

We have no idea how much the government knows and how much the CIA even knows about average citizens. The government is not supposed to be doing this in this country. They listen in on our phone calls. I am not exaggerating because I have studied this a long time.

What the Agency [CIA] does is ordered by the President and the NSC [National Security Council]. The Agency neither makes decisions on policy nor acts on its own account. It is an instrument of the President.

The danger of having the military take over intelligence is that the military has a very different perspective on the world.

My literal responsibility as director of the CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval; to inform.

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.

As the CIA is set up neither you, the National Security Council, nor anyone else will be in a position to know what it is doing or control it.

Congress has chosen to recognize that a president may be forced to pursue legitimate foreign policy objectives by covert means. Such recognition, however, does not mean it surrenders the right to be informed of covert measures so that it can express its views as to the legitimacy of the goals or the wisdom of seeking to achieve them.

The shadowy world of foreign intelligence-gathering – the American government’s most secret and least accountable enterprise – is now the Bush administration’s main legal weapon in the war on terrorism.

Intelligence, like any other aspect of national security, has to be under civilian control.

The national security state controls the President. It controls most of the executive departments.

Intelligence gathered by this government leaves no doubt

Everything the CIA does is secret and it is secret particularly from the Congress.

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

Prior to the present war [WWII], the United States had no foreign intelligence service. It never has had and does not have a coordinated intelligence service.

Intelligence is a sacred cow. We’ve done nothing since we’ve been here about it. The CIA isn’t worth a damn.

I want to make it clear … that America is not interested in spying on ordinary citizens.

Congress has really serious oversight powers over Intelligence Agencies that they have not exercised in recent years.

We want our spying agencies spying on foreigners. That’s why we have them.

There are a lot of things that I really question - the legality of the drone strikes, these NSA revelations. Jimmy Carter came out and said we don’t live in a democracy. That’s a little intense when an ex-president says that. So you know, he’s got some explaining to do, particularly for a constitutional law professor.