Nancy Pelosi Quotes

What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.

Nixon railed against the CIA and their lousy intelligence.

I call President Bush a terrorist. I call those around him terrorists as well: Condoleezza Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales in the Justice Department, and certainly Cheney.

As both a career intelligence officer and as an American citizen, I am a strong believer in the importance of oversight. Simply put, experience has taught us that CIA cannot be effective without the people's trust, and we cannot hope to earn that trust without the accountability that comes with Congressional oversight.

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.

In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed.

The CIA … concealed its failures abroad, lying to Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. It told those lies to preserve its standing in Washington.

There are times when the Central Intelligence Agency makes policy by default.

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

Let's remember, the CIA's job is to go out and create wars.

The mobilisation which Bush has been able to perform since 11 September 2001 has to be fought - at least by Americans - in the name of a wise, honourable and democratic patriotism.

I worked for George Bush. I'm proud to have worked for him. I think that a lot of the most controversial things we did, that people didn't like and - and criticized us for, things like the terror surveillance program or the enhanced interrogation techniques, were things that allowed us to save lives.

A major theme in all my books is that the CIA is not only the first line of defense but they should also be the first line of offense.

On the contrary, it might even be a projection of what the truth is of the Bush Administration's complacency and ineptitude on the terrorism in its first 9 months in office.

In my professional work with the Agency, by the late '70s, I had come to question the value of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the intelligence agency's impact on American policy.

By the late '70s I had come to question the point of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the CIA's overall charter.

An urgent need exists for regular and responsible Congressional scrutiny of the Central Intelligence Agency. Such scrutiny is essential… Our form of government…is based on a system of checks and balances. If this system gets seriously out of balance at any point the whole system is jeopardized and the way is opened for the growth of tyranny…CIA is freed from practically every ordinary form of Congressional check. I agree that an intelligence agency must maintain complete secrecy to be effective. However, there is a profound difference between an essential degree of secrecy to achieve a specific purpose and secrecy for the mere sake of secrecy.

…the CIA has never carried out any action of a political nature, given any support of any nature, to any persons, potentates or movements, political or otherwise, without appropriate approval at a high potential level in our government outside the CIA.

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.

It's very dangerous ... to confuse the confuse the identity and fortune of the President with the success and fortune of the nation.

As the power of the populace increases, the wisdom of its statesmen, who concern themselves with external affairs, decreases proportionately.

I promise you the country would be in real trouble if I were really in the White House.

The CIA was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.

There was a mentality in Congress that regarded foreign agents who had committed human rights abuses as unacceptable. The government was too quick to take them off its payrolls, limiting its access to terrorists. It’s that kind of political correctness that you can’t afford in the intelligence business.