John Brennan Quotes

As has been the case throughout the history of terrorism, government anxiety centres on what to do about those against whom there may be intelligence but no usable evidence.

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

I want to be very clear: whenever it is possible to capture a suspected terrorist, it is the unqualified preference of the administration to take custody of that individual so we can obtain information that is vital to the safety and security of the American people.

In the fight against terrorism, national agencies keep full control over their police forces, security and intelligence agencies and judicial authorities.

The CIA has acknowledged that it has detained about 100 terrorists since 9/11, and about a third of them have been subjected to what the CIA refers to as 'enhanced interrogation tactics,' and only a small proportion of those have in fact been subjected to the most serious types of enhanced procedures.

The prompt assimilation of that intelligence will be essential if we are to avoid another September 11th.

The FBI. is a massive culture. It's been a culture that served America well, and it's been focused on prosecution. But what we need in terms of terrorism is prevention.

Terrorism is not a matter that can be left to law enforcement, with its deliberative process, built-in delays, and safeguards that may let the prisoner go free on procedural grounds.

People should think of the war on terror as being like the war on crime--- a struggle in which success is measured not by final victory but by declines in incidence and seriousness of attacks.

The most effective way to gather intelligence and thwart terrorism can also be a direct route into morally repugnant terrain. A survey of the landscape of persuasion.

Successful counter-terrorist strategies are based on accurate and detailed intelligence on terrorist networks and activities

In order to win the war on terrorism, we have to win the war of information. Information is so very, very valuable. This is an important tool in gathering up information.

The point is the country has got serious problems dealing with terrorism both domestic and international.

Where the stakes are the highest, in the war on terror, we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing, planning and collaborative enforcement.

We can't gather the intelligence we need to foil future attacks, if we are blindly granting terrorists the right to remain silent. But for some reason, we've already done that - with the terrorist who tried to bring down Flight 253.

There is no moral equivalency between those who would kill using children, innocent civilians, children and adults, in their homes and in their places of worship, to that of a government that is seeking those terrorists before they can engage in that awful activity.

Andrew Warren was a rarity in the CIA's Clandestine Service - African-American, fluent in Arabic, and relatively young for an agent who'd already spent nearly a decade chasing terrorists in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq and Algeria, so deep undercover that few of his friends or family knew the nature of his work.

High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country.

The central role in the fight against terrorism is with national authorities.

I think the American people believe in stopping and preventing terrorism pretty much at any cost.

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

I can tell you that the Canadian intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been providing outstanding co-operation with our intelligence and law enforcement agencies as we work together to track down terrorists here in North America and put them out of commission.

In the United States, it's the mandate of the FBI to gather information relating to terrorism, go out and collect it, to do the interviews, to do the investigative work.

The actions we took in the aftermath of 9/11 were harsh but necessary and effective. These steps were fully sanctioned and carefully followed. The detention and interrogation of top terrorists like Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi yielded breakthroughs which have kept this country safe.

Our task, your task... is to try to connect the dots before something happens. People say, 'Well, where's the smoking gun?' Well, we don't want to see a smoking gun from a weapon of mass destruction.