Evan McMullin Quotes

Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership at a time of war, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back?

When you're told to go brief a United States senator on a covert operation, you go do it. And you trust the information isn't going to leak.

I don't want to talk about intelligence matters. I will say, however, that intelligence-community estimates should not become public in the way of this city and in the way of Congress.

Usually you kind of give the President a pass on leaking confidential stuff.

Americans have been given goals to achieve in Iraq, but not the standards by which to measure progress. And the only assurance Americans have been given that we can reach those goals is to trust the President and his Administration at their word.

In the '60s - and right up to the present day - the identity of a member of the British Secret Services was and is, quite rightly, a state secret. To divulge it is a crime. The Services may choose to leak a name when it pleases them.

The United States is the only country in the world that has ever released the operations files of its intelligence agency.

Most people don't know what goes on in the intelligence services. Certainly I had very little idea what went on in GCHQ. For me it was a job, a chance to use my languages.

I would be concerned if any speech to Congress related any information that's new to the president of the United States.

I hopes the candidate [Donald Trump] is given fake intelligence briefings ... because you can't trust him.

The FBI demonstrated this by taking down the former head of the CIA [General David Petraeus] over classified information given to his mistress. Almost no-one is untouchable. The FBI is always trying to demonstrate that no-one can resist us. But Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI's investigation, so there's anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak. We've published about 33,000 of Clinton's emails when she was Secretary of State.

It may affront the military-minded person to suggest a regime that does not maintain any military secrets.

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

[I will] totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, nail by nail, brick by brick

Our intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments - as opposed to ordinary citizens - around the world, in the same way that the intelligence services of every other nation does. We will not apologize simply because our services may be more effective.

There are some who become spies for money, or out of vanity and megalomania, or out of ambition, or out of a desire for thrills. But the malady of our time is of those who become spies out of idealism.

I wasn't terribly familiar. I had read some of the headlines but didn't quite understand difference between WikiLeaks...[Edward] Snowden. And then watching the documentary, working on the film, you got to see his personal journey through this and sort of understand more about what he went through.

The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes, and that the president may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the attorney general. It's important to understand, senators, that the rules and the methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities.

[Donald Trump] has also promised an intelligence surge [in Syria]. Mike Flynn knows a lot about that. Tactically, Mike Flynn has been fantastic with intelligence when he was in the military. They'll be looking at that.

Snowden has enough [sic] information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had. The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.

It is a little-known fact about covert operations that you will spend a lot of time with people you can’t really trust. They may be traitors and liars. We call them assets or informants. But mostly, in those days, I called him Zach.

It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.

So she [Hillary Clinton] wouldn't intentionally put the nation at risk. She wouldn't intentionally traffic in top secret stuff. And besides, not all this stuff we deal with is that classified anyway. So here's the president [Barack Obama], very powerful, intimidating guy, [James] Comey works for him, the president's been out there saying he didn't think Hillary did anything wrong.

[Donald Trump] can do it [build the wall] by executive order by just re-programming money within the within the Immigration Service.

Look, the FBI has the tools necessary un-American activities in our country. It goes on, we shouldn't even be talking about it.