James Comey Quotes

During my time as CIA Director and Secretary of Defense, Hillary was a strong supporter of our efforts to protect our homeland, decimate al-Qaeda, and bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

I spent over ten years in the Central Intelligence Agency as an undercover operations officer serving overseas after 9/11 where I carried out covert operations against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as other countries who are 'hostile to liberty,' as I like to say.

Critics have stepped up their attacks on the President for authorizing the National Security Agency to listen to international communications of known al Qaeda members or affiliated terrorists during a time of war. The American people expect their leaders to stay a step ahead of the enemy, and the National Security Agency authorization is a critical tool in the War on Terror that saves lives and protects civil liberties at the same time.

US intelligence agencies will only use such data to meet specific security requirements: counterintelligence, counterterrorism, counterproliferation, cybersecurity, force protection for our troops and allies, and combating transnational crime, including sanctions evasion.

The FBI is unique in that it straddles both law enforcement and counterintelligence.

SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, also has no executive powers and operates abroad on CIA lines, but with a tiny percentage of the budget and a tiny percentage of the personnel.

Terrorists and criminals are increasingly adept at exploiting cutting-edge technologies to carry out or to mask their crimes. To counter current and emerging threats, the FBI actively deploys a wide range of technology-based tools, capabilities, and training that enable and enhance intelligence, national security, and law enforcement operations.

Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.

We barely missed killing Bin Laden. There were numerous findings issued by the President to kill him. We rolled up terrorist cells. We stopped the millennium bombings.

I think soon after I became director of the CIA - President Obama pulled me into the Oval Office and said: 'Look, I just want you to know that your top priority is to go after Osama bin Laden.'

I strongly support the call to greatly expand our human intelligence capability to penetrate al Qaeda and gather critical intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks on our homeland.

There will always be spies. We have to have them. Without them we wouldn't have got Osama bin Laden - it took us years, but it happened.

The FBI had more agents in New York than the CIA had agents abroad. [In the 1990s].

Secrecy now beclouds everything about the Central Intelligence Agency—its cost, its efficiency, its success, its failures.

CIA will not develop operations to penetrate another Government agency, even with the approval of its leadership.

Bureau of Secret Intelligence.

The CIA was set up by me for the sole purpose of getting all the available information to the President. It was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities.

We have 17 different intelligence agencies and they are all basic;ly doing the same thing.

Counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and counterintelligence are staples. The four countries of highest interest - Russia, China, Iran and North Korea - are constants.

Renditions before and since 9/11 share some basic features. They have been conducted lawfully, responsibly and with a clear and single purpose: Get terrorists off the street and gain intelligence on those still at large. Our detention and interrogation programs flow from the same inescapable logic.

A chief of station is the head of all intelligence operations in any given country.

We know there are terrorists communicating with individuals in the United States. We just can't see what they're saying.

The world has changed, the CIA is having to change, and again, the challenge for someone like me as a spy novelist is to write realistically about where they're actually going.

Intelligence collection is not confined to the communications of adversaries or of the guilty. Rather, it's about gaining information otherwise unavailable that would help keep Americans safe and free.

Reasonable people can disagree about the authorities the NSA should have, when it's appropriate for the CIA to use drone strikes, and how assertive U.S. foreign policy and intelligence should be.