James Comey Quotes

It's very, very difficult I think for us to have a transparent debate about secret programs approved by a secret court issuing secret court orders based on secret interpretations of the law.

We do have to balance this issue of privacy and security. Those who pretend that there's no balance that has to be struck and think we can take a 100-percent absolutist approach to protecting privacy don't recognize that governments are going to be under an enormous burden to prevent the kinds of terrorist acts that not only harm individuals, but also can distort our society and our politics in very dangerous ways.

By tearing down the wall between law enforcement and the intelligence community, we have been able to share information in a way that was virtually impossible before the Patriot Act.

I'm very grateful that Barack Obama as president very much put protection of privacy on the agenda today, due to the fact of Islamist terrorism all over the world.

We understand the concerns that people have with not only protecting our values, but our privacy interests as well. We think that the USA Freedom Act was a good resolution of that.

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.

We cannot go up on a wire. We cannot do a search without a judge on the FISA Court approving it and determining that we have met the standard that has been set forth by Congress in order to utilize these techniques.

Opponents of civil liberties contend the NSA data collection has made our country more safe, but even the most vocal defenders of the program have failed to identify a single thwarted plot.

President Obama and his successors are dependent on the 100,000-plus people inside the American intelligence community - the people Edward Snowden betrayed.

We can give our intelligence and law enforcement community the powers they need to track down and take out terrorists without undermining our commitment to the rule of law, or our basic rights and liberties.

What we do with the information now is up to us, but certainly I have a lot of respect for the courage and integrity that was required for [Edard Snowden] to take that action.

I do think that when you go into red states, they're - so-called red states - I think they're troubled with certain excesses with respect to the Patriot Act, but they're also concerned with making sure we're secure against terrorism.

I think the vast majority of the American people say you shouldn't be able to collect my phone records if I'm not suspicious, if you don't have probable cause.

The [Barack] Obama administration almost appears as though it is afraid of the intelligence community. They're afraid of death by a thousand cuts - you know, leaks and things like that.

I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.

Obama found a lot of people that think just like he does, and he put them in the intelligence community. Can you imagine? When you think of the intelligence community, don't you think of super patriots, don't you think of people out there even risking their lives to defend and protect the Constitution and the people of this country and this country itself as founded? No. That's not the kind of people Obama put at the CIA.

People always ask me what I think, if Edward Snoden is a hero, if he's a villain. I don't really tend to moralize it so much as I feel like he's a whistleblower. He's someone who saw a wrongdoing and in order to shine a light on that wrongdoing had to bend some rules and break some laws along the way.

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

I think you just learn a lot of stuff in general about all the stuff he [Edward Snowden] released. I think there's probably a lot that we don't know. That's what is really interesting.

They're mounting a campaign right now with the ACLU and a lot of different organizations advocating for [Edward Snoden] pardoning before [Barack] Obama leaves office. Wouldn't it be incredible to see something like that happen? I don't know what we can expect. I am interested in the different points and perspectives that people have.

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order. [...] Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. [...]

When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That's not what this program is about. ... What the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers, and durations of calls; they are not looking at people's names and they're not looking at content. ... If the intelligence committee actually wants to listen to a phone call they have to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation.

If we really care about safety we would close down WikiLeaks. We would treat the people at WikiLeaks as enemy combatants. We would declare that the kind of thing this private did is treason. WikiLeaks is not a fun and games event. WikiLeaks undermines profoundly the ability of the United States to work around the world. Why would you, if you were a foreigner thinking about helping the United States, why would you confide anything to an American when you know that it could end up in The New York Times based on some leak?

One of the things that I've urged the president-elect to do is to develop a strong working relationship with the intelligence community and I think it's important that Congress, on a bipartisan basis.

I think it's kind of a stretch. You know, it's one thing if somebody working for the U.S. government has sold secrets to the other side, it's another if they have something in their personal life that they're hiding for which they could be blackmailed. Having evidence that they didn't tell the truth to somebody in the same building where they work, maybe it's just the old intel guy, is - it's a problem.