Dianne Feinstein Quotes

I don't deny that there are problems in the intelligence world, but I would argue that in the UK we try to uphold the highest standards in the world.

First, I have the privilege of being Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is not an oxymoron I assure you.

Congress has really serious oversight powers over Intelligence Agencies that they have not exercised in recent years.

I think cleaning house at the CIA needed to happen.

The Committee's review of a series of intelligence shortcomings, to include intelligence prior to 9/11 and the pre-war intelligence on Iraq, clearly reveal how vital a diverse intelligence workforce is to our national security.

Our intelligence community needs better coordination of operations and exchange of information, and that's why we need an overall director of national intelligence and a national counterterrorism center.

The NSA has different reporting requirements for each branch of government and each of its legal authorities.

George Tenet has been the director of central intelligence since 1997, time enough to have changed the Agency's culture. He has failed. He should go.

We have actually experienced in recent months a dramatic demonstration of an unprecedented intelligence failure, perhaps the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the United States.

My experience is the White House is not a very good place to coordinate intelligence, much less to integrate it.

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

I believe that reforming our intelligence community is one of the most important things that we can do in order to ensure that our country is in fact safer, stronger and wiser.

While the intelligence profession oftentimes demands secrecy, it is critically important that there be a full and open discourse on intelligence matters with the appropriate elected representatives of the American people.

I do have concerns about the current efforts to restructure our nation's intelligence community.

There should be a mass purge of the CIA for incompetence…. There were 3,000 people killed on September 11, and not a single CIA operative has been fired. They missed that; they missed the weapons of mass destruction.

I am very much interested in seeing the United States have as fine a foreign military and naval intelligence as they can possibly have, but I am not interested in setting up here in the United States any particular agency under any President ... and just allow him to have a Gestapo of his own if he wants to have it.

Intelligence, like any other aspect of national security, has to be under civilian control.

While the interests of the Intelligence community should not be taken lightly, we must remember that they exist to serve, not dictate.

Intelligence is a sacred cow. We’ve done nothing since we’ve been here about it. The CIA isn’t worth a damn.

There has been a culture of misinformation among the intelligence leadership.

… policy has shaped intelligence more than vice versa.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that the men and women of our intelligence community put their lives on the line every day, and they do very dangerous work to keep our country safe.

Chairman Chaffetz was an enthusiastic supporter of the 'USA Freedom Act,' designed to rein in the allegedly renegade NSA and its wanton depredations of American privacy.

Ensuring that the intelligence community adheres to its responsibilities to report on its activities to Congress is absolutely essential.

American political elites feel very empowered to criticize the American intelligence community for not doing enough when they feel in danger, and as soon as we've made them feel safe again, they feel equally empowered to complain that we're doing too much.