James R. Clapper Quotes

The Agency became so wrapped up in the military operation that it failed to appraise the chances of success realistically. Furthermore, it failed to keep the national policymakers adequately and realistically informed of the conditions considered essential for success.

I like to have fulsome discussions on every topic. What happens if you lose this show? What would you do? We have to look at every hypothesis.

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.

Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes. The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving 400,000 or 500,000 troops. We missed it.

I was an intelligence officer, not a policy-maker.

Nothing is more important to national security and the making and conduct of good policy than timely, accurate, and relevant intelligence. Nothing is more critical to accurate and relevant intelligence than independent analysis.

Unfortunately, the historical record of failure to prevent strategic surprises is overwhelming. In conventional warfare, victims usually misread the evidence or miscalculate their responses, and they can suffer surprise even when their intelligence collection systems and defensive preparations are impressive.

Failure to subject the project, especially in its latter frenzied stages, to a cold and objective appraisal by the best operating talent available, particularly by those not involved in the operation Failure to advise the president, at an appropriate time, that success had become dubious and to recommend that the operation be therefore canceled Failure to recognize that the project had become overt and that the military effort had become too large to be handled by the agency alone

As an intelligence analyst you have to tell the president what you know, what you think you know and what you don’t know.

Part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.

The failings in Afghanistan don't fall on the shoulders of the American service personnel trying to complete their mission. The failure falls on military leadership unable to adapt to irregular warfare, and a Congress that blindly continues to fund failure.

Is the proposed operation likely to succeed? What might the consequences of failure? Is it in the realm of practicability in terms of material and supplies?

There are so many things a large intelligence espionage organization can do to justify its existence, that people can get promotions for, because it could result in results.

You have multiple intelligence agencies. They all ultimately report to the director of national intelligence but, you know, it never comes in neat packages. So you have to make judgments on what you have, and it's not easy to do.

Here's the teaching point, if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions, and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions.

What I learned is that policymakers have to force consideration of actions that may not have occurred to them at the time.

We had periodic crises in this country when the technical intelligence didn't support the policy. We had the bomber gap, the missile gap.

Good politics starts with empathy, proceeds to analysis, then sets out values and establishes the vision, before getting to the nitty-gritty of policy solutions.

The Soviet Union did not achieve victory over the West, so was my information inadequate to help them to victory, or did it play no particular role in their failure to achieve victory?

My job is to give the president and secretary of defense military advice before they know they need it.

One of the great intellectual failures of the American intelligence community, and especially the counterterrorism community, is to assume if someone hasn't attacked us, it's because he can't or because we've defeated him.

Wishful thinking is not sound public policy.

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

And I argued with that intelligence estimate and I think it is a responsibility of policymakers to use their best judgment on the basis of the intelligence they've received.

Policymakers have to make judgments based on the best intelligence they get.