Jimmy Carter Quotes

The FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program would work hand-in-hand with police departments, literally planning attacks on Black Panther Party offices throughout the United States of America. They did this over a period of time.

We [the FBI] are a fact-gathering organization only. We don't clear anybody. We don't condemn anybody..... The minute the FBI begins making recommendations on what should be done with its information, it becomes a Gestapo.

Remember that J. Edgar Hoover’s secret files began in the interests of national security and ended up being used for blackmail.

Hoover had us [FBI agents and officials] prepare material for McCarthy regularly. We kept furnishing it to him while Hoover publicly denied that we were helping him.

Domestic intelligence activity has threatened and undermined the Constitutional rights of Americans to free speech, association and privacy. It has done so primarily because the Constitutional system for checking abuse of power has not been applied.

We’re not a peephole journal. What you are doing is the story … the Federal police force of the United States doing this to an individualized citizen.

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

I'm not against the FBI investigation in doing a proper role, but I'm against the FBI spying on people like Martin Luther King. I'm against the CIA fighting secret wars and overthrowing government.

Also, with information having just come out at the time about J. Edgar Hoover's electronic surveillance of Dr. King, it gave greater weight to the statements of those persons who were alleging involvement of the FBI.

You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.

In its attempt to crush the Black Panthers, the FBI engineered frequent arrests on the flimsiest of pretexts.

I have noticed, with much distress, the excessive wartime activity of the investigating bureaus of Congress and the administration, with their impertinent and indecent searching out of the private lives and the past political beliefs of individuals.

Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous -- and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations -- have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity. Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable.

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.

] The vast industry of mutual surveillance that grew up alongside the industry of mutual destruction is not about to disappear. The spies, like the weapons, are here to stay. And proliferate, sooner or later, whether we like it or not.

Abolish the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Intelligence gathered by this government leaves no doubt

Homeland security intelligence done the wrong way will give us thought police.

This country, for reasons of history, culture and therefore law, has had an allergy to domestic intelligence.

Security is like liberty in that many are the crimes committed in its name.

Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

As the plot of 'Condor' unfolds, you'll understand that nothing is sacred in the pharmacy world or in the behind-the-scenes workings of the CIA and FBI.

Our intelligence agencies have vast powers, and Obama used them illegally to spy on political opponents. This can't be allowed to stand.

When a government forcibly holds enough people indefinitely without trial, it evokes the kinds of raids, detention, and abuses of power associated with authoritarian states - or darker periods in American history.

The tactics that the Trump administration are using on the streets of Portland are abhorrent. People are being literally scooped off the street into unmarked vans, rental cars, apparently. They are being denied probable cause. And they are denied due process. They don't even know who's pulling them into the vans.