Adam Schiff Quotes
The intelligence community is very professional, they do their jobs well, they're the best intelligence gatherers in the world. They're dedicated, patriotic Americans. They will work with any president. They want to have a good relationship with every president.
Schiff, Adam. Interview by Chris Cuomo. New Day, CNN, 16 Feb. 2017.
The American Embassy in Berlin had wiretapped the telephone and telegraph wires of the German Foreign Ministry. The man who did that was hired by Secretary of State Lansing as the first employee of the new unit.
Intelligence agents tend to prefer covert activities to the less dramatic, non-exciting, activity of gathering and analyzing intelligence. Most national intelligence services tend to enlarge their portfolio to include covert activities regardless of what the national leaders intended. Because of the secrecy, they can often get away with this.
Actually, this is true for most government agencies and many non-government institutions as well. The concern is greater when organizations whose policies can affect life and death are not consciously developing and choosing policy alternatives and yet the policies are made by default.
The major idea of intelligence agencies in a democracy is for the intelligence agencies to provide the policy makers with facts on the ground and data with which they can make sounder policies. However, many times the policies of the administration is so firm that the political ideology restrict not only the kinds of analysis the intelligence agencies do, but in some cases shape or control the conclusions of otherwise sound studies. The influence of Vice President Cheney on the CIA and the invasion of Iraq.
Adam Bennett Schiff is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the U.S. Representative for California's 28th congressional district since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Schiff is in his eleventh term, having served since 2001.
