James R. Schlesinge Quotes

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

It’s [the CIA’s] broken. It’s so broken that nobody wants to believe it.

I have great respect for the people in intelligence and CIA. I don't have a lot of respect for in particular one of the leaders. But that's OK. But I have a lot of respect for the people in the CIA.

The 33 different intelligence systems paid for by 15 different agencies need to be brought together…. A national debate on intelligence is necessary! … I am going to continue to fight a system that doesn’t want to hear the word “reform.”

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

Secrecy now beclouds everything about CIA—its cost, its efficiency, its successes, and its failures.

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

Nixon railed against the CIA and their lousy intelligence.

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

I've yet to meet a President who controlled the CIA.

The CIA was set up by me for the sole purpose of getting all the available information to the President. It was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities.

I know CIA like the back of my hand.

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.

The men and women of the CIA are a national treasure.

When I was younger, I actually wanted to be a CIA agent. Really. I even did the online questionnaire.

There is no part of the executive branch that more exists on the outer edge of executive prerogative than the American intelligence community - the intelligence community, CIA, covert action. My literal responsibility as director of CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval, to inform.

As an old man who remembers the intellectual exhilaration and the pleasure of having done good work that characterized the CIA when it was young, I wonder if it might not be better to speak and think in terms of restoring its culture.

If you look back today over the last 25 years, it is a fact that we have had a progressive degeneration of our intelligence community in general; in particular in the field of human intelligence.

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.

…the CIA has never carried out any action of a political nature, given any support of any nature, to any persons, potentates or movements, political or otherwise, without appropriate approval at a high potential level in our government outside the CIA.

The CIA claims that secrecy is necessary to hide what it's doing from enemies of the United States ... the real reason for secrecy is to hide what the CIA is doing from the American people.

It's inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with all the overt orders of the government.

Anyone who tells you he deals with the CIA is either a fool (for admitting it) or a braggart.

The United States Intelligence community collects too much information.