Michael Scheuer Quotes

Woe to you who insults the intelligence community, if you're president.

There was a striking example of this in Pakistan when the US sent in Special Forces, to be honest, to kill Osama Bin Laden. He could easily have been apprehended and caught but their orders were to kill him.

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

There was a mentality in Congress that regarded foreign agents who had committed human rights abuses as unacceptable. The government was too quick to take them off its payrolls, limiting its access to terrorists. It’s that kind of political correctness that you can’t afford in the intelligence business.

This great palladium of national safety…

As for these extremists, here’s what those who would cowardly attack our civilians don’t get. The United States is never going to retreat from the world. We don't get terrorized. We’re going to keep standing up for our interests. We're going to keep standing up for the security of our citizens. We're going to keep standing up for human rights and dignity for people wherever they live. We’re going to keep working with our allies and our partners. We're going to keep offering a future of hope and progress -- in stark contrast to terrorists who only know how to kill and destroy and maim. And like generations before us, the United States of America is going to remain the greatest force for freedom that the world has ever known.

Secrecy now beclouds everything about the Central Intelligence Agency—its cost, its efficiency, its success, its failures.

Human rights and fundamental freedoms may be limited to meet the just requirements of national security, public order, public health, public safety, or public morality…. realization of human rights must be considered in the regional and national context bearing in mind different political, economic, legal, social, cultural, historical and religious backgrounds

Bureau of Secret Intelligence.

Terrible times require terrible things to be done.

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.

It is not the intelligence community's place to set and implement policy.

During my time as CIA Director and Secretary of Defense, Hillary was a strong supporter of our efforts to protect our homeland, decimate al-Qaeda, and bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

The world has changed, the CIA is having to change, and again, the challenge for someone like me as a spy novelist is to write realistically about where they're actually going.

It's certainly not helpful when the commander in chief is a critic of the intelligence community.

The greatest nation in the world should not have much to fear from a family, especially children, fleeing violence. More importantly, children fleeing violence ought to have nothing to fear from the greatest country in the world.

While supporting human rights in another country is important, fighting for our own safety is crucial.

My personal sources in the intelligence community and the military are very good. They're excellent. I have very high-up, in-depth sources.

We can give our intelligence and law enforcement community the powers they need to track down and take out terrorists without undermining our commitment to the rule of law, or our basic rights and liberties.

Trump said that he hoped bin Laden suffered a lot. It looks like he got his wish, because the CIA said bin Laden spent his last hour watching 'Celebrity Apprentice.'

The [Barack] Obama administration almost appears as though it is afraid of the intelligence community. They're afraid of death by a thousand cuts - you know, leaks and things like that.

For Donald Trump to dismiss out of hand the intelligence community's fact gathering is, frankly - doesn't bode well for him protecting our country.

That intelligence capability is enormously important to the United States, to our conduct of foreign policy, to defense matters, to economic matters. And I am a strong supporter of it.

You bomb ISIL. You're not trying to bomb innocent people. And that requires intelligence and confidence in our military to be able to develop the kinds of targets that we need. We're already doing Special Forces, who are going to help us gather that intelligence and help advise and assist and train local forces so that they can go after ISIL in areas like Raqqah and Mosul.

We have less civil liberties than we had on 9/ 1 1 in some significant ways. But we are also, I believe, less safe as a result in many instances of the sacrifice in human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law that (the Bush) administration has adopted.