Elliott Abrams Quotes

The Bush administration also was not straightforward about the intelligence it had, releasing tenuous information that fit its goal of attacking Iraq. I feel deceived.

White House officials acknowledge in broad terms that a president's time and public rhetoric are among his most valuable policy tools.

I guess the issue that I have with all the news organizations that have a political MO, if you will, attached to them is that they sometimes jump to conclusions about what this will mean. Get ahead of themselves.

The Obama administration appears to regard intelligence leaks and briefings more or less like briefings by the Democratic National Committee or White House flack Jay Carney. You use any information at hand, classified or not, and you spin it any way you like, fairly or not.

You get to a point where the factual adjudication doesn't matter because there are all these other outlets that are far less responsible, all talking about the ad, some of which have a political reason for promoting it.

I may have my personal political thing, but we never wanted it to stain the show.

News represents another form of advertising, not liberal propaganda.

I think it's a self-serving effort to put a political agenda above the safety of our law enforcement officers.

First OSP [Office of Special Plans] supplies false or exaggerated intelligence; then members of the WHIG leak it to friendly reporters, complete with prepackaged vivid imagery; finally, when the story breaks, senior officials point to it as proof and parrot the unnamed quotes they or their colleagues previously supplied.

In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized.

A clearer form of politicization (of intelligence) is the inconsistent review of analysis: reports that conform to policy preferences have an easier time making it through the gauntlet of coordination and approval than ones that do not.

The Arab Press is a deeply distorted lens.

The scientist is speaking in a forum to which opposing scientific views are not more or less automatically accorded equal access. The politician is free to select his own experts to develop an issue in the way that has maximum political utility to him. Truth may be only incidental. the scientist is speaking in a forum to which opposing scientific views are not more or less automatically accorded equal access. The politician is free to select his own experts to develop an issue in the way that has maximum political utility to him. Truth may be only incidental.

The CIA’s intelligence was in many cases simply Bill Casey’s ideology.

I really do not believe that an intelligence organization in this government is able to deliver an honest analytical product without facing the risk of political contention.

People in charge of intelligence are political as well.

Politicization - the shading of analysis to fit prevailing policy or politics - is the harshest criticism one can make of an intelligence organization. It strikes beyond questions of competence to the fundamental ethic of the enterprise, which is, or should be, truth telling.

I have been accused of acting out of partisan political motives.

We should never have any political or religious organization filter our news.

Apparently, all foreign media organisations have to follow an approved script of acceptable coverage, lest they are accused of interference. And make no mistake: we're not talking about neutrality. The only acceptable approach was, 'Support Clinton, attack Trump'.

I pointed to an article with bold headlines reporting that the police had refused to allow the PAP to hold a rally at Empress Place, and then to the last paragraph where in small type it added the meeting would take place where we were now. I compared this with a prominent report about an SPA rally. This was flagrant bias.

Bush and Cheney were not misled by flawed intelligence; they used the flawed intelligence to mislead.

[Operation] Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasizing reports that showed non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed compliance. It was cherry-picking intelligence.

The news pages are now routinely the site of the rankest propaganda.

Wow, the entire network of anchors has been hired to be the press secretary.