Jeff Sessions Quotes

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

The NSA's business is 'information dominance,' the use of other people's secrets to shape events.

In my professional work with the Agency, by the late '70s, I had come to question the value of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the intelligence agency's impact on American policy.

There has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States Government by the Muslim Brotherhood … They are in the Justice Department, Department of Homeland, and potentially even in the National Intelligence Agency …

In the Chinese view, the United States has designed its own system of rules about what constitutes 'legal' spying and what is illegal.

Ever since we've had electronic communications, and particularly during a time of war, presidents have authorized the electronic surveillance of the enemy.

Xi agreed to the American definition of legitimate espionage. In other words, you don't use the power of the state to steal secrets for profit.

From my experience as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, if a congressperson is identified as a potential target by a foreign intelligence service, that individual is notified.

Russia has a long history of propaganda and trying to influence various nation's cultures and elections. It's happening. They seem to have stepped up their game.

To be perfectly candid, we're better at stealing other people's secrets than anyone else in the world. But we self-limit. We steal secrets to keep our citizens free and safe.

It's public knowledge that there have been efforts - as U.S. intelligence sources have said - by Russia to destabilize the U.S. political system. I think that Canadians and, indeed, other Western countries should be prepared for similar efforts to be directed at us.

Cyber espionage is very lucrative for economic benefit to a nation.

The fallout from Wikileaks is incomparable to 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole, numerous embassies, et al.

Having conducted counterintelligence investigations, I can attest that not everything a foreign intelligence service does is necessarily illegal.

When a foreign adversary knows that an American official has deceived or withheld vital information from our government, it creates a fundamental counterintelligence vulnerability that can render that official irreparably compromised.

I'm talking about the finding in October that is public now of 17 different intelligence agencies saying Russia tried to meddle with our elections.

Cyber security will be an issue that I will be absolutely focused on as president. Because whether it's Russia, or China, Iran or North Korea more and more countries are using hacking to steal our information, to use it to their advantage. And we can't let that go on.

There is nothing going on and in the meantime we do know that our democracy is under assault by the KGB. To me, that's something we ought to be talking about. That's a relevant issue in this campaign [2016].

Even heads of our own security agency said, you know, we need to take a deep breath on this. This really doesn't seem to be happening [that Russians are trying to influence American domestic politics ].

I think that what is true is that the Russians intended to meddle, and they meddled. And it could be another country in the future.

Espionage is never a laughing matter. And in fact, this is not a political issue. I don't want to get this confused with the back and forth we might have about economic issues or anything else. This is a matter of national security now. And I find it very frightening that Donald Trump is encouraging any foreign power to breach a campaign and try to influence the outcome of the election.

...also took for granted that secret services were the only real measure of a nations political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.

We know that Russia was involved in hacking our democracy. We know that the evidence or information is sufficient to warrant an FBI investigation of this. We are trying to do as much of this as we can in the public eye transparently. Obviously, some of it will have to be done in closed session.

It's been reported - in fact, The New York Times has reported that intelligence agencies have told the White House that they now have, quote, "high confidence" that the Russian government was behind the hack.

I favor an aggressive expansion of America's intelligence capabilities domestically and around the world.