Intelligence Assessment Quotes

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.

Economists are evaluated on how intelligent they sound, not on a scientific measure of their knowledge of reality

[D]rawing up 'secret war plans' for a possible attack on Iraq wasn't irrational. The low-level war against Saddam was 12 years old, with no end in sight. American and British pilots were getting shot at, sanctions weren't working, and Bush was getting warnings that Saddam had all those terrible weapons and would use them against America. Bush would have been a fool not to draw up plans. Gee, wait till the critics find out that FDR, without ever informing the media, was plotting to fight Japan and Germany before Pearl Harbor.

After the heavily politicized 2007 Iran NIE, many of us in Congress found it hard to take some intelligence analysis at face value.

President Bush admitted that the United States went to war in Iraq based on bad intelligence. But he says knowing what we know now he would still do it again. So at least we're learning from our mistakes.

You certainly can't tell anything from the microscopic structure of the brain whether the person was an idiot or a genius.

Sheep are not considered the most intelligent animals but British scientist say humans may have underestimated the woolly creatures. In fact, the British scientific community is even suggesting that the animals might even be "Irish-smart.".

Nothing is more important to national security and the making and conduct of good policy than timely, accurate, and relevant intelligence. Nothing is more critical to accurate and relevant intelligence than independent analysis.

Questions of motive are very difficult in intelligence analysis.

I go back and forth as to whether I think Nancy Pelosi's really this dumb or not. Although, every time I hear her speak I get closer and closer to concluding that she is this dumb.

I love to work. It fascinates me. And I love seeing who's coming up, who's got the charisma to last, who's got the intelligence to move on to other things. I'm so glad now that I'm stuck behind the piano, because when you're getting older it's very hard to waddle around the stage.

As an intelligence analyst you have to tell the president what you know, what you think you know and what you don’t know.

Hillary Clinton's not very bright. Everybody says she's so smart, so much smarter than Donald Trump. She doesn't really have a grasp. She doesn't have a grasp on what's important and what's not.

The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that.

I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.

When a man puts me a question, I judge of his intelligence.

An espionage organization is a collector: it collects raw information. That gets processed by a machinery that is supposed to resolve its reliability, and to present a finished product.

The Intelligence Community Assessment concluded first that President Putin directed and influenced a campaign to erode the faith and confidence of the American people in our presidential election process. Second, that he did so to demean Secretary Clinton, and third, that he sought to advantage Mr. Trump.

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 ].

You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s the nature of the intelligence business.

You have multiple intelligence agencies. They all ultimately report to the director of national intelligence but, you know, it never comes in neat packages. So you have to make judgments on what you have, and it's not easy to do.

I can remember when I was National Security Adviser, the intelligence community told us... they put out an intelligence report saying that Iran would never back off from attacks on shipping in the Gulf if we use force.

We measure minds by their stature; it would be better to esteem them by their beauty.

We had periodic crises in this country when the technical intelligence didn't support the policy. We had the bomber gap, the missile gap.