Intelligence Reform Quotes

I do not believe that reorganization will fix what is wrong with our intelligence community….Failures were caused by performance, not organization.

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

When I was director of the CIA, I knew that we had been - and I'm choosing my words very carefully here - effective in our expansion. We really had - expansion of government agencies and expansion of use of contractors. Effective, we were; efficient, we weren't. And so, as director of the CIA, I went after the inefficiencies part.

Since September 11th Congress has created the Department of Homeland Security, more than doubled the homeland security budget and implemented a bipartisan overhaul of our intelligence systems.

Our intelligence community needs better coordination of operations and exchange of information, and that's why we need an overall director of national intelligence and a national counterterrorism center.

First, I have the privilege of being Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is not an oxymoron I assure you.

In the aftermath of September 11, and as the 9/11 Commission report so aptly demonstrates, it is clear that our intelligence system is not working the way that it should.

I’m William Colby and I was the head of the CIA. The job of intelligence is to warn us of dangers to our military. Now the Cold War is over, and the military threat is far less. Now it’s time to cut our military spending by 50 percent and invest the money in our schools, health care, and our economy.

My experience is that our intelligence officials try to do the right thing, but even with good intentions, sometimes they make mistakes. Sometimes they can be overzealous.

Another factor is the decision, made in 1976, to sharply divide the FBI and the foreign intelligence agencies. The FBI would collect within the United States; the foreign intelligence agencies would collect overseas.

[I will] totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, nail by nail, brick by brick

The manner in which intelligence indicators were handled in the Cuba situation may well be the most serious flaw in our intelligence system, and one which, if uncorrected, could lead to the gravest consequences

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.”

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 intelligence bureaucracy is in a pathological state of dysfunction, and has been for decades. To fix the critical problems, we need to face them in a serious and thoughtful way. Neither party has done that well at all.

Before 9/11 there were weak procedures, willingness, and mechanisms for communicating among agencies for foreign intelligence and the FBI with its focus on law enforcement. The domestic-vs.-foreign barrier has been solved by the reforms after 9/11 that established the DNI.

The 9/11 Commission strongly recommends that the National Intelligence Director be fully in control of the budget, from developing it to implementing it, to ensuring that the National Intelligence Director has the clout to make decisions.

While the intelligence profession oftentimes demands secrecy, it is critically important that there be a full and open discourse on intelligence matters with the appropriate elected representatives of the American people.

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.

I’m going to abolish the DAS in the next 3 or 4 months. I want to create a new and completely different intelligence agency. By abolishing the DAS we can take away the bad culture that has developed.

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

There is still much to be done by our intelligence community to bring its achievements up to an acceptable level.

There is nothing like proposals for intelligence reform to activate the anti-bodies of the affected agencies.

We will have to continue to improve our human intelligence system-something that was, unfortunately, lacking in the years which led up to September 11. This is going to be a continuing process of change.

… policy has shaped intelligence more than vice versa.