I was an intelligence officer for what was then 8th Air Force, B-52 Air Force.
There is no worse place for an intelligence service like CIA to be than on Page 1, above the fold in your daily newspaper.
If we are going to conduct espionage in the future, we are going to have to make some changes in the relationship between the intelligence community and the public it serves.
An intelligence analyst may attribute an attack to al Qaeda, whereas a policy maker could opt for the more general ‘extremist.’
I believe we do have a great intelligence service. Is it good enough in all circumstances? Of course not. We live in the human condition. We try to make it better each day.
I have spent my adult life working in American intelligence. It has been quite an honor. Generally well resourced. A global mission. No want of issues. And it was a hell of a ride.
The FISA Amendment Act of 2008 actually allows some of the things we were doing under the president’s authority only against al Qaeda, it allows them for all legitimate foreign intelligence purposes.
President Obama and his successors are dependent on the 100,000-plus people inside the American intelligence community – the people Edward Snowden betrayed.
Americans are very practical folks. Accustomed to hard choices in their own lives, they are willing to give us in intelligence a lot of slack as we make the hard choices our profession demands.
Dissenting analysts passionate about their positions are not unusual in the American intelligence community. Their presence – or even the rejection – of their favored positions is not prima face evidence of politicization.
Intelligence collection is not confined to the communications of adversaries or of the guilty. Rather, it’s about gaining information otherwise unavailable that would help keep Americans safe and free.
Presidents get to decide how their intelligence is served up to them, and it’s the job of intelligence to adjust.
When the intelligence is making a policymaker too happy, he ought to challenge it, and even if he doesn’t, the intelligence briefer needs to launch a red team against his own conclusions to see if he can hold his ground.
It’s good to remind intelligence producers and consumers alike about the need to ‘warn of emerging conditions, trends, threats and opportunities’ and the potential for discontinuities.
Intelligence is often viewed as a profession that steals secrets and then knits those secrets together for policymakers in order to inform their judgments.
A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas, and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.
CIA relies on a partner’s focus, linguistic agility, and cultural depth; in return, the partner benefits from CIA’s resources, technology, and global view.
The arc of technology is in the direction of unbreakable encryption, and no laws are going to get in the way of that reality.
Anger can be a useful emotion; it’s built into our genetic code to help with self preservation. But it can also be destructive, even when it is justified.