Across all U.S. intelligence agencies, there is a lack of cultural respect and a poorly tuned attitude toward foreign peoples and cultures.
For years, Israeli and American intelligence agencies assumed that if Iran were to gain the ability to build a bomb, it would be a result of its relationship with Russia, which was building a nuclear reactor for Iran at a site called Bushehr and had assisted the Iranians in their missile-development program.
In Israel's short history, army commanders and the heads of the intelligence agencies have often advocated the use of force and in many cases showed contempt for the law and human rights. Political leaders have typically been more measured.
When Russia's intelligence agencies obtained some of the National Security Agency's secrets about its own cyberweapons, it appeared to do so by manipulating a virus protection program sold by Kaspersky, a Russian firm.
In the fight against terrorism, national agencies keep full control over their police forces, security and intelligence agencies and judicial authorities.
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.
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 was reading about all of these medical and psychological experimental programs that the government and various intelligence agencies had run throughout the 20th century. Any book you can read on that, there's some really horrifying and fascinating stuff that goes on there.
Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials, the Foreign Ministry nerds, tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies.
I am committed to ensure that our intelligence community, law enforcement, medical professionals, and military have the information and funding needed to protect the American people from threats at home and abroad.
The intelligence community does not have complete 'eyes on' the totality of the Iranian nuclear program, nor can it guarantee that we have identified all of Iran's nuclear facilities and processes.
The president doesn't order the military to seize political opponents. He doesn't order his intelligence community to lie about national security for political purposes. He uses the military or intelligence communities to protect the United States and our citizens, not to help him win elections.
Because of the terrorist threat, the FBI and CIA have become as important as the military in preserving our freedom. Yet while thanking our military is standard practice in American life, no one thinks of thanking the FBI, the CIA, or the rest of the intelligence community for keeping us safe since 9/11.
The intelligence community gets hurt through sequestration.
The intelligence community, for the most part, has no accountability at all; to the Congress, to us the American people, and so they feel that they above the law.
The intelligence community really is a vast bureaucratic entity, and it has been politicized in ways that are not effective for the gathering of intelligence and giving it to senior policymakers.
I believe that reforming our intelligence community is one of the most important things that we can do in order to ensure that our country is in fact safer, stronger and wiser.
American political elites feel very empowered to criticize the American intelligence community for not doing enough when they feel in danger, and as soon as we've made them feel safe again, they feel equally empowered to complain that we're doing too much.
President Obama and his successors are dependent on the 100,000-plus people inside the American intelligence community - the people Edward Snowden betrayed.
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.
