Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've always loved investigations.
Leaking of classified material is a concern.
In planning an attack, persons have various roles.
My admonition is, 'No counterterrorism lead goes uncovered.'
Perimeter defense may not matter if the enemy is inside the gates.
So there is a foreign intelligence purpose for every one of our FISA warrants.
In the future, the cyber threat will equal or even eclipse the terrorist threat.
No one has ever been able to convince me that optimism is not preferable to pessimism.
We need to take lessons learned from fighting terrorism and apply them to cyber crime.
I think around the world, our agents are the best collectors of information you'll find.
There'll be differences of opinion in just about every intelligence analysis that you make.
We cannot turn back the clock. We cannot undo the impact of technology. Nor would we want to.
You don't eat before your troops eat, and you don't ask your troops to do anything you won't do, too.
It's because we need to determine who in this country is poised, positioned to commit terrorist acts.
The FBI's principal priority right now is protecting the United States against another terrorist attack.
Anyplace we go in the world, when someone asks us what we do, we feel an immense pride in saying, 'FBI.'
I didn't know the organization, but the one thing you can say about the FBI, it's tremendously professional.
But since September 11, we have made every effort to try to work closely with state and local law enforcement.
I am confident that every action we took as the FBI detained individuals in the wake of 9/11 was appropriately done.
The collapse of Enron was devastating to tens of thousands of people and shook the public's confidence in corporate America.
Computer hackers do not need to know each other's real names, or even live on the same continent, to steal millions in mere hours.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, it became clear that the FBI's number one priority must be the prevention of another terrorist attack.
I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war.
I love doing bank robberies, drug cases, homicides - as a prosecutor, that's what I thought I was going to be overseeing when I got to the bureau.
I love prosecuting cases, and I love doing investigations, particularly homicide investigations and the like, and that's why I became a prosecutor.
I would say in just about every investigation we have, there will be differences of opinion, where you have partial facts, as to what those facts mean.
They're - FBI agents are some of the finest people you'll find anyplace in the country or the world. And I'm lucky to have the opportunity to work with them.
For the FBI and for the United States, the war on terrorism is a complex and perplexing issue. It is as complex and perplexing as any issue we have ever faced.
In the last 10 years, in narcotics task forces, in a number of violent crime task forces, we've worked very closely together with state and local law enforcement.
What we bring to the table is not only our 56 field offices in the United States and our number of resident agencies, but also we have 45 legal attaches overseas.
As I said before, there are often disagreements as to what a particular set of facts mean. That is not at all unusual, and one shouldn't read into it more than is there.
In the United States, it's the mandate of the FBI to gather information relating to terrorism, go out and collect it, to do the interviews, to do the investigative work.
People talk about the Patriot Act that was passed immediately in the wake of September 11. What the Patriot Act did was break down the walls between the various agencies.
But we had - I think if you look at law enforcement 10 years ago, if you look at the challenges, the FBI was focused excessively on what was happening in the United States.
We had to address information technology in the ways we had not before and give the agents the tools that they need to do their job more efficiently and more expeditiously.
I remember... seeing the first plane go into the towers and thinking: 'It's a beautiful day. Somebody really must have gotten off course to have the plane go into the towers.'
There are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those that will be. Even that is merging into one category: those that have been hacked and will be again.
I do believe when there are advances in technology that it is important to balance the privacy interests affected with the investigative take that you might get from that technology.
And at that point, I think we all realized it was something tremendously tragic, probably a terrorist attack, and the next step was to go down to our command center and get things going.
Secondly, not only have we put additional agents on counterterrorism, but we've also built up our analytical structure so that we're better positioned to analyze the information we have.
If I have the honor of being confirmed by the Senate, I will make it my highest priority to restore the public's confidence in the FBI and to re-earn the faith and trust of the American people.
And from the moment that we realized it was a terrorist attack, there isn't an agent or a support person in the FBI that wasn't committed to bringing to justice those who were responsible for this.
So without getting into the specifics, I can tell you that to the extent that investigation is a relatively important investigation and meaningful, the president would have been periodically briefed.
Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity set the expectations for behavior; they set a standard for our work. More than just a motto, for the men and women of the FBI, Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity is a way of life.
In order to be successful against each of these threats, we have to have a presence overseas, work closely not only with our counterparts in the law enforcement community, but also with the intelligence community.
All I'm going to tell you is investigations, whether it be this and others, where you have partial facts, analysts, agents are always trying to interpret what those facts mean, extrapolate from them what they mean.
We cannot go up on a wire. We cannot do a search without a judge on the FISA Court approving it and determining that we have met the standard that has been set forth by Congress in order to utilize these techniques.
I am convinced that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be. And even they are converging into one category: companies that have been hacked and will be hacked again.
The overwhelming majority of Muslims in this country and overseas are peaceful, law-abiding citizens. However, a small number of Muslims are members of fundamentalist sects sworn to the destruction of the United States.
And so every one of us in the FBI, I don't care if it's a file clerk someplace or an agent there or a computer specialist, understands that our main mission is to protect the public from another September 11, another terrorist attack.