Political Quotes

“I want to assure the distinguished chairman that we are not changing the law. This is simply a guideline the previous CIA Director felt was needed. We are not changing the law. We are not doing anything untoward or unconstitutional. Our constituents are calling this a war on terrorism. In wars, you don't fight by a Marquis of Queensberry rules. The time to be overly punctilious about who you get to work with you to get information from the enemy ought to come to an end. I will assure the distinguished chairman that we are assured that in the past this has not been too much of a problem. But the problem is, our folks are a little reluctant to try to go recruit people with the current limitations in place because of the difficulties that presents. All this does is to change a guideline--no legal statutory change-- that simply says if they believe particular people would be useful in gathering intelligence against terrorist organizations--it is specifically limited to that--then they may recruit those people even though there might be something in their background that suggests they have a checkered past. If we cannot use informants against terrorist organizations, which by definition means there are no good actors, then we start this war with one hand tied behind our back. There are a lot of other changes that we make in this amendment. Let me just illustrate the nature of the things we do. I think almost all of them are going to be very uncontroversial.…”