Leon Panetta: “It's all about protecting him. It's all about saying whatever he has to say that will somehow protect him, particularly…”

I think it was Walter Mondale when he was asked about the legacy of the Carter administration, said something like, we told the truth, we followed the law and we preserve the peace.

I think we have to take this intelligence assessment as a real threat to NATO.

It just -- it strikes me that what the chairman was trying to do perhaps was to try to send a wake-up call to both the Speaker and his Republican colleagues, that Russia still remains very much a threat to the United States.

I don’t think there is any question that we are dealing with classified information.