Political Quotes

“From 1992 to 1999, the intelligence agency, we decreased the number of agents we had in the field by 27 percent, we decreased the number of stations or locations that we had around the world by 30 percent, and we decreased the number of assets. What is an asset? An asset is a spy. We reduced the number of assets we had by 40 percent. We gutted our human intelligence capability. We have phenomenal satellites and different things that can do wonderful things in trying to help us figure out what is going on, but unless we have the human intelligence to determine intent and planning or to go inside of a building and see what is going on inside of a building and to hear and be part of the discussions, we cannot figure out exactly what is going on; and even if we have those people in certain places, it is still difficult to pull together the entire practice. But the reason we were kind of blind in Iraq in 2000 is that Bill Clinton's administration, President Clinton's administration, gutted our human intelligence.”