James Clapper Quotes

Part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.

For the record, in my long career, I’ve never knowingly exposed classified information in an inappropriate manner.

The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections – theirs and other people’s.

The history of the intelligence community is replete with violations of the trust of the American people.

The country of Iraq is somewhat of an artificial creation going back to colonial days. And so you have the Kurds and then the Sunnis in the north predominantly and Shias in the south.

The number one foreign policy goal of Russia is control of the former Soviet space.

It is not the intelligence community’s place to set and implement policy.

The Russians are bent on establishing both a presence in the Western Hemisphere, and they’re looking for opportunities to expand military cooperation: sell equipment, air bases, as well as intelligence gathering facilities.

The first week in intelligence school, you learn there are only two conditions in life. There is policy success, or there is intel failure. There is no other condition in life.

I think the notion of getting the North Koreans to denuclearize is probably a lost cause.

A key player with respect to sanctions is, of course, China. And so, if a military option were to be exercised, then obviously we would play very heavily in that process. But that’s not a decision, fortunately, that the intelligence community makes.

The term ‘Muslim Brotherhood’… is an umbrella term for a variety of movements: in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.

In the future, we will probably see cyber operations that change or manipulate electronic information to compromise its integrity instead of simply deleting the access to it.

Although we must be prepared for a catastrophic large-scale strike, a cyber armageddon, the reality is that we have been living with a constant barrage of cyberattacks for some time. The trend, I believe, will continue.

To the extent that anyone has leverage over North Korea, it’s China.

I was a part of the decision-making in the Pentagon, when I was the undersecretary for intelligence, to start CYBERCOM, both as a sub-unified command and under a dual-hat arrangement. That was never intended to be permanent in any event.

A leak is an unauthorized disclosure of classified or sensitive information that is improper under any circumstance.

Typically, people in the intelligence community are just going to kind of hunker down and do their job, do their mission. And I believe – I have great faith in them. I think they will continue to serve up truth to power even if the power chooses not to listen to the truth.

The reason that ISIL was so successful, yes, it had to do with their capabilities and prowess on the battlefield, but they were dealing with a receptive constituency in northern Iraq because of the intense hatred of the Maliki government, which of course is imposing the Shia view on them.

The Intelligence Community Assessment concluded first that President Putin directed and influenced a campaign to erode the faith and confidence of the American people in our presidential election process. Second, that he did so to demean Secretary Clinton, and third, that he sought to advantage Mr. Trump.

I think the founding fathers, in their genius, created a system of three co-equal branches of government and a built-in system of checks and balances.

What I said was, the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens’ e-mails. I stand by that.

It’s certainly not helpful when the commander in chief is a critic of the intelligence community.

ISIL particularly is very slick, very sophisticated, proselytizing and recruiting, and they are very astute users of social media.

I have always accepted intelligence was an honorable profession. We are all mindful of the need to comply with our moral values and the law.

I did get a letter from the speaker of the House urging – enjoining me not to brief Secretary Clinton, and lots of cards and letters from people about not briefing Mr. Trump.

I’ve long maintained during my 50-plus year career in intelligence that leaks endanger national security, they compromise sources, methods, and tradecraft, and they can put assets’ lives at risk.

This is strictly personal opinion, not company policy, but I do think that we could do with having a USIA on steroids.

I do think – the metaphor I always use – it’s the role of intelligence community to stay down in the engine room and shovel that intelligence coal, and people on the bridge get to decide where to drive the ship and how fast and how to arrange all the deckchairs.

In the end, we will never, ever be able to guarantee that there will not be an Edward Snowden or another Chelsea Manning because this is a large enterprise composed of human beings with all their idiosyncrasies.