In the great battle of Antietam, still the bloodiest day in American history, Union forces were led by Gen. George McClellan, an incredibly cautious man.
Accusations fit on a bumper sticker; the truth takes longer.
There is no part of the executive branch that more exists on the outer edge of executive prerogative than the American intelligence community - the intelligence community, CIA, covert action. My literal responsibility as director of CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval, to inform.
One of the things that distinguishes the CIA from the State Department is that the CIA is both asked to, and authorized to, steal secrets. So if the question is whether the CIA steals secrets, the answer is yes.
The intelligence community is governed by the same legal and ethical standards as the rest of American government and society, but an operational imperative is here, too. An intelligence community charged with global responsibilities cannot be successful without diversity of thought, culture and language.
There's this movie, 'Zero Dark Thirty' about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Some have complained that too many 'secrets' were dished out by the intelligence and special operations communities to director Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal and their crew, part of a broader pattern of using intelligence for political effect.
When the intelligence is making a policymaker too happy, he ought to challenge it, and even if he doesn't, the intelligence briefer needs to launch a red team against his own conclusions to see if he can hold his ground.
For all of its well-deserved reputation for pragmatism, American popular culture frequently nurtures or at least tolerates preposterous views and theories. Witness the 9/11 'truthers' who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot.
If we don't get our relationship with the emerging People's Republic of China right, that is something that could lead to global catastrophe.
National security looks different from the Oval Office than it does from a hotel room in Iowa.
Thoreau points out clearly that civil disobedience gets its moral authority by the willingness to suffer the penalties from disobeying a law, even if you think that law is unjust.
Americans are very practical folks. Accustomed to hard choices in their own lives, they are willing to give us in intelligence a lot of slack as we make the hard choices our profession demands.
When asked if I miss being in government, I usually try to lighten the moment by responding that I awake most days, read the paper, and then observe that, 'It's yet another great day to be the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.'
Responsibility demands action, and dealing with the immediate threat must naturally be a top priority.
Despite a campaign that was based on a very powerful promise of transparency, President Obama, and again in my view quite correctly, has used the state secrets argument in a variety of courts, as much as President Bush.
At the end of the 30 Years War then, Europe broadly decided to separate the sacred from the secular in its political culture. I know that is an oversimplification, but it is instructive, and it led to a growth in religious tolerance that has characterized the best of Western life since.
A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas, and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.
CIA relies on a partner's focus, linguistic agility, and cultural depth; in return, the partner benefits from CIA's resources, technology, and global view.
When at the CIA, I was fond of saying that many jihadis join the movement for the same reasons that young Americans join the Crips and the Bloods: youthful alienation, the need to belong to something greater than self, the search for meaningful identity. But it also matters what gang you join.
George Tenet was actually a very strong centralizing force. If you met George by personality, George met with the president six days out of seven: nontrivial attribute inside the federal government. And George was head of the CIA.
