Privatization is more efficient and effective in some cases, but not in intelligence.
My take is, privacy is precious. I think privacy is the last true luxury. To be able to live your life as you choose without having everyone comment on it or know about.
Joe and I are still very aware of the fact that we live in a country where he criticised the government and lived another day. That trumps all. To paraphrase Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the other forms of government. You constantly have to fight for it; you have to keep your government honest.
Even those that hate Hillary admit she is a work horse and not a show horse. She gets down into the nuts and bolts and figures out, 'What's the policy, what's the substance?'
I can tell you, all the intelligence services in the world were running my name through their databases to see did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Who did she see?
I think it's the height of patriotism to continue to exercise your right as a citizen and to hold your government to account. Isn't that what the very essence of democracy is about?
She was very kind to us when Joe and I went through the darkest days of the leak of my name in 2003. And, of course, Joe worked in the Clinton White House.
I do not subscribe to the 'Trump is crazy like a fox' thing. I think that's being too generous.
A chief of station is the head of all intelligence operations in any given country.
I find it really hard to relate to the Bond women or Angelina Jolie in 'Salt.' And of course it's informed by my experiences and the people I've met along the way and the places I've been.
North Korea is the errant teenage child, aren't they? Or toddler - they're holding their breath until they get their way.
Hollywood does tend to portray CIA officers as totally the honey trap. Looks matter as they do in any profession. But the most important thing for me when I was working was blending into my environment.
We need the best and the brightest to go into public service.
I really believe the nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons is the world's most ominous threat.
The intelligence community really is a vast bureaucratic entity, and it has been politicized in ways that are not effective for the gathering of intelligence and giving it to senior policymakers.
I know having a Jason Bourne all alone in a field firing at bad guys is much more dramatic, but it's not real.
The great thing about fiction is you can fix things and make things better.
In the CIA, they recruit you to be an officer, an ops officer, in part due to how well you cope with stress and how well you adapt to new situations.
Over the years, from serving in the CIA to sitting on non-profit boards, I have observed first-hand what the addition of even one woman to a meeting or to a decision-making body can do. Put simply, in very many instances, group dynamics improve markedly.
I think, honestly, my largest concern, there are a lot of unbalanced people out there, and all of a sudden, I'm the CIA poster girl, and our home in Washington, the front door was about 20 feet from the street. I went to the agency at a certain point and asked for security on a residence.
