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You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.

Nothing is more important to national security and the making and conduct of good policy than timely, accurate, and relevant intelligence. Nothing is more critical to accurate and relevant intelligence than independent analysis.

One of our pillars has to be national security - our nation's security both domestically and abroad.

The very heart of being a sovereign nation is providing security of one's borders, of one's internal situation, and security against anyone attacking one's nation. That is the very heart of what I believe is sovereignty.

But the federal government, our collective government, has responsibilities that none of these other levels of government can fulfill; and chief among these is national defense.

I've been a stalwart for national security.

National security laws must protect national security. But they must also protect the public trust and preserve the ability of an informed electorate to hold its government to account.

The U.N. guards the vital principles entrenched in its charter, notably the sovereign equality of states and the inadmissibility of interference in their internal affairs. It is precisely because the U.N. is the chief guardian of both these sacrosanct principles that it alone is allowed to approve derogations from them.

The example that America knows how to govern itself is one of the compelling aspects of our national security.

Intelligence services exist to do things that are illegal abroad. They exist to tell lies.