I got as much information as I could, so I wouldn't look stupid, but this is a post 9/11 world and there's only so much you can do with the FBI in terms of research.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We got a lot of information from the detainees that eventually led us to bin Laden.
Just the minute the FBI begins making recommendations on what should be done with its information, it becomes a Gestapo.
Some believe that the FBI has these phenomenal capabilities to access any information at any time - that we can get what we want, when we want it, by flipping some sort of switch. It may be true in the movies or on TV. It is simply not the case in real life.
You know, as director of the CIA, I got an awful lot of intelligence about all the horrible things that could go on across the world.
Well, our position, and our chairman has talked about this extensively, is that we had a lot of intelligence prior to 9/11. We knew that two al Qaeda operatives who ultimately participated in the 9/11 disaster were in the United States. We didn't find them.
And so every one of us in the FBI, I don't care if it's a file clerk someplace or an agent there or a computer specialist, understands that our main mission is to protect the public from another September 11, another terrorist attack.
I love researching all sorts of weird stuff. I always say, 'God help me if the FBI came across my Internet search history.'
To accomplish its mission, the FBI relies heavily upon its law enforcement and intelligence partners around the nation and around the globe. By combining our resources and our collective expertise, we are able to investigate national security threats that cross both geographical and jurisdictional boundaries.
In the United States, it's the mandate of the FBI to gather information relating to terrorism, go out and collect it, to do the interviews, to do the investigative work.
After 9/11, the amount of applicants the FBI received increased exponentially. Whereas you used to require a college degree, and it was a small group of people who were just out of college, after 9/11, it changed.
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