Collecting intelligence information is like trying to drink water out of a fire hydrant. You know, in hindsight It's great. The problem is there's a million dots at the time.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Intelligence collection is not confined to the communications of adversaries or of the guilty. Rather, it's about gaining information otherwise unavailable that would help keep Americans safe and free.
It's necessary to understand what real intelligence work is. It will never cease. It's absolutely essential that we have it. At its best, it is simply the left arm of healthy governmental curiosity. It brings to a strong government what it needs to know. It's the collection of information, a journalistic job, if you will, but done in secret.
The dirty little secret of the intelligence world is that much of what you really need to know isn't exactly a secret anyway.
Intelligence is the ability to take in information from the world and to find patterns in that information that allow you to organize your perceptions and understand the external world.
By definition, intelligence deals with the unclear, the unknown, the deliberately hidden. What the enemies of the United States hope to deny we work to reveal.
Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.
For something that's supposed to be secret, there is a lot of intelligence history. Every time I read one book, two more are published.
No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.
Human intelligence is a marvelous, subtle, and poorly understood phenomenon. There is no danger of duplicating it anytime soon.
Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.