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The plan we developed to deal with al Qaeda depended on developing sources of human and technical intelligence that could give us insights into his plans at the tactical level. This is easy to say but hard to accomplish.

Terrorists continue to exploit divisions between law enforcement and the intelligence communities that limit the sharing of vital counterterrorism information.

In terms of the breadth of the threat of Al Qaeda itself - it's not the only terrorist organization, and it works with others as cells around the world in at least 60 countries. You potentially are talking about tens of thousands of followers who can be conscripted into service to carry out a terrorist plot.

Our intelligence community needs better coordination of operations and exchange of information, and that's why we need an overall director of national intelligence and a national counterterrorism center.

Al Qaeda is not the organization now that it was before. It is under stress organizationally. Its leadership spends more time trying to figure out how to keep from getting caught than they do trying to launch operations.

There's been intelligence that terrorists would look to programs such as the visa waiver program to exploit.

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.

As a former career intelligence professional, I have a profound appreciation for the value of intelligence. Intelligence disrupts terrorist plots and thwarts attacks. Intelligence saves lives.

You want to keep intelligence separate from policy.

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.