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Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.

Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.

My literal responsibility as director of the CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval; to inform.

It is illegal for the CIA to spy on Americans and an affront to our Republic to spy on the Senate.

Cyber-enabled theft of trade secrets by state actors in China has emerged as a major threat to our economic and, thus, national security.

I don't know if the European Union contributes a great deal to espionage. At the union level, they talk about commerce and privacy. But to keep citizens safe, that remains a responsibility back in national capitals.

I did not seek to sell U.S. secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

I'm sort of fascinated by the whole espionage crime thing.

One of the things that distinguishes the CIA from the State Department is that the CIA is both asked to, and authorized to, steal secrets. So if the question is whether the CIA steals secrets, the answer is yes.

To be perfectly candid, we're better at stealing other people's secrets than anyone else in the world. But we self-limit. We steal secrets to keep our citizens free and safe.