Quote

The mishandling of the would-be airplane bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab's visa is only the latest piece of evidence that the granting of visas should be taken away from the State Department. For the granting of visas - especially today, when terrorism is such a complex threat - is far closer to being a law-enforcement function.

For some, the very act of intelligence gathering seems illegitimate when applied to the crime of terrorism.

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.

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

In the aftermath of September 11, and as the 9/11 Commission report so aptly demonstrates, it is clear that our intelligence system is not working the way that it should.

I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.

In the last four years under the Patriot Act, we have seen a great increase in the ability of law enforcement officials to investigate and track terrorists.

We can't gather the intelligence we need to foil future attacks, if we are blindly granting terrorists the right to remain silent. But for some reason, we've already done that - with the terrorist who tried to bring down Flight 253.

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

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.