Quote

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.

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.

Public discussion of how we determine al Qaeda intentions, I just - I can't see how that can do anything but harm the security of the nation.

Al Qaeda likes to coordinate, have a central command to be able to send out emissaries around that they have highly trained and say, 'This is the moment we're going to do a large-scale attack.'

An intelligence analyst may attribute an attack to al Qaeda, whereas a policy maker could opt for the more general 'extremist.'

Al Qaeda operates by launching surprise attacks on civilian targets with the goal of massive casualties. Our only means for preventing future attacks, which could use WMDs, is by acquiring information that allows for pre-emptive action.

Any American who joins al Qaeda will know full well that they have joined an organization that is at war with the United States. Any American who did that should know well that they in fact are part of an enemy... and that the U.S. will do anything that is possible to destroy that enemy to save American lives.

When I was commander of Central Command, obviously we were very concerned about the developments in Yemen, the developments in Somalia and elsewhere, in Africa and so forth. But the al Qaeda senior leadership is under unprecedented pressure.

In short, the hunt for bin Laden could not have been accomplished without every form of American intelligence-gathering.

I strongly support the call to greatly expand our human intelligence capability to penetrate al Qaeda and gather critical intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks on our homeland.