Unless you have a perception of who you are as a lawyer you will never be at ease in dealing with legal matters clients or courts. But if you know who you are and why you're there all you need is the expertise and the information.

In my book I detail the critical information we obtained from al Qaeda terrorists after they became compliant following a short period of enhanced interrogation. I have no doubt that that interrogation was legal necessary and saved lives.

The real violence is committed in the writing of history the records of the legal system the reporting of news through the manipulation of social contracts and the control of information.

We get information in the mail the regular postal mail encrypted or not vet it like a regular news organization format it - which is sometimes something that's quite hard to do when you're talking about giant databases of information - release it to the public and then defend ourselves against the inevitable legal and political attacks.

My number one goal was not getting 'A's' - and I proved it. I was a 'C' student. You have to be ready to learn. If you're not interesting in learning it doesn't work. As I grew older and wanted to learn and desperately wanted inside information learning was a lot easier.

Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized processed and available to the right people in a format for decision making it is a burden not a benefit.

Perhaps to the uninformed it may appear unaccountable that a man should be able to retain in his memory such a variety of learning but the close alliance with each other of the different branches of science will explain the difficulty.

Learning about the way people process information and their emotions is hugely helpful to my work.

We're not that much smarter than we used to be even though we have much more information - and that means the real skill now is learning how to pick out the useful information from all this noise.

Widespread public access to knowledge like public education is one of the pillars of our democracy a guarantee that we can maintain a well-informed citizenry.