Building technical systems involves a lot of hard work and specialized knowledge: languages and protocols coding and debugging testing and refactoring.

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

For four years I listened to stories of intelligence failures and it wasn't due to incompetence of anyone in the system but that the system is so arcane.

As a former attorney general. I have the greatest respect for the criminal justice system. But it is not good at intelligence gathering.

We're not trying to harass the average American. We need to convert this now to a risk-based system with TSA concentrating and focusing on intelligence on security setting up again the parameters of which we do this.

Since September 11th Congress has created the Department of Homeland Security more than doubled the homeland security budget and implemented a bipartisan overhaul of our intelligence systems.

We will have to continue to improve our human intelligence system-something that was unfortunately lacking in the years which led up to September 11. This is going to be a continuing process of change.

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.

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought system planning intelligence and honest purpose as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Our democracy our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.