We worked to develop our own operations to advance U.S. counterterrorism objectives by penetrating terrorist safe havens and collecting intelligence that would inform policy and enable our own operations.

I am sure that in Canada the people appreciate this principle and the general intelligence which prevails over that country is such that I am sure there is no danger of a reactionary policy ever finding a response in the hearts of any considerable number of our people.

Here's the teaching point if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions.

And I argued with that intelligence estimate and I think it is a responsibility of policymakers to use their best judgment on the basis of the intelligence they've received.

Policymakers have to make judgments based on the best intelligence they get.

I was an intelligence officer not a policy-maker.

When I resigned I put the U.S. Government on notice that I'm going to stick to policy issues that I have no intention of going out and blowing the cover off of the intelligence operations that those are truly sensitive and they should not be exposed.

Intelligence is playing a more important role in policymaker decisions than I think I've ever seen in my time in Congress or before.

Well I've been reading a lot about the fifty years since the Second World War about Western foreign policy and all that. I try not to let it get to me but sometimes I just think that there's no hope.

I told the President I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them they are not going to sit down and talk.