As a former attorney general. I have the greatest respect for the criminal justice system. But it is not good at intelligence gathering.
But it is equally incontrovertible that if our intelligence gathering process is seriously flawed, we had better find out and find out fast if we are to avoid another Sept. 11.
We will use all lawful tools at our disposal, and that includes authorities under the renewed PATRIOT Act. We firmly believe that our intelligence gathering tools must enable us to collect the information we need to protect the American people.
In the 1990s, human intelligence gathering was seriously neglected.
We always monitor the flow of information, intelligence, threat streams to see whether we have any indication there's some imminent. We work hard to identify potential cells and disrupt them. This is one of the reasons we put so much emphasis on intelligence gathering.
War on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement operation.
I think all governments engage in intelligence gathering vis-a-vis other governments.
If we had complete knowledge, you wouldn't need any intelligence gathering whatsoever. The president isn't god. We do have intelligence gathering.
