James R. Clapper > Quotes

“my mother showed me that the color of someone’s skin doesn’t determine the human dignity they deserve.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“When one of them yelled, “I can’t hear you,” Bush responded, “I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people—and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” I thought that was an inspired, and inspiring, statement to those responders and to the nation, and I wanted to get to work.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“Obama never took for granted all the “invisible” people who work behind the scenes”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“it was actually the Republican-controlled House that voted to cut funding to foreign embassies, leading up to the September 11, 2012 attack”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“what Russia did to the United States during the 2016 election was far worse than just another post–Cold War jab at an old adversary.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“When I was at a very impressionable age, my mother showed me that the color of someone’s skin doesn’t determine the human dignity they deserve. That lesson stayed with me and influenced decisions I’ve made in both my personal and professional lives.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“Culture, custom, and resistance to change are formidable obstacles that take time to overcome.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“As our meeting came to a merciful end and we were readying to leave, I mentioned that the paternal grandfather and namesake of one of my staff traveling with us, Jan Karcz, had fought the Nazis as the general in charge of the Polish cavalry, then served with the underground resistance and had died at Auschwitz. Jan’s maternal grandfather had hidden two Jewish women in Warsaw, saving their lives, and his mother had served as a squad leader of teenage medics in Poland. Netanyahu’s demeanor changed instantly, and he asked us to be introduced to Jan.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“The Center for American Progress had published a report in the fall of 2014 with some astounding statistics. As it wrote in an analysis of the 2007–9 recession, “Ninety-five percent of all income gains since the start of the recovery have accrued to the top 1 percent of US households.” This was only part of a longer trend. From 1983 to 2010, the top fifth of US families by net worth had increased their wealth by 120 percent and the middle fifth by only 13 percent; the net worth of the bottom fifth had decreased in that period. Looking at the theoretical household at the perfect center of American earnings—50 percent of American families earning more, and 50 percent earning less—they wrote, “The median family saw its income fall by 8 percent between 2000 and 2012.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“He closed the bit with, “Say what you will about Mr. Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the White House,” and the screens around the room showed a Photoshopped image of the White House turned into a tacky hotel with “Trump” emblazoned across the front in neon lights. Trump smiled and waved, but after the cameras turned away, I could tell he was seething.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“helping make the owners of the companies I worked for richer just never moved me.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“And here’s where an IC security vulnerability became glaringly evident. The CIA hadn’t attached any alerts to his background profile, and when Snowden applied to become an NSA IT administrator, contracted through Dell Technologies, NSA supposedly never verified his references. NSA assigned him in Asia, then back to Maryland, and then to Hawaii in March 2012, where he worked on IT systems in the agency’s information-sharing office. In that role, he had access to a vast array of NSA systems, programs, and data. In March 2013, he left Dell to work for Booz Allen Hamilton in a similar role, still at NSA Hawaii, and he continued to steal classified material.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“We drew on all of NIMA’s skill sets to determine whether and how the suspect WMD sites might be interconnected and mutually supportive. This served as a compelling, persuasive example of what the integration of our two major legacy professions could achieve . . . and it was all wrong.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“In 2007, Edelman, one of the largest marketing firms in the world, published a groundbreaking “trust barometer” study showing that—by far—people trusted “someone like me” over anyone else—more than “experts” and certainly more than “government officials”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“On day one, he made it very clear that the Korean War had never formally ended, the 1953 armistice was just a cease-fire agreement, and North Korea could, and would, invade the South if given the opportunity.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“More to the point for US intelligence, while it took the Dutch Safety Board more than a year to reach its conclusions, we had the Russians dead to rights in just a few hours, fusing data from our so-called “national technical means satellites,” intercepts, and open-source reporting—particularly social media. For me, our ability to pinpoint attribution for this tragedy to an overly aggressive and trigger-happy Russian military was particularly gratifying, because I’d lived through the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983. This time we had systems in place that were designed to collect the relevant information, systems that would allow us to show precisely what happened. Not only did those systems work as advertised, but we also had the means in place to integrate data”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“The commander explained that the rules of engagement called for ROK Army elements along the DMZ to assume that any aircraft flying north was defecting and to shoot them out of the sky. We’d been taking fire from both the north and south, and it turned out the ROK soldiers were better shots. I went home that night and hugged Sue and Andy. I continued to study”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“I think everyone in that room appreciated what a courageous decision the president had made in ordering the raid. We’d all played out the scenarios for what might happen”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“We remain stuck on our narrative, and they are (or perhaps merely have been until recently) stuck on theirs. Only the bigger partner can change those narratives. I hope we can think ambitiously and be willing to go long, and perhaps this is our opportunity to do so.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“Later that summer, ODNI public affairs director Shawn Turner invited journalists from two national publications, separately, to discuss the March hearing, and why I’d answered the way I did. Both journalists, again separately, gave Shawn the same answer: The explanation he gave to them sounded plausible—even believable—but reporting that the DNI lied under oath sold newspaper copies and drove internet clicks, and their editors would never let them change that narrative. So in writing that I’d lied, at least some journalistic publications were shirking their own obligation to the truth.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“If you take care of yourself, if you have a vision of what you want for the future, if you’re kind, and attentive, and responsible, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll live an interesting and successful life. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll reach every goal you set out to achieve. Fifty-nine years ago, I set out to graduate from Annandale High, and I didn’t reach that goal. I never got the chance to wear a red Annandale robe and mortarboard until tonight.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“He insinuated that, unlike all previous candidates, he might not accept as legitimate a clear win by his opponent. At the final presidential debate on October 19, when asked by moderator Chris Wallace if he would honor the election results, Trump responded, “I’ll keep you in suspense, okay?” At a rally the following day, he said, “I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election—if I win.” On October 27, he told the crowd at a rally, “And just thinking to myself right now, we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right? What are we even having it for?”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“I knew I was in trouble when part of my pants began to disappear and my leg started steaming.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“The question for me is, to what extent are we as a society willing to sacrifice personal liberties in the interests of common safety?”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“Studies, of course, are one of Washington’s time-honored pastimes for simultaneously responding to criticism and conveying the image of taking action while kicking any big decisions down the road, and NIMA had become the study piñata of the Intelligence Community.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“By that point I had read the emails in question and come to my own conclusions. None of them was sent to or from anyone outside of government, and none was marked in a way that would indicate it was classified, but several did discuss sensitive intelligence sourcing that shouldn’t have been transmitted across open internet connections, where they could be intercepted by an adversary.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“Sue and I stood in the hallway, waiting on Vice President Biden to arrive to officiate at the ceremony. When he appeared, I took a couple of steps forward, preparing to shake his hand, but without making eye contact with me, he went straight to Sue, thanking her for the sacrifices she'd made, for her service, and for letting me come back to government. What a classy thing to do! I thought. In that moment I knew that he understood how difficult life can be for families, who also serve, and who often see when we're frustrated, sad, or angry--or sometimes, elated--but can't always be told the reason why.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“I want to make this clear: Putin’s government used intelligence tradecraft and social media savvy to lie to the American public throughout the 2016 campaign and afterward, and it was those lies that led directly to the deepening of divisions in our society, to the erosion of our government institutions and destabilization of our democracy, to Donald Trump’s election, and to the demonstrations of hate in Charlottesville.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“one small team at DIA was in charge of creating a Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, and I tried to give them as much support as I could. Their charter was signed in 1990, the same year Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

“I’ll never forget the expression on his face as he exclaimed, “My God, I’ve raised my own replacement!”
― James R. Clapper, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence