Leon Panetta Quotes
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I don't engage in hypotheticals.
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Companies should be able to share specific threat information with the government without the prospect of lawsuits hanging over their head.
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I'm not big on commissions.
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Today, I think the attitude is that governing is not necessarily good politics, and the result is that it's much more partisan and much more divided.
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My experience is that the director of the FBI is particularly important to just how aggressive an investigation will be into an issue. And once you remove James Comey, it creates a vacuum at the top. And the fundamental issue will be whether or not there is support at the highest levels within the FBI to continue to conduct that investigation. That's going to be the question mark.
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Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.
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These days, it takes only seconds - seconds - for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline.
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The United States was attacked on 9/11/12, and we know who attacked us.
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Frankly, my fundamental beliefs have not changed.
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I think a quality that a national security adviser must have is the ability to set up procedures.
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The reason we've always had a civilian in that job [Secretary of Defence] is because we really believe that it is policymakers who ought to control the military and not have the military control the military.
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The United States will do whatever we have to do to protect our forces.
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One of the principal qualities that you need as national security adviser is trust, the trust of the president. And that depends on truth and it depends on honesty.
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The potential for the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyber-attack.
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The president is out there today trying to talk about health care, and the reality is nobody cares about what he's saying on health care because this news is consuming everything. No president could tolerate that or should tolerate it.
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In the zero-sum budget game, every dollar spent on this problem [illegal immigration] must be taken from somewhere else....No, we should not tolerate people immigrating illegally. But we need to treat this issue honestly and fairly.
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The last thing I want to do is to make the mistakes of the past.
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Iran's continued drive to develop nuclear capabilities, including troubling enrichment activities and past work on weaponization documented by the IAEA, and its continued support to groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist organizations make clear that the regime in Tehran is a very grave threat to all of us.
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Throughout the 40 years I've been in Washington, I've always worked hard, particularly with regards to the budget issues.
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Caution is an important quality in a leader, but it has to be caution followed by decision. Caution followed by ambivalence can be a weakness.
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After every major conflict - World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the fall of the Soviet Union - what happened was that we ultimately hollowed out the force, largely by doing deep across-the-board cuts.
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I want you and the people of Israel to know a few things that have not and will not change. The United States stands firmly with Israel, and we have a rock solid commitment to the security of Israel and to the security of its citizens.
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It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to borrow money from the Chinese to go give to another country for humanitarian aid. We ought to get the Chinese to take care of the people.
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I think my best advice would be to separate Donald Trump, the president of the United States from whatever investigation is being conducted by the FBI. I mean, there is something to be said, frankly, about the need for the appointment of an independent prosecutor because the American people are entitled to have a full review of what happened as a result of what the Russians did during our election.
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When you cut a half-a-trillion dollars from the defense budget, it affects almost every area in the defense budget.
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I want to reassert again the position of the United States that with regards to Iran, we will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, period. We will not allow them to develop a nuclear weapon, and we will exert all options in the effort to ensure that that does not happen...The United States stands firmly with Israel, and we have a rock solid commitment to the security of Israel and to the security of its citizens.
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We are a nation at war. This is also a time for hard choices. It's about ensuring that we are able to prevail in the conflicts in which we are now engaged. But it's also about being able to be strong and disciplined in applying our nation's limited resources to defending America.
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I know that young people sometimes, caught up in the moment, make some very foolish decisions.
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The consequence could be that we would have an escalation that would take place that would not only involve many lives, but I think it could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret.
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The most important thing we can do is prosecute the offenders, deal with those that have broken the law and committed this crime. And if we can do that then we can begin to deal with this issue and send a signal this is not a problem that we are going to ignore in the United States military.
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Leon Panetta
- Born: June 28, 1938
- Occupation: Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
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