The history of the intelligence community is replete with violations of the trust of the American people.

I've long maintained during my 50-plus year career in intelligence that leaks endanger national security, they compromise sources, methods, and tradecraft, and they can put assets' lives at risk.

It is not the intelligence community's place to set and implement policy.

I do think - the metaphor I always use - it's the role of intelligence community to stay down in the engine room and shovel that intelligence coal, and people on the bridge get to decide where to drive the ship and how fast and how to arrange all the deckchairs.

Republicans rarely criticize Obama for lack of empathy - in part because liberals have traditionally been seen as standing up for the weak and the vulnerable. Conservatives can be just as empathetic. But they believe that, in most cases, it's not government's role to be the primary dispenser of empathy.

The best way to create emotional or spiritual distance between me and another person is for them to come up to me and go, 'yaassssss.'

There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet.

In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn't just want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy and to let it be known that people shouldn't tolerate this anymore.