Richard A. Clarke Quotes

We are keeping New Jersey one step, several steps, ahead of terrorism.

The nature of Homeland Security is that no news is good news. And no news sometimes means somebody got interdicted at the border, somebody got interdicted before they could get on an airplane, somebody was arrested providing material support to terrorism. Homeland Security means very often something you never hear about.

Since September 11, the U.S. has significantly improved its security to prevent another attack.

But I warn my colleagues that we will fail in our efforts to protect the homeland if we do not take additional steps to avoid a trade-off between protecting ourselves against terrorists attacks and preparing for and responding to natural disasters.

President George W. Bush's aggressive war on Islamic terrorism produced a 100 percent perfect track record of keeping the United States safe from another attack. The result has been increased security for the American people, who, in turn, have become complacent about the true nature of the threat.

When these attacks occur, as they likely will, we will wonder what more we could have done to stop them.

The counterterrorism strategy known as CONTEST aimed to reduce the risk to the UK and its interests overseas from terrorism, so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence.

The bottom line is we are pursuing every single possible action to keep our country safe from terrorism.

Fighting a war on terrorism is like fighting against crime. We can never hope to eradicate crime, so we shouldn't bother fighting it.

I think that the American people should rest assured and be assured that every federal agency that has a role to play in this terrorism is working overtime now, taking every necessary action to protect our great citizens.

And so every one of us in the FBI, I don't care if it's a file clerk someplace or an agent there or a computer specialist, understands that our main mission is to protect the public from another September 11, another terrorist attack.

The central role in the fight against terrorism is with national authorities.

I think the American people believe in stopping and preventing terrorism pretty much at any cost.

The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the way we think about security.

Since the tragedies, the Department of Homeland Security was established to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, and most importantly, to share intelligence information among government agencies and departments.

It's very difficult to tell someone how to protect themselves from a terrorist attack, whether it occurs in the U.S. or on foreign soil, particularly when you have terrorists with no concern for human life.

The FBI. is a massive culture. It's been a culture that served America well, and it's been focused on prosecution. But what we need in terms of terrorism is prevention.

I believe that work can be done on security; in combating terrorism in Mexico we have done our part in this area. But at the same time, the world must continue working.

On September 11, 2001, we thought we were going to be attacked many, many times between then and now. We haven't been. I believe we had a president who made the right decision at the right time... to put us on offense against terrorists.

Look, we constantly live looking at the issue of the threat of terrorism.

Intelligence is our first line of defense against terrorism, and we must improve the collection capabilities and analysis of intelligence to protect the security of the United States and its allies.

Why has an administration that talks so much about terrorism and homeland security demonstrated so little competence when it comes to securing the homeland?

The administration asserts that two thirds or three quarters of al-Qaeda’s managers have been captured or killed, and that al-Qaeda must therefore be on the ropes. Why spend vast sums defending against it?

People should think of the war on terror as being like the war on crime--- a struggle in which success is measured not by final victory but by declines in incidence and seriousness of attacks.

When it comes to terrorism, the only path to safety is the path to action.