O'Reilly: Was there a reason why Turner and Carter wanted a weaker Intelligence?
Clancy: It's politically correct.
O'Reilly: Simple as that?
Clancy: I think so. The political left, they deal in symbols rather than reality. The general difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals like pretty pictures and conservatives like to build bridges that people can drive across. And conservatives are indeed conservative because if the bridge falls down then people die, whereas the liberals figure, we can always build a nice memorial and make people forget it ever happened and was our fault. They're very good at making people forget it was their fault. Allright? The CIA was gutted by people on the political left who don't like Intelligence operations... and as a result of that, as an indirect result of that, we lost 5,000 citizens last week.
O'Reilly: How about the FBI... they don't seem to be nearly as efficient and effective as they used to be... same situation?
Clancy: Disagree. The FBI is one of our premier agencies...and they've developed a whole lot of information in this case already,... they're probably the best police agency in the whole world... but you know... a police agency by its very nature is reactive rather than proactive. It's not an intelligence gathering organization - it reacts to crimes, investigates crimes.
O'Reilly: ... one of the charges of the FBI is to protect us from internal terrorism... as you know...
Clancy: ...they're awfully good at it...
O'Reilly: ...well, and they were clueless this time, and then they had the big spy that was operating for 15 years for Russia, and they had all the problems in the agency with Mr. Clinton, and they couldn't get a straight answer out of him, ummm, I don't know I'm not there.
Clancy: OK Bill, hang on, how perfect is the news media?
O'Reilly: Not perfect at all... but our charge isn't to protect anybody...
Clancy: The trouble with any human institution is that it's vulnerable to imperfections... there aren't too many perfect people in the world
O'Reilly: So you are confident that the FBI is up to protecting us internally?
Clancy: ohhh, they're the best in the world... without a doubt.
Call me crazy, but if I wanted to blame someone for this, Jimmy Carter wouldn't the first guy on my list. I don't know why if the CIA was so gutted by Carter that it was never restored by Reagan nor Bush senior.
Thanks for the suggestion, but, no, I'll continue to just post the ones I like. The ones I quoted were relevant to this thread so thats all I posted. I linked the other thread where you can see the whole thing in context... where it still means the same thing.