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.

I suddenly realized at the CIA that I had to make life-and-death decisions about people.

The Taliban is resilient.

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.

I think the primary message to the world is that the United States is going to remain the strongest military power in the world.

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.

Clearly, Russia has lied to the world about what's going on in Ukraine. They have clearly violated the cease-fire agreements.