Leon Panetta Quotes

The terrorism from 9/11 has metastasized. It's metastasized in Iraq and Syria, in Nigeria, in Somalia, in Yemen and in other places in North Africa. We need a very comprehensive strategy to deal with that threat.

If the Iraqis fail to implement the reforms, if they fail to get a handle on the violence, there's nothing the United States can do, militarily or otherwise, that can solve those problems. They have to assume the primary responsibility to govern themselves.

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 don't engage in hypotheticals.

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.

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.

I don't think there's any question that America is safer as a result of the bin Laden operation.

Sexual assault has no place in the military. It is a violation of everything that the US military stands for.

The area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security.

Rather than undermining the Palestinian Authority, it is in Israel's interests to strengthen it by... continuing to transfer Palestinian tax revenues and pursuing other avenues of cooperation.

Companies should be able to share specific threat information with the government without the prospect of lawsuits hanging over their head.

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.

People elected Donald Trump because he acts decisively. He fired James Comey. He didn't fire the entire FBI. If there's something there, the FBI is going to continue to investigate it.

Go forward, knowing that you are greater than the challenges of your time.

I think a quality that a national security adviser must have is the ability to set up procedures.

I have tremendous confidence in the ability of government institutions and the American people to do what is right to make sure that our democracy stays on the right track.

I think it's extremely important that the president Donald Trump himself indicate that he too wants to discover the full truth behind what the Russians did to elections 2016.

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.

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.