Louis J. Freeh Quotes

The State Department said the countries that are most stealing our best ideas also are our best allies.

I was a prosecutor and an FBI agent for many, many years.

In order to keep up with the criminals and to protect our national security, the solution is clear: we need legislation to ensure that telephone companies and other carriers provide law enforcement with access to this new technology.

The fraudster's greatest liability is the certainty that the fraud is too clever to be detected.

Ask the American public if they want an FBI wiretap and they'll say, "no." If you ask them do they want a feature on their phone that helps the FBI find their missing child they'll say, "Yes."

I wanted all my visits to be official. When I sent the pass back with a note, I had no idea it would antagonize the president. I found out years later that it did.

I doubt that Congress would pass on the opportunity to make sure that our children were safe from terrorists.

My role and my obligation was to conduct criminal investigations.

The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security.

The country was not focused on terrorism before September 11th.

If five years from now we solve the access problem, but what we're hearing is all encrypted, I'll probably, if I'm still here, be talking about that in a very different way: the objective is the same. The objective is for us to get those conversations whether they're by an alligator clip or ones and zeros. Whoever they are, whatever they are, I need them.

Collecting intelligence information is like trying to drink water out of a fire hydrant. You know, in hindsight It's great. The problem is there's a million dots at the time.

And I understand that, I testified in closed hearings over eight years because there are intelligence matters, there are sensitive matters that should not be held in a public hearing.

The problem was with Bill Clinton, the scandals and rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out.