My role and my obligation was to conduct criminal investigations.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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