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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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