Dennis C. Blair
Dennis C. Blair
Dennis Cutler Blair is the former United States Director of National Intelligence and is a retired United States Navy admiral who was the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific region. Blair was a career officer in the U.S. Navy and served in the White House during the presidencies of both President Jimmy Carter and President Ronald Reagan. Blair retired from the Navy in 2002 as an Admiral. In 2009, Blair was selected as President Barack Obama’s first Director of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
CountryUnited States of America
mean knowing information
The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.
trust senior government
All officers of the Intelligence Community, and especially its most senior officer, must conduct themselves in a manner that earns and retains the public trust. The American people are uncomfortable with government activities that do not take place in the open, subject to public scrutiny and review.
independent important analysis
Nothing is more important to national security and the making and conduct of good policy than timely, accurate, and relevant intelligence. Nothing is more critical to accurate and relevant intelligence than independent analysis.
agencies among barrier fbi foreign intelligence mechanisms reforms solved
Before 9/11 there were weak procedures, willingness, and mechanisms for communicating among agencies for foreign intelligence and the FBI with its focus on law enforcement. The domestic-vs.-foreign barrier has been solved by the reforms after 9/11 that established the DNI.
white house integrating
My experience is the White House is not a very good place to coordinate intelligence, much less to integrate it.
religious kings nice
The leaders who we admire who have been able to bring great change in the past - Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela - they're all inspirational religious leaders and smart tacticians. It would be nice to find the Muslim Gandhi, wouldn't it?
country organization understanding
High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country.
war thinking chinese
I think you can go back in history and look at what the effect in Asia and the world was of a divided, fractured China from, you know, the opium wars through the Chinese civil war, and I don't think it was pretty for Asia or the world.
caused industrial power shift shifting
The Industrial Revolution caused a centuries-long shift in power to the West; globalization is now shifting the balance again.
accidents al america approach causes deaths task toward violent
There are many causes of violent deaths in America - murders and traffic accidents - that we do not approach with the same 'no price too steep, no task too difficult' approach that we take toward al Qaeda.
case china developing extreme inevitable slowly views
As is often the case when things are complicated, extreme views have superficial appeal. On the one extreme, some see China as an inevitable enemy that must be contained; on the other hand, there are those who see China as a slowly developing democracy that can be embraced.
absolutely approved carried defend fault methods orders time within
I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.
addition criminal deliver global include mass means private terrorists
In addition to anti-American terrorists with global reach, our adversaries include organizations - some nation states, some private and some criminal - that proliferate weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.
involves taiwan united war
As I've said many times and publicly, a war between China and Taiwan that involves the United States is a lose-lose-lose.