James Bamford Quotes (14 Quotes)

Every time a Soviet plane took off, NSA knew about it. It was pretty easy to track. Now they have to track people who use cell phones, pay phones and calling cards ... You have to be a bit optimistic to think it will work.

It was basically Western Union for cables, and ATT for the telephone. It's much more complicated now.

Maybe nothing will come of it. Maybe the next time he tries to enter the United States or Britain he will be denied, without explanation. Maybe he will be arrested.

It shows how just somebody riding in the back seat of a car in a remote part of a remote desert, and somebody sitting at a desk at NSA could actually hear their voice and take action immediately.

Overall, most people think Trailblazer is a disappointment,

He was very anti-Communist in his appearance, ... He would always be talking about how we should be doing more stories about the Communist menace and communist influence and Russian influence.

They (Bush administration) wanted to expand the number of people they were eavesdropping on, and they didn't think they could get the warrants they needed from the court to monitor those people.

He'd have a natural interest in what a Russian spymaster had to say, ... It turned out later that he was the person Hanssen originally sent his letter to apply for his job at the KGB.

It shows people do try to cover up when they make mistakes.

The fact that we were attacked, the fact that nobody seems to have known anything about it, is an indication to me that they haven't broken it, ... In my opinion, this is the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history.

He was extremely outwardly religious. He was always trying to get me to go with him to one of these sessions of Opus Dei, which is a sort of a semi-secretive, conservative branch of the Catholic Church,

The whole idea of the NSA is intercepting huge streams of communications, taking in 2 million pieces of communications an hour.

Today one of the key aspects of NSA is what they call 'information at rest,' this is information in databases.

If you kill Trailblazer, you might as well kill NSA. Gen. Alexander has no choice but to find a way to make it work.