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
Dennis C. Blair quotes about
advocate broad china dialogue diversity expose intense middle people sounds strong vice visits
I know it sounds Pollyannish and 'Kumbaya'-like, but I find that the more that you expose Americans to the diversity of what's going on in China and vice versa, the more people find that there is this broad middle path. And so I'm a strong advocate of intense visits and dialogue back and forth.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
white house integrating
My experience is the White House is not a very good place to coordinate intelligence, much less to integrate it.
benefit bottom damage essential far gave hurt image interests line national techniques whatever
The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.
I find when you talk with the Chinese on most subjects, they are very practical.
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.
against economic extreme ideologies interests open sections served stand willing
I think American interests are served when there are sections of the world that have representative governments, politically open economic systems, and are willing to take a stand against some of the more extreme ideologies that there are around the world.
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.
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.