19 Quotes by James Bamford

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

It's a return to the bad old days of the N.S.A..

It's a vacuum cleaner approach to virtually millions of communications an hour. Nobody knows what they're doing with it.

It was basically Western Union for cables, and AT&T for the telephone. It's much more complicated now.

It produces, probably produces, 80 percent of the intelligence the United States uses, ... The Puzzle Palace.

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

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.

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.

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.