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I suddenly realized at the CIA that I had to make life-and-death decisions about people.

Leon Panetta

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Leon Panetta
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 28
Former Director Of The Central Intelligence Agency
Lawyer
Political Scientist
Politician
Monterey
California
Leon Edward Panetta
Realized
Decisions
Decision
Death
Make
Life
People
Cia
Suddenly

More quotes by Leon Panetta

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One of the principal qualities that you need as national security adviser is trust, the trust of the president. And that depends on truth and it depends on honesty.
Leon Panetta
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I mean, the Taliban, my view is that they have been weakened. We have not seen them able to conduct any kind of organized attack to regain any territory that they've lost. We've seen levels of violence going down.
Leon Panetta
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The United States will do whatever we have to do to protect our forces.
Leon Panetta
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The Taliban is resilient.
Leon Panetta
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Well, the United States is a Pacific power. And we have always had a presence in the Pacific.
Leon Panetta
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Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.
Leon Panetta
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The one thing that I remember from all of my intelligence briefings and my dealings with the Russians is that when you deal with the Russians, you have to deal with them from strength, not from weakness.
Leon Panetta
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We are a nation at war. This is also a time for hard choices. It's about ensuring that we are able to prevail in the conflicts in which we are now engaged. But it's also about being able to be strong and disciplined in applying our nation's limited resources to defending America.
Leon Panetta
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You know, as director of the CIA, I got an awful lot of intelligence about all the horrible things that could go on across the world.
Leon Panetta
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In the zero-sum budget game, every dollar spent on this problem [illegal immigration] must be taken from somewhere else....No, we should not tolerate people immigrating illegally. But we need to treat this issue honestly and fairly.
Leon Panetta
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China is a major power in the Pacific and I think we are dealing with some common threats in that region: the whole issue of Korea and the stability of Korea, the whole issue of nuclear proliferation, the whole issue of providing free access to our ships that are operating in that area.
Leon Panetta
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Clearly, Russia has lied to the world about what's going on in Ukraine. They have clearly violated the cease-fire agreements.
Leon Panetta
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Al Qaeda still remains a threat.
Leon Panetta
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Iran is isolating itself from the rest of the world.
Leon Panetta
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An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals.
Leon Panetta
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It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to borrow money from the Chinese to go give to another country for humanitarian aid. We ought to get the Chinese to take care of the people.
Leon Panetta
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In this century, the 21st century, the U.S. recognizes our prosperity and our security depends even more on the Asia-Pacific region.
Leon Panetta
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I think a quality that a national security adviser must have is the ability to set up procedures.
Leon Panetta
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There's no question that the main location of al Qaeda is in tribal areas of Pakistan.
Leon Panetta
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Sexual assault has no place in the military. It is a violation of everything that the US military stands for.
Leon Panetta