Lawrence DiRita Quotes

"We have a lot of skilled people, a lot of energy, and a lot of money. But I question whether the DoD is the best place to be doing these things."

"The department remains in regular consultation with the relevant committees in Congress and with other agencies within the intelligence community, including the CIA."

"It is accurate and should not be surprising that the Department of Defense is attempting to improve its long-standing human intelligence capability."

"I think one of the principle lessons is that in a disaster of a certain scale, there is no other department of government that can provide the resources and the planning and the advanced thinking than this department,"

"There was already a significant flow of Guard troops. Changing the nature of the operation wasn't going to get people there any faster."

"We're getting more intelligence that's allowing us to stop more of these things, find more of them. So we're learning from them and the enemy is learning from us, and it's going to be that way for as long as there is an insurgency."

"It's still classified, ... along with a lot of the underlying planning."

"but there just has been no decisions made."

"There is no unit that is directly reportable to the Secretary of Defense for clandestine operations as is described in the Washington Post article. ... Further, the department is not attempting to 'bend' statutes to fit desired activities, as is suggested in this article."

"We altered the rotation of units during the January elections, and I think its perfectly plausible we'll do the same thing for these elections."

"Decisions were made then that seemed appropriate at the time. And now the Iraqi government is making decisions that seem appropriate to this point."

"It's not known, to the best of my understanding."