Top 61 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Mueller

In the context of September 11, there were so many that lost their lives that - how do you single out one person? There were so many acts of heroism that day from so many people, whether it be firemen and police officers in New York and our agents also.

The FBI's principal priority right now is protecting the United States against another terrorist attack.

I was in my office when - on 9/11. I think I had a number of meetings scheduled. I was just getting to know the bureau. And somebody walked in and said the first plane had - or a plane had struck the World Trade Center, one of the towers.

I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war.

We had to address information technology in the ways we had not before and give the agents the tools that they need to do their job more efficiently and more expeditiously.

The 19 hijackers that came over here to commit the attack on Sept. 11, there were those that were at the bottom of the line. There were those who were the principal conspirators. There were those who were the pilot. Everybody has a role.

I think, in the wake of Sept. 11, it's important for the American public to understand that to the extent that there are individuals within the United States who would undertake terrorist attacks, that we are doing something to address that.

We cannot go up on a wire. We cannot do a search without a judge on the FISA Court approving it and determining that we have met the standard that has been set forth by Congress in order to utilize these techniques.

It's because we need to determine who in this country is poised, positioned to commit terrorist acts.

Anyplace we go in the world, when someone asks us what we do, we feel an immense pride in saying, 'FBI.'

For the FBI and for the United States, the war on terrorism is a complex and perplexing issue. It is as complex and perplexing as any issue we have ever faced.

People talk about the Patriot Act that was passed immediately in the wake of September 11. What the Patriot Act did was break down the walls between the various agencies.

There'll be differences of opinion in just about every intelligence analysis that you make.

And at that point, I think we all realized it was something tremendously tragic, probably a terrorist attack, and the next step was to go down to our command center and get things going.

I love doing bank robberies, drug cases, homicides - as a prosecutor, that's what I thought I was going to be overseeing when I got to the bureau.

Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity set the expectations for behavior; they set a standard for our work. More than just a motto, for the men and women of the FBI, Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity is a way of life.

I would say in just about every investigation we have, there will be differences of opinion, where you have partial facts, as to what those facts mean.

What we bring to the table is not only our 56 field offices in the United States and our number of resident agencies, but also we have 45 legal attaches overseas.

And so every one of us in the FBI, I don't care if it's a file clerk someplace or an agent there or a computer specialist, understands that our main mission is to protect the public from another September 11, another terrorist attack.

I am convinced that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be. And even they are converging into one category: companies that have been hacked and will be hacked again.

I am confident that every action we took as the FBI detained individuals in the wake of 9/11 was appropriately done.

I think around the world, our agents are the best collectors of information you'll find.

Prior to the passage of the Patriot Act, it was very difficult - often impossible - for us to share information with the Central Intelligence Agency, with NSA, with the other intelligence agencies, and likewise, for them to share information with us.

Computer hackers do not need to know each other's real names, or even live on the same continent, to steal millions in mere hours.

For the men and women of the FBI, bravery is reflected not only in the physical courage often necessary in the job. It can be seen in the courage of conviction, in the courage to act with wisdom in the face of fear, and in the courage it takes to admit mistakes and move forward.

I've always loved investigations.

I didn't know the organization, but the one thing you can say about the FBI, it's tremendously professional.

We need to take lessons learned from fighting terrorism and apply them to cyber crime.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, it became clear that the FBI's number one priority must be the prevention of another terrorist attack.

You don't eat before your troops eat, and you don't ask your troops to do anything you won't do, too.

I remember... seeing the first plane go into the towers and thinking: 'It's a beautiful day. Somebody really must have gotten off course to have the plane go into the towers.'

I know when I was here prosecuting homicides in the District of Columbia, one of the most effective units here was the cold case squad, which had on it FBI agents, as well as Metropolitan Police Department homicide detectives working together.

So without getting into the specifics, I can tell you that to the extent that investigation is a relatively important investigation and meaningful, the president would have been periodically briefed.

Perimeter defense may not matter if the enemy is inside the gates.

I know that we will be judged in history by not only how we disrupt terrorism but how we protect the civil liberties and constitutional rights of all Americans, even Americans who don't wish us well. We must do all these things exceptionally well.

And from the moment that we realized it was a terrorist attack, there isn't an agent or a support person in the FBI that wasn't committed to bringing to justice those who were responsible for this.

I love prosecuting cases, and I love doing investigations, particularly homicide investigations and the like, and that's why I became a prosecutor.

I still have to work on patience.

They're - FBI agents are some of the finest people you'll find anyplace in the country or the world. And I'm lucky to have the opportunity to work with them.

My admonition is, 'No counterterrorism lead goes uncovered.'

In the United States, it's the mandate of the FBI to gather information relating to terrorism, go out and collect it, to do the interviews, to do the investigative work.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims in this country and overseas are peaceful, law-abiding citizens. However, a small number of Muslims are members of fundamentalist sects sworn to the destruction of the United States.

In order to be successful against each of these threats, we have to have a presence overseas, work closely not only with our counterparts in the law enforcement community, but also with the intelligence community.

The collapse of Enron was devastating to tens of thousands of people and shook the public's confidence in corporate America.

All I'm going to tell you is investigations, whether it be this and others, where you have partial facts, analysts, agents are always trying to interpret what those facts mean, extrapolate from them what they mean.

But we had - I think if you look at law enforcement 10 years ago, if you look at the challenges, the FBI was focused excessively on what was happening in the United States.

We cannot turn back the clock. We cannot undo the impact of technology. Nor would we want to.

I do believe when there are advances in technology that it is important to balance the privacy interests affected with the investigative take that you might get from that technology.

As I said before, there are often disagreements as to what a particular set of facts mean. That is not at all unusual, and one shouldn't read into it more than is there.

So there is a foreign intelligence purpose for every one of our FISA warrants.

If I have the honor of being confirmed by the Senate, I will make it my highest priority to restore the public's confidence in the FBI and to re-earn the faith and trust of the American people.

Leaking of classified material is a concern.

If you look at the 19 hijackers who came to the United States in Sept. 11 to commit those acts, if you'd looked at them before they got onto a plane, you could probably say the same thing. There were various levels of expertise, various levels of competence.

In planning an attack, persons have various roles.

For most of us, fidelity is faithfulness to an obligation, trust, or duty. For the men and women of the FBI, fidelity also means fidelity to country. It means fidelity to justice and the law, fidelity to the Constitution, fidelity to equality and liberty.

Secondly, not only have we put additional agents on counterterrorism, but we've also built up our analytical structure so that we're better positioned to analyze the information we have.

But since September 11, we have made every effort to try to work closely with state and local law enforcement.

There are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those that will be. Even that is merging into one category: those that have been hacked and will be again.

In the future, the cyber threat will equal or even eclipse the terrorist threat.

No one has ever been able to convince me that optimism is not preferable to pessimism.