In recent years, anyone in the government, certainly anyone in the FBI or the CIA, or recently, in again, Clint's film, In the Line of Fire, the main bad guy is the chief advisor to the president.
I heard some good news today, the FBI and the CIA are going to start cooperating. They are going to start working together. And if you don't know the difference between the FBI and the CIA, the FBI bungles domestic crime, the CIA bungles foreign crime.
You have one conversation with Clint Eastwood, and you realize how cool of a guy he is. He can get down to anyone's level.
The last president we had was the smartest guy anyone could remember and he did the dumbest thing anyone has ever seen in the White House so go figure.
I'm not against the FBI investigation in doing a proper role, but I'm against the FBI spying on people like Martin Luther King. I'm against the CIA fighting secret wars and overthrowing government.
But I would defy anyone to go back over the years and tell me anyone whose career I've ruined, anyone whom I've driven out of the service, anyone I've fired from a job.
Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President
Foaly: Anyone see you come in here? Holly: The FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA, MI6. Oh, and the EIB. Foaly: The EIB? Holly: (smirking) Everyone in the building.
Because of the terrorist threat, the FBI and CIA have become as important as the military in preserving our freedom. Yet while thanking our military is standard practice in American life, no one thinks of thanking the FBI, the CIA, or the rest of the intelligence community for keeping us safe since 9/11.
The president has a duty and a right to oversee the FBI, and you know, he properly delegate the law enforcement to the FBI and try to insulate it from politics. But that's not to curb the president's authority over the FBI. So if he wants to meet with the FBI and give his opinion or even talk about his hopes, if indeed, he said that, he has every right to do so.
The FBI demonstrated this by taking down the former head of the CIA [General David Petraeus] over classified information given to his mistress. Almost no-one is untouchable. The FBI is always trying to demonstrate that no-one can resist us. But Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI's investigation, so there's anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak. We've published about 33,000 of Clinton's emails when she was Secretary of State.
If you look at my track record as government chief scientific advisor, I've always recognized that all of the sciences are important to all of research, and we need a balance.
Being a POW certainly doesn't qualify anyone to be president.
Presidents are given immense power in the American political system when it comes to personnel. FBI directors are given ten-year terms to insulate them from politics as much as one can, but it's not absolute protection. If a president wants to fire an FBI director, they can do that.
I don't want to quit. I've always said that Clint Eastwood is one of my best friends. I've known Clint for many years and we have almost a jokey relationship about retirement. I always say: "OK Clint, are you ready to retire this year?" And he always says: "No, are you?" So, I'm waiting for the phone call where Clint says he's hanging up his spurs. That's never going to happen. If it doesn't happen for Clint, it won't happen for me.
We didn't create the culture of film. We certainly market it better than anyone in the world, but film could have happened anywhere. It's not distinctly American, as witnessed by the fact that there are film communities throughout the world that tell stories to their own cultural liking.
Isn't it a little strange the FBI director has a private conversation with the president. Instead of saying to the president, Mr. President, you're new to this job. You're not a legal law enforcement guy. What you're saying is inappropriate to me.