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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly recently interviewed CIA Director John Brennan [npr.org]. Here are some highlights:

On the FBI/Apple dispute [npr.org] over the San Bernardino iPhone:

BRENNAN: What would people say if a bank had a safe-deposit box, or a storage company had a storage bin, that individuals could use and access and store things, but the government was not going to be able to have any access to those environments? And so criminals, terrorists, whatever, could use it. So what is it about electronic communications that makes it unique in terms of it not being allowed to be accessed by the government when, again, the law, the courts, say that the government should have access to it? So these are things that need to be worked through.

[...] On whether the CIA is arming and training opposition forces in Syria:

BRENNAN: I'm not going to talk about anything that the CIA might be doing in that area. But the U.S. government has made it very clear that it supports the opposition, moderate opposition inside of Syria. ... There are a lot of various means of providing support to the opposition. And given that the opposition is a patchwork of moderates, as well as extremists, as well as terrorists, there is a need to make sure that any type of support that comes from the outside, whether it be from the United States or other countries, is going to support those moderate elements within the opposition, and not the extremists and terrorists.

On Russian President Vladimir Putin's ambitions:

BRENNAN: I think he has found that he's in a bit of a quandary now inside of Ukraine, in terms of realizing his objectives. Now in Syria, he's had a relationship with the — Russia has had a relationship with the government in Damascus for the past 50 years, has invested a lot of money, and a lot of military support. ... Mr. Putin is very assertive, very aggressive. He pursues Moscow's agenda in a variety of means. He does it with his intelligence and security services when he wants to hide his hands, but also, he's doing it rather overtly right now, obviously, with the introduction of thousands of Russian military personnel and sophisticated weaponry inside of Syria.

Related: C.I.A. Admits Penetrating Senate Intelligence Computers [soylentnews.org]
CIA Chief: Terrorists Harder to Find, Because of Leaks, Reforms [soylentnews.org]
Two Alleged Teen Hackers Cuffed: CIA Director Brennan Email Hacker, and French XMPP Server Operator [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission