James Woolsey
James Woolsey
Robert James Woolsey Jr.is a national security and energy specialist and former Director of Central Intelligence who headed the Central Intelligence Agency from February 5, 1993 until January 10, 1995. A lawyer by training and trade, he held a variety of government positions in the 1970s and 1980s, including as Under Secretary of the Navy from 1977 to 1979, and was involved in treaty negotiations with the Soviet Union for five years in the 1980s. His career also included time...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth21 September 1941
CountryUnited States of America
The world -- and not just the United States -- has a problem with depending on the Middle East, and not just the Saudis, for such a large oil share, which creates a problem because of the instability in the area.
had to do with coordination of intelligence in the United States.
They are looking hard for technology to get leverage with their conventional forces and to move more quickly than they have been able to in the past into the world of computers, electronics and so on.
Countries are effectively paid deference in direct and indirect ways if they're huge oil suppliers.
A single well-designed attack could send oil to well over $100 a barrel and devastate the world's economy. Oil dependence today creates serious and pressing dangers for the U.S. and other oil-importing nations.
This is an issue for people's pocketbooks as well as the economy and national security.
One of the generals, I think, said yesterday that over 90 percent of the attacks that occurred in the country, including those outside the Sunni triangle, are coming from within that Sunni triangle. It's there that I think they really have to win the war.
We need to move away from oil, period.
As we move toward a new Middle East, over the years and, I think, over the decades to come, we will make a lot of people very nervous.
As we move toward a new Middle East, ... over the years and, I think, over the decades to come ... we will make a lot of people very nervous.
It's as if we were fighting with dragon for some 45 years and slew the dragon and then found ourselves in a jungle full of a number of poisonous snakes.
For anyone who believes that this is purely a commercial undertaking, unrelated to a national strategy of domination of energy markets and of the western Pacific, I would suggest that that view is extraordinarily naive.
American farmers, by making the commitment to grow more corn for ethanol, are at the top of the spear on the war against terrorism.
We've got jihadists. That doesn't mean that all Muslims are problems with respect to terrorism, but there is something going on here. We've got a problem dealing with one aspect of one portion of modern Islam - just as hundreds of years ago the world had a problem with Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition.