Nicholas Rasmussen:

Well, thus far, I think we have been able to sustain the kind of resource picture that we need to carry out the functions that the American people would want us to carry out. And we have not experienced those kinds of cuts.

As far as morale is concerned, when you have a mission like counterterrorism, it isn't hard to keep morale up in your organization. My work force, my colleagues at NCTC, come to work every day knowing exactly why they're there, and it's to keep fellow Americans safe.

They're also, I think, increasingly becoming used to the idea that everybody's better off in our line of work if you can tune out politics. And so I encourage them to do that, tune out politics of — anything that you're watching on TV that causes you to stop doing what you're doing is probably not a good thing.

So, especially with younger officers, I try to keep them focused on the mission, keep them focused on doing what they signed up to do, which is everything in their power to keep their fellow Americans safe.