Vince Flynn Quotes

I joined the CIA in 1985 as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service.

We need to make is to strengthen the position of the director of the CIA.

When I was younger, I actually wanted to be a CIA agent. Really. I even did the online questionnaire.

By the late '70s I had come to question the point of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the CIA's overall charter.

It [the CIA] was not intended as a Cloak & Dagger Outfit. It was intended merely as a center for keeping the President of what was going on in the World…I never wanted the CIA to act as a spy organization. That was never the intention when it was organized.

The CIA was set up by me for the sole purpose of getting all the available information to the President. It was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities.

I know CIA like the back of my hand.

The men and women of the CIA are a national treasure.

Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.

Secrecy now beclouds everything about CIA—its cost, its efficiency, its successes, and its failures.

[Referring to the CIA:] We coexist. They work, and we work.

Prior to the present war [WWII], the United States had no foreign intelligence service. It never has had and does not have a coordinated intelligence service.

Secrecy now beclouds everything about the Central Intelligence Agency—its cost, its efficiency, its success, its failures.

I never worked for any secret service, certainly not the Israeli secret service.

The world has changed, the CIA is having to change, and again, the challenge for someone like me as a spy novelist is to write realistically about where they're actually going.

I would not put C.I.A. officers at risk by asking them to undertake risky, controversial activity again.

I spent over ten years in the Central Intelligence Agency as an undercover operations officer serving overseas after 9/11 where I carried out covert operations against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as other countries who are 'hostile to liberty,' as I like to say.

SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, also has no executive powers and operates abroad on CIA lines, but with a tiny percentage of the budget and a tiny percentage of the personnel.

Let's remember, the CIA's job is to go out and create wars.

I was with the CIA for only three years. I worked in the Directorate of Operations, which is now called the National Clandestine Service. It's the part of the organization where the spies live. I didn't have much experience beyond the training.

Throughout my career, I had the great fortune to experience firsthand as well as to witness what it means to be a CIA officer.

I think all governments engage in intelligence gathering vis-a-vis other governments.

Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

As an old man who remembers the intellectual exhilaration and the pleasure of having done good work that characterized the CIA when it was young, I wonder if it might not be better to speak and think in terms of restoring its culture.

The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.