Ally Carter Quotes

How could your cover be blown in Canada? Why even bother going dark there? How could you tell?

Tact ops is a unit which breaks into homes and offices to plant bugging devices. They get into mafia hangouts, they go into embassies, they go into terrorist hangouts, and they describe themselves as court-sanctioned burglars.

There are more FBI undercover agents in the ranks of the Communist Party than there were actual communists.

I spent a whole career infiltrating places.

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.

This is the wonderful thing about espionage, nothing exists any more.

I am always up to steal secrets from smart people.

I have a long-standing interest in what I like to think of as 'forbidden knowledge:' methods of unarmed killing, lock picking, breaking and entry, spy stuff, and other things that the government wants only a few select individuals to know.

If you want to know what a terrorist is doing, you have to put an agent in their camp.

I thought that you guys [the CIA] had people everywhere, that you knew about everything, and now you don't even know anything about a raggedy-ass, little fourth rate country. All you have to do is get some Chinese coolies from a San Francisco laundry shop and drop them over there and use them.

The simple truth is that the inspectors will never find anything the location of which has not been discovered through intelligence operations.

[CIA] Case officers most fear the US ambassador and his staff, then restrictive headquarters cables, then curious gossipy neighbors in the local community, as potential threats to the operation. Next would come the local police, then the press. Last of all is the KGB.

I am unable to tell a quarter of a billion Americans what we are doing on their behalf, because if I did, it would become the table of contents of the training manual of the enemy.

Spies go undercover. They take on different personas.

A chief of station is the head of all intelligence operations in any given country.

I've long maintained during my 50-plus year career in intelligence that leaks endanger national security, they compromise sources, methods, and tradecraft, and they can put assets' lives at risk.

I was a case officer, otherwise known as an operations officer. My role was to go out and convince Al Qaeda operatives to instead work with us as well as to convince people and officials in foreign governments to work on behalf of the U.S. government secretly.

I spent close to a decade as an undercover officer in the CIA and have spent most of my adult life collecting intelligence and protecting sources and methods.

Imagine a 'Mission: Impossible'-style spy or infiltration mission into the core, the very heart of the Empire's military-industrial complex, the most secure facility in the Empire. You have a small band of experts with complementary skills who, together, are able to do these amazing things.

The aim of a foreign intelligence service is to find and convince individuals to help them achieve intelligence objectives.

Every intelligence operation carries risks.

Breaking a cardinal rule of spy craft, I actually let it be known that I wanted to work for the CIA.

I excelled in finding and acquiring secret information that I obtained in brush passes, dead drops, or in meetings in dusty alleys of third world capitals.

Of all those in the army close to the commander, none is more intimate than the secret agent.

Look, the FBI has the tools necessary un-American activities in our country. It goes on, we shouldn't even be talking about it.