Ronen Bergman Quotes

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn ran the defense intelligence agency from 2012 to 2014. He served as a top national intelligence adviser to General Stanley McChrystal in Iraq.

Some of the best fan mail I get are from our men and women in the military and intelligence communities. They say, 'Boy you do your homework, this is exactly how we're doing it.'

We are dealing with treachery and threats, which accompanied the establishment of Israel.

There is no part of the executive branch that more exists on the outer edge of executive prerogative than the American intelligence community - the intelligence community, CIA, covert action. My literal responsibility as director of CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval, to inform.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

I do have concerns about the current efforts to restructure our nation's intelligence community.

I am very much interested in seeing the United States have as fine a foreign military and naval intelligence as they can possibly have, but I am not interested in setting up here in the United States any particular agency under any President ... and just allow him to have a Gestapo of his own if he wants to have it.

Intelligence, like any other aspect of national security, has to be under civilian control.

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

Intelligence is a sacred cow. We’ve done nothing since we’ve been here about it. The CIA isn’t worth a damn.

The trust that was reposed in the CIA has faded. The agency is so battered that its utility for espionage is subject to question

Intelligence isn’t just something for the Cold War. When you think of Pearl Harbor, you can understand why. Unpleasant surprises are out there.

I've yet to meet a President who controlled the CIA.

Bureau of Secret Intelligence.

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

As a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, I know that the CIA, Treasury Department, National Security Agency, and others work closely to keep tabs on the IRGC's operations.

I have great respect for the people in intelligence and CIA. I don't have a lot of respect for in particular one of the leaders. But that's OK. But I have a lot of respect for the people in the CIA.

It is not the intelligence community's place to set and implement policy.

Don't drag the Mossad into political arguments. These are people who can't defend themselves.

As director of CIA, I was responsible for everything done in the agency's name, and it didn't matter whether that was done by an agency employee, a government contractor, a liaison service on our behalf, or a source on our behalf.

American political elites feel very empowered to criticize the American intelligence community for not doing enough when they feel in danger, and as soon as we've made them feel safe again, they feel equally empowered to complain that we're doing too much.

When I was working on 'Homeland,' there was a consultant who helped me a lot... I went to Washington and met with my consultant there, and he actually organised a lunch with several people from the Intelligence Committee.

President Obama and his successors are dependent on the 100,000-plus people inside the American intelligence community - the people Edward Snowden betrayed.

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.