Robby Mook Quotes

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

I handed over names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union.

When I handed over the names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union, I had come to the conclusion that the loss of these sources to the U.S. would not compromise significant national defense, political, diplomatic interests.

It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used.

Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.

Espionage is largely separate from the mainstream of foreign policy … you nail the spy and you punish him, and you move on.

This town leaks like a sieve. Sometimes I think that the easiest thing on the world would be to be a spy against the United States of America

There are more foreign intelligence officers inside the US now, working against US interests, than there were at the height of the cold war.

If you’re going to be involved with espionage, you’ve got to be motivated. It’s not fun and games. It’s dirty and dangerous. There’s always the chance that you’re going to get burned.

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.

One of the things that distinguishes the CIA from the State Department is that the CIA is both asked to, and authorized to, steal secrets. So if the question is whether the CIA steals secrets, the answer is yes.

Providing classified information to a foreign agent of the People's Republic of China is a real and serious threat to our national security.

When you're dealing with espionage and covert affairs, sometimes the secret is more exciting than the knowledge.

Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of 'fair play' must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.

I'm not a spy for Russia or China or any other country for that matter.

There are some who become spies for money, or out of vanity and megalomania, or out of ambition, or out of a desire for thrills. But the malady of our time is of those who become spies out of idealism.

The way the United States intelligence community operates is it doesn't limit itself to the protection of the homeland. It doesn't limit itself to countering terrorist threats, countering nuclear proliferation. It's also used for economic espionage, for political spying to gain some knowledge of what other countries are doing.

I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game.

In the old days, spies had done they'd done because they loved their country, because they believed in what they were doing. But he'd never been given a choice. Nowadays, spies weren't employed. They were used.

Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.

You couldn't trust anyone or anything that belonged to the world of espionage.

I was trained in Army Intelligence, but spent most of my army career in the infantry. But like many people of my generation, I was very much caught up in the Cold War, and books and movies about espionage.

There are Russian spies here now. And if we're lucky, they'll steal some of our secrets and they'll be two years behind.

...also took for granted that secret services were the only real measure of a nations political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.

I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of [CIA] sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.