David Ignatius Quotes

The shadowy world of foreign intelligence-gathering – the American government’s most secret and least accountable enterprise – is now the Bush administration’s main legal weapon in the war on terrorism.

Everybody spies on everybody.

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.

When you join the CIA, you have to make some peace with whether you are comfortable psychologically and philosophically, with the use of force and using it clandestinely.

Having watched the form of our traitors for a number of years, I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game.

There is only one law of espionage—there are always going to be spies.

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

Americans don’t spy on Americans.

This country, for reasons of history, culture and therefore law, has had an allergy to domestic intelligence.

Our agency (the Central Intelligence Agency) is the last refuge of organizational privacy available to the U. S. Government.

We want our spying agencies spying on foreigners. That’s why we have them.

I served 10 years on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, and I had the distinct privilege of meeting with real U.S. spies throughout the globe.

If we are going to conduct espionage in the future, we are going to have to make some changes in the relationship between the intelligence community and the public it serves.

No one would argue that it's in the United States' interest to have independent knowledge of the plans and intentions of foreign countries. But we need to think about where to draw the line on these kind of operations so we're not always attacking our allies, the people we trust, the people we need to rely on, and to have them in turn rely on us.

Everybody has a hacking capability. And probably every intelligence service is hacking in the territory of other countries. But who exactly does what? That would be a very sensitive piece of information. But it's very difficult to communicate about it. Because nobody wants to admit the scope of what they're doing.

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.

The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent.

I suspect Obama did not know he was recording Angela Merkel's cell phones.

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

Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone.

I've known several spies who have wanted to become novelists. And novelists who became spies, of course.

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.

You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

So there is a foreign intelligence purpose for every one of our FISA warrants.