Malcolm Nance Quotes

I really wanted to be a spy. I guess it's a bit like acting, where you play a role.

I've always wanted to be a spy, and frankly I'm a little surprised that British intelligence has never approached me.

I would be a terrible CIA officer in real life.

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

You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters.

In my head, I think I'd make a perfect spy, but in reality, I don't think I'd fare very well.

Since that time I have had continuous contact with the persons who were completely unknown to me, except that I knew they would hand whatever information I gave them to the Russian authorities.

I always liked spy stories.

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.

I've always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.

My name is E. Howard Hunt. I'm currently retired from more than 22 years in the profession of espionage.

From the outside, the CIA seems pretty exotic, but from the inside, it's a big, bureaucratic place. Think 'post office with spies.'

I would have loved to have met some former spies, but they don't readily advertise themselves unless they're not living in Moscow, and even then. I'm sure I've met some without realizing it.

There are few archbishops in espionage. He's on our side and that's all that matters. Besides, one needn't ask him to one's club.

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

Secrecy is as essential to Intelligence as vestments to a Mass, or darkness to a spiritualist seance, and must at all costs be maintained, quite irrespective of whether or not it serves any purpose.

You can probably forgive the top spy for lying about spying. Lying is part of the job description. It’s what spies do.

The intelligence community is built, resourced, designed, trained, and focused around secrecy. We try to obtain the secrets of our adversaries and we try and keep secret how we are doing so.

Bill Stephenson taught us all we ever knew about foreign intelligence.

Follow the money, and one arrives at a basic fact: the CIA’s edge is paramilitary.

Oh, I can keep many secrets, so I would be a phenomenal secret agent. I love secrets.

I spent a whole career infiltrating places.

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.

Exposing the activities of a foreign intelligence service renders them ineffective, since it removes plausible deniability, which is the hallmark of covert intelligence operations.