Harry S. Truman Quotes

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

Secrecy now beclouds everything about the Central Intelligence Agency—its cost, its efficiency, its success, its failures.

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.

I know CIA like the back of my hand.

I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.

We need to make is to strengthen the position of the director of the CIA.

The men and women of the CIA are a national treasure.

When I was younger, I actually wanted to be a CIA agent. Really. I even did the online questionnaire.

Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.

A major theme in all my books is that the CIA is not only the first line of defense but they should also be the first line of offense.

It's necessary to understand what real intelligence work is. It will never cease. It's absolutely essential that we have it. At its best, it is simply the left arm of healthy governmental curiosity. It brings to a strong government what it needs to know. It's the collection of information, a journalistic job, if you will, but done in secret.

…the CIA has never carried out any action of a political nature, given any support of any nature, to any persons, potentates or movements, political or otherwise, without appropriate approval at a high potential level in our government outside the CIA.

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

Intelligence gathered by this government leaves no doubt

Everything the CIA does is secret and it is secret particularly from the Congress.

The men who control the CIA are of an older, conservative generation which has kept the agency fifteen or twenty years behind the progress of the nation at large.

Bureau of Secret Intelligence.

I was working for the CIA and prohibited from speaking publicly.

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.

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.

First of all, CIA follows the law.

It's hardly a news flash that a secret, clandestine intelligence agency might resist giving out information about its operations when not not legally required to do so.

I joined the CIA in 1985 as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service.

I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified.