Aldrich Ames Quotes

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.

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.

It is important to seek out the spies that the enemy has sent to spy on you so you can bribe them to really spy for you.

They were conspiring to desert us in the night and steal some of our horses... we engaged a spy.

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

I’ll use prostitutes to go out and seduce … high campaign officials.

It takes two to corrupt – the corrupted and the corrupter.

The times are such as ... to make it the duty of every friend of the country to keep a true lookout and if possible, discover and expose to the detestation of the world those traitors, who acting under foreign influences are plotting schemes destructive to the interests of their country.

Treason must be stopped by fair means of foul.

Deception can cost billions. Think Enron, Madoff, the mortgage crisis. Or in the case of double agents and traitors, like Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames, lies can betray our country. They can compromise our security. They can undermine democracy. They can cause the deaths of those that defend us.

A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life

We knew we were talking about spies. I knew he knew I knew. I was digging my own grave.

I saw a limit to what I was giving as kind of a scam I was running on the KGB, by giving them people that I knew were their double agents fed to us.

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.

Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.

Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you got your back turned.

It's impossible for somebody to defect from the United States. Edward Lee Howard is not a defector. He's a traitor.

One only needs a big enough bribe to give in like a lamb.

The Fifth Column.

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

The loggers are more powerful than we are …. There is bribery everywhere.

I never met a North Korean who didn’t like pornography. Supplying porn to North Korean officials to entice them to spy for America, along with money or whatever else it might take—yes I was willing to do that.

As to [Aaron] Burr, there is nothing in his favour … he is bankrupt beyond redemption except by the plunder of his country. His public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandizement…. He is truly the Cataline of America.

Goddamn bitch set me up!

On occasion, I used to give presents to the kings, besides the hire that I gave to to their sons who accompany me; and nevertheless, they seized me with my companions.