John Sherman Cooper Quotes

The head of the CIA, it seems to me, would think long and hard before he admitted that former employees of his had been involved in the murder of the President of the United States-even if they weren't acting on behalf of the Agency when they did it.

The CIA could not face up to the American people and admit that its former employees had conspired to assassinate the President; so from the moment Kennedy's heart stopped beating, the Agency attempted to sweep the whole conspiracy under the rug.

It's hard for me to imagine that some people in the CIA who had firsthand knowledge would be unable to recognize that this would be helpful information for a soldier's death.

The CIA is an easy target because they do so much that is wrong.

a direct admission that we are responsible for negligence which might have resulted in the assassination of the President [JFK].

…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.

Absolutely get rid of CIA agents from units and the territory of Cambodia.

The CIA … concealed its failures abroad, lying to Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. It told those lies to preserve its standing in Washington.

CIA will not develop operations to penetrate another Government agency, even with the approval of its leadership.

When I blew the whistle on the whole thing, it was [William J.] Casey who, I felt, regarded what I had done as treason.

In the name of national security, the Commission’s hearings were held in secret, thereby continuing the policy which has marked the entire course of the case. This prompts my second question: If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security? Indeed, precisely the same question must be put here as was posed in France during the Dreyfus case: If the Government is so certain of its case, why has it conducted all its inquiries in the strictest secrecy?

I would not put C.I.A. officers at risk by asking them to undertake risky, controversial activity again.

There are no figures in the Trump campaign who colluded with Russia - but there were at least five in the Obama administration who helped push the bogus narratives of collusion and obstruction, and they have plenty of questions to answer.

My CIA colleagues were smart, dedicated, funny, and creative. Yes, there was sometimes stifling bureaucracy, boredom, colleagues who never should have been there, and later, deeply disturbing stories of the CIA's involvement in torture. Still, I got to do work I thought was incredibly important and, many times, had fun doing it.

George Tenet was actually a very strong centralizing force. If you met George by personality, George met with the president six days out of seven: nontrivial attribute inside the federal government. And George was head of the CIA.

I would never jeopardize classified information. I served my country well and loyally, and I had to sue the C.I.A. on First Amendment grounds.

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.

Of course we wish that more people involved in the leak of my true CIA identity had been prosecuted, but the system worked.

I think even pro-China legislators would not believe I'm really a CIA agent.

Nothing is more important to those of us at CIA than our obligation to earn the trust of our fellow citizens.

The American people and our allies around the world can rely on CIA's vigilance, excellence, and determination to proudly serve.

Beyond a power play by the oil industry, there is no conceivable explanation for barring courts within any state from considering cases related to oil leases and energy production off its own coastlines.

It is very important that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency adhere to the same classification guidelines that all employees must adhere to because there are very good reason for those classification guidelines.

The Trump administration's assault against the FBI's efforts to assess a national security threat posed by suspected foreign agents only raises more questions about what went on in 2016.