Gina Haspel Quotes

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

I know CIA like the back of my hand.

I was with the CIA for only three years. I worked in the Directorate of Operations, which is now called the National Clandestine Service. It's the part of the organization where the spies live. I didn't have much experience beyond the training.

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

Throughout my career, I had the great fortune to experience firsthand as well as to witness what it means to be a CIA officer.

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.

I learned serving under William J. Casey, that the Clandestine Service is the heart and soul of the agency [the CIA]. It is also the part that can land you in jail.

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.

As an old man who remembers the intellectual exhilaration and the pleasure of having done good work that characterized the CIA when it was young, I wonder if it might not be better to speak and think in terms of restoring its culture.

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

The CIA was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.

It [the CIA] was not intended as a Cloak & Dagger Outfit. It was intended merely as a center for keeping the President of what was going on in the World…I never wanted the CIA to act as a spy organization. That was never the intention when it was organized.

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

Bureau of Secret Intelligence.

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.

I spent close to a decade as an undercover officer in the CIA and have spent most of my adult life collecting intelligence and protecting sources and methods.

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.

It will be the CIA's mission and my own if confirmed to ensure that the agency remains the best in the world at its core mission - collecting what our enemies do not want us to know. In short, the CIA must be the world's premier espionage organization.

I have great respect for the people in intelligence and CIA. I don't have a lot of respect for in particular one of the leaders. But that's OK. But I have a lot of respect for the people in the CIA.

SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, also has no executive powers and operates abroad on CIA lines, but with a tiny percentage of the budget and a tiny percentage of the personnel.

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

You know, as director of the CIA, I got an awful lot of intelligence about all the horrible things that could go on across the world.

The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.

I had been involved in U.S. intelligence in Berlin, Germany, while in the military and had worked with a contact with the Central Intelligence Agency office there.