Pete Hoekstra Quotes

I think all governments engage in intelligence gathering vis-a-vis other governments.

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.

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

Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

I find a difference in British spy fiction and American spy fiction. In the American version, it's more militaristic, partly because the CIA has more of the military makeup. Whereas MI6 is more of a cerebral, intelligence-based, relationship-based service, i.e., all they do is recruit people to get information out of them.

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.

Espionage is largely separate from the mainstream of foreign policy … you nail the spy and you punish him, and you move on.

[Referring to the CIA:] We coexist. They work, and we work.

For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.

I have spent my adult life working in American intelligence. It has been quite an honor. Generally well resourced. A global mission. No want of issues. And it was a hell of a ride.

No one would argue that it's in the United States' interest to have independent knowledge of the plans and intentions of foreign countries. But we need to think about where to draw the line on these kind of operations so we're not always attacking our allies, the people we trust, the people we need to rely on, and to have them in turn rely on us.

Europeans don't like to talk about intelligence, and they often pretend their countries don't spy.

Experts say that Britain and France have strong spy agencies; Germany's is competent but afraid to level with its public; the rest are relatively weak, and there is no Europe-wide spy agency.

When I was first elected to the Senate, I was fortunate to be appointed to the Intelligence Committee. There, I saw up close the dedication and commitment of the men and women of our intelligence agencies.

CIA has been treated with enormous respect and our expertise is valued for what we bring to the table.

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

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

The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent.

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.

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've been called a spy of Israel since 1996, and since I made my documentary film in 2000 the FBI has investigated me as an agent of Iraq. The FBI has also opened up an investigation into my wife calling her a KGB spy.

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.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.

There will always be spies. We have to have them. Without them we wouldn't have got Osama bin Laden - it took us years, but it happened.