Alexandra Elbakyan Quotes

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

It is incontestable that even under the best of circumstances and when dealing with the friendliest and most stable of allies that intelligence organizations of foreign powers must not be permitted to become established on American soil and should be discouraged wherever possible from taking root any place in this Hemisphere.

We should be adult enough to understand that major countries are going to be spying on us.

In the Chinese view, the United States has designed its own system of rules about what constitutes 'legal' spying and what is illegal.

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.

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

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.

The committee's finding that China stole sensitive technology from U.S. weapons research labs is alarming.

In terms of the espionage, this is something I have talked to President Obama about. We don't want it to mar the relationship between Mexico and the United States. But it is unacceptable for a country to practice such espionage, especially if there is a good relationship with the other country.

Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting?

You can't get closer to the heart of national sovereignty than national security and intelligence services.

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.

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.

No one's interested really in knowing what policies or diplomatic initiatives or arms negotiations might have been compromised by me.

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.

The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaida, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan.

By the late '70s I had come to question the point of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the CIA's overall charter.

…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.

…in time of peace the bulk of intelligence can be obtained through overt channels… It can also be obtained…through the many Americans, business and professional men and American residents of foreign countries, who are naturally and normally brought in touch with what is going on in those countries.

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

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

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

Prior to the present war [WWII], the United States had no foreign intelligence service. It never has had and does not have a coordinated intelligence service.

Our agency (the Central Intelligence Agency) is the last refuge of organizational privacy available to the U. S. Government.

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