Richard Helms Quotes

Anyone who tells you he deals with the CIA is either a fool (for admitting it) or a braggart.

There is only one law of espionage—there are always going to be spies.

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.

Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.

From the outside, the CIA seems pretty exotic, but from the inside, it's a big, bureaucratic place. Think 'post office with spies.'

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

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

Breaking a cardinal rule of spy craft, I actually let it be known that I wanted to work for the CIA.

Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.

You couldn't trust anyone or anything that belonged to the world of espionage.

This is the wonderful thing about espionage, nothing exists any more.

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

However I dress it up, I was a spy and I am not proud of it.

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

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.

The only thing I ever withheld from the KGB were the names of two agents whom I personally had known and handled and had a particular feeling for.

What I really found was that the one similarity between 'Covert Affairs' and 'Fair Game' is a deep love and admiration and fascination with the home life of a spy.

I knew quite well, when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union, that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counterespionage and the law, and then prosecution and capital punishment.

I've always wanted to be a spy, and frankly I'm a little surprised that British intelligence has never approached me.

I suddenly realized at the CIA that I had to make life-and-death decisions about people.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

When you join the CIA, you have to make some peace with whether you are comfortable psychologically and philosophically, with the use of force and using it clandestinely.

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.

There are few archbishops in espionage. He's on our side and that's all that matters. Besides, one needn't ask him to one's club.

It was given for all purposes to which a secret service fund should or could be applied to the public benefit—for spies, if the gentleman pleases.