Mike Pompeo Quotes

I never worked for any secret service, certainly not the Israeli secret service.

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

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

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

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

Secrecy is as essential to Intelligence as vestments to a Mass, or darkness to a spiritualist seance, and must at all costs be maintained, quite irrespective of whether or not it serves any purpose.

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

I know CIA like the back of my hand.

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

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

The intelligence community is built, resourced, designed, trained, and focused around secrecy. We try to obtain the secrets of our adversaries and we try and keep secret how we are doing so.

Bureau of Secret Intelligence.

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.

Bill Stephenson taught us all we ever knew about foreign 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.

Having conducted counterintelligence investigations, I can attest that not everything a foreign intelligence service does is necessarily illegal.

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.

Everybody thinks it's glamorous and this spy versus spy stuff is so exciting, but working in that industry and being a CIA operative, like a field officer, is tough. That's a difficult job that usually dismantles their lives in some capacity.

We can't spy on them if they aren't spying on us, now can we?" Warped logic, but okay.

What the Agency [CIA] does is ordered by the President and the NSC [National Security Council]. The Agency neither makes decisions on policy nor acts on its own account. It is an instrument of the President.

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

Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.

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

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