Aldrich Ames Quotes

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

I've met enough KGB colonels in my life.

Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust.

When I handed over the names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union, I had come to the conclusion that the loss of these sources to the U.S. would not compromise significant national defense, political, diplomatic interests.

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.

…historically, the official personnel of the Soviet bloc countries assigned to this nation, including those at the United Nations, have been used extensively for espionage purposes…

Exposing the activities of a foreign intelligence service renders them ineffective, since it removes plausible deniability, which is the hallmark of covert intelligence operations.

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.

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.

It's impossible for somebody to defect from the United States. Edward Lee Howard is not a defector. He's a traitor.

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

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

There are more foreign intelligence officers inside the US now, working against US interests, than there were at the height of the cold war.

When you're in the CIA, you anticipate the possibility that you'll be betrayed by a foreign government or a source, but you never anticipate that it would be by your own government.

Putin is not a politician. Putin is a KGB agent. And whatever he does is provocations, which KGB is usually involved in.

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

We knew we were talking about spies. I knew he knew I knew. I was digging my own grave.

When the States already had nuclear weapons, and the Soviet Union was only building them, we got a significant amount of information through Soviet foreign intelligence channels.

I saw a limit to what I was giving as kind of a scam I was running on the KGB, by giving them people that I knew were their double agents fed to us.

I am always up to steal secrets from smart people.

The difficulties of conducting espionage against the Soviet Union in the Soviet Union were such that historically the Agency had backed away from the task.

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

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 that time I have had continuous contact with the persons who were completely unknown to me, except that I knew they would hand whatever information I gave them to the Russian authorities.

Moscow had this incredible, intense atmosphere of intrigue and darkness and secrecy.