National Security Council Quotes

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

I wouldn't even know - and I spent three years in the CIA - I wouldn't even know how you'd start a covert action program in a place like Iran. It would be extraordinarily difficult.

Controlled penetration of the Communist Party. Controlled penetrations in the armed forces Controlled penetrations in the major anti-Communist organizations Controlled penetrations of the major labor unions

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

Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.

The Fifth Column.

White Paper has effectively exposed certain aspects of PBSUCCESS ... If possible, fabricate big human interest story, like flying saucers, birth sextuplets in remote area to take play away.

I needed two sponsors. I met Phlek Phoeun, who I had known long before. He introduced me to Mao Say, who was a high CIA. They promised to support me in the election, on condition that “I accept their commands and accomplish missions given by the CIA”. In the end I consented to their requirements. From that time I was a CIA agent. They promised to promote me, and my activities were carried out in connection with Mao Say's from then on. Mao Say then assigned me to participate in two CIA newspapers: 1. Liberal People headed by contemptible Sim Va, a CIA. 2. Réalité Cambodgien managed by contemptible Bare (CIA). These two newspapers were against people, revolution, socialism, and communism. They were written in favor of U.S., capitalism, and imperialism.

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

If this was a graduating class of CIA case officers my advice would be short and to the point: Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counteraccusations.

Follow the money, and one arrives at a basic fact: the CIA’s edge is paramilitary.

I would be a terrible CIA officer in real life.

I first learned the power of trust in the CIA. There is no question that when I joined the Agency as a covert operations officer, it was still run along the 'old boys' network' model.

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.

In my head, I think I'd make a perfect spy, but in reality, I don't think I'd fare very well.

'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game.

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.

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.

The NSA's business is 'information dominance,' the use of other people's secrets to shape events.

I worked for MI6 in the Sixties, during the great witch-hunts, when the shared paranoia of the Cold War gripped the services.

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

I would have loved to have met some former spies, but they don't readily advertise themselves unless they're not living in Moscow, and even then. I'm sure I've met some without realizing it.

When people ask me if I have worked for the C.I.A., I often answer: what good to you is my answer? Because if I did, I might not say so.

Every department in Washington…contained numerous traitors and spies.

Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.