Richard Perle Quotes

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.

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you is facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails. Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between one hundred and five hundred tons of chemical weapons agent...He remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.

We were bereft of any human intelligence—zero, nada, in terms of agents on the ground…. We had no answers.

Bureau of Secret Intelligence.

We know that there are unaccounted-for Scud and other ballistic missiles in Iraq. And part of the problem is that, since 1998, there has been no way to even get minimal information about those programs except through intelligence means.

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

Intelligence gathered by this government leaves no doubt

Nobody [at the CIA] had any idea of who was doing what where

I still believe to some degree that Iraq had WMD.

A chief of station is the head of all intelligence operations in any given country.

The dirty little secret of the intelligence world is that much of what you really need to know isn't exactly a secret anyway.

The members of the National Clandestine Service of the CIA are called the collectors of last resort. They are tasked to seek the truth when all other avenues of intelligence collection have failed.

I spent close to a decade as an undercover officer in the CIA and have spent most of my adult life collecting intelligence and protecting sources and methods.

I excelled in finding and acquiring secret information that I obtained in brush passes, dead drops, or in meetings in dusty alleys of third world capitals.

I do have reason to believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

I was with the CIA for only three years. I worked in the Directorate of Operations, which is now called the National Clandestine Service. It's the part of the organization where the spies live. I didn't have much experience beyond the training.

I've had nothing to do with the intelligence world since I left it, in any shade or variety.

The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent.

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.

In intelligence work, there are limits to the amount of information one can share. Confidentiality is essential.

I think around the world, our agents are the best collectors of information you'll find.

They have involved co-operation between the Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda operatives on training and combined operations regarding bomb making and chemical and biological weapons.

I wasn't privy to all of the intelligence that was coming in about Guatemala, but I did see the traffic that was coming in from Guatemala City, because it was very relevant to me, and of course I exchanged what I had with the chief of station in Guatemala City.

It's necessary to understand what real intelligence work is. It will never cease. It's absolutely essential that we have it. At its best, it is simply the left arm of healthy governmental curiosity. It brings to a strong government what it needs to know. It's the collection of information, a journalistic job, if you will, but done in secret.

For something that's supposed to be secret, there is a lot of intelligence history. Every time I read one book, two more are published.