Mort Sahl Quotes

I'm not a spy for Russia or China or any other country for that matter.

That’s the thing about spies. Most of the secrets we keep are from each other.

Tact ops is a unit which breaks into homes and offices to plant bugging devices. They get into mafia hangouts, they go into embassies, they go into terrorist hangouts, and they describe themselves as court-sanctioned burglars.

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

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.

The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.

I will not, nor will I ever, publicly divulge sensitive intelligence sources and methods. For when that happens, our national security is endangered and lives can be lost.

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.

We planted bugs, microphones, in premises which interested us in the West. We weren't too successful - I would have said unfortunately in former years, but I don't care anymore now.

…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…

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.

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.

I've long maintained during my 50-plus year career in intelligence that leaks endanger national security, they compromise sources, methods, and tradecraft, and they can put assets' lives at risk.

One of the things that distinguishes the CIA from the State Department is that the CIA is both asked to, and authorized to, steal secrets. So if the question is whether the CIA steals secrets, the answer is yes.

The aim of a foreign intelligence service is to find and convince individuals to help them achieve intelligence objectives.

Israelis cannot enter Iran, so Israel, Iranian officials believe, has devoted huge resources to recruiting Iranians who leave the country on business trips and turning them into agents.

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

As a former F.B.I. special agent who conducted counterintelligence investigations, I can attest that foreign intelligence services do not operate on the basis of explicit agreements or even actions that, standing alone, constitute criminal activity.

Rather than trying to find evidence of a crime, the FBI's counterintelligence goal is to identify, monitor and neutralize foreign intelligence activity in the United States.

Of all those in the army close to the commander, none is more intimate than the secret agent.

But first, my friends, I need you to do something for me. We have two spies in the back of the auditorium.

The British secret service was staffed at one point almost entirely by alcoholic homosexuals working for the KGB