Henry Crumpton Quotes

Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.

I've known several spies who have wanted to become novelists. And novelists who became spies, of course.

I'd be a terrible secret agent. I can't keep a secret and I'm not sneaky.

Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.

If you think you might have secret information listening to me, you're lost.

When you join the CIA, you have to make some peace with whether you are comfortable psychologically and philosophically, with the use of force and using it clandestinely.

Anyone who tells you he deals with the CIA is either a fool (for admitting it) or a braggart.

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

Spies are great, and when you need 'em, you need 'em. But they are no substitute for insight.

If you set foot on your enemies' land, get spies on them. Choose those whom you count on for their truthfulness and advice, whether Arabs or inhabitants of that land. Liars' accounts would not benefit you, even if some of them were true; the deceiver is a spy against you and not for you.

Intelligence without counter-intelligence is useless.

If you’re going to be involved with espionage, you’ve got to be motivated. It’s not fun and games. It’s dirty and dangerous. There’s always the chance that you’re going to get burned.

It’s [the CIA] an organization that thrives on deception. How do you manage an organization like that?

If you are completely transparent, then you have no intelligence service.

Spies go undercover. They take on different personas.

Oh, I can keep many secrets, so I would be a phenomenal secret agent. I love secrets.

The CIA in real life, we know, is looking for new kinds of cover. It's looking for new platforms, as they like to say, and it's trying to use the revolution in communications technology, the ability to use all sorts of corporate entities in ways that are hard to detect to get our spies in the places where they need to be.

I could have been a top notch spy. People confess the most amazing secrets to me, even when I am not fishing for those nuggets. I must look trustworthy because I sit there with a video camera or a tape recorder while the stories pour out.

Intelligence officers are a peculiar lot. Whether they are active or retired, their brains are wired for a completely different way of seeing the world around them.

Like acting, undercover detective work requires a lot of performance. There's just more pressure because it's life-or-death situations.

Yet have I ever heard it said that spies and tale-bearers have done more mischief in this world than poisoned bowl or the assassin's dagger.

He who is not sage and wise, humane and just, cannot use secret agent.s. And he who is not delicate and subtle cannot get the truth out of them.

Throughout my career, I had the great fortune to experience firsthand as well as to witness what it means to be a CIA officer.

You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters.

What you get in the Cold War is 'the wilderness of mirrors' where you have to figure out what's good and what's evil. That's good for John le Carre, but not me.