Trevor Paglen Quotes

Andrew Warren was a rarity in the CIA's Clandestine Service - African-American, fluent in Arabic, and relatively young for an agent who'd already spent nearly a decade chasing terrorists in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq and Algeria, so deep undercover that few of his friends or family knew the nature of his work.

I was a case officer, otherwise known as an operations officer. My role was to go out and convince Al Qaeda operatives to instead work with us as well as to convince people and officials in foreign governments to work on behalf of the U.S. government secretly.

Years ago, even prior to 9/11, I did a movie called "The Siege." I did a lot of research with the FBI and the CIA. And I was amazed at that time (I guess we might all know it now) how little information they shared with each other. So after that, I'm not surprised by anything.

You will recall that for months after 9/11, there was incredible support and sympathy for the US. I really hoped and wished they had played on that, and kept all these friends they had made, and found a way of dealing with the terrorists through co-operation of international intelligence services, police exchange of information.

Magic is used in espionage, all the time, for clandestine things. I've got a whole library from a gentleman who was hired by the CIA to create magic technology for the use of anti-terrorism.

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.

The CIA has acknowledged that it has detained about 100 terrorists since 9/11, and about a third of them have been subjected to what the CIA refers to as 'enhanced interrogation tactics,' and only a small proportion of those have in fact been subjected to the most serious types of enhanced procedures.

When I was about, I'd say, 18 or 19 years old, I wanted to be a part of the CIA just because they know those intimate secrets... So I was just always into knowing. I like to know things.

Pakistan has accepted some security training from the CIA, but U.S. export restrictions and Pakistani suspicions have prevented the two countries from sharing the most sophisticated technology for safeguarding nuclear components.

As a beat reporter covering the CIA and intelligence world after the terrorist attacks of 2001, I could sense that many things I couldn't see or understand were changing, expanding, getting so big they were difficult to manage.

We need spies that look like their targets, CIA officers who speak the dialects terrorists use, and FBI agents who can speak to Muslim women who might be intimidated by men.

Since 9/11, the U.S.A. Patriot Act has torn down the invisible wall that was perceived as preventing the FBI and CIA from sharing information.

The Obama administration has vastly expanded the use of armed drones and concentrated a great deal of diplomatic effort on building and maintaining alliances that share information about terrorists, provide access to get near them, and then strike against them.

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.

Spontaneous operations performed by individuals and cells here and there over the whole world, without connections between them, have put the local and international intelligence apparatus in a state of confusion, as arresting the members of aborted cells does not influence the operational activities of others who are not connected with them.

Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.

[Referring to the CIA:] We coexist. They work, and we work.

Between 1945 and 2005 the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements…

Intelligence is about lies. If something is legal and above board, you would not need the CIA to do it.

There are times when the Central Intelligence Agency makes policy by default.

The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations." At least one death, that of Dr. Olson, resulted from these activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers

All his training as a lawyer and a judge was that you didn’t do illegal things. He could never accept that this is exactly what the CIA does when it operates abroad. We break the laws of their countries. It’s how we collect information. It’s why we’re in business.

In the absence of hard intelligence, covert action is a fool’s game.

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

CIA relies on a partner's focus, linguistic agility, and cultural depth; in return, the partner benefits from CIA's resources, technology, and global view.