John le Carre Quotes

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

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.

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

[I will] totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, nail by nail, brick by brick

Everybody thinks it's glamorous and this spy versus spy stuff is so exciting, but working in that industry and being a CIA operative, like a field officer, is tough. That's a difficult job that usually dismantles their lives in some capacity.

In the old days, spies had done they'd done because they loved their country, because they believed in what they were doing. But he'd never been given a choice. Nowadays, spies weren't employed. They were used.

Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.

Someone responding to the story said 'real spies do not speak like that'. Well, I am a spy and that is how they talk. Whenever we had a debate in the office on how to handle crimes, they do not defend due process - they defend decisive action. They say it is better to kick someone out of a plane than let these people have a day in court. It is an authoritarian mindset in general.

Most people think spies are afraid of guns, or KGB guards, or barbed wire, but in point of fact the most dangerous thing they face is paper. Papers carry secrets. Papers carry death warrants. Papers like this one, this folio with its blurry eighteen year old faked missile photographs and estimates of time/survivor curves and pervasive psychosis ratios, can give you nightmares, dragging you awake screaming in the middle of the night.

The men and women of the CIA are a national treasure.

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

When I was younger, I actually wanted to be a CIA agent. Really. I even did the online questionnaire.

With stealth technology, the U.S. could spy on its Cold War adversaries without running the risk of getting caught.

The skills of the British intelligence community are a great national asset.

I thought that you guys [the CIA] had people everywhere, that you knew about everything, and now you don't even know anything about a raggedy-ass, little fourth rate country. All you have to do is get some Chinese coolies from a San Francisco laundry shop and drop them over there and use them.

Secrecy now beclouds everything about CIA—its cost, its efficiency, its successes, and its failures.

Secrecy is as essential to Intelligence as vestments to a Mass, or darkness to a spiritualist seance, and must at all costs be maintained, quite irrespective of whether or not it serves any purpose.

It [the CIA] was not intended as a Cloak & Dagger Outfit. It was intended merely as a center for keeping the President of what was going on in the World…I never wanted the CIA to act as a spy organization. That was never the intention when it was organized.

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

I am unable to tell a quarter of a billion Americans what we are doing on their behalf, because if I did, it would become the table of contents of the training manual of the enemy.

Bureau of Secret Intelligence.

The CIA was set up by me for the sole purpose of getting all the available information to the President. It was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities.

Intelligence is often viewed as a profession that steals secrets and then knits those secrets together for policymakers in order to inform their judgments.

I never worked for any secret service, certainly not the Israeli secret service.

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.