Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

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.

I suspect Obama did not know he was recording Angela Merkel's cell phones.

The fact is that a car used by Gerry Adams and myself during the course of the Mitchell review was bugged by elements within British military intelligence.

[Wiretapping is] a dirty business…. [Espionage] has been employed by every tribe and state since the beginning of history.

It is hard to work with the nagging doubt that perhaps some foreign intelligence agency is reading all your correspondence, especially when you know they have done so in the past.

We can't spy on them if they aren't spying on us, now can we?" Warped logic, but okay.

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

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.

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

I am always up to steal secrets from smart people.

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.

There will always be spies. We have to have them. Without them we wouldn't have got Osama bin Laden - it took us years, but it happened.

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.

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.

There was a possibility I could have been under surveillance.

I would have loved to have met some former spies, but they don't readily advertise themselves unless they're not living in Moscow, and even then. I'm sure I've met some without realizing it.

Most of the results of using technical bugging devices were of little importance for my service. It may have been different in counter-intelligence, where bugs in flats, etc., were used to obtain a lot of information about what counter-intelligence was interested in.

…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…

Espionage takes place in the world. Even we commit espionage.

It would be highly useful to government espionage to have reports from all our bookstores, all our hardware and retail stores, all our drugstores…. What one buys at the hardware and retail stores may furnish clues to potential uses of wires, soap powders, and the like used by criminals.

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

Everything I say and do, I assume that I am being spied on.

Espionage is largely separate from the mainstream of foreign policy … you nail the spy and you punish him, and you move on.

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

It is important to seek out the spies that the enemy has sent to spy on you so you can bribe them to really spy for you.