Jack Devine Quotes

Espionage and disinformation have a millennia long tradition in statecraft. Both the Soviets and the U. S. interfered with foreign elections during the Cold War.

Russia has always been involved in propaganda and disinformation.

I've met enough KGB colonels in my life.

Most of them are military commanders, country notables and landowners, and educated people. It is inconceivable that such a group should incline to the theory of Communism. But if Western countries persist in applying unjust pressure, they may well throw themselves into Russia’s arms.

Only enemies of the Soviet Union can think of the KGB as some kind of secret police.

The Central Intelligence Agency is in a rotten state. Today, Central Intelligence Agency has hardly any worthwhile operations behind the iron curtain. In their briefings they present a rosy picture to outsiders but the awful truth remains under the TOP SECRET label of the agency.

Putin has demonstrated his fondness for the Cold War…. Once a KBG agent, always a KGB agent.

To give this activity [the Bay of Pigs] even covert support is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world-nor on our own consciences

Before I was elected to represent southwestern Texas in the U.S. Congress, I spent almost a decade as an undercover officer in the CIA. I served in places where Russia has geopolitical interests, and learned that Russia has one simple goal: to erode trust in democratic institutions.

Putin, I believe, was actually born to be a KGB agent. And I say born because I think that his father was also an agent of the secret police in Russia.

Russia is an interesting place because they're extremely evil but they're not that good at implementing their evil.

Putin is not a politician. Putin is a KGB agent. And whatever he does is provocations, which KGB is usually involved in.

When [Vladimir] Putin, a former lieutenant-colonel in the KGB, became Russia's president on December 31, 1999 - eight years after the failed coup attempt against (then Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev, and eight years after the people had torn down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the hated founder of the KGB, in Moscow - it was admittedly a shock. Nevertheless, I decided to give Putin a chance. He seemed dynamic and capable of learning. But I had to bury my hopes after just a few months. He proved to be an autocrat - and, because the West let him do as he pleased, he became a dictator.

Why does the world dislike Russia? I do not think that we are unloved or considered to be ignorant.

My notion of the KGB came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education.

In Russia we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One.

I learned later, just as a footnote, that the World Assembly of Youth was a CIA front.

Poland, of course, was the key country. I remember Stalin telling me that the plains of Poland were the invasion route of Europe to Russia and always had been, and therefore he had to control Poland.

Putin sought to keep Ukraine weak through corruption.

Moscow had this incredible, intense atmosphere of intrigue and darkness and secrecy.

The only thing I ever withheld from the KGB were the names of two agents whom I personally had known and handled and had a particular feeling for.

I grew up reading the classic novels of Cold War espionage, and I studied Russian history and Soviet foreign policy.

Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.

Hard men present hard choices - none more so than Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia.

Thirteen years after the end of the Soviet Union, the American press establishment seemed eager to turn Ukraine's protested presidential election on November 21 into a new cold war with Russia.