Quotes about Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Maochun Yu

The United States is the only country in the world that has ever released the operations files of its intelligence agency.

When Bob Casey was the CIA Director, he the declassification of all the operational files of the WWII Office of Strategic Service. The huge collection is referred to as Record Book 2.6

Stanley A. McChrystal

I go back and think of President Kennedy, who had a military service background, but he comes into the presidency, and he's faced with a decision on the Bay of Pigs, with the C.I.A. and the military giving him data, and it turns out very badly.

Central Intelligence Agency

White Paper has effectively exposed certain aspects of PBSUCCESS ... If possible, fabricate big human interest story, like flying saucers, birth sextuplets in remote area to take play away.

This covert project — PBSUCCESS — to destabilize Guatemala was exposed by the Guatemalan government. To minimize the embarrassment in the U. S., the PBSUCCESS CIA staff asked headquarters to fabricate sensational stories to keep newspapers and the fledgling TV news busy and distracted from covering the Guatemala story that the CIA was trying to destabilize the government in order to bring about regime change. The CIA was prohibited by law from doing this but the agency at that time ignored many laws. It is not known if the phony stories were actually planted at that time.

William J. Donovan

Prior to the present war [WWII], the United States had no foreign intelligence service. It never has had and does not have a coordinated intelligence service.

Precursor to CIA. During WWII Donovan’s OSS, the FBI and the State Department had the three civilian intelligence organizations while each of the 4 Armed Services had their own intelligence services. Rarely did any of these 7 organizations communicate with any of the others. In the case of the OSS, the FBI and the military services tended to try and obstruct many of their operations. This was the first call for what became the CIA.

Norodom Sihanouk

Everyone knows now that it was Nixon who wanted me liquidated. For a long time, the Americans dreamed of doing to me what they failed to do against Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs incident.

George Schultz

Nixon railed against the CIA and their lousy intelligence.

Richard Nixon

What the Hell do those clowns do out there at Langley? Get the CIA jerks working on Cambodia.

Stephen Kinzer

On Aug. 19, 1953, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran became the first victim of a C.I.A. coup. Ten months later, on June 27, 1954, President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala became the second.

Jon Meacham

In the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy learned that the Generals are not always right.

John Perkins

There's no question in my mind that it was C.I.A. sanctioned, and most - many Latin American investigators have come to the same conclusion. Of course, we never heard about that in our country.

Neil Bush

The last book I read to my mom was 'Barbara Bush: A Memoir' published by mom in 1994. It reflected on their entire life - dad going to China, running the CIA, running for Senate, running for President twice.

Doug Liman

More of 'The Bourne Identity's script was taken from the events of the Iran Contra, which my father investigated for the Senate, than what was taken from Robert Ludlum's novel.

Robert Dallek

The Bay of Pigs was an operation the United States endorsed. That was a preventive operation. We were afraid that Castro was going to subvert the hemisphere.

Paul Findley

Fewer than a dozen Members of Congress have any idea how much money the CIA spends each year, and probably none of them has much of an idea what the Agency actually does with that money.

Patti Davis

The CIA created, armed and financed the Contras. My father backed them with everything he had. It was my father's war, and almost everyone in Nicaragua has lost somebody as a result of it. I couldn't go down there, being his daughter, and expect not to feel those people's wrath.

Lyndon B. Johnson

This story going around about the CIA … sending in folks to get Castro, It’s incredible. They have a man that was involved that was brought into the CIA, with a number of others, and instructed by the CIA and the Attorney General [then Robert F. Kennedy] to assassinate Castro after the Bay of Pigs.

Johnson tasked Clark with finding out what the FBI knew of this story. The story was true. Worse, the CIA had hired members of the Mafia to do the assassination. (The Mafia resented Castro as he ended the Gambling Mecca that Cuba had been when his revolution succeeded. Before the Castro revolution, he Mafia got a “piece” of the profits from each Cuban casino for “protection.”) It might have been that the Kennedy Assassination was retaliation by Castro. However, the CIA withheld this from the Warren Commission and Robert Kennedy never revealed it even though he was a member of the Commission and the Commission had security clearance. See {637465}.

Richard Perle

George Tenet has been the director of central intelligence since 1997, time enough to have changed the Agency's culture. He has failed. He should go.

Stephen Cambone

The office has oversight of people who do analysis and oversight of people who do operations, but it is not charged with doing either. That is an important point to make. Those functions are performed by the CIA, DIA and other agencies.

Robert Kennedy

Despite the President's orders that no American forces be used, the first two people who landed in the Bay of Pigs [in 1961] were Americans. The CIA sent them in.

Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes

A former executive of the United Fruit Company, now retired, Mr. Walter Turnbull, came to see me with two gentlemen whom he introduced as agents of the CIA. They said I was a popular figure in Guatemala and that they wanted to lend their assistance to overthrow Arbenz… Among other things, I was to promise to favor the United Fruit Company and the International Railways of Central America; to destroy the railroad workers union…

Greg Grandin

In the 1960s, after the Cuban Revolution, CIA and FBI agents often coordinated their activities with anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

Allen Dulles

Mr. President, I stood right here at Ike’s desk and told him I was certain that our Guatemalan operation would succeed, and Mr. President, the prospect for this plan are even better than they were for that one.

Dulles was a master at manipulating presidents. Instead of just presenting his Bay of Pigs plan to Kennedy and assuring him of his belief in its likely success, Dulles brought in the comparison with Eisenhower, a great general with extensive foreign policy experience. If Ike would give the go ahead with a lesser success probability plan, then it showed the confidence that Eisenhower had in Dulles and the Central Intelligence Agency staff. If Kennedy were to kill the Bay of Pigs plan, then either he did not have the courage that Ike had or he was substituting his military judgment for Eisenhower’s. Kennedy approved the operation which was a terrible example of military planning. Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs Debacle, never again had great confidence in the professional military and espionage. Many political scientists and historians credit this negative experience with the Bay of Pigs with giving Kennedy the confidence to not follow the recommendations of the leading military and intelligence staff when faced with the Cuban Missile Crises—even when members of the Joint Chief’s of Staff (Curtis LeMay was the most forceful) told him unequivocally that his failure to act more forcefully would likely weaken if not destroy the independence of the country. President Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, took a much more proactive role in the Missile Crises than they did in the Bay of Pigs.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Quotes