Cold War Espionage Quotes

In the early 21st century, it is easy to condemn the Bond books for being racist and imperialist, sexist and misogynist, elitist and sadistic. But this is merely another way of saying that we cannot understand the Bond books without reference to the personality, the outlook and the 'Tory imagination' of the man who wrote them, and to the time in which he wrote them; and that we cannot understand the 1950s and 1960s without some reference to them, and to him.

The KGB still killed people, the KGB would not execute its last prisoner until the final days of its existence in 1991, but by the eighties a termination required paperwork and signatures and a post-action review.

During the Cold War, we gathered information by listening to the Soviets, taking pictures of the Soviets, and we allowed our human intelligence to decline.

Nest of Soviet fellow travelers clacking busybodies in a Soviet jellyfish front, sitting here in Leesburg oozing out their funny little propaganda and making nuisances of themselves.

Putin did not head the KGB, never has. Putin was a mid-level nobody there. Putin was one of those guys in the KGB who was a climber. He was forever hoping, climbing that ladder, trying to get to the head spot.

Le Carre's voice - patrician, cold, brilliant and amused - was perfect for the wilderness-of-mirrors undertow of the Cold War, and George Smiley is the all-time harassed bureaucrat of spy fiction.

There was an American girl, Priscilla Johnson. She worked for U.P. in Moscow. She knew [John] Kennedy, and she met [Lee Harvey] Oswald around the same time I did. But I can tell you some­thing else almost as curious.

By the time of the GDR's demise, two in every 13 citizens were informers.

I am a huge fan of Alan Furst. Furst is the best in the business--the most talented espionage novelist of our generation.

Nobody ever leaves the KGB, by the way. Once you're there, no matter what you say you've done next, nobody ever leaves the KGB.

I think in some ways what Snowden is, is he's a mix of a cold war spy novel and post-9/11 spy novel.

I think it's more difficult now to write a spy thriller with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many authors have tried, but few have succeeded in capturing the interest of readers.

For me, the Profumo affair symbolizes the evanescence of male government compared to women's cosmic power.