Intelligence Service Quotes

I've always wanted to be a spy, and frankly I'm a little surprised that British intelligence has never approached me.

There's no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, 'The government's corrupt,' and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

The aim of a foreign intelligence service is to find and convince individuals to help them achieve intelligence objectives.

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.

I believe we do have a great intelligence service. Is it good enough in all circumstances? Of course not. We live in the human condition. We try to make it better each day.

Regarding Wikileaks, I have profound ambivalent feelings about it. I am a firm believer in a strong intelligence service. There's a need for classified information.

The Abwehr [Nazi-Germany's secret intelligence service] gets better treatment from the FBI than we do.

As we know the KGB is all over this election [2016].

I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.

The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.

If you are completely transparent, then you have no intelligence service.

The purpose of an intelligence service is to avoid war, not to promote one.

Breaking a cardinal rule of spy craft, I actually let it be known that I wanted to work for the CIA.

Bureau of Secret Intelligence.

From my experience as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, if a congressperson is identified as a potential target by a foreign intelligence service, that individual is notified.

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.

Having conducted counterintelligence investigations, I can attest that not everything a foreign intelligence service does is necessarily illegal.

It [the intelligence service] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population; and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

There is no worse place for an intelligence service like CIA to be than on Page 1, above the fold in your daily newspaper.

Against … attack the existing peacetime forces of the Army and Navy in the Hawaiian islands, including their necessary munitions and supplies, are believed to be adequate. The success of our defense against this form of attack will depend almost wholly upon our not being totally surprised by the enemy, and will require an efficient intelligence service, not only in the Hawaiian Islands but elsewhere.

I find a difference in British spy fiction and American spy fiction. In the American version, it's more militaristic, partly because the CIA has more of the military makeup. Whereas MI6 is more of a cerebral, intelligence-based, relationship-based service, i.e., all they do is recruit people to get information out of them.

Exposing the activities of a foreign intelligence service renders them ineffective, since it removes plausible deniability, which is the hallmark of covert intelligence operations.

I was proud to be the first woman to serve as the No. 2 in the Clandestine Service. It is not my way to trumpet the fact that I am a woman up for the top job, but I would be remiss in not remarking on it - not least because of the outpouring of support from young women at CIA who consider it a good sign for their own prospects.

On Foreign Secretary Robin Cook: If a man cannot keep a measly affair secret, what is he doing in charge of the Intelligence Service?

Everybody has a hacking capability. And probably every intelligence service is hacking in the territory of other countries. But who exactly does what? That would be a very sensitive piece of information. But it's very difficult to communicate about it. Because nobody wants to admit the scope of what they're doing.