Intelligence Work Quotes

Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results.

I wasn't a spy. I'd have been spotted in five seconds. Yes, I was in intelligence, but that covered a multitude of things.

I come from a service family - I met my husband Dave during my third tour in Iraq serving as a CIA analyst alongside the military.

One of my own guiding principles in intelligence work was ... not to make a mystery of what is a matter of common knowledge or obvious to friend and foe alike.

I have great respect for the people in intelligence and CIA. I don't have a lot of respect for in particular one of the leaders. But that's OK. But I have a lot of respect for the people in the CIA.

As a former attorney general. I have the greatest respect for the criminal justice system. But it is not good at intelligence gathering.

I had been involved in U.S. intelligence in Berlin, Germany, while in the military and had worked with a contact with the Central Intelligence Agency office there.

I have spent my adult life working in American intelligence. It has been quite an honor. Generally well resourced. A global mission. No want of issues. And it was a hell of a ride.

I joined the CIA in 1985 as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service.

I was with the CIA for only three years. I worked in the Directorate of Operations, which is now called the National Clandestine Service. It's the part of the organization where the spies live. I didn't have much experience beyond the training.

You know, as director of the CIA, I got an awful lot of intelligence about all the horrible things that could go on across the world.

It's necessary to understand what real intelligence work is. It will never cease. It's absolutely essential that we have it. At its best, it is simply the left arm of healthy governmental curiosity. It brings to a strong government what it needs to know. It's the collection of information, a journalistic job, if you will, but done in secret.

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.

When I was first elected to the Senate, I was fortunate to be appointed to the Intelligence Committee. There, I saw up close the dedication and commitment of the men and women of our intelligence agencies.

I have been a systems engineer, systems administrator, a senior adviser for the Central Intelligence Agency, a solutions consultant and a telecommunications information systems officer.

In intelligence work, there are limits to the amount of information one can share. Confidentiality is essential.

I wanted to be a journalist. The other thing I wanted to be was a spy.

My CIA colleagues were smart, dedicated, funny, and creative. Yes, there was sometimes stifling bureaucracy, boredom, colleagues who never should have been there, and later, deeply disturbing stories of the CIA's involvement in torture. Still, I got to do work I thought was incredibly important and, many times, had fun doing it.

Even the Intelligence agency has an office of public affairs which may seem like an oxymoron.

The men and women of the CIA are a national treasure.

There is still much to be done by our intelligence community to bring its achievements up to an acceptable level.

I was working for the CIA and prohibited from speaking publicly.

Making use of human weaknesses in intelligence work is a logical matter. It keeps coming up, and of course you try to look at all the aspects that interest you in a human being.

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

Success cannot be advertised: failure cannot be explained. In the work of intelligence, heroes are undecorated and unsung, often even among their own fraternity.