Political Espionage Quotes

Spying on the prime minister of Israel and Congress has nothing to do with national security - only politics.

I think it's safe to say that the Russians are extremely interested in anything that has to do with the U.S. political system. And it's not out of the realm of possibility that they are in many other systems.

[Donald Trump] said, "Maybe the Russians could find those [Hillary Clinton's] emails - and if the Russians find 'em, please give them to the media." Well, I don't know how you get there from here, but the media then reported that Trump was encouraging the Russians to hack the Hillary campaign and produce the evidence to the media.

Reports the CIA has concluded that Russian hacking of Democratic emails was aimed at helping Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, a step beyond the intelligence community's earlier finding that Russia was simply trying to cast doubt on the integrity of our elections.

Spies are the ears and eyes of Princes.

Fancy Bear actually went after opposition research and, specifically, research related to the Trump candidacy.

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

With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda…in their name—calling assault on the West the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people…

If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were, in effect, breaking into the home of every citizen.

I believe that without Watergate we would have had an extraordinary period of success with a strong Nixon and a still vital Brezhnev in power.

Russian government was in contact with multiple [Donald] Trump campaign sources while they were doing [attacks]. Russian nemesis in the American government, U.S. State Department, CIA, are not faring well since Donald Trump came to power.

I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the [Donald] Trump campaign.

We got the first WikiLeaks publication of documents hacked and stolen by Russian government sources from the DNC, from the Democratic Party, and they started publishing those stolen documents from the DNC right before the Democrats started their convention.Good political timing if you're trying to help [Donald] Trump and hurt the Democrats.

We know that Russia was involved in hacking our democracy. We know that the evidence or information is sufficient to warrant an FBI investigation of this. We are trying to do as much of this as we can in the public eye transparently. Obviously, some of it will have to be done in closed session.

It's a big deal when you have got to fire the deputy director of the FBI because he lies four times, twice under oath. It's also a big deal when you have got to reassign people off the Mueller probe, when you have got cash at the Democratic National Committee that is convertible into a warrant to spy on American citizens.

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.

But take the Russia issue. You open up the convention, and you have got a report that the Democratic Party has been hacked by the Russians, e-mails, the e-mails of the Democratic Party, which is a headline and words that you don't want, if you're Hillary Clinton's campaign.And Donald Trump immediately takes the story and basically steps on the advantage he has and say, well, the Russians, who am I to tell [Vladimir] Putin? You know, the Russians ought to come in and continue to hack our - and find out where the e-mails are.

The Russians didn't hack the DNC servers. The Russians didn't interfere in the election [2016]. And if you get a Democrat in the know to sit down and honestly tell you off the record, they'll admit it.

Governments and spy agencies, including those of democratic countries, have often enlisted criminals to smuggle weapons to allied insurgents abroad or even to assassinate enemies abroad.

The Democratic Party would like to see an open independent bipartisan investigation [about hacking].

It was a charming fantasy of romantics that the spies would stop spying, that political conflict would end and politicians would tell the truth. Unfortunately that has not been the case.

What is missing from the Mueller report is an honest discussion about the origins of the unverified hearsay in the 'Steele dossier' that formed the underpinning of the unprecedented spying effort against Trump and his campaign.

I suspect Obama did not know he was recording Angela Merkel's cell phones.

Richard Nixon was a Republican presidential candidate who encouraged crooks to commit espionage against the Democratic National Committee in order to gain an edge in a presidential election.

Russian hacking of the DNC is a problem, not a scandal.