Spy Agency Quotes

I know CIA like the back of my hand.

If you walk into the front hallway of the CIA, you will see, on your left, a statue of William 'Wild Bill' Donovan. Bill Donovan was the person who created the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, which was America's spy agency during World War II and then kind of morphed into what's now the CIA.

It will be the CIA's mission and my own if confirmed to ensure that the agency remains the best in the world at its core mission - collecting what our enemies do not want us to know. In short, the CIA must be the world's premier espionage organization.

I have the best agents in the world.

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

I never worked for any secret service, certainly not the Israeli secret service.

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

When I was younger, I actually wanted to be a CIA agent. Really. I even did the online questionnaire.

A major theme in all my books is that the CIA is not only the first line of defense but they should also be the first line of offense.

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

Her Majesty's Secret Service wouldn't have me on the payroll.

The ISI is above all a paramilitary organization. It doesn't do all that much collection of intelligence. It's not a very good spy agency, but it's good at running covert action.

The National Security Agency: Where Intelligence Goes To Work

Edward Snowden copied and leaked information from inside the world's most protected spy agency, and then fled to Russia, but yet, because a small part of the data he expropriated was provided to a news organisation, journalism conventions readily accord him lone whistleblower status.

I actually thought, like, I was sure 'Get Smart' and, like, 'James Bond' movies, I was sure that that's what real life was like.

It's becoming less and less the National Security Agency and more and more the national surveillance agency. It's gaining more offensive powers with each passing year.