Bob Graham Quotes

What you get in the Cold War is 'the wilderness of mirrors' where you have to figure out what's good and what's evil. That's good for John le Carre, but not me.

With stealth technology, the U.S. could spy on its Cold War adversaries without running the risk of getting caught.

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.

…historically, the official personnel of the Soviet bloc countries assigned to this nation, including those at the United Nations, have been used extensively for espionage purposes…

Bill Stephenson taught us all we ever knew about foreign intelligence.

Putin is not a politician. Putin is a KGB agent. And whatever he does is provocations, which KGB is usually involved in.

I've met enough KGB colonels in my life.

The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent.

I've been called a spy of Israel since 1996, and since I made my documentary film in 2000 the FBI has investigated me as an agent of Iraq. The FBI has also opened up an investigation into my wife calling her a KGB spy.

Since that time I have had continuous contact with the persons who were completely unknown to me, except that I knew they would hand whatever information I gave them to the Russian authorities.

Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.

I knew quite well, when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union, that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counterespionage and the law, and then prosecution and capital punishment.

We're no longer in the Cold War. Eavesdropping on friends is unacceptable.

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

There is only one law of espionage—there are always going to be spies.

I thought that you guys [the CIA] had people everywhere, that you knew about everything, and now you don't even know anything about a raggedy-ass, little fourth rate country. All you have to do is get some Chinese coolies from a San Francisco laundry shop and drop them over there and use them.

] The vast industry of mutual surveillance that grew up alongside the industry of mutual destruction is not about to disappear. The spies, like the weapons, are here to stay. And proliferate, sooner or later, whether we like it or not.

Espionage is largely separate from the mainstream of foreign policy … you nail the spy and you punish him, and you move on.

There are more foreign intelligence officers inside the US now, working against US interests, than there were at the height of the cold war.

There is an urgent need to develop the highest possible intelligence on the USSR in the shortest possible time.

I would be a terrible CIA officer in real life.

I spent over ten years in the Central Intelligence Agency as an undercover operations officer serving overseas after 9/11 where I carried out covert operations against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as other countries who are 'hostile to liberty,' as I like to say.

Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust.

I saw a limit to what I was giving as kind of a scam I was running on the KGB, by giving them people that I knew were their double agents fed to us.

I am always up to steal secrets from smart people.