Jack Adams Quotes

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

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

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

It is important to seek out the spies that the enemy has sent to spy on you so you can bribe them to really spy for you.

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.

In a global and totalitarian war, intelligence must be global and totalitarian.

I am unable to tell a quarter of a billion Americans what we are doing on their behalf, because if I did, it would become the table of contents of the training manual of the enemy.

I served 10 years on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, and I had the distinct privilege of meeting with real U.S. spies throughout the globe.

Spies are a most important element in water, because on them depends an army's ability to move.

In the old days, spies had done they'd done because they loved their country, because they believed in what they were doing. But he'd never been given a choice. Nowadays, spies weren't employed. They were used.

We can't spy on them if they aren't spying on us, now can we?" Warped logic, but okay.

Spies could be invaluable in peacetime, once the fighting actually started, their value dropped steeply. When the swords were out, it was the information your own scouts provided that mattered, not reports from unknown people whose veracity you couldn't prove.

The Confederates had suspected Wild Bill of being a spy for two or three days, and had watched him closely.

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

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

'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game.

I am always up to steal secrets from smart people.

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.

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

Who would have thought that in the 1950s, Burbank was a hotbed of international espionage?

It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used.

The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.

There will always be spies. We have to have them. Without them we wouldn't have got Osama bin Laden - it took us years, but it happened.

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.

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.