J. Edgar Hoover Quotes

No one would argue that it's in the United States' interest to have independent knowledge of the plans and intentions of foreign countries. But we need to think about where to draw the line on these kind of operations so we're not always attacking our allies, the people we trust, the people we need to rely on, and to have them in turn rely on us.

There is a huge difference between gathering intelligence in foreign countries, even our allies, and secretly getting information on U.S. citizens.

SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, also has no executive powers and operates abroad on CIA lines, but with a tiny percentage of the budget and a tiny percentage of the personnel.

I think all governments engage in intelligence gathering vis-a-vis other governments.

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.

[Referring to the CIA:] We coexist. They work, and we work.

Absolutely get rid of CIA agents from units and the territory of Cambodia.

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

The security [of European national is dependent on the effective intelligence of their neighbors.

I was in government for 13 years and in that time only once met the head of the German security services, and that was because he was an old friend. Otherwise, I carefully avoided having anything to do with these people. They are unavoidable but not really necessary.

I would not put C.I.A. officers at risk by asking them to undertake risky, controversial activity again.

Under the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act, US intelligence agencies cannot engage in covert actions abroad without a presidential finding that these operations are important to US national security.

Look, the FBI has the tools necessary un-American activities in our country. It goes on, we shouldn't even be talking about it.

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

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.

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.

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.

Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.

When I was about, I'd say, 18 or 19 years old, I wanted to be a part of the CIA just because they know those intimate secrets... So I was just always into knowing. I like to know things.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

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.

By the late '70s I had come to question the point of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the CIA's overall charter.

…the CIA has never carried out any action of a political nature, given any support of any nature, to any persons, potentates or movements, political or otherwise, without appropriate approval at a high potential level in our government outside the CIA.

…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…