Jamie Bell Quotes

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.

They could hang people for what's in there.

When I handed over the names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union, I had come to the conclusion that the loss of these sources to the U.S. would not compromise significant national defense, political, diplomatic interests.

Confess and be hanged.

Every department in Washington…contained numerous traitors and spies.

Having watched the form of our traitors for a number of years, I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game.

This town leaks like a sieve. Sometimes I think that the easiest thing on the world would be to be a spy against the United States of America

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

When you're in the CIA, you anticipate the possibility that you'll be betrayed by a foreign government or a source, but you never anticipate that it would be by your own government.

Over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them.

I don't think Edward Snowden deserves a death penalty or life in prison. I think that's inappropriate. I think that's why he fled, [because] that is what he faced.

[on Edward Snowden] He should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence.

Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders.

To sit in solemn silence on a dull, dark dock in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.

You will be excellently executed.

If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It's better to live somehow than not at all.

You might be a redneck if you entire family has ever sat around waiting for a call from the governor to spare a loved one.

I'm not a spy for Russia or China or any other country for that matter.

I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified.

Every responsible chief in the CIA knows that the more covert the action, the greater the need for a clear policy and a defined target.

I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.

The death penalty experiment has failed.

[I will] totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, nail by nail, brick by brick

I have great respect for the people in intelligence and CIA. I don't have a lot of respect for in particular one of the leaders. But that's OK. But I have a lot of respect for the people in the CIA.

Everybody thinks it's glamorous and this spy versus spy stuff is so exciting, but working in that industry and being a CIA operative, like a field officer, is tough. That's a difficult job that usually dismantles their lives in some capacity.