George Pelecanos Quotes

I really wanted to be a spy. I guess it's a bit like acting, where you play a role.

When I became a cadet, I immediately decided I wanted to be an undercover cop because I don't like uniforms.

A lot of black people worked with the police as snitches. We used to call them bimpees where I grew up. And, you know, they were afforded special privileges. They may have been paid by the police. But you never knew who was informing on you. We lived either next door to or - two doors away from us was a known informant in Soweto.

It is a little-known fact about covert operations that you will spend a lot of time with people you can’t really trust. They may be traitors and liars. We call them assets or informants. But mostly, in those days, I called him Zach.

I'm a spy. It's not really... I worked for the CIA 15 years. The cover was I worked for the insurance business.

Law enforcement has always had informants and people they've had to deal with, who walk a certain line. They're choosing between the lesser of two evils. They're befriend one person to gain access to another person, who's a bigger fish.

The terrorists that we are up against today do not rely upon cell phones and SAT phones and emails. They rely on couriers. You cannot intercept what a courier is telling somebody.

I have a long-standing interest in what I like to think of as 'forbidden knowledge:' methods of unarmed killing, lock picking, breaking and entry, spy stuff, and other things that the government wants only a few select individuals to know.

I concluded that infiltration of the Klan was the only way to get evidence that would stand up in court. There was no one else around to do it.

Utilize undercover officers to distribute misinformation within the crowds

Drug people are the very vermin of humanity.... Occasionally we must adopt their dress and tactics.

This [counterterrorism] is a game of drag bunts and stolen bases, not home runs.

It is clear that in some instances the use of microphone surveillance is the only possible way of uncovering the activities of espionage agents, possible saboteurs and subversive persons. In such instances I am of the opinion that the national interest requires that microphone surveillance be utilized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Intelligence is about lies. If something is legal and above board, you would not need the CIA to do it.

Hollywood does tend to portray CIA officers as totally the honey trap. Looks matter as they do in any profession. But the most important thing for me when I was working was blending into my environment.

I would be a terrible CIA officer in real life.

I spent a whole career infiltrating places.

Counterintelligence is, in effect, chasing ghosts, which is why the tools used to investigate foreign intelligence activity are secret, like human sources or electronic surveillance.

Like acting, undercover detective work requires a lot of performance. There's just more pressure because it's life-or-death situations.

I spent close to a decade as an undercover officer in the CIA and have spent most of my adult life collecting intelligence and protecting sources and methods.

I spent almost a decade as an undercover officer in the CIA. I was the guy in the back alleys at four o'clock in the morning collecting intelligence on threats to the Homeland.

Breaking a cardinal rule of spy craft, I actually let it be known that I wanted to work for the CIA.

They [spies] cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness.

We have to have better intelligence. We have to have better interdiction capabilities. And so the issue is not how much we spend or how hard we try; the issue is are we doing it the right way? Are we being smart about it?

The life of spies is to know, not bee known.