John Scarlett Quotes

If information is true, if it can be verified, and if it's really important, the newspaper needs to be willing to take the risk associated with using unidentified sources.

Trade shows such as the wire tappers' ball are highly secretive and ban journalists from attending. None of the U.S. agencies that attended the wire tappers' ball - including the FBI, the Secret Service, and every branch of the military - were willing to comment when a reporter queried them about their attendance.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.

The military wants a system that protects its policies and privileges.

Just because you read a report in the 'New York Times,' the 'Economist,' or, yes, 'The New Yorker' doesn't make it true. But we do know that a few people have evaluated that story with what strikes me as fairly objective standards of reason.

You shouldn't presume that all quotes that are in a magazine or a newspaper are accurate.

The danger of having the military take over intelligence is that the military has a very different perspective on the world.

Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they're lazy and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.

What a jolly thing military surveillance is!

The Cox Report documents a systematic, well-planned effort by the Chinese military at the highest levels to target and acquire technology for military modernization.

Fact-checking doesn't exist primarily because some of us are liars and cheats. It exists because writers will be writers, much as they may mean to be historians.

I find a difference in British spy fiction and American spy fiction. In the American version, it's more militaristic, partly because the CIA has more of the military makeup. Whereas MI6 is more of a cerebral, intelligence-based, relationship-based service, i.e., all they do is recruit people to get information out of them.

Of all those in the army close to the commander none is more intimate than the secret agent; of all rewards none more liberal than those given to secret agents; of all matters none is more confidential than those relating to secret operations.

Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.

The Cox Committee found that the Chinese military acquired many of the technologies over the past seven years, although many of them had been targeted for acquisition for more than a quarter century.

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.

In any war against Japan the USA will be perfectly helpless against the new organization of German spies in USA, which are already now supplying directly and indirectly Japan with all important military news, as until now it was very difficult for Japan to get such informations by their own staff. Many of these Pro-Japanese Pro- German spies are members of the different pro German societies f.i. Friends of new Germany etc etc These fellows are much more dangerous to USA than the worst Bolshevists...

I am very much interested in seeing the United States have as fine a foreign military and naval intelligence as they can possibly have, but I am not interested in setting up here in the United States any particular agency under any President ... and just allow him to have a Gestapo of his own if he wants to have it.

The more servile a reporter is toward his sources, the more authoritative he can appear in print.

America’s military defense capability owes more to the Israeli intelligence input than it does to any other single source of intelligence… it’s value is worth more than five CIAs

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.

We don't print the truth. We don't pretend to print the truth. We print what people tell us. It's up to the public to decide what's the truth.

We in the Defense Department want to know what we are talking about when we provide information so it will take some time longer for us to get all the information.

I don't trust news sources, and neither should other people. They should use them in the same way that they use medical opinions and get more than one on the important issues. Trust is the most precious thing you could possibly give to another person. But to institutions? Publications?

My personal sources in the intelligence community and the military are very good. They're excellent. I have very high-up, in-depth sources.