Quotes about Intelligence Gathering Techniques

Barry Eisler

I was with the CIA for only three years. I worked in the Directorate of Operations, which is now called the National Clandestine Service. It's the part of the organization where the spies live. I didn't have much experience beyond the training.

Asha Rangappa

As a former F.B.I. special agent who conducted counterintelligence investigations, I can attest that foreign intelligence services do not operate on the basis of explicit agreements or even actions that, standing alone, constitute criminal activity.

Jane Harman

The Committee's review of a series of intelligence shortcomings, to include intelligence prior to 9/11 and the pre-war intelligence on Iraq, clearly reveal how vital a diverse intelligence workforce is to our national security.

Paul Bremer

If you look back today over the last 25 years, it is a fact that we have had a progressive degeneration of our intelligence community in general; in particular in the field of human intelligence.

Richard Nixon

Intelligence is a sacred cow. We’ve done nothing since we’ve been here about it. The CIA isn’t worth a damn.

Cofer Black

I was an intelligence officer, not a policy-maker.

Paul Pillar

… policy has shaped intelligence more than vice versa.

The major idea of intelligence agencies in a democracy is for the intelligence agencies to provide the policy makers with facts on the ground and data with which they can make sounder policies. However, many times the policies of the administration is so firm that the political ideology restrict not only the kinds of analysis the intelligence agencies do, but in some cases shape or control the conclusions of otherwise sound studies. The influence of Vice President Cheney on the CIA and the invasion of Iraq.

James R. Clapper

It is not the intelligence community's place to set and implement policy.

Dick Cheney

You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s the nature of the intelligence business.

Todd Akin

In the 1990s, human intelligence gathering was seriously neglected.

Frank Wisner

There are times when the Central Intelligence Agency makes policy by default.

Actually, this is true for most government agencies and many non-government institutions as well. The concern is greater when organizations whose policies can affect life and death are not consciously developing and choosing policy alternatives and yet the policies are made by default.

James R. Schlesinge

The trust that was reposed in the CIA has faded. The agency is so battered that its utility for espionage is subject to question

The scandals of the past of CIA lies to Congress and the President, mistakes they had made, and a raft of illegal activities, had eroded support for the agency. We still had the NSA and the Military Intelligence Agencies which had not been involved in the CIA scandals.

Mike Rogers

I'm the chairman of the intelligence committee. We don't only get formal briefings, but we collect our information from the intelligence community in a variety of ways.

Tom Hiddleston

I think that is so interesting. It is le Carré. There must be so much of him when he was younger. He's an interesting character. I don't want to say the word "passive" because there is something very active about the way he is passive, if that makes any sense: the nature of his watching and his listening is active. It is always so alive because he is, essentially, a spy.

Intelligence Gathering Techniques Quotes