Quotes About Counterintelligence

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.

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.

But the technology was accessible, which suggests incompetence on the part of our counterintelligence community and the Clinton Administration, and may in fact rise to the level of treason.

But no one wanted to embarrass the Bureau. The case festered for years. Not until after Freeh's departure was it clear that the Chinese, Russian, and Cuban intelligence services all had penetrated the FBI in the 1990s. So had a member of the world's most dangerous and least-known terrorist organization. His name was Ali Mohamed. Al-Qaeda had a double agent posing as an informer for the FBI.

From 1966 to 1976 ... The primary cause in [the] decline in FBI counterespionage and counterintelligence cases was the ceaseless demand by Presidents Johnson and Nixon to focus on the political warfare against the American left.... - "Espionage Against the United States by American Citizens, 1947-2001, Defense Personnel Security Research Center, July 2002

George Piro, had gathered evidence that al-Qaeda had a network of adherents at American flight schools. Williams urged a nationwide investigation. He was unsurprised when headquarters took no action; thirteen years of experience had taught him that counterintelligence and counterterrorism were "bastard stepchildren" at the FBI.

federal government is the third largest user of the polygraph test to detect lying. In 1982 22,597 tests were reported by various federal agencies.* Most were given to investigate a crime, except for the polygraph tests given by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). These agencies use the polygraph for intelligence and counterintelligence investigations.

Our side has agents. Their side has spies.

At the end of the interrogation, Moustakas said, Kelley was escorted out of CIA headquarters by a senior counterintelligence officer, who also took his badge. He was placed on administrative leave that was to last twenty-one months. In limbo, falsely accused as a spy and facing a possible death penalty, Kelley, having served his country for thirty-seven years, had nowhere to turn. He could only wait, and hope that he would eventually be cleared of the crime he knew he had not committed.

They know what we're planning, and we know what they're planning. But they don't know we know.