Quotes About Espionage

Blending in is the perfect smoke screen for spying. The better you do it, the better you can conceal your intentions.

It's called obfuscation in the interest of deniability. You might say it's our lingua franca.

without preamble.

Right now,tucked into the booth,Gray Donohue whispered into the ear of the redhead on his right,while his hand slipped under the table and under the skirt of the female to his left.As he whispered,the redhead lifted her heavy lids,turned her gaze to whereever Gray´s hand had landed,and grinned.Marina whirled back to the bar and drained her beerto the very last bit of foam.He was the best assignment she´d ever had.Or he would be,if she could just get him to notice her.

Pirate King, chapter 9

I'd met spooks and blades and they lied like they had invented the concept.

Better we see them seeing us, because then we can all see together, but when not seeing them seeing us we might not see them seeing us doing what we are doing. MI5 agent Iona von Ustinov (father of actor Peter Ustinov) to MI6 agent Desmond Bristow about the PDVE (Portuguese Secret Police) in 1944.

One result was the publication of the names of confidential informants, including political dissidents, who had spoken with American diplomats in Iran, China, Afghanistan, the Arab world, and elsewhere.6 As a consequence, some of these individuals had to be relocated to protect their lives. More importantly, the revelations made it more difficult for American diplomats to acquire human intelligence in the future, since the confidentiality of conversations could not be relied upon.

There began to appear before my romantic eyes...a vast and complicated network of espionage, terror, sadism and hate, from which no one, official or private, could escape.

Some 70–100 intelligence staff were attached to the German embassy sending, as Hoare later wrote, 'worthless reports to Berlin. And worst of all, Hitler believed what they sent him rather than the careful reports from the Abwehr that did not always suit the Fuhrer's wishful thinking.'6

Stalin did not trust Churchill, because he did not trust anyone (except, for two years, Adolf Hitler). Yet Churchill could not discover Stalin's true views about him because after June 1941 Britain's intelligence services were ordered not to spy on Britain's new Soviet ally, a mistaken policy that was certainly not reciprocated.

Zwyczajem wszystkich szpicli Å›wiata unikali patrzenia w oczy i jak wszyscy szpicle Å›wiata mieli pospolite i wyblakÅ'e gÄ™by, którym usilnie starali siÄ™ nada? mÄ…dry wyraz, dziÄ™ki czemu przypominali umysÅ'owo chore maÅ'py.

That's right; I was watching 'From Russia With Love', one of my favourite Bond movies, and suddenly thought that I'd love to see a version of this from Tatiana Romanova's point of view. Or, better yet; what if she was the hero? What if this was her story, and Bond was just a side character?

Did anyone in the White House or the N.S.A or the C.I.A. consider flying to Hong Kong and treating Mr. Snowden like a human being, offering him a chance to testify before Congress and a fair trial?

The dirty little secret of the intelligence world is that much of what you really need to know isn't exactly a secret anyway.

There are two kinds of people in America today: those who have experienced a foreign cyber attack and know it, and those who have experienced a foreign cyber attack and don't know it.

The members of the National Clandestine Service of the CIA are called the collectors of last resort. They are tasked to seek the truth when all other avenues of intelligence collection have failed.

Why did the Clinton Administration continue to liberalize export controls on sensitive technologies even after it learned that China had stolen designs?

told you, Charlie, the FSB is a more refined version of the KGB.

Because Rakkim knew the seduction of hiding in plain sight. The singular pleasure of blending into the background, of setting the table in the house of the enemy and watching him eat dinner.

If one's enemies know where you are, no matter how well protected you are, you can be gotten.

from which secret meetings with enemies are born".

What are you - Secret Service?' 'If I were, I wouldn't admit it.' 'And you're not admitting it, I notice.

Espionage is an effort to find windows into men's souls.