The resistance of policy-makers to intelligence is not just founded on an ideological presupposition. They distrust intelligence sources and intelligence officials because they don't understand what the real problems are.

An espionage organization is a collector: it collects raw information. That gets processed by a machinery that is supposed to resolve its reliability, and to present a finished product.

The FBI, to its credit in a self-serving sort of way, rejects the routine use of the polygraph on its own people.

My little scam in April '85 went like this: Give me $50,000; here's some names of some people we've recruited.

The only thing I ever withheld from the KGB were the names of two agents whom I personally had known and handled and had a particular feeling for.

I came into the Agency with a set of ideas and attitudes that were quite typical of people coming into the Agency at that time. You could call it liberal anti-communism.

The betrayal of trust carries a heavy taboo.