To the extent that I considered the personal burden of harming the people who had trusted me, plus the Agency, or the United States, I wasn't processing that.

Espionage, for the most part, involves finding a person who knows something or has something that you can induce them secretly to give to you. That almost always involves a betrayal of trust.

When Reagan was elected, I felt that the Agency had gone much more into the service of a political tendency in the country with which I had already felt very strong disagreement.

No one's interested really in knowing what policies or diplomatic initiatives or arms negotiations might have been compromised by me.

The use of the polygraph has done little more than create confusion, ambiguity and mistakes.

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.

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