I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.

Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.

A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.

I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.

The cold war provided the perfect excuse for Western governments to plunder and exploit the Third World in the name of freedom; to rig its elections, bribe its politicians, appoint its tyrants and, by every sophisticated means of persuasion and interference, stunt the emergence of young democracies in the name of democracy.

The trouble is, when professional spies go out of their way to make a definitive statement about one of their own, the public tends to believe the opposite: which puts us all back where we started.

It was a charming fantasy of romantics that the spies would stop spying, that political conflict would end and politicians would tell the truth. Unfortunately that has not been the case.