Mark Riebling - Cia Quotes

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The history of the CIA brims with inquiries that cowed our spies and ruined their careers.

Mark Riebling

Every time the Secretary of Defense tries to get a hand on his many intelligence programs, we hear warnings about the dire consequences to liberty. When you look behind those warnings, what you really see is the CIA trying to preserve its perks.

Mark Riebling

Though espionage is supposed to be thrilling, CIA memoirs are often boring. Usually written decades after the fact, always sanitized by government censors, the typical "autospyography" has the vague, approximate effect of a police sketch drawn from the memory of a traumatized witness.

Mark Riebling

The Pentagon's judgments about the world have generally proved sounder than the CIA's. In the 1960s, the CIA said that the Soviets wouldn't put missiles in Cuba; in the 1970s, that their missiles weren't accurate; in the 1980s, that the missile budget wouldn't bankrupt Moscow; and in the 1990s, that Russia's democratic reforms were irreversible. In each case, the Pentagon argued the opposite case, and turned out to be right. Similarly, in the 1980s, the CIA said that the Soviets weren't sponsoring terrorism, and then, in the 1990s, that Sunni and Shiite terrorists wouldn't cooperate. In each case, again, the Pentagon rightly claimed otherwise.

Mark Riebling