"When I came to the CIA in the mid-'90s, our graduating class of case officers was unbelievably low. Now, after years of rebuilding, our training programs and putting our best efforts to recruit the most talented men and women, we are graduating more clandestine officers than at any time in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency.“

-George Tenet

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George Tenet quote about intelligence: "When I came to the CIA in the mid-'90s, our graduating class of case officers was unbelievably low. ..."

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"You know, at the end of the day, the only thing you have is trust and honor in this world. That's all you have. All you have is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor. When you don't have that anymore, well, you know, there you go. Trust was broken."

-George Tenet

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"To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days."

-George Tenet

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"By definition, intelligence deals with the unclear, the unknown, the deliberately hidden. What the enemies of the United States hope to deny we work to reveal."

-George Tenet

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"To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days."

-George Tenet

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"As a nation we have, over the past seven years, been rebuilding our intelligence with powerful capabilities that many thought we would no longer need after the Cold War. We have been rebuilding our clandestine service, our satellite and other technical collection, our analytical depth and expertise."

-George Tenet

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"Here's the teaching point, if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions, and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions."

-George Tenet

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"I wasn't privy to all of the intelligence that was coming in about Guatemala, but I did see the traffic that was coming in from Guatemala City, because it was very relevant to me, and of course I exchanged what I had with the chief of station in Guatemala City."

-E. Howard Hunt

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"Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials, the Foreign Ministry nerds, tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies."

-Aldrich Ames

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"We had periodic crises in this country when the technical intelligence didn't support the policy. We had the bomber gap, the missile gap."

-Aldrich Ames

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"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."

-Aldrich Ames

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"There are so many things a large intelligence espionage organization can do to justify its existence, that people can get promotions for, because it could result in results."

-Aldrich Ames

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"Our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union."

-Aldrich Ames

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