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"The U.S. is, so far as I know, the only nation which places such extensive reliance on the polygraph. It has gotten us into a lot of trouble."
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"The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations - great or small - to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century."
"Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right."
"As a South African I honestly cannot understand how people can't see South Africa as a unique nation, untied by ties of history, bonds of suffering, victory, struggles, hope - and in more ways than I ever before thought possible - blood."
"Japan is an important ally of ours. Japan and the United States of the Western industrialized capacity, 60 percent of the GNP, two countries. That's a statement in and of itself."
"A house in the country is not the same as a country house."
"What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country."
"Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held."
Explore more quotes by Aldrich Ames
"I knew quite well, when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union, that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counterespionage and the law, and then prosecution and capital punishment."
"You might as well ask why a middle-aged man with no criminal record might put a paper bag over his head and rob a bank. I acted out of personal desperation."
"I said in court a long time ago that I didn't see that the Soviet Union was significantly helped by the information I gave them, nor that the United States was significantly harmed."
"The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent."
"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."
"Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust."
"Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials, the Foreign Ministry nerds, tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies."
"Because interrogations are intended to coerce confessions, interrogators feel themselves justified in using their coercive means. Consistency regarding the technique is not important; inducing anxiety and fear is the point."
"In my professional work with the Agency, by the late '70s, I had come to question the value of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the intelligence agency's impact on American policy."
"When I got the money, the whole burden descended on me, and the realization of what I had done. And it led me then to make the further step, a change of loyalties."
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