Public evidence record
Published podcast speaker
Claim ledger
18 transcript-backed records
01 / belief
“The more the CIA is pushed into the paramilitary, the more military-like activities, I think the more trouble the CIA will get into.”
02 / belief
“I think the reasoning carries some weight, certainly. I don’t believe Ruby was part of a conspiracy.”
03 / belief
“I think that what the CIA has always tried to do is to explore any type of new techniques or approaches or practices that are going to provide, again, just one more insight or perspective into trying to understand this world of ours and how events are going to evolve.”
04 / uncertainty
“Facebook — it has loads of money, but also, I don’t know how concerned it is about ensuring that there are no vulnerabilities in the system that can be exploited by actors, either domestic or foreign.”
05 / belief
“There are ways to communicate outside. But I think that there are a lot of distractions that come with phones.”
06 / belief
“Case officers — in the CIA parlance, the ones that go out and actually recruit spies to conduct espionage against their countries — I think really seek out those areas that could be, in fact, exploited — vulnerabilities or otherwise.”
07 / disagreement
“Unfortunately, over time, there has not been as much of an effort to try to better integrate those agencies and authorities and capabilities, as well as to ensure that they are complementary as opposed to unnecessarily redundant. I disagree with Bob Gates.”
08 / belief
“I think Donald Trump is pretty transparent as far as who he is and the types of things that he holds dear, and what he holds dear is himself, first and foremost.”
09 / evaluation
“[laughter] I think sometimes it’s because they continue to go back to the tried-and-true methods.”
10 / evaluation
“I think, yes, looking at it just in isolation, it’s good that the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan have relations with Israel. But at the same time, I don’t know whether or not it’s now going to be more difficult or harder to address the Palestinian problem, which is long, long overdue for some type of resolution that, again, does justice to the Palestinian people.”
11 / evaluation
“There’s a lot of other aspects of the early CIA, in terms of toppling regimes and actually shaping developments overseas during the Cold War, when I think Washington really felt we were in an existential challenge and competition with the Soviet Union.”
12 / preference
“I would like to think that CIA recruiters would be looking for individuals who are intellectually curious, have critical thinking skills, and mainly have also, I think, some degree of contrariness because you don’t want people just to accept as gospel what it is that they are being told, especially if they’re going to be interacting with spies overseas.”
13 / evaluation
“Because if you don’t nest within that broader environment of what is knowable, then I think you can give your listener the wrong impression about the extent and depth of your knowledge.”
14 / recommendation
“Whenever I would administer the oath of office to a new group of CIA officers every month at CIA headquarters, I tell them to not neglect the home front because, first of all, we want happy employees at CIA.”
15 / commitment
“I started out in the operation side of CIA and had a real feel, I think, for clandestinely acquired intelligence, human intelligence as well as technical intelligence.”
16 / prediction
“That was during the earlier Kennedy years. But there are some things that I think are going to remain mysteries.”
17 / evaluation
“I just found that my early religious upbringing gave me a good grounding in morality and values and what I think are the ethics of life, although I have, quite frankly, lost my Catholic faith over the years.”
18 / prediction
“I think just because someone tests in a certain way doesn’t mean that they’re going to actually follow through and be that way.”