Covert Quotations

Revolutionaries who come to power by force of arms usually have great crimes in their background. Leaders who survive campaigns by great powers to destroy them do not survive because they observe the niceties of law. Subversives who shape world events by covert action and violence work in shadows and detest the light of day.

I think we're probably only about halfway through the number of revelations. I'm pretty certain there will be quite detailed stuff on other uses of covert surveillance. I suspect that emails will be the next scandal. And devices that track people moving around. That's just starting to come out.

The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.

Without a clear picture of where the military's covert forces are operating and what they are doing, Americans may not even recognize the consequences of and blowback from our expanding secret wars as they wash over the world.

Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame are not normal, everyday malware, of course. All three of them were most likely developed by a Western intelligence agency as part of covert operations that weren't meant to be discovered. The fact that the malware evaded detection proves how well the attackers did their job.

For decades, the men at Area 51 thought they'd take their secrets to the grave. At the height of the Cold War, they cultivated anonymity while pursuing some of the country's most covert projects. Conspiracy theories were left to popular imagination.

Even as the whole world tries to hang on to its job, there is also this weird parallel sense - almost a covert longing - that the old corrupt structures on which that job depends needs to be, ought to be, swept away.

When you're told to go brief a United States senator on a covert operation, you go do it. And you trust the information isn't going to leak.

There is no part of the executive branch that more exists on the outer edge of executive prerogative than the American intelligence community - the intelligence community, CIA, covert action. My literal responsibility as director of CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval, to inform.

When was the last time that a covert agent's name was leaked, jeopardizing that agent's life, the life of that agent's network, of informants and the security of this country? ... This is not just another ordinary leak.

She was always of the view that she would rather not get her hands dirty with covert action.

My literal responsibility as director of the CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval; to inform.

He can use the time to make covert manipulations. He can try to divide the parties, he can even use the army again.

It could be that there is covert activity going on there. They design their buildings and design their activities knowing that they're being observed.

It is absolutely true that we set out to expose Microsoft's covert activities,

I thought both teams started the game very intense. Georgia's athleticism and quickness on the perimeter really forced us into some early turnovers and Georgia was able to covert those turnovers into baskets. Georgia shot extremely well. We couldn't get anything started offensively.

I think what we found out this week is that any alleged wrongdoing is really confined to a single individual. Those who were expecting an indictment, indicating a broad conspiracy to out a covert CIA agent or -- are going to be disappointed because there is no evidence to support that.

I think there's something very dark in the South African psyche. I think we live a lot of the time in a state of a very low-grade civil war; the levels of violence in South Africa are extremely high. In a way, the civil war that never happened is being played out in a covert way, so we live with a lot of very ugly things.

Part of the president's job is to make sure his staff obeys the laws and he should make sure that anyone indicted in this dastardly outing of a covert operative is immediately dismissed from the White House,

We need a full accounting of the Bush administration's spending on advertising, PR, and fake news. It's time for Congress to reclaim its constitutional role as a counterweight to the executive branch and permanently cut off funding for covert propaganda. We must ensure that taxpayer money isn't being spent by the White House to secretly manipulate the American public.

This nation has been at war, ... Airlines are the front line of that war. We wouldn't think of contracting out our army to protect us against an open foreign invasion. We shouldn't think of contracting out responsibility of defending the internal United States against covert attacks.

There is still a lot of covert and overt hostility toward women

This whole activity was effectively concealed. It's baffling. It's basically a covert action taking place at the National Archives.

This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife. Rove never once indicated to me that she had any kind of covert status.

When Covert became a community, you had different people coming in, and, today you have different people coming in. History's really repeating itself right now.

Cord defined the concept, doctrine and implementation of covert action on behalf of the security and interests of our nation,

There should not be anything covert in case of an electoral alliance with Congress. We are for a formal tie-up.

The United States believes that the long-standing, massive and covert Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities makes sense only as part of a nuclear weapons program,

No one wants to friend or follow covert info about Pakistan's nuclear policy.

They did overt and covert surveillance. In some cases, they wanted them to know they were being followed.

There is not much of a bureaucratic leap, if history is any guide, between a seemingly benign call for 'continuous situational awareness' and the onset of a covert and illegal campaign of domestic surveillance.

Targeted Trojan attacks have much the same effect as conventional Trojans, often opening back doors and covert channels for information theft. What makes targeted Trojans different, though, is that they are made specifically for use against a particular organization or user group.

I've known Jonathan for years, and I see no indication that he would ever go about things in a covert way.

The costs of social uncertainty about covert monitoring are simply too high to justify Carnivore in its current form.

In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action.

In examining the CIA's past and present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public.

The changing structure and nature of the workplace has led to more invasive and often covert monitoring practices that call into question employees' most basic rights to privacy and dignity.

You are about as covert as a sledgehammer.

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides, Who covert faults at last with shame derides