I found that our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union. – Aldrich Ames
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 agencys impact on American policy. – Aldrich Ames
The resistance of policy-makers to intelligence is not just founded on an ideological presupposition. They distrust intelligence sources and intelligence officials because they dont understand what the real problems are. – Aldrich Ames
The Soviet Union did not achieve victory over the West, so was my information inadequate to help them to victory, or did it play no particular role in their failure to achieve victory? – Aldrich Ames