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
We had periodic crises in this country when the technical intelligence didnt support the policy. We had the bomber gap, the missile gap. – Aldrich Ames
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
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