18 Quotes by Tim Weiner

It takes 5 to 7 years to turn a novice into a case officer capable of working in the capitals of the world.

The ability to represent failure as success would become an Agency tradition.

Their attempts to make sense of the world had carried heat but little light.

Truman said he only needed a daily intelligence digest to keep from having to read a two-foot stack of cables every morning.

To the CIA, everyone's an outsider.

The American people are suckers,” Nixon said. “Gray Middle America – they’re suckers.

As a consequence of its cultural myopia, the CIA misread the world.

Never had so much intelligence meant so little. The conduct of the war had been set by a series of lies that the leaders of the United States told one another and the American people.

They might not love Big Brother, but they knew he was part of the family now.