Argo: How the CIA & Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History

The trick is that you have to believe the lie and believe it so much that the lie becomes the truth.

Intelligence is only as good as the consumer's ability to believe and utilize it.

One of the main lessons I had learned is that exfiltrations are almost ninety percent logistics - just making sure everything is lined up as it needs to be.

Allan Dulles said it best: "Any intelligence service worth its salt can make the other fellow's currency." In other words, every nation needs to have its own airtight security measures, while at the same time be actively working in secret to reverse engineer those of the enemy faster than they can invent them.

I liked to put young and old in the same room, because they would certainly have different takes on the same problem.

Exfiltrations are like abortions," I said. "You don't need one unless something's gone wrong. If you need one, don't try to do it yourself. We can give you a nice, clean job.

Every intelligence agency is ultimately judged on its ability to successfully rescue people and bring them out of harm's way, which is essentially what an exfiltration is.