The Falcon and the Snowman Quotes

“For the next month, reports of CIA activities in Australia dominated the front pages of several Australian newspapers. Using Chris’s disclosure of CIA tampering in Australia as a springboard, the newspapers initiated investigative series which suggested that the ouster of Prime Minister Whitlam might have been orchestrated by the American intelligence service, and there were fresh reports almost daily of different alleged CIA manipulations of political, economic and labor affairs in the country. None of the Australian journalists managed to discover the “deception” that Chris had alluded to—the Rhyolite-Argus deception. Nevertheless, the close Australian–American alliance that had been cemented in World War II was suddenly buffeted by a political tornado, and the incident touched off day after day of stormy sessions in the Australian parliament. There were demands for a complete investigation of the CIA’s role in Australia. But the government managed to ride out the storm. It simply remained aloof from the crisis, refusing to respond to the allegations and biding its time until they subsided.”
― Robert Lindsey, The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage

“An upset victory in 1972 by the Australian Labour Party and the election of Gough Whitlam as prime minister sent jitters through the CIA. The agency feared that a left-leaning government in Australia might reveal the function of the bases or, worse, abrogate the agreement and close down the facilities. Because of these fears and apprehension that the KGB might find it easy to penetrate a labor government, the CIA decided to limit the information it made available to the Australian Security and Intelligence Service, the Australian CIA. To the American CIA, there were high stakes involved in the bases, and not surprisingly, it meant to keep them. Despite professions of loyalty from Whitlam to the American-Australian alliance, apprehension about an anti-U.S. shift in Australian policy continued to grow within the Central Intelligence Agency. And in the minds of certain officials within the CIA, these fears were soon validated. One of Whitlam’s first acts after becoming prime minister was to tweak the United States by withdrawing Australian troops from Vietnam, and in 1973 he publicly denounced the American bombing of Hanoi, enraging President Nixon. Meanwhile, strident”
― Robert Lindsey, The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage

“Along with Lockheed, TRW became the CIA’s principal supplier of Black Satellites.”
― Robert Lindsey, The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage

“Chris was vaguely troubled by the revelation that one of America’s closest allies was being deceived by the U.S. Government, but he let the thought slip away and accepted an invitation to go to lunch with some of the other TRW employees assigned to Rhyolite. The”
― Robert Lindsey, The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage

“Chris was told he had been assigned to work in a communications vault that was the nerve center for this system of international espionage—a code room linking the TRW plant with CIA Headquarters and Rhyolite’s major ground stations in Australia. The continuing disclosures about the secret world fascinated Chris, and he was especially intrigued by what he saw as a bizarre contrast between the mechanical spies he had been told about and the location of the ground stations. The Rhyolite earth stations had been planted in a world that was about as close as man could find now to the Stone Age; they were situated near Alice Springs in the harsh Outback of Australia, an oasis in a desert where aborigines still lived much as Stone Age men did thousands of years ago. Under an Executive Agreement between the United States and Australia, Chris was told, all intelligence information collected by the satellites and relayed to the network of dish-shaped microwave antennas at Alice Springs was to be shared with the Australian intelligence service. However, Rogers told Chris, the United States, by design, was not living up to the agreement: certain information was not being passed to Australia. He explained that TRW was designing a new, larger satellite with a new array of sensors; the Australians, Rogers emphasized, were never to be told about it; anytime Chris sent messages that would reach Australia, he must delete any reference to the new satellite. Its name was Argus, or AR—for Advanced Rhyolite. Whoever in the CIA had selected the cryptonym must have enjoyed his choice, because it was appropriate. In Greek mythology, Argus was a giant with one hundred eyes … a vigilant guardian.”
― Robert Lindsey, The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage

“much flak if I made you a general at your age.”
― Robert Lindsey, The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage