Counterintelligence is, in effect, chasing ghosts, which is why the tools used to investigate foreign intelligence activity are secret, like human sources or electronic surveillance.

Like any country with sophisticated intelligence services, Russia has long been a careful student of U.S. freedoms, laws and the constraints of its main nemesis in the U.S., the FBI.

As a former FBI counterintelligence agent who investigated foreign propaganda cases, I’ve seen firsthand how foreign intelligence services leverage American freedoms - and the constitutional limitations on the FBI’s investigative power - to their advantage."

Exposing the activities of a foreign intelligence service renders them ineffective, since it removes plausible deniability, which is the hallmark of covert intelligence operations.

You are almost not free, if you are teaching a group of graduate students, to become friends with one of them. I don't mean anything erotically charged, just a friendship.

There are things that I don't like to talk about directly. There are relationships that I am in and have been in that I've written about in a slightly more abstract way, talking about how it affected me but not so much dealing with the other people involved.

The people I chose to work with me on this album are there because I have a personal relationship with them.

My best friend growing up really put the bug in my ear about acting. We created this one hour-and-a-half improv play when we were 10 or 11 and performed it at the library. We just played off each other so well and had the best time doing it and the funniest part was, we wound up having packed houses, other people loved it too.