SpyCruise 2003: San Diego to Hawaii -- "Denial, Deception and Illusion", March 27-April 9, 2003

Best cruise I’ve ever taken, thanks to the SpyCruise™ lectures. Would have enjoyed longer talks but understand the time constraints you were enduring. Excellent presentations. Do more cruises!

Extremely interesting. Every time we thought it couldn’t get any better, it got better. I’m glad we did not miss it.

Best cruise I’ve ever been on. All the lectures were very well presented by the speakers, the subject matter was very interesting and informative. The entire SpyCruise™ staff did an excellent job in making things run smoothly and you all made everyone of us feel welcome and comfortable. Thanks and I can’t wait for the next SpyCruise™.

Excellent presentations. PowerPoint helps audience follow along. Like photos and videos. They help make point.

Excellent presentations! Wealth of information and talent! Bottom line—we’d love to hear more from your terrific lecturers! We’d go almost anywhere to do so. Congratulations on a great program!

This has been a delightful, entertaining and tiring week—not enough time to do all we would have liked—especially relax! Attended all the SpyCruise™ events and enjoyed them even more than anticipated. The speakers were informative and knowledgeable and presented their material well. All in all we congratulate CI Centre on a great event.

The course program was superb! Intriguing, suspenseful, interesting and addictive! As a participant in Homeland Security committee discussion on how to improve US security, I found the course very relevant, important and informative. Your course should be a required course for all military, OCS/academies and war colleges as well as all readiness planners in the US Coast Guard, US Navy and other branches of our country. I highly recommend your courses to all US citizens and interested corporations in the US who want to maintain or improve their security posture. Due to the SpyCruise™ format on this cruise, it made this cruise (our 5^th) the very best of all!! Thank you and all of your staff.

I have been impressed by the depth of preparation/research that has gone into these presentations. The visuals are outstanding. The personal perspectives of each of the presenters has really added to their talks. How do you top Oleg Kalugin or Ken Crosby? Keith Melton is in a class by himself. I guess when I signed up I didn’t realize what the CI Centre had to offer and what David Major gathered together. I am impressed and would love to go again.

The program exceeded my expectations! I learned a lot from the briefings and the book review will make it easier to find better books to further by studies. It is one thing to be briefed on these stories but to hear it from people who had first-hand account can’t be beat. The video presentations made the sessions interesting too, by including audio and video clips. We liked the book giveaways! Excellent job! We look forward to the next one. All in all a very enjoyable seminar.

I was hooked as soon as I saw the compound word SpyCruise™. I decided to surprise my husband with the cruise (I told him what it was on the day we left for Tampa). All of my expectations have not only been met but exceeded!!! My husband does not like to sit and wait, but he has been in the Grand Lounge half an hour early for every lecture to be certain of getting the best seats for us. I have never been in any one place that was filled with such fascinating, colorful people! You have assembled a most knowledgeable, experienced and entertaining group of speakers. How can you ever top this group? I thoroughly enjoyed to informal Commodore Lounge sessions. Didn’t miss any. In fact, we didn’t miss any SpyCruise™ sessions—attended all talks and spoke with many amazing people. LOVED ALL OF IT! Thank you so much!

The variety of speakers was excellent, as was the subject knowledge. Presentations were excellent.

Liked meeting speakers every evening to further ask questions, hear their experiences. I applaud the very organized presentations, the opportunity to win free books with every lecture. Enjoyed every speaker and presentation. Appreciated photos with the professors time, also the colorful graphics—they enhanced points made.

I found all the presenters to be excellent. All were different in their own individual ways.

I liked the relatively small size of the SpyCruise™ group. It allowed for more intimacy and familiarity—great opportunities for interesting discussions—than would be possible in a much larger group. I feel privileged to be a participant in this maiden voyage of SpyCruise™ and I’m at a loss to image a more interesting week. The CI-TV programs were impressive. Congratulations on putting together a superb program!

We enjoyed the lectures very much. Overall, an excellent group of presentations.

I found the Wen Ho Lee and Hanssen lectures fascinating! Nigel not only spoke on a fascinating subject but also had an engaging delivery. I enjoyed Keith, Ken and Gene’s talks—great gadgets. Ray’s lecture on SOLO was very interesting. David and Paul’s lectures on Wen Ho Lee and Bob Hanssen were superb both contextually and in delivery. The last session was surprising and informative. I appreciated the timeliness of the lectures.

This was an excellent experience. I was very impressed with the program and all the speakers. For me the human side of the trade was the most interesting and I particularly enjoyed Ken Crosby’s stories as well as the stories of the more recent cases of Robert Hanssen and Wen Ho Lee. I found the opportunity to listen to Oleg Kalugin absolutely fascinating. All of the sessions however were very informative and quite interesting and I will look forward to hearing about future cruises.

All lectures very good and very interesting. CI Centre videos very, very good. Watched continuously.

Glad you had PowerPoint to summarize information. Friendliness of staff and instructors was really nice. Interesting attendees to visit with.

I thoroughly enjoyed the program. I would like to hear more information from Ken Crosby and Nigel West. I just want to conclude that the men were very brave. They put their country first. Thank you for putting this program together.

Speakers were knowledgeable and appropriate for the subjects presented.

Excellent information. Filled in a lot of gaps made by the media. I am proud and very thankful to have listened to and met so many proud and brave defenders of America. God bless America!

Excellent support staff! A credit to your organization!

It opened my eyes to how much is involved in keeping our country free and gave me a great appreciation for the men and women who put their lives on the line for the good of others—and can’t even get a pat on the back for it till it’s long past due! Many of the stories are absolutely breathtaking, unbelievable and wonderful!

Lectures were informative, people were interesting. It will take a while to digest all the information we heard.

The presentations were very well done—best PowerPoint shows I’ve ever seen. A great show, entertaining and educational. Learned tons! The lecture topics were well-chosen with a nice spread from CIA points of view and KGB. Great idea to include an agent (Garbo) that had a major effect on the course of history. Operation SOLO also fascinating, though I would have liked to hear the KGB side. Major added some interesting insights to Hanssen case, not only because he worked with him.

Really good first effort. Lectures and new info rates A+. Abundant kudos to all.

Fascinating. Unique. Most informative. Will recommend to our friends. Knowledgeable faculty. Makes us more informed citizens.

What has impressed me most was how little we average citizens are aware of so much of the information we heard this week. I feel I am much better informed. Thought all professors were quite good.

The lectures were excellent. Have enjoyed meeting the staff and attendees. Have had wonderful conversations and enjoyed the connections of who knows/knew who.

Overall, it has been an interesting and new experience. I would love to continue to learn more and perhaps relate the experiences to real world events.

Outstanding lectures and enjoyed the availability of the professors. Appreciated rescheduling of lectures to accommodate short excursions/activities even though I’m sure it was a nightmare for the spy staff. Great job on the PowerPoint presentations. Overall graphics were nice and clean. Lots of work, I know because I do the same at a TV station.

This has been the best presentation I have ever seen. To get this many speakers at one time is remarkable.

Excellent, excellent, excellent.

All instructors know their subject matter very well and communicate very well. The lectures were organized and the audio/visual was very good. Overall, it was a great time, great fun, made new friends, and at the same time learned something new.

Since my personal experience in intelligence was confined to limited areas, this SpyCruise™ opened up many new worlds to me. Of greatest worth was first hand information from history makers which in many cases straightened out my perspectives. I feel that it was time well spent even at my time of life. Thanks to you and your staff I’m still learning.

Thank you David Major for organizing and arranging this fabulous SpyCruise™. All lectures were informative, fascinating and also entertaining. Of particular interest to me were the following: Major and Moore with the Hanssen case; Nigel West—Garbo; Crosby—South America; Oleg Kalugin—Targeting America and many, many more. I do hope there will be more SpyCruises™ on other cruise lines.

Having spent much time in China, I particularly enjoyed Paul Moore’s talk, but I learned from each of the sessions. Bravo!

I wish to congratulate the staff form the materials supplied on arrival and their stellar help during the week. You all should be proud. Special kudos to the MC, David Major.

Enjoyed all the lectures. I am a novice about all of this but am interested in all the topics. I would love to learn more.

Overall everything was excellent.

Very impressed by the quality of the program—events ran on time and there was good adaptability to unexpected situations. Excellent PowerPoint usage—especially enjoyed seeing the tradecraft tools.

Excellent topics, wonderful presentations. Good presenters.

Your lectures were everything I expected and more.

The program is well planned and presented. The videos in the room are very interesting.

The lectures have been fascinating! It’s been great that the lecturers have been speaking on a level that isn’t above the novices heads.

Excellent lectures! You didn’t want to miss anything. What great speakers! I found it fascinating to see that the speakers were learning about each other’s cases (the details) for the first time in some cases. I would have enjoyed seeing them sitting as a round table towards the end sharing their reactions.

Very informative, interesting and fun.

Looking forward to the lectures made the cruise much more enjoyable than it would have been.

The cruise itself was good. The seminars were very informative. Overall speakers were great—very knowledgeable!

This was much more than I expected with so many good speakers and professional presentations. I had not been aware of CI Centre and its activities before. Great format; your professors were super. The entire week was thought-provoking and entertaining.

Very good. Enjoyed it very much and learned a great deal.

You folks did a wonderful job. The presentations were right to the point. Fascinating stories. Hard-hitting and somewhat disturbing to learn how the US got taken by the communists.

Overall, well done! Opening session and Ken Crosby were the best. Myself, I like pictures and things I could touch, like the Spy Museum. Had a great time; would come again.

I enjoyed the lectures immensely and they were so well done. I can’t imagine improving on your presentation. The speakers were not only knowledgeable but amusing. Many thanks to all of you for being there when we needed you.

I was amazed by the lectures on the trip. I had no idea you had these types of people with so much history speaking. Let’s have lots more SpyCruises™!

Wonderful speakers, wonderful programs. Very interesting programs. Couldn’t wait for next session. It’s great for the average person to know what went on behind the scenes. I never knew all the ways and planning that went on. We usually only heard if the newspapers told us, and never knew a lot of it was still going on, or not the truth of it all. I know this will be a very successful program and you did a great job on our first trip. We look forward to the next trip with you super guys. I talked to people not on SpyCruise™ and they said they enjoyed the CI-TV programs very much too.

Surprised by the length of the program—this is not a complaint. The lectures (and those giving them) could not be more pleasing. It is a real privilege to hear from those who were there and were participants. Issues are dealt with thoroughly and with great charm. Staff is professional and courteous in demeanor and bring with them an amazing wealth of experience.

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