here's a snopes report on this quote.. evidently, a firm source to confirm this quote is nonexistent: "So far no hits on the actual quote despite several different searches on a number of databases. This leads me to a number of conclusions. 1. Truman never said it. Truman is, like most American presidents, well documented, and so finding proof of a quote by him should not be difficult. His biographies are numerous, and he was not exactly known for speaking close to the chest. 2. Truman said several things somewhat like it, but not the exact phrase. Truman was plagued by regrets about his decisions as president later in life, to a degree unusual in Presidents. There were many things about the United States he was deeply dismayed by that he felt personally responsible for, and was not afraid to talk about them. 3. Someone put this together from a number of his quotes, though the Gestapo part is most likely not Truman. Nazi comparison are not something I see Truman making casually, and considering how many different ways he can be established to have been discontent with the CIA, I doubt that he would have refrained from describing them as the Gestapo in all his quotes but one, the very one which we so conveniently can not source. That said, though Truman may not have directly called the CIA the American Gestapo, he certainly didn't like what they became, and as their creator, he was in a unique position to judge them."