Cia Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Cia. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Foaly: Anyone see you come in here? Holly: The FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA, MI6. Oh, and the EIB. Foaly: The EIB? Holly: (smirking) Everyone in the building.
Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl Band 1-3)
I tell you, I'm half tempted to break into CIA custody just so I can break Joe Solomon out of CIA custody just so I can break Joe Solomon.
Ally Carter (Only the Good Spy Young (Gallagher Girls, #4))
As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn’t your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
Are you ready for nuclear Armageddon?
Michael Parker (The Devil's Trinity)
We do have CIA agent Lily Carson in the room. You overseas folks know Lily very well." Wesley Bromwell joked. "Oxford University hasn't been the same since Lily left England with her masters degree.
Dennis K. Hausker (Secrets: in a corrupted society)
I can be whoever you want me to be: CIA, FBI, DIA, an agency so fucking secret you've never heard of it before." -Gabriel Allon
Daniel Silva (The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon, #7))
Burns hummed, meeting Ty's eyes and trying not to smile. "You want the CIA to believe that you mistook your partner for your prisoner, handcuffed him, and delivered him to Langley?" Ty shrugged. "I mean...he grew a beard. It was an honest mistake." Burns nodded. "Fair enough.
Abigail Roux (Armed & Dangerous (Cut & Run, #5))
The CIA currently has in custody two FBI agents and a Boston police detective who is demanding they pay for the damage to his boat." "He's okay?" Burns nodded. "Emptied a double-barreled shotgun at a couple of Company lackeys, and then they arrested him. He spent all night claiming he thought they were the Men in Black coming to scan his brain" Ty bit his lip so he wouldn't laugh. -- about Nick
Abigail Roux (Armed & Dangerous (Cut & Run, #5))
Suddenly, Blaze appears, alone. “She’s in the middle of something really important. What do I tell her?” Jen groans. “Tell her she gets to hack into the CIA’s system. She won’t be able to pass that up.
C.B. Cook (Twinepathy (IDIA #1))
I don't want to hurt anyone" Laszlo fiddled with a button on his tux jacket. "Can't we convince the CIA that some of us are peaceful?" "we'll have to try" Angus folded his arms across his broad chest. "And if they doona believe we're peaceful, then we'll have to kill the bastards." Roman frowned, somehow their Highlander logic escaped him.
Kerrelyn Sparks (How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire (Love at Stake, #1))
Trophy hunters are like politicians, they both like to pull the trigger from the comfort of a safe distance.
J. Bartell (The 231 Club: My Ten Year Journey From Therapist to CIA Courier and Sanctioned Kills - A True Story)
Death isn't peaceful; it is just nothing. Everything is gone. No more sunrises, no more hopes, no more fears. Nothing.
Linda Howard (Kill and Tell (CIA Spies, #1))
I tell you, I'm half tempted to break into CIA custody just so I can break Joe Solomon out of CIA custody just so I can break Joe Solomon
Ally Carter (Only the Good Spy Young (Gallagher Girls, #4))
Your long-term association with military intelligence is important. Let’s talk about what you might notice in them. Since this happened, one or two may have changed behavioral characteristics. Are there any with peculiarities different from when they started?
Karl Braungart (Fatal Identity (Remmich/Miller, #3))
I want to follow your orders, but, I…I still work for military intelligence, and I need permission to travel out of my stationed area.
Karl Braungart (Counter Identity (Remmich/Miller, #2))
Well, here’s the shocker,” said Kirby. “Majors Miller and McKinsey believe our former Captain Paul Remmich is acting as a spy for the Iraqi government.
Karl Braungart (Counter Identity (Remmich/Miller, #2))
Sure as hell doesn’t seem that Williams’ study and findings were general. This man talked from fact. I bet this is the scientist and study they want.
Karl Braungart (Fatal Identity (Remmich/Miller, #3))
They're puttin' music to AIDS germs--putting a drum machine behind them and a metronome beat and Ted Turner's colorizing them, goddamn it. These aren't even really people, man. It's a CIA plot to make you think malls are good. Don't you see?
Bill Hicks
In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different roder from eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us. What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this world almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information--misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information--information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?
Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)
And we are not pursuing military information on this trip. At least not about the Russian mafia exchanging Russian-Ukrainian tanks and electronics for their benefit in Syria.
Karl Braungart (Lost Identity (Remmich/Miller, #1))
Wait a minute. What was that name you mentioned? Something about Allah?
Karl Braungart (Counter Identity (Remmich/Miller, #2))
I am calling to tell you that Colonel Yildiz has made travel arrangements for you, Tara, and me. We are flying to Istanbul tomorrow. I’ll call you back and with the departure time. Do you understand?
Karl Braungart (Counter Identity (Remmich/Miller, #2))
The CIA agent looked more dead than alive. Alex wondered if he had been hit, but there was no sign of any blood. Perhaps he was in shock.
Anthony Horowitz (Skeleton Key (Alex Rider, #3))
Seventh graders jumped onto the backs of FBI agents. Seniors squared off against the CIA.
Ally Carter (United We Spy (Gallagher Girls, #6))
 “We think a spy scheme could be brewing with one or more of the Middle East scientists going to Los Alamos.
Karl Braungart (Fatal Identity (Remmich/Miller, #3))
A boy needs a father to show him how to be in the world. He needs to be given swagger, taught how to read a map so that he can recognize the roads that lead to life and the paths that lead to death, how to know what love requires, and where to find steel in the heart when life makes demands on us that are greater than we think we can endure.
Ian Morgan Cron (Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me: A Memoir. . . of Sorts)
He works for the CIA. Johnny Redyellow is his name, but I just simply call him Agent Orange.
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
The FBI and the CIA hate each other, and they both hate the telephone company. The telephone company, in turn, seems to hate everybody.
John A. Keel (The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story)
The only currency that you alone can devalue is your integrity.
J. Bartell (The 231 Club: My Ten Year Journey From Therapist to CIA Courier and Sanctioned Kills - A True Story)
He remained quiet, his movements studied. He was still not certain the intruder had gone and, if an attack was coming, he was going to be ready.
Jeffrey S. Stephens (Enemies Among Us (Nick Reagan, #2))
If he'd expected to be pampered and coddled through his undercover assignments, he would have gone to work for the CIA.
Julie James (A Lot like Love (FBI/US Attorney, #2))
Paul, tell him you need to talk to international security advisors. Briefly explain the army asked you to act as a temporary diplomat. You don’t have to give the details. Now, what are your calendar plans?
Karl Braungart (Counter Identity (Remmich/Miller, #2))
I pulled into the Grand Union parking lot and drove to the end of the mall where the bank was located. I parked at a safe distance from other cars, exited the BMW, and set the alarm. You want me to stay with the car in case someone's riding around with a bomb in his backseat looking for a place to put it?" Lula asked. Not necessary. Ranger says the car has sensors." Ranger give you a car with bomb sensors? The head of the CIA don't even have a car with bomb sensors. I hear they give him a stick with a mirror on the end of it.
Janet Evanovich
I long ago became convinced that the most reliable source for arcane and obscure and seemingly unobtainable information does not lie with the government or law enforcement agencies. Apparently neither the CIA nor the military intelligence apparatus inside the Pentagon had even a slight inkling of the Soviet Union's impending collapse, right up to the moment the Kremlin's leaders were trying to cut deals for their memoirs with New York publishers. Or, if a person really wishes a lesson in the subjective nature of official information, he can always call the IRS and ask for help with his tax forms, then call back a half hour later and ask the same questions to a different representative. So where do you go to find a researcher who is intelligent, imaginative, skilled in the use of computers, devoted to discovering the truth, and knowledgeable about science, technology, history, and literature, and who usually works for dirt and gets credit for nothing? After lunch I drove to the city library on Main and asked the reference librarian to find what she could on Junior Crudup.
James Lee Burke (Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux, #13))
Κατά τους ειδικούς της CIA, δύο είναι οι πιο αναξιόπιστες χώρες στον κόσμο για τη συλλογή πληροφοριών. Η Ιαπωνία και η Ελλάδα. Στην Ιαπωνία δεν μιλάει κανένας και για τίποτε. Στην Ελλάδα μιλούν όλοι και για τα πάντα
Πέτρος Τατσόπουλος
It seems to me it's always the evil we refuse to see that does us the greatest harm.
Robert B. Baer (See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism)
Gentlemen, how did the Tariq’Allah find out about the weapon? Was it from sources in the United States or Iraq?
Karl Braungart (Triple Deception (Remmich/Miller, #4))
People always think that they'll never break. They'll never give in, CIA operatives somehow crack, but not them
Kitty Thomas (Comfort Food)
How did you not know they broke up? You usually monitor his social media like he's al-Qaeda and you're the CIA.
Heather Cocks (Messy (Spoiled, #2))
If you want to debate the morality of war versus terrorism, let’s start with how these conflicts begin.
Jeffrey S. Stephens (Enemies Among Us (Nick Reagan, #2))
Why doesn’t the CIA hire your grandmother to interrogate terror suspects? She does a much better job than they do of getting classified information.
Meg Cabot (Royal Wedding (The Princess Diaries, #11))
They forget that the CIA is all about collecting information. Information for other people to act on. If you join the CIA expecting a life of laser guns, ju-jitsu and exotic STDs, bear in mind that your only contact with them may come through the pages of The Lancet and Popular Mechanics.
Jay Spencer Green (Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's)
Above all, what you have as young people that's vitally needed to make social change, is impatience. You want it to happen now. There have to be enough people that say, "We want it now, in our lifetime. " We want to see apartheid in South Africa come down right now. We want to see the war in Central America stop right now. We want the CIA off our campus right now. We want an end to sexual harassment in our communities right now. Be adventurists in the sense of being bold and daring. Be opportunists and seize this opportunity, this moment in history, to go out and save our country. It's your turn now.
Abbie Hoffman
Sugar, I cannot express to you how much the press does not give a fuck about who started what,” Ellen says. “As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn’t your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
The trick is that you have to believe the lie and believe it so much that the lie becomes the truth.
Antonio J. Méndez (Argo: How the CIA & Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History)
Golf is probably a CIA psyop. Think about it. Golf is the only thing that tames the wild FloridaMan. It turns even the hilariously hostile into the docile.
Jarod Kintz (To be good at golf you must go full koala bear)
Faith should be tempered with logic and reasoning.
J. Bartell (The 231 Club: My Ten Year Journey From Therapist to CIA Courier and Sanctioned Kills - A True Story)
He checked out his surrounding. More books. A drinking fountain. A poster showing a guy slam-dunking a basketball with one hand and holding a book in the other, urging kids to READ! Weird, thought Steve. How can he even see the hoop? ... You see, Steven, Librarians are the most elite, best trained secret force in the United States of America. Probably in the world." "No way." "Yes way." "What about the FBI?" "Featherweights." "The CIA?" Mackintosh snorted. "Don't make me laugh. Those guys can't even dunk a basketball andd read a book at the same time.
Mac Barnett (The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity (Brixton Brothers, #1))
The brave men and women, who serve their country and as a result, live constantly with the war inside them, exist in a world of chaos. But the turmoil they experience isn’t who they are; the PTSD invades their minds and bodies.
Robert Koger (Death's Revenge)
Intelligence is only as good as the consumer's ability to believe and utilize it.
Antonio J. Méndez (Argo: How the CIA & Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History)
If your Soviet neighbor is trying to set fire to your house, you can't be worrying about the Arab down the block. If suddenly it's the Arab in your backyard , you can't be worrying about the People's Republic of China and if one day the ChiComs show up at your front door with an eviction notice in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other, then the last thing you're going do is look over his shoulder for a walking corpse.
Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
There are scores of people who have never recovered, or been recovered, from an FSB interrogation. They’re a hard organization to describe because nothing like the FSB exists in the USA. To get even remotely close, you’d have to ask the CIA to birth a seven-headed hydra with the faces of the FBI, DEA, NSA, Immigration, Border Patrol, Coast Guard, and the Navy Seals with a hangover and a grudge.
Tanya Thompson (Red Russia)
It used to be just CIA agents with ear-pieces who walked round with preoccupied, faraway expressions, and consequently regarded all the little people as irrelevant scum. Now, understandably, it's nearly everybody.
Lynne Truss (Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door)
New Rule: Conspiracy theorists who are claiming that we didn't really kill Bin Laden must be reminded that they didn't think he did the crime in the first place. Come on, nutjobs, keep your bullshit straight: The towers were brought down in a controlled demolition by George W. Bush to distract attention from Hawaii, where CIA operatives were planting phony birth records so that a Kenyan named Barack Obama could someday rise to power and pretend to take out the guy we pretended took out the Towers. And I know that's true because I just got it in an e-mail from Trump.
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.
Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
The truth was, neither the Central Intelligence Agency nor any of the other official and unofficial U.S. intelligence organizations have ever been some kind of all-seeing, all-knowing, global illuminati. For starters, we never hand that kind of funding.
Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation? (CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686, 1952) As cited by Dr Ellen P. Lacter, p57
Orit Badouk Epstein (Ritual Abuse and Mind Control)
One final bit of advice. The next time a senior administrator of the CIA tells you she has a national-security crisis ... Leave the bullshit in Cambridge.
Dan Brown (The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3))
Snowden said carefully, 'I've been unable to get in touch with the person I thought might know about our mutual friend's difficulty.' The guy sounded like he worked for the CIA. Or Charles Dickens.
Josh Lanyon (The Hell You Say (The Adrien English Mysteries, #3))
He supposed he knew, rationally, that she wasn't the prettiest woman in the world, but if his eyes saw any imperfections, his heart didn't care.
Linda Howard (Kill and Tell (CIA Spies, #1))
There hasn't been a scandal this big at the C.I.A. since (CLASSIFIED) committed (CENSORED) to (REDACTED).
Stephen Colbert
I liked to put young and old in the same room, because they would certainly have different takes on the same problem.
Antonio J. Méndez (Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History)
So this is where the CIA began—with J. Edgar Hoover telling the British to go to hell, and the British not appreciating it.
Jason Fagone (The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies)
SVR,” he said, which meant Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, which was their foreign intelligence service. Like the CIA, or the DGSE, or MI6 in Britain. Then he said, “But we’re all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.
Lee Child (Personal (Jack Reacher, #19))
She turned and looked at Deuce, giving him a helpless gesture. “What the hell is going on?” “Livi, you remember my brother, Ty. This is his partner, Zane Garrett.” “Hi,” Zane offered in a low voice that sent a shiver up Ty’s spine. “And these are their… friends, Julian and Cameron,” Deuce said as he waved at the other two men. “Nice to meet you,” Cameron mumbled. She greeted them each, overwhelmed by the surprise, then looked at the doorknob and the string of straws, shaking her head. “What is all this?” “It was a security measure. We’re running from the CIA,” Ty told her, not even attempting to spare her. “They’re trying to kill us.” “Well, kill him, specifically,” Zane added as he pointed at Julian. “I sell antiques,” Julian said, monotone. She narrowed her eyes, looking amongst them and then at Deuce. “Is this some sort of boys’ weekend that I’m not supposed to intrude on? Because I can totally leave before they hurt themselves trying to lie convincingly.” Deuce gave her a warm smile and shook his head. “I think the only one lying is him,” he said, pointing at Julian.
Abigail Roux (Armed & Dangerous (Cut & Run, #5))
Intelligence fails because it is human, no stronger than the power of one mind to understand another. (480)
Tim Weiner (Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA)
It sometimes seemed to Alex that the whole universe was against him. Getting away from FLamingo Bay had almost killed him. It had been an exhausting struggle against time, the elements, and Drevin's firepower. And now he was going back. It was the CIA agent, Ed Shulsky, who had made it happen. Alex, you know the place. I need you to tell me where they're holding Tamara. You can give me a layout of the island. Anyway, we don't have much time. You saw for yourself. The rocket is on its way, and if what you've told me is true-" It is." Alex felt a spurt of annoyance. Why should the American doubt, even for a moment, what he said? Was it perhaps because he was only fourteen? Shulsky noticed his reaction. "I'm sorry. That was out of line. But this plan of his, Ark Angel...Washington..." He shook his head. "It's beyond anything we could have imagined. And that's why we have to take him out. Right now. We don't have time to drop you off." But you're too late," Alex argued. "Gabriel 7 has gone. What are going to do? Shoot it down?
Anthony Horowitz (Ark Angel (Alex Rider, #6))
Second thoughts? About the Squad?" She nodded. "I'm starting to think the CIA is seriously deranged for letting us do this," I told her, "but that doesn't mean I don't want to do it." I paused. "Actually, the fact that we probably shouldn't be doing this kind of makes me want to do it more." Zee snorted. "Adrenaline junkie," she accused.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Killer Spirit (The Squad, #2))
After the 11 September attack," March editorializes one morning, "amid all that chaos and confusion, a hole quietly opened up in American history, a vacuum of accountability, into which assets human and financial begin to vanish. Back in the days of hippie simplicity, people liked to blame 'the CIA' or 'a secret rogue operation.' But this is a new enemy, unnamable, locatable on no organization chart or budget line--who knows, maybe even the CIA's scared of them.
Thomas Pynchon (Bleeding Edge)
Ain’ no Black people need no therapists, ’cause we don’ be havin’ those mental issues. OCD, ADD, PTSD, and all those other acronyms they be comin’ up with every day. I’m tellin’ you, the only acronyms Black folk need help with is the NYPD, FBI, CIA, KKK, and KFC, ’cause I know they be puttin’ shit in those twelve-piece bucket meals to make us addicted to them. All that saturated fat, sodium.
Mateo Askaripour (Black Buck)
Washington was a small town run by people who believed that they lived in the center of the universe.
Tim Weiner (Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA)
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.
Antonio J. Méndez (Argo: How the CIA & Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History)
Binge-read!
Joelle Charbonneau (The Testing (The Testing, #1))
The American Way of Life! Eat too much, work too much, buy too much, read too little, think even less, and die in poverty and insecurity. No, thank you. Don't you see that's how Americans take over the world? Not just through their army and their CIA and their World Bank., but through this infectious disease called the American Dream?
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Committed (The Sympathizer, #2))
Speaking of tongues, they are the main reason I'm a nervous wreck. Ryan is a senior and well, sadly, I'm not all that experienced with boys. I mean, I'm a freshman and have been to dances with boys my age and even have gone out with boys, but I've never really kissed them. Not like I hope to kiss Ryan anyway. Bobby Robinson did shove his tongue into my mouth one time, when we were kissing under the bleachers at a football game, but it didn't feel so good. I'm pretty sure he didn't have it exactly right. So I talked to my friends, Katie and Lisa, about how to properly make out. But, well, here is just a bit of their unhelpful advice. Just let him take the lead, do what ever he does. Um, couldn't that get me into a lot of trouble? Just sort of kiss his tongue, but try not to drool. Don't open your mouth too wide. And then, just open your mouth wide. See? Stupid, conflicting information. And this from girls who supposedly know how to do this! I feel like I'm an undercover CIA agent trying to wrestle vital information out of a ruthless double agent, and the fate of the free world depends upon it. All the while, the President is yelling at me in a panic, saying, Somebody! Anybody! Just get me the truth!
Jillian Dodd (That Boy (That Boy, #1))
Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed. —I. F. STONE, 1907 – 1989
Gary Webb (Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Cocaine Explosion)
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.
Antonio J. Méndez (Argo: How the CIA & Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History)
One of the questions I have been asked many times since this story broke is this: Now that the facts are out there, what can we do? My answer, depressing and cynical as it may be, is always the same. Not much. Not now. And certainly not until the American public and its Congressional representatives regain control of the CIA and shred the curtain of secrecy that keeps us from discovering these crimes of state until its too late. Perhaps when the government officials who presided over these outrages are safely in their crypts, and their apologists and cheerleaders are buried woth them, future historians can finally call these men to account for the miseries they caused. Even if that's all that ever happens, it will be fitting and just, because the favorable judgment of history is ultimately what they craved.
Gary Webb (Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Cocaine Explosion)
1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.
Christopher Hitchens
I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.
Gary Webb (Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Cocaine Explosion)
In the mid 1980's I was asked by an american legal institution known as the Christic Legal Institute to compile a comic book that would detail the murky history of the C.I.A., from the end of the second world war, to the present day. Covering such things as the heroin smuggling during the Vietnam war, the cocaine smuggling during the war in Central America, the Kennedy assasination and other highlights. What I learned during the frankly horrifying research that I had to slog through in order to accomplish this, was that yes, there is a conspiracy, in fact there are a great number of conspiracies that are all tripping each other up. And all of those conspiracies are run by paranoid fantasists, and ham fisted clowns. If you are on a list targeted by the C.I.A., you really have nothing to worry about. If however you have a name similar to someone on a list targeted by the C.I.A., then you are dead? The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening. Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless...
Alan Moore
Psychology’s service to U.S. national security has produced a variant of what the psychiatrist Robert Lifton has called, in his study of Nazi doctors, a “Faustian bargain.” In this case, the price paid has been the American Psychological Association’s collective silence, ethical “numbing,” and, over time, historical amnesia. 3 Indeed, Lifton emphasizes that “the Nazis were not the only ones to involve doctors in evil”; in defense of this argument, he cites the Cold War “role of …American physicians and psychologists employed by the Central Intelligence Agency…for unethical medical and psychological experiments involving drugs and mind manipulation.” 4
Alfred W. McCoy (Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation)
The most widely accepted measure for calculating income inequality is a century-old formula called the Gini coefficient. It's a gold standard for economists around the globe, along with the World bank, the CIA, and the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. What it reveals is startling. Today the United States has the most unequal society of all developed nations. America’s level of inequality is comparable to that of Russia, China, Argentina, and the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Jessica Bruder (Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century)
Some of America's highest profile assassins – including the likes of John Lennon’s killer Mark David Chapman and Robert Kennedy’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan – claimed they were CIA-programmed killers hypnotized by MK-Ultra. The media portrayed them as crazed lone gunmen, so naturally the public paid little attention to their claims. Kentbridge, however, knew it was possible some of these men were mind controlled soldiers, or Manchurian Candidates, carrying out assassination orders their conscious minds were not even aware of.
James Morcan (The Ninth Orphan (The Orphan Trilogy, #1))
Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary. Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history. Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people. At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95). Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.
Michael Parenti (Dirty Truths)
What do you mean, is that it? I just saved his career and the CIA from ruin and he calls me a perfidious ass." "What's perfidious mean?" Ace asked from the driver's seat. "You deceived him and stole his girlfriend out from under his nose," Julia said to Conrad. "I think technically 'ass' is a pretty mild revilement." "Revilement?" Ace looked at one and then the other in his rearview. "This is some kind of spy talk, isn't it? Okay, I'm down with it. Just tell me what it means.
Misty Evans (Operation Sheba (Super Agent, #1))
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.
Antonio J. Méndez (Argo: How the CIA & Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History)
Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews? I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
هل أصبحت حكايه رجل مستقيم من الطرائف النادره في هذا العصر بحيث تحتل الصفحات الاولي في الجرائد وتوضع علي رووس الاعمده وتلفت اليها الانظار ويتحاكي بها الناس علي انها من العجائب والغرائب‏..‏ فهذا رجل يرد حافظه نقود بها بضعه الوف من الدولارات عثر عليها في الطريق العام ويعيدها الي صاحبها ويرفض ان ياخذ مكافاه ولا ينتظر ثنائ من احد ولا يريد احدا ان يكتب عنه‏..‏ ويمضي الي حال سبيله يلملم اطراف جلبابه القديم ويختفي عن الانظار‏..‏ من اي عالم جاء هذا الرجل‏..‏ ومن اي كوكب هبط‏..‏ ومن اي زمن من الازمان البائده نزل علينا‏..‏ وهل يعود الي بلده في مركبه فضائيه؟؟ انه جنس من الاجناس البشريه البائده بلاشك نقرا عنه في الكتب القديمه وفي قصص الاطفال‏..‏ ونعلم يقينا انه انقرض مثل الديناصورات التي انقرضت وانه لم يتبق منه الا هذه الحفريه النادره‏.‏ ورغم ان صوت الدين الان عال جدا في الميكروفونات وفي خطب المساجد‏..‏ والمسابح نراها تجلجل في كل يد‏..‏ ورغم ان اكثر اللحي طالت وارتفع رصيد المواطن العادي من العمرات ومن زياره الرسول ومن الطواف حول الكعبه ومن ترديد الادعيه‏..‏ الا ان الدين نفسه غير موجود‏..‏ الدين بمعني الامانه والاستقامه والصلاح والعمل النافع وطهاره اليد ونقاء الضمير والزهد في الدنيا وتقوي الله والعمل للاخره‏..‏ فهذه الاخلاق اصبحت شيئا نادرا‏..‏ والجماعات الدينيه تشغل نفسها بمسائل اخري مثل القائ قنابل المسامير وقتل السياح في مذبحه الاقصر لانهم كفره‏(‏ رغم ان هذه الجماعات الدينيه تعيش في انجلترا وفي امريكا تحت وصايه وحمايه المخابرات الاجنبيه وينفق عليها الـ ‏CIA‏ وهي تنفذ لهذه المخابرات خططها الاستعماريه بمنتهي الدقه والامانه‏)..‏ ما علاقه كل هذا بالاسلام‏..‏ وما الخدمه التي يقدمونها‏..‏ تلك فزوره اخري في هذا العصر العجيب المليئ بالفوازير والمتناقضات ومن هو الاله المعبود في هذا الزمان؟‏!!‏ انه ليس الله قطعا انه الدولار‏..‏ ربما انه الدنيا‏..‏ رغم كل هذه اللحي الطويله واسفار الحج والعمره والمساجد المزخرفه التي تطاول السمائ‏..‏ وهو شيطان النفس الذي يزين للنفس كل ما تهوي في جميع الاحوال‏..‏ وما اكثر الذين يتصورون انهم يعبدون الله وهم ابعد ما يكونون عنه‏..‏ وقد اقنع كل واحد منهم نفسه واقنعه شيطانه بانه يعمل لله وللرسول ولليوم الاخر وانه المسلم الحق وليس له من الاسلام الا الاسم‏..‏ وقد فعل من قبلهم القرامطه نفس الشيئ فهدموا الكعبه وقتلوا الحجيج وسرقوا الحجر الاسود وظنوا انهم يخدمون الدين‏..‏ والجماعات الدينيه الجديده يسمونها اليوم بجماعات الافغان لانها بدات في اف
مصطفى محمود
Freelance investigative reporter Danny Casolaro was looking into the Cabazon/Wackenhut projects as part of a larger conspiracy investigation at the time he was found dead in a West Virginia motel room in 1991, allegedly a suicide victim. He had told friends he was convinced that "spies, arms merchants and others were using the reservation as a low-profile site on which to develop weapons for Third World armies, including the Nicaraguan Contras.
Gary Webb (Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Cocaine Explosion)
Founded by President Truman at 12:01 A.M. on November 4, 1952, the NSA had been the most clandestine intelligence agency in the world for almost fifty years. The NSA's seven-page inception doctrine laid out a very concise agenda: to protect U.S. government communications and to intercept the communications of foreign powers. "The roof of the NSA's main operations building was littered with over five hundred antennas, including two large radomes that looked like enormous golf balls. The building itself was mammoth--over two million square feet, twice the size of CIA headquarters. Inside were eight million feet of telephone wire and eighty thousand square feet of permanently sealed windows.
Dan Brown
Even President Reagan couldn’t understand him. During an early briefing Casey delivered to the national security cabinet, Reagan slipped Vice President Bush a note: “Did you understand a word he said?” Reagan later told William F. Buckley, “My problem with Bill was that I didn’t understand him at meetings. Now, you can ask a person to repeat himself once. You can ask him twice. But you can’t ask him a third time. You start to sound rude. So I’d just nod my head, but I didn’t know what he was actually saying.” Such was the dialogue for six years between the president and his intelligence chief in a nuclear-armed nation running secret wars on four continents.
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
Other personalities are created to handle new traumas, their existence usually occurring one at a time. Each has a singular purpose and is totally focused on that task. The important aspect of the mind's extreme dissociation is that each ego state is totally without knowledge of the other. Because of this, the researchers for the CIA and the Department of Defense believed they could take a personality, train him or her to be a killer and no other ego stares would be aware of the violence that was taking place. The personality running the body would be genuinely unaware of the deaths another personality was causing. Even torture could not expose the with, because the personality experiencing the torture would have no awareness of the information being sought. Earlier, such knowledge was gained from therapists working with adults who had multiple personalities. The earliest pioneers in the field, such as Dr. Ralph Alison, a psychiatrist then living in Santa Cruz, California, were helping victims of severe early childhood trauma. Because there were no protocols for treatment, the pioneers made careful notes, publishing their discoveries so other therapists would understand how to help these rare cases. By 1965, the information was fairly extensive, including the knowledge that only unusually intelligent children become multiple personalities and that sexual trauma endured by a restrained child under the age of seven is the most common way to induce hysteric dissociation.
Lynn Hersha (Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed to Kill for Their Country)
The major goal of the Cold War mind control programs was to create dissociative symptoms and disorders, including full multiple personality disorder. The Manchurian Candidate is fact, not fiction, and was created by the CIA in the 1950’s under BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE mind control programs. Experiments with LSD, sensory deprivation, electro-convulsive treatment, brain electrode implants and hypnosis were designed to create amnesia, depersonalization, changes in identity and altered states of consciousness. (p. iii) “Denial of the reality of multiple personality by these doctors [See page 114 for names] in the mind control network, who are also on the FMSF [False Memory Syndrome Foundation] Scientific and Professional Advisory Board, could be disinformation. The disinformation could be amplified by attacks on specialists in multiple personality as CIA conspiracy lunatics” (P.10) “If clinical multiple personality is buried and forgotten, then the Manchurian Candidate Programs will be safe from public scrutiny. (p.141)
Colin A. Ross (Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists)
As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our 'national security' calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of 'Left' intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush's legitimacy. So I don't even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.
Christopher Hitchens (Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left)
What he confessed was this. He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles. He had been on a satanic quest. These were some of James Jesus Angleton’s dying words. He delivered them between fits of calamitous coughing—lung-scraping seizures that still failed to break him of his cigarette habit—and soothing sips of tea. “Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars,” Angleton told Trento in an emotionless voice. “The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. . . . Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it.” He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day—Dulles, Helms, Wisner. These men were “the grand masters,” he said. “If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.” Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup. “I guess I will see them there soon.
David Talbot (The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government)
In 1953, Allen Dulles, then director of the USA Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), named Dr Sidney Gottlieb to direct the CIA's MKULTRA programme, which included experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new dissociated identities, new memories, and responses to hypnotic access codes. In 1972, then-CIA director Richard Helms and Gottlieb ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA records. A clerical error spared seven boxes, containing 1738 documents, over 17,000 pages. This archive was declassified through a Freedom of Information Act Request in 1977, though the names of most people, universities, and hospitals are redacted. The CIA assigned each document a number preceded by "MORI", for "Managament of Officially Released Information", the CIA's automated electronic system at the time of document release. These documents, to be referenced throughout this chapter, are accessible on the Internet (see: abuse-of-power (dot) org/modules/content/index.php?id=31). The United States Senate held a hearing exposing the abuses of MKULTRA, entitled "Project MKULTRA, the CIA's program of research into behavioral modification" (1977).
Orit Badouk Epstein (Ritual Abuse and Mind Control)
It’s not the drug that causes the junkie it’s the laws that causes the junkie because of course the drug laws means that he can’t go and get help because he is afraid of being arrested. He also can’t have a normal life because the war on drugs has made drugs so expensive and has made drug contracts unenforceable which means they can only be enforced through criminal violence. It becomes so profitable to sell drugs to addicts that the drug dealers have every incentive to get people addicted by offering free samples and to concentrate their drug to the highest possible dose to provoke the greatest amount of addiction as possible. Overall it is a completely staggering and completely satanic human calamity. It is the new gulag and in some ways much more brutal than the soviet gulag. In the soviet gulags there was not a huge prison rape problem and in this situation your life could be destroyed through no fault of your own through sometimes, no involvement of your own and the people who end up in the drug culture are walled off and separated as a whole and thrown into this demonic, incredibly dangerous, underworld were the quality of the drugs can’t be verified. Were contracts can’t be enforced except through breaking peoples kneecaps and the price of drugs would often led them to a life of crime. People say “well, I became a drug addict and I lost my house, family, and my job and all that.” It’s not because you became a drug addict but, because there is a war on drugs which meant that you had to pay so much for the drugs that you lost your house because you couldn't go and find help or substitutes and ended up losing your job. It’s all nonsense. The government can’t keep drugs out of prisons for heaven’s sakes. The war on drugs is not designed to be won. Its designed to continue so that the government can get the profits of drug running both directly through the CIA and other drug runners that are affiliated or through bribes and having the power of terrorizing the population. To frame someone for murder is pretty hard but to palm a packet of cocaine and say that you found it in their car is pretty damn easy and the government loves having that power." -Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve? For most of us, news of the weather will sometimes have consequences; for investors, news of the stock market; perhaps an occasional story about crime will do it, if by chance it occurred near where you live or involved someone you know. But most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action...You may get a sense of what this means by asking yourself another series of questions: What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action, and the monstrous treatment of the Baha’is in Iran? I shall take the liberty of answering for you: You plan to do nothing about them. You may, of course, cast a ballot for someone who claims to have some plans, as well as the power to act. But this you can do only once every two or four years by giving one hour of your time, hardly a satisfying means of expressing the broad range of opinions you hold. Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into—what else?—another piece of news. Thus, we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.
Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)
It was raining and I had to walk on the grass. I’ve got mud all over my shoes. They’re brand-new, too.” “I’ll carry you across the grass on the return trip, if you like,” Colby offered with twinkling eyes. “It would have to be over one shoulder, of course,” he added with a wry glance at his artificial arm. She frowned at the bitterness in his tone. He was a little fuzzy because she needed glasses to see at distances. “Listen, nobody in her right mind would ever take you for a cripple,” she said gently and with a warm smile. She laid a hand on his sleeve. “Anyway,” she added with a wicked grin, “I’ve already given the news media enough to gossip about just recently. I don’t need any more complications in my life. I’ve only just gotten rid of one big one.” Colby studied her with an amused smile. She was the only woman he’d ever known that he genuinely liked. He was about to speak when he happened to glance over her shoulder at a man approaching them. “About that big complication, Cecily?” “What about it?” she asked. “I’d say it’s just reappeared with a vengeance. No, don’t turn around,” he said, suddenly jerking her close to him with the artificial arm that looked so real, a souvenir of one of his foreign assignments. “Just keep looking at me and pretend to be fascinated with my nose, and we’ll give him something to think about.” She laughed in spite of the racing pulse that always accompanied Tate’s appearances in her life. She studied Colby’s lean, scarred face. He wasn’t anybody’s idea of a pinup, but he had style and guts and if it hadn’t been for Tate, she would have found him very attractive. “Your nose has been broken twice, I see,” she told Colby. “Three times, but who’s counting?” He lifted his eyes and his eyebrows at someone behind her. “Well, hi, Tate! I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.” “Obviously,” came a deep, gruff voice that cut like a knife. Colby loosened his grip on Cecily and moved back a little. “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said. Tate moved into Cecily’s line of view, half a head taller than Colby Lane. He was wearing evening clothes, like the other men present, but he had an elegance that made him stand apart. She never tired of gazing into his large black eyes which were deep-set in a dark, handsome face with a straight nose, and a wide, narrow, sexy mouth and faintly cleft chin. He was the most beautiful man. He looked as if all he needed was a breastplate and feathers in his hair to bring back the heyday of the Lakota warrior in the nineteenth century. Cecily remembered him that way from the ceremonial gatherings at Wapiti Ridge, and the image stuck stubbornly in her mind. “Audrey likes to rub elbows with the rich and famous,” Tate returned. His dark eyes met Cecily’s fierce green ones. “I see you’re still in Holden’s good graces. Has he bought you a ring yet?” “What’s the matter with you, Tate?” Cecily asked with a cold smile. “Feeling…crabby?” His eyes smoldered as he glared at her. “What did you give Holden to get that job at the museum?” he asked with pure malice. Anger at the vicious insinuation caused her to draw back her hand holding the half-full coffee cup, and Colby caught her wrist smoothly before she could sling the contents at the man towering over her. Tate ignored Colby. “Don’t make that mistake again,” he said in a voice so quiet it was barely audible. He looked as if all his latent hostilities were waiting for an excuse to turn on her. “If you throw that cup at me, so help me, I’ll carry you over and put you down in the punch bowl!” “You and the CIA, maybe!” Cecily hissed. “Go ahead and try…!” Tate actually took a step toward her just as Colby managed to get between them. “Now, now,” he cautioned. Cecily wasn’t backing down an inch. Neither was Tate.
Diana Palmer (Paper Rose (Hutton & Co. #2))