The Secret Terrorists Quotes

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They were holding their weapons but could not risk opening a window or exiting the vehicle to return fire. Then they saw one of their attackers pull out a grenade.
Jeffrey S. Stephens (Enemies Among Us (Nick Reagan #2))
The sirens were getting louder as Damino ran to him, handcuffing Khalizad from behind and putting her in the vehicle. Together they lifted the inert Afnan and his cart into the van’s cargo space.
Karl Braungart (Triple Deception (Remmich/Miller, #4))
Former corporal Hitler, decorated for his service on the front lines of the Great War, may have believed he knew more about waging war than the Prussian generals. His successes as an infantryman, terrorist, diplomatic bully, and military victor in early 1940 had made him supremely confident. But, in reality, he was out of his depth. He already had failed to easily capture the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk in May, 1940 and failed again a few months later in the Battle of Britain despite superior air power. Understanding the enormous potential of a comprehensive geopolitical strategy, such as the Quadripartite Entente, was beyond his capabilities and destroyed by his hatreds. While Germany was still powerful, the misjudgments in 1940 and the failure to conquer Russia in 1941 were taking a toll. Largely unrecognized at the time, the odds were beginning to shift away from Hitler. 
Dale A. Jenkins (Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway)
Funny how the U.S. sends in the military to fight “terrorists” in any country which has resources we want....
Ziad K. Abdelnour (Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics)
Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Would you do it again?" The words sting sharply. "Would you risk me for your terrorist friends again?" I would. I don't say it out loud, but Lucas sees my answer in my eyes. "I kept your secret." It's worse than any insult he could throw at me. The knowledge that he protected me, even though I didn't deserve it, gnaws at my core. "But now I know you're not different, not anymore," he continues, almost spitting. "You're the same as all the rest. Heartless, selfish, cold—just like us. They taught you well.
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
We dare to fight back, and the terrorists accuse us of being the real terrorists.” “It’s their secret weapon, Mikhail. Get used to it.
Daniel Silva (The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon, #7))
William Butler Yeats’s “Second Coming” seems perfectly to render our present predicament: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” This is an excellent description of the current split between anaemic liberals and impassioned fundamentalists. “The best” are no longer able to fully engage, while “the worst” engage in racist, religious, sexist fanaticism. However, are the terrorist fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the U.S.: the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the non-believers’ way of life. If today’s so-called fundamentalists really believe they have their way to truth, why should they feel threatened by non-believers, why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns him. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist’s search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued, fascinated by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful Other, they are fighting their own temptation. These so-called Christian or Muslim fundamentalists are a disgrace to true fundamentalists. It is here that Yeats’s diagnosis falls short of the present predicament: the passionate intensity of a mob bears witness to a lack of true conviction. Deep in themselves, terrorist fundamentalists also lack true conviction-their violent outbursts are proof of it. How fragile the belief of a Muslim must be, if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a low-circulation Danish newspaper. The fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The problem with fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but rather that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending, politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority towards them only make them more furious and feeds their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite fact that the fundamentalists are already like us, that secretly they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them. (This clearly goes for the Dalai Lama, who justifies Tibetan Buddhism in Western terms of the pursuit of happiness and avoidance of pain.) Paradoxically, what the fundamentalists really lack is precisely a dose of that true “racist” conviction of one’s own superiority.
Slavoj Žižek (Violence: Six Sideways Reflections)
what is God? “He’s truth; He’s meaning. He’s my purpose and yours. With terrorists wiping people out, dealers hooking kids on meth and ecstasy, violence and cruelty; there’s still love, comfort, joy, and hope. That’s God. Without him, none of it makes sense.
Kristen Heitzmann (Secrets (The Michelli Family Series, #1))
Le garçon qui m’avait souri, et qui, une seconde plus tôt, n’était qu’une fonction, un outil, une sorte d’insecte monstrueux, voici qu’il se révélait un peu gauche, presque timide, d’une timidité merveilleuse. Non qu’il fût moins brutal qu’un autre, ce terroriste ! mais l’avènement de l’homme en lui éclairait si bien sa part vulnérable ! On prend de grands airs, nous les hommes, mais on connaît, dans le secret du coeur, l’hésitation, le doute, le chagrin…
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Lettre à un otage)
You revolutionists' the other continued, with leisurely self-confidence, 'are the slaves of the social convention, which is afraid of you; slaves of it as much as the very police that stands up in the defence of that convention. Clearly you are, since you want to revolutionize it. It governs your action, too, and thus neither your thought nor your action can ever be conclusive. (...) 'You are not a bit better than the forces arrayed against you -- than the police, for instance. The other day I came suddenly upon Chief Inspector Heat at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. He looked at me very steadily. But I did not look at him. Why should I give him more than a glance ? He was thinking of many things -- of his superiors, of his reputation, of the law courts, of his salary, of newspapers -- of a hundred things. But I was thinking of my perfect detonator only. He meant nothing to me. He was as insignificant as -- I can't call to mind anything insignificant enough to compare him with -- except Karl Yundt perhaps. Like to like. The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolutions, legality -- counter moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical. He plays his little game -- so do you propagandists.
Joseph Conrad (The Secret Agent)
Funny how the U.S. sends in the military to fight “terrorists” in any country which has resources it wants....
Ziad K. Abdelnour (Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics)
As far as keeping secrets is concerned, I have a black hole in my heart .... whatever goes inside stays there and never comes out.
Raj Sharma. (Autobiography of a Terrorist: A journey from Death to Life)
The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket.  Revolution, legality—counter moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical.
Joseph Conrad (The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale)
Terrorism is often confused or equated with . . . guerrilla warfare,” the terrorism theorist Bruce Hoffman once wrote. “ This is not surprising, since guerrillas often employ the same tactics (assassination, kidnapping, bombings of public gathering-places, hostage-taking, etc.) for the same purposes (to intimidate or coerce, thereby affecting behavior through the arousal of fear) as terrorists.”34
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by a group of former Confederate soldiers; its first grand wizard was a Confederate general who was also a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. The Klan soon spread beyond the South to the Midwest and the West and became, in the words of historian Eric Foner, “the domestic terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.” The main point of the Klan’s orgy of violence was to prevent blacks from voting—voting, that is, for Republicans. Leading Democrats, including at least one president, two Supreme Court justices, and innumerable senators and congressmen, were Klan members. The last one, Robert Byrd, died in 2010 and was eulogized by President Obama and former President Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton called him her “mentor.” The sordid history of the Democratic Party in the early twentieth century is also married to the sordid history of the progressive movement during the same period. Progressives like Margaret Sanger—founder of Planned Parenthood and a role model for Hillary Clinton—supported such causes as eugenics and social Darwinism. While abortion was not an issue in Sanger’s day, she backed forced sterilization for “unfit” people, notably minorities. Sanger’s Negro Project was specifically focused on reducing the black population.
Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
The hijackers had rented apartments, bought airplane tickets, purchased box cutters, received emails and wire transfers. All of this could have been looked at as it was happening, Poindexter said. Terrorists give out signals. Genoa could find them. It would take enormous sums of time and treasure, but it was worth it. The 9/11 attacks were but the opening salvo, the White House had said. The time was right because the climate was right. People were terrified.
Annie Jacobsen (The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency)
They were men who felt that The Time Had Come. Regimes can survive barbarian hordes, crazed terrorists, and hooded secret societies, but they’re in real trouble when prosperous and anonymous men sit around a big table and think thoughts like that.
Terry Pratchett (Feet of Clay (Discworld, #19))
Ujanja wote ulimwisha Murphy. Ilimbidi kutoboa siri ili adui asizidi kumuumiza. Alilaumu mno kufa wakati alishakula ng’ombe mzima. Alifikiri Mogens na Yehuda walishauwawa kulingana na hasira nyingi za magaidi. Walihakikisha hawafanyi makosa hata kidogo. Alivyomaliza kumhoji, yule adui alizunguka nyuma katika mgongo wa Murphy na kwenda katika dirisha lililokuwa wazi – la mashariki – ambapo aliegemea na kuvuta sigara. Alichungulia kidogo nje kisha akageuka na kuendelea kupata upepo mdogo wa baridi.
Enock Maregesi (Kolonia Santita)
In their secretly nervous hearts, they’ve convinced themselves, poor little delusional narcissists, that their nation is the most powerful that ever was or even will be, ignoring the still vaster empires that have crumbled in the past, conveniently forgetting that the U.S. has only existed for a mere 225 years, and refusing to consider for a nanosecond that in another 225 years it very well might be gone.” *Stubblefield commentary, on patriotic American citizens in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Tom Robbins (Villa Incognito)
Our world was a battleground on which good and evil clashed, and many of the combatants on the dark side were known to everyone. Terrorists, dictators, politicians who were merchants of lies and hate, crooked businessmen in league with them, power-mad bureaucrats, corrupted policemen, embezzlers, street thugs, rapists, and their ilk waged part of the war, and their actions were what made the evening news so colorful and depressing. But those fighting in that dark army had their secret schemes, too, intentions and desires and goals that would make their public villainy seem almost innocent by comparison. They were assisted by other politicians who concealed their hatred and envy, by judges who secretly had no respect for the law, by clergymen who in private worshipped nothing but money or the tender bodies of children, by celebrities who trumpeted their concern for the common man while in their off-screen lives assiduously hobnobbing with and advancing the interests of the elite of elites.… The war unseen by most people was one of clandestine militias, unincorporated businesses, unchartered organizations, philosophical movements that could not survive fresh air and sunlight, secretive coalitions of lunatics who didn’t recognize their own lunacy, nature cults and science cults and religious cults.
Dean Koontz (Saint Odd (Odd Thomas, #7))
There is much in our culture to affront the eye of the fervent terrorist postulant, things out there that do us no favors, to be sure. If, for example, it came to light that the dangerously thin, affectless, value-deficient, higher aspiration-free, amateur-porn chanteuse Paris Hilton was actually a covert agent from some secret Taliban madrassa whose mission was to portray the ultimate capitalist-whore puppet of a doomed society with nothing more on its mind than servitude to Mammon and celebrity at any cost, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
David Rakoff (Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems)
We may, in our darker thoughts, care little about whether a suspected terrorist is extradited to a state where he might be executed, or tortured, or might not receive a fair trial; but a legal system which permits this for a suspected terrorist would have to allow it for your partner, or friend, or teenage son whose computer whizz-kiddery lands him in hot water with the security services of a foreign power. Tearing down the edifice of human rights, as we are urged is in our interests, simply because it occasionally results in a benefit to people we don’t like, is the politics of the kindergarten.
The Secret Barrister (Fake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies)
Some of the leaders of the backlash said their name was an acronym for “Taxed Enough Already.” Maybe this was true at first. But the Tea Party was soon infused with paranoia that had nothing to do with taxes. While the ugliness caught Washington observers by surprise, anyone who had spent time in a battleground state recognized it instantly. Back in Ohio, volunteers had been told to check boxes corresponding to a voter’s most important issue: economy, environment, health care. But what box were you supposed to check when a voter’s concern was that Obama was a secret Muslim? Or a terrorist? Or a communist? Or the actual, literal Antichrist? How could you convince a voter whose pastor told them your candidate would bring about the biblical end of days? Other people were just plain racist. Outside an unemployment center in Canton, a skinny white man with stringy hair and a ratty T-shirt told me he would never, ever support my candidate. When I asked why, he took two fingers and tapped them against the veiny underside of his forearm. At first I didn’t understand. “You won’t vote for Obama because you’re a heroin addict?” It took me at least ten seconds to realize he was gesturing to the color of his skin.
David Litt (Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years)
Michael Evans was supposed to want to kill me. I was the bait.” But Michael Evans, homegrown terrorist extraordinaire, hadn’t gone for Alex’s throat. Oh, no, he’d gone for something much worse. The man Alex had been hunting for the majority of his FBI career had raped his wife and tossed her to the side of the road like garbage.
Lexi Blake (On Her Master's Secret Service (Masters and Mercenaries, #4))
Hardly anyone in Washington or at Langley yet saw the full significance of bin Laden and al Qaeda. When President Clinton signed Executive Order 12947 on January 23, 1995, imposing sanctions on twelve terrorist groups because of their role in disrupting the Middle East peace process, neither al Qaeda nor bin Laden made the list.31
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
It was the Rothschilds who funded the early ‘Jewish’ settlers in Palestine; it was the Rothschilds who helped to create and fund Hitler and the Nazis in the Second World War which included the sickening treatment of Jews, gypsies, communists, and others; it was the Rothschilds who used the understandable post-war sympathy for the ‘Jews’ they had mercilessly exploited to press through their demands for a take-over of Arab Palestine; it was the Rothschilds who funded the ‘Jewish’ terrorist groups in Palestine which bombed, murdered, and terrorised Israel into existence; and it was the Rothschilds who funded and manipulated these terrorists into the key positions in Israel, among them the Prime Ministers, Ben-Gurion, Shamir, Begin, and Rabin. These men would spend the rest of their lives condemning the terrorism of others with an hypocrisy which beggars belief; it was Lord Victor Rothschild, the controller of British Intelligence, who provided the know-how for Israel’s nuclear weapons; it was the Rothschilds who owned and controlled Israel from the start and have continued ever since to dictate its policy; it was the Rothschilds and the rest of the Brotherhood network which has hidden and suppressed the fact, confirmed by Jewish historians, that the overwhelming majority of ‘Jewish’ people in Israel originate genetically from the Caucasus Mountains, not from the lands they now occupy. The Jewish people have been sacrificed on the Rothschild altar of greed and lust for power, but even the Rothschilds take their orders from a higher authority which, I believe, is probably based in Asia, and the Far East dictates to the operational headquarters in London.
David Icke (The Biggest Secret: The book that will change the World)
Forget bringing the troops home from Iraq. We need to get the troops home from World War II. Can anybody tell me why, in 2009, we still have more than sixty thousand troops in Germany and thirty thousand in Japan? At some point, these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves. Our soldiers have been in Germany so long they now wear shorts with black socks. You know that crazy soldier hiding in the cave on Iwo Jima who doesn’t know the war is over? That’s us. Bush and Cheney used to love to keep Americans all sphinctered-up on the notion that terrorists might follow us home. But actually, we’re the people who go to your home and then never leave. Here’s the facts: The Republic of America has more than five hundred thousand military personnel deployed on more than seven hundred bases, with troops in one hundred fifty countries—we’re like McDonald’s with tanks—including thirty-seven European countries—because you never know when Portugal might invade Euro Disney. And this doesn’t even count our secret torture prisons, which are all over the place, but you never really see them until someone brings you there—kinda like IHOP. Of course, Americans would never stand for this in reverse—we can barely stand letting Mexicans in to do the landscaping. Can you imagine if there were twenty thousand armed Guatemalans on a base in San Ber-nardino right now? Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber. And why? How did this country get stuck with an empire? I’m not saying we’re Rome. Rome had good infrastructure. But we are an empire, and the reason is because once America lands in a country, there is no exit strategy. We’re like cellulite, herpes, and Irish relatives: We are not going anywhere. We love you long time!
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
Everything in the world that mattered was gone. I prayed secretly. Perhaps we all did. No one wanted to be identified as a probable terrorist. So we prayed hiding in our rooms. We prayed for a return to what was, and a future that could be. We were held in a place that felt as if war didn't exist, in a world that we knew was fraught with fighting.
Kao Kalia Yang (Somewhere in the Unknown World)
Vice President Gore, Richard Clarke, and Madeleine Albright were “strong support[ers]” of the program, joining in President Clinton’s “intense” interest in it.5 Egypt’s most famous terrorist, Talaat Fouad Qassem, was “seized in Croatia, flown to the USS Adriatic, a navy warship, interrogated, then flown to Egypt for [torture and] execution.”6 Egypt’s secret police, the Gihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma, is widely known for its brutal torture regime, “real Macho interrogation . . . enhanced interrogation techniques on steroids” and was used by both Presidents Bush and Clinton.7 Congress attempted to end this program in 1998. The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act slipped in a passage making it the policy of the United States not to “expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.”8 Clinton vetoed the bill in late October,
Andrew P. Napolitano (Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty)
It was now clear that Yousef and his colleagues had developed their terrorist plans by studying American airline security procedures. “If terrorists operating in this country are similarly methodical, they will identify serious vulnerabilities in the security system for domestic flights.” The National Intelligence Estimate made no mention of Osama bin Laden.36
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
Fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The problem with fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior.
Slavoj Žižek (Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism)
Any critique of Islam is denounced as an expression of Western Islamophobia, Salman Rushdie is denounced for unnecessarily provoking Muslims and being (partially, at least) responsible for the fatwa condemning him to death, and so on. The result of such stances is what one should expect in such cases: the more the Western liberal Leftists probe into their guilt, the more they are accused by Muslim fundamentalists of being hypocrites who try to conceal their hatred of Islam. [T]his constellation perfectly reproduces the paradox of the superego: the more you obey what the Other demands of you, the guiltier you are. It is as if the more you tolerate Islam, the stronger its pressure on you will be. What this implies is that terrorist fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, are not really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term--what they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the US: the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the non-believers' way of life. If today's so-called fundamentalists really believe they have found their way to Truth, why should they feel threatened by non-believers, why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist's search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued and fascinated by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation. The passionate intensity of a fundamentalist mob bears witness to the lack of true conviction; deep in themselves, terrorist fundamentalists also lack true conviction--their violent outbursts are proof of it. How fragile the belief of a Muslim would be if he felt threatened by, say, a stupid caricature in a low-circulation Danish newspaper? Fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists' conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identify from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The problem with fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority towards them only makes them more furious and feed their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite: the fact that the fundamentalists are already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them.
Slavoj Žižek
The FBI issued 216 secret, internal threat warnings between January 1 and September 10, 2001, of which 6 mentioned possible attacks against airports or airlines. The State Department issued 9 separate warnings during the same period to embassies and citizens abroad, including 5 that highlighted a general threat to Americans all over the world. The Federal Aviation Administration issued 15 notices of possible terrorist threats against American airlines.19
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
The CIA prepared a briefing paper on July 10 for senior Bush administration officials: “Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that [bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.”24
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
THE TERRORIST ATTACKS came one after another during 1985, all broadcast live on network television to tens of millions of Americans. In June two Lebanese terrorists hijacked TWA Flight 847, murdered a Navy diver on board, and negotiated while mugging for cameras on a Beirut runway. In October the Palestinian terrorist Abu Abbas hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro in Italy, murdered a sixty-nine-year-old Jewish-American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, dumped his body overboard, and ultimately escaped to Baghdad with Egyptian and Italian collaboration. Just after Christmas, Palestinian gunmen with the Abu Nidal Organization opened fire on passengers lined up at El Al ticket counters in Vienna and Rome, killing nineteen people, among them five Americans. One of the American victims was an eleven-year-old girl named Natasha Simpson who died in her father’s arms after a gunman unloaded an extra round in her head just to make sure. The attackers, boyish products of Palestinian refugee camps, had been pumped full of amphetamines by their handlers just before the holiday attacks.
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
al Qaeda is prepared to mount one or more terrorist attacks at any time.” There were some reports that the attack was aimed at U.S. soil. An intelligence alert in early June said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was recruiting volunteers to undertake missions in the United States, where they would “establish contact with colleagues already living there.” In July the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center reported that it had interviewed a source who had recently returned from Afghanistan. The source had reported, “Everyone is talking about an impending attack.”23
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
At the subway station you wait fifteen minutes on the platform for a train. Finally a local, enervated by graffiti, shuffles into the station. You get a seat and hoist a copy of the New York Post. The Post is the most shameful of your several addictions. You hate to support this kind of trash with your thirty cents, but you are a secret fan of Killer Bees, Hero Cops, Sex Fiends, Lottery Winners, Teenage Terrorists, Liz Taylor, Tough Tots, Sicko Creeps, Living Nightmares, Life on Other Planets, Spontaneous Human Combustion, Miracle Diets and Coma Babies.
Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City)
Left-leaning news media leaked classified national security secrets, destroying three major national security programs designed to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.8 Every day of the war, the New York Times and other left-leaning media provided front-page coverage of America’s body counts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and helped to fuel a massive “anti-war” movement, which attacked America’s fundamental purposes along with its conduct of the war. The goal of these campaigns was to indict America and its leaders as war criminals who posed a threat to the world.
David Horowitz (How Obama Betrayed America....And No One Is Holding Him Accountable)
I do think we can connect novelists and terrorists here. In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act. People who are in power make their arrangements in secret, largely as a way of maintaining and furthering that power. People who are powerless make an open theater of violence. True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to.
Don DeLillo
Before 1969 came to an end, Palestinian terrorists trained at the KGB’s Balashikha special-operations school east of Moscow had hijacked their first “Zionist” El Al plane and landed it in Algeria, where its thirty-two Jewish passengers were held hostage for five weeks. The hijacking had been planned and coordinated by the KGB’s Thirteenth Department, known in Soviet bloc intelligence jargon as the Department for Wet Affairs (wet being a KGB euphemism for bloody). To conceal the KGB’s hand, Andropov had the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (created and financed by the KGB) take credit for the hijacking. The
Ion Mihai Pacepa (Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism)
One such question revolved around the informal institution of black kids eating together in the cafeteria. I’m going to let you in on a secret: growing black children like to eat. In a majority-white school, they are often friends with other black people. This has been known to result in black kids eating together at the same table. While this terrorist cell–like activity is a perceived clear and present danger to some in the non-black community, the agenda at most of these nefarious, exclusive gatherings consisted of talking about classes, flirting, making fun of each other, and, oh, plotting the downfall of White America—but only on every third Tuesday.
Baratunde R. Thurston
For years, the suspicion that Mr. Putin has a secret fortune has intrigued scholars, industry analysts, opposition figures, journalists and intelligence agencies but defied their efforts to uncover it. Numbers are thrown around suggesting that Mr. Putin may control $40 billion or even $70 billion, in theory making him the richest head of state in world history. For all the rumors and speculation, though, there has been little if any hard evidence, and Gunvor has adamantly denied any financial ties to Mr. Putin and repeated that denial on Friday. But Mr. Obama’s response to the Ukraine crisis, while derided by critics as slow and weak, has reinvigorated a 15-year global hunt for Mr. Putin’s hidden wealth. Now, as the Obama administration prepares to announce another round of sanctions as early as Monday targeting Russians it considers part of Mr. Putin’s financial circle, it is sending a not-very-subtle message that it thinks it knows where the Russian leader has his money, and that he could ultimately be targeted directly or indirectly. “It’s something that could be done that would send a very clear signal of taking the gloves off and not just dance around it,” said Juan C. Zarate, a White House counterterrorism adviser to President George W. Bush who helped pioneer the government’s modern financial campaign techniques to choke off terrorist money.
Peter Baker
You’ve said, “You can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution as long as you like and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in chemistry and it will be refuted tomorrow.” How does your approach to the world as a scientist affect and influence the way you approach politics? Nature is tough. You can’t fiddle with Mother Nature, she’s a hard taskmistress. So you’re forced to be honest in the natural sciences. In the soft fields, you’re not forced to be honest. There are standards, of course; on the other hand, they’re very weak. If what you propose is ideologically acceptable, that is, supportive of power systems, you can get away with a huge amount. In fact, the difference between the conditions that are imposed on dissident opinion and on mainstream opinion is radically different. For example, I’ve written about terrorism, and I think you can show without much difficulty that terrorism pretty much corresponds to power. I don’t think that’s very surprising. The more powerful states are involved in more terrorism, by and large. The United States is the most powerful, so it’s involved in massive terrorism, by its own definition of terrorism. Well, if I want to establish that, I’m required to give a huge amount of evidence. I think that’s a good thing. I don’t object to that. I think anyone who makes that claim should be held to very high standards. So, I do extensive documentation, from the internal secret records and historical record and so on. And if you ever find a comma misplaced, somebody ought to criticize you for it. So I think those standards are fine. All right, now, let’s suppose that you play the mainstream game. You can say anything you want because you support power, and nobody expects you to justify anything. For example, in the unimaginable circumstance that I was on, say, Nightline, and I was asked, “Do you think Kadhafi is a terrorist?” I could say, “Yeah, Kadhafi is a terrorist.” I don’t need any evidence. Suppose I said, “George Bush is a terrorist.” Well, then I would be expected to provide evidence—“Why would you say that?” In fact, the structure of the news production system is, you can’t produce evidence. There’s even a name for it—I learned it from the producer of Nightline, Jeff Greenfield. It’s called “concision.” He was asked in an interview somewhere why they didn’t have me on Nightline. First of all, he says, “Well, he talks Turkish, and nobody understands it.” But the other answer was, “He lacks concision.” Which is correct, I agree with him. The kinds of things that I would say on Nightline, you can’t say in one sentence because they depart from standard religion. If you want to repeat the religion, you can get away with it between two commercials. If you want to say something that questions the religion, you’re expected to give evidence, and that you can’t do between two commercials. So therefore you lack concision, so therefore you can’t talk. I think that’s a terrific technique of propaganda. To impose concision is a way of virtually guaranteeing that the party line gets repeated over and over again, and that nothing else is heard.
Noam Chomsky (On Anarchism)
his administration had just finished “a top-to-bottom review of our strategy” in Afghanistan. Bush laid out renewed aims: “To help the people of that country to defeat the terrorists and establish a stable, moderate, and democratic state that respects the rights of its citizens, governs its territory effectively, and is a reliable ally in this war against extremists and terrorists.” He admitted, “Oh, for some that may seem like an impossible task. But it’s not impossible.”11 In fact, the war on the ground was deteriorating by the month. Its challenges had at last attracted the White House’s attention. Yet the Bush administration’s new strategy remained informed by undue optimism, not least because Afghanistan still looked much better than Iraq. Bush was defensive about the comparison.
Steve Coll (Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016)
Later we will look in more detail at how the Long Telegram and NSC-68 should shape the plan to destroy our jihadist enemies today, but for now consider this passage from Kennan’s original secret cable:         In summary, we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with [the] U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi[,] that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken. . . . Kennan was writing about the USSR, but this description of a fanatical enemy incapable of living in peace with America applies word for word to the jihadist organizations behind all the major terrorist atrocities from 9/11 to the San Bernardino massacre.
Sebastian Gorka (Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War)
Our safety lies in repentance. Our strength comes of obedience to the commandments of God. My beloved brethren and sisters, I accept this opportunity in humility. I pray that I may be guided by the Spirit of the Lord in that which I say. I have just been handed a note that says that a U.S. missile attack is under way. I need not remind you that we live in perilous times. I desire to speak concerning these times and our circumstances as members of this Church. You are acutely aware of the events of September 11, less than a month ago. Out of that vicious and ugly attack we are plunged into a state of war. It is the first war of the 21st century. The last century has been described as the most war-torn in human history. Now we are off on another dangerous undertaking, the unfolding of which and the end thereof we do not know. For the first time since we became a nation, the United States has been seriously attacked on its mainland soil. But this was not an attack on the United States alone. It was an attack on men and nations of goodwill everywhere. It was well planned, boldly executed, and the results were disastrous. It is estimated that more than 5,000 innocent people died. Among these were many from other nations. It was cruel and cunning, an act of consummate evil. Recently, in company with a few national religious leaders, I was invited to the White House to meet with the president. In talking to us he was frank and straightforward. That same evening he spoke to the Congress and the nation in unmistakable language concerning the resolve of America and its friends to hunt down the terrorists who were responsible for the planning of this terrible thing and any who harbored such. Now we are at war. Great forces have been mobilized and will continue to be. Political alliances are being forged. We do not know how long this conflict will last. We do not know what it will cost in lives and treasure. We do not know the manner in which it will be carried out. It could impact the work of the Church in various ways. Our national economy has been made to suffer. It was already in trouble, and this has compounded the problem. Many are losing their employment. Among our own people, this could affect welfare needs and also the tithing of the Church. It could affect our missionary program. We are now a global organization. We have members in more than 150 nations. Administering this vast worldwide program could conceivably become more difficult. Those of us who are American citizens stand solidly with the president of our nation. The terrible forces of evil must be confronted and held accountable for their actions. This is not a matter of Christian against Muslim. I am pleased that food is being dropped to the hungry people of a targeted nation. We value our Muslim neighbors across the world and hope that those who live by the tenets of their faith will not suffer. I ask particularly that our own people do not become a party in any way to the persecution of the innocent. Rather, let us be friendly and helpful, protective and supportive. It is the terrorist organizations that must be ferreted out and brought down. We of this Church know something of such groups. The Book of Mormon speaks of the Gadianton robbers, a vicious, oath-bound, and secret organization bent on evil and destruction. In their day they did all in their power, by whatever means available, to bring down the Church, to woo the people with sophistry, and to take control of the society. We see the same thing in the present situation.
Gordon B. Hinckley
Clinton put it later. Yet at the same time “you cannot collapse walls, collapse differences, and spread information without making yourself more vulnerable to forces of destruction.” Clinton believed that America’s mission was to accelerate these trends, not resist them. He sought to lead the country and the world from a period of global “interdependence” to one of more complete worldwide “integration.” Terrorist attacks were a “painful and powerful example of the fact that we live in an interdependent world that is not yet an integrated global community,” he believed. Yet Clinton did not want to build walls. He saw the reactionary forces of terrorism, nationalism, and fundamentalism as inevitable; they were intricately connected to the sources of global progress. They were also doomed. In human history, he asserted with questionable accuracy, “no terrorist campaign has ever succeeded.”31
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
Given the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to understand why anyone doubts the fascist nature of the French Revolution. Few dispute that it was totalitarian, terrorist, nationalist, conspiratorial, and populist. It produced the first modern dictators, Robespierre and Napoleon, and worked on the premise that the nation had to be ruled by an enlightened avant-garde who would serve as the authentic, organic voice of the “general will.” The paranoid Jacobin mentality made the revolutionaries more savage and cruel than the king they replaced. Some fifty thousand people ultimately died in the Terror, many in political show trials that Simon Schama describes as the “founding charter of totalitarian justice.” Robespierre summed up the totalitarian logic of the Revolution: “There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man…[W]e must exterminate all our enemies.
Jonah Goldberg (Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning)
CIA analysis began by late 1994 to run in a different direction. The insights Black and his case officers could obtain into bin Laden’s inner circle were limited, but they knew that bin Laden was working closely with the Sudanese intelligence services. They knew that Sudanese intelligence, in turn, was running paramilitary and terrorist operations in Egypt and elsewhere. Bin Laden had access to Sudanese military radios, weapons, and about two hundred Sudanese passports. These passports supplemented the false documents that bin Laden acquired for his aides from the travel papers of Arab volunteers who had been killed in the Afghan jihad. Working with liaison intelligence services across North Africa, Black and his Khartoum case officers tracked bin Laden to three training camps in northern Sudan. They learned that bin Laden funded the camps and used them to house violent Egyptian, Algerian, Tunisian, and Palestinian jihadists. Increasingly the Khartoum station cabled evidence to Langley that bin Laden had developed the beginnings of a multinational private army. He was a threat.
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
Every extension of hegemony is also an extension of terror. Let's be clear: Beyond spectacular terrorism, terror should be seen as an infiltration, an internal convulsion, a form of power fighting itself. Power itself, from the inside, secretes an antagonistic power that materializes in one way or another-it could be Islam or it could be something else altogether. Every form is possible, but, for the most part, terror is a form of reversion - it is not necessarily violent, although in its most extreme form it necessarily implies death. The death of its victims, but first and foremost the death of the terrorists. September 11 put the spotlight on the symbolic use of death as an absolute weapon. The death of a terrorist is not a suicide: it is an effigy of the virtual death that the system inflicts on itself. From revolt to revolt, it take multiple forms throughout history. From the sabotage and destruction of machines by Luddites in 1820 to Blacks burning their own neighborhoods in America in the 1960s, from general strikes to hostage taking and suicide attacks, we have gone increasingly farther into unilateral sacrifice, in suicidal violence without mercy or possible response - into the unexchangeable.
Jean Baudrillard (The Agony of Power)
The most important thing that is happening in the world right now is the emerging of the new man. Since the monkeys, man has remained the same, but a great revolution is on it's way. When monkeys became man, it created the mind. With the new man, a great revolution will bring the soul in. Man will not just be a mind, a psychological being, he will be a spiritual being. This new consciousness, this new being, is the most important thing, which is happening in the world today. But the old man will be against the emerging of the new man, the old man will be against this new consciousness. The new man is a matter of life and death, it is a question of the survival of the whole earth. It is matter of survival of consciousness, of survival of life itself. The old man has become utterly destructive. The old man is preparing for a global suicide right now. Rather than allowing the new man, the old man would rather destroy the whole earth, destroying life itself. The old destructive man is preparing right now for a third world war. The global economical and political elite and the war industrial complex in the U.S, which runs the foreign policy of the U.S, is right now promoting for a third world war. The U.S. has over thrown the democratically elected government in Ukraine in an secret operation by the CIA, the world's largest terrorist organization, and replaced it with a fascistic regime, a marionette for the U.S. The war industrial complex is now desperately trying to promote the third war by demonizing, lying and blaming Russia. We see the same aggression and lies from the U.S. that we have seen before against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela and Iran. President Eisenhower warned against the war industrial complex, which he considered the largest threat to democracy. President John F. Kennedy also warned against a "secret conspiracy" against democracy. The war industrial complex consists of the international banks, oil companies, war industry, democratically elected politicians, conservative think tanks, international mainstream media and global companies, who make profits from human suffering and wars. The European governments and the mainstream media also cooperate with the war industrial complex to bring the world into disaster. But this time it will not work as the time for wars is over, and peace loving people and people who represent the new man are working against this kind of aggression.
Swami Dhyan Giten
This kind of speculation reached a high point with the Pentagon's initiative of creating a 'futures market in events', a stock market of prices for terrorist attacks or catastrophes. You bet on the probable occurrence of such events against those who don't believe they'll happen. This speculative market is intended to operate like the market in soya or sugar. You might speculate on the number of AIDS victims in Africa or on the probability that the San Andreas Fault will give way (the Pentagon's initiative is said to derive from the fact that they credit the free market in speculation with better forecasting powers than the secret services). Of course it is merely a step from here to insider trading: betting on the event before you cause it is still the surest way (they say Bin Laden did this, speculating on TWA shares before 11 September). It's like taking out life insurance on your wife before you murder her. There's a great difference between the event that happens (happened) in historical time and the event that happens in the real time of information. To the pure management of flows and markets under the banner of planetary deregulation, there corresponds the 'global' event- or rather the globalized non-event: the French victory in the World Cup, the year 2000, the death of Diana, The Matrix, etc. Whether or not these events are manufactured, they are orchestrated by the silent epidemic of the information networks. Fake events.
Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact (Talking Images))
St Alexander, his friends, and mentors opposed National Socialism primarily from the standpoint of their Christian faith. They perceived Nazi ideology as an assault on Truth. In the ambition of the Nazi creed to destroy the existing order of society, in its fierce determination to annihilate Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and all whom it deemed unworthy of existence, the White Rose saw an assault on the very concept of Man who was created in God’s image. It was an assault on God himself. The authors of the White Rose leaflets, Alexander and Hans, ascribe a spiritual significance to their resistance to Nazism, which they call “the dictatorship of evil.”255 In their fourth leaflet, they present this resistance as a struggle against “the National Socialist terrorist state … the struggle against the devil, against the servants of Antichrist.” It is of utmost importance, they continue, to realize that everywhere and at all times, demons have been lurking in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, separates himself from the powers of a higher order and, after voluntarily taking the first step, is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating pace. One must therefore cling to God, as “of course man is free, but without God he is defenseless against evil. He is like a rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air.” The accuracy of the young people’s perception of the fundamental antagonism of National Socialism to Christianity was corroborated by the Nazis themselves (although, like the Communists in Russia, they made efforts to disguise and deny this). In a secret circular of June 9, 1941, Martin Bormann, Hitler’s second in command, divulged the fact that the repressive measures against the Churches of Germany were aimed against Christianity itself. The circular opened with the following words: “National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable.”256 In a private conversation, the head of the dreaded SS, Heinrich Himmler, boasted that “We shall not rest until we have rooted out Christianity.
Elena Perekrestov (Alexander Schmorell: Saint of the German Resistance)
Isn’t this the weekend of Xander Eckhart’s party?” “Yes.” Jordan held her breath in a silent plea. Don’t ask if I’m bringing anyone. Don’t ask if I’m bringing anyone. “So are you bringing anyone?” Melinda asked. Foiled. Having realized there was a distinct possibility the subject would come up, Jordan had spent some time running through potential answers to this very question. She had decided that being casual was the best approach. “Oh, there’s this guy I met a few days ago, and I was thinking about asking him.” She shrugged. “Or maybe I’ll just go by myself, who knows.” Melinda put down her forkful of gnocchi, zoning in on this like a heat-seeking missile to its target. “What guy you met a few days ago? And why is this the first we’re hearing of him?” “Because I just met him a few days ago.” Corinne rubbed her hands together, eager for the details. “So? Tell us. How’d you meet him?” “What does he do?” Melinda asked. “Nice, Melinda. You’re so shallow.” Corinne turned back to Jordan. “Is he hot?” Of course, Jordan had known there would be questions. The three of them had been friends since college and still saw each other regularly despite busy schedules, and this was what they did. Before Corinne had gotten married, they talked about her now-husband, Charles. The same was true of Melinda and her soon-to-be-fiancé, Pete. So Jordan knew that she, in turn, was expected to give up the goods in similar circumstances. But she also knew that she really didn’t want to lie to her friends. With that in mind, she’d come up with a backup plan in the event the conversation went this way. Having no choice, she resorted to the strategy she had used in sticky situations ever since she was five years old, when she’d set her Western Barbie’s hair on fire while trying to give her a suntan on the family-room lamp. Blame it on Kyle. I’d like to thank the Academy . . . “Sure, I’ll tell you all about this new guy. We met the other day and he’s . . . um . . .” She paused, then ran her hands through her hair and exhaled dramatically. “Sorry. Do you mind if we talk about this later? After seeing Kyle today with the bruise on his face, I feel guilty rattling on about Xander’s party. Like I’m not taking my brother’s incarceration seriously enough.” She bit her lip, feeling guilty about the lie. So sorry, girls. But this has to stay my secret for now. Her diversion worked like a charm. Perhaps one of the few benefits of having a convicted felon of a brother known as the Twitter Terrorist was that she would never lack for non sequiturs in extracting herself from unwanted conversation. Corinne reached out and squeezed her hand. “No one has stood by Kyle’s side more than you, Jordan. But we understand. We can talk about this some other time. And try not to worry—Kyle can handle himself. He’s a big boy.” “Oh, he definitely is that,” Melinda said with a gleam in her eye. Jordan smiled. “Thanks, Corinne.” She turned to Melinda, thoroughly skeeved out. “And, eww—Kyle?” Melinda shrugged matter-of-factly. “To you, he’s your brother. But to the rest of the female population, he has a certain appeal. I’ll leave it at that.” “He used to fart in our Mr. Turtle pool and call it a ‘Jacuzzi.’ How’s that for appeal?” “Ah . . . the lifestyles of the rich and famous,” Corinne said with a grin. “And on that note, my secret fantasies about Kyle Rhodes now thoroughly destroyed, I move that we put a temporary hold on any further discussions related to the less fair of the sexes,” Melinda said. “I second that,” Jordan said, and the three women clinked their glasses in agreement
Julie James (A Lot like Love (FBI/US Attorney, #2))
Story time. In September of 1869, there was a terrible fire at the Avondale coal mine near Plymouth, Pennsylvania. Over 100 coal miners lost their lives. Horrific conditions and safety standards were blamed for the disaster. It wasn’t the first accident. Hundreds of miners died in these mines every year. And those that didn’t, lived in squalor. Children as young as eight worked day in and out. They broke their bodies and gave their lives for nothing but scraps. That day of the fire, as thousands of workers and family members gathered outside the mine to watch the bodies of their friends and loved ones brought to the surface, a man named John Siney stood atop one of the carts and shouted to the crowd: Men, if you must die with your boots on, die for your families, your homes, your country, but do not longer consent to die, like rats in a trap, for those who have no more interest in you than in the pick you dig with. That day, thousands of coal miners came together to unionize. That organization, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, managed to fight, for a few years at least, to raise safety standards for the mines by calling strikes and attempting to force safety legislation. ... Until 1875, when the union was obliterated by the mine owners. Why was the union broken so easily? Because they were out in the open. They were playing by the rules. How can you win a deliberately unfair game when the rules are written by your opponent? The answer is you can’t. You will never win. Not as long as you follow their arbitrary guidelines. This is a new lesson to me. She’s been teaching me so many things, about who I am. About what I am. What I really am. About what must be done. Anyway, during this same time, it is alleged a separate, more militant group of individuals had formed in secret. The Molly Maguires. Named after a widow in Ireland who fought against predatory landlords, the coal workers of Pennsylvania became something a little more proactive, supposedly assassinating over two dozen coal mine supervisors and managers. ... Until Pinkerton agents, hired by the same mine owners, infiltrated the group and discovered their identities. Several of the alleged Mollies ended up publicly hanged. Others disappeared. You get the picture. So, that’s another type of secret society. The yeah-we’re-terrorists-but-we-strongly-feel-we’re-justified-and-fuck-you-if-you-don’t-agree society. So, what’s the moral of this little history lesson? This sort of thing happens all day, every day across the universe. It happens in Big Ways, and it happens in little ways, too. The strong stomp on the weak. The weak fight back, usually within the boundaries of the rat trap they find themselves confined. They almost always remain firmly stomped. But sometimes, the weak gather in secret. They make plans. They work outside the system to effect change. Like the Mollies, they usually end up just as stomped as everyone else. But that’s just life. At least they fucking tried. They died with their boots on, as much as I hate that expression. They died with their boots on for their people, their family, not for some rich, nameless organization that gives no shits whether they live or die. Or go extinct. Or are trapped for a millennia after they’re done being used. In my opinion, that’s the only type of society that’s worth joining, worth fighting for. Sure, you’re probably gonna die. But if you find yourself in such a position where such an organization is necessary, what do you have to lose? How can you look at yourself if you don’t do everything you can? And that brings us to the door you’re standing in front of right now. What does all this have to do with what you’re going to find on the other side? Nothing!
Matt Dinniman (The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #6))
Defense Minister, General Militaru was definitely from the latter category. Iliescu wanted terrorists and he was about to provide them. The whole country wanted the terrorists caught and he wanted to provide that, too, he wanted to serve. Ceauşescu had stopped Militaru from serving eleven years before 1989. It was 1978 and Militaru was a three star general when he was pulled out of active duty and given a position in management in the Construction Industry Ministry - luckily for him. He was lucky. Ceauşescu feared the Russians. Militaru’s name came out in the Raven’s file as a GRU agent. The GRU was the secret service of the Red Army, and this was the reason why Ceauşescu took the Second Army from Militaru’s command and gave him that petty job in the construction industry. He would have been killed if Ceauşescu didn’t fear the Soviet backlash, that’s for sure. Twenty years after 1989 I see the events more clearly. But on that night I was young and stupid, and open to being manipulated like the other 23 million Romanians.
Florin Grancea (The Pigs' Slaughter)
~ “In their secretly nervous hearts, they’ve convinced themselves, poor little delusional narcissists, that their nation is the most powerful that ever was or even will be, ignoring the still vaster empires that have crumbled in the past, conveniently forgetting that the U.S. has only existed for a mere 225 years, and refusing to consider for a nanosecond that in another 225 years it very well might be gone.” *Stubblefield commentary, on patriotic American citizens in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Tom Robbins (Villa Incognito)
the anniversary of July 7, moreover, Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain’s MI6 secret intelligence service, said that the latest fighting in the region was ‘‘essentially a Muslim on Muslim affair’’ and that both the government and the media were exaggerating the threat. ‘‘It is time to move away from the distortion that 9/11 understandably created in our national security stance,’’ he said. ‘‘We must continue to cover the Middle East as a political requirement but without putting the incipient terrorist threat to ourselves at the center of the picture.
Anonymous
The CIA program known as “extraordinary rendition,” the practice of clandestinely transferring suspected terrorists from one country to another for the purposes of incarceration or interrogation, has been well documented. It was put into place not by President George W. Bush but by his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
Daniel Silva (The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon, #7))
The idea for the Guild first came up at a party. Your father and I met there and, well, I suppose that's a story all its own. But we were both frustrated by the media at the time. We set out to tell the truth when everyone else seemed set on choosing sides. We had grand ideas about how far we could reach. … Back then, we knew we should be careful, but we had no idea how dangerous it would turn out to be.
Sonny and Ais
I remember thinking how the same stereotypes worked in reverse, how the simplistic media in the UK and USA had convinced so many Westerners that all Arabs were either peace-loving hippies who secretly wanted to live in Western-style democracies, or Evil Terrorists who wanted to feast on the blood of the innocent when the moon was full.
Jamie Alexander (Nowhere Like Home: Misadventures in a Changing World)
Then the U.S. government started a secret operation aimed at kidnapping, detaining, torturing, or killing terrorist suspects, an operation that has no legal basis.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi (The Mauritanian (originally published as Guantánamo Diary))
But terrorists are not living and training only in faraway Third World countries. Attacks have occurred in Paris, London, Madrid, and Jerusalem, and, obviously, in New York, Washington, and the skies above the United States on September 11, 2001, when nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists murdered thousands of Americans. It is also a virtual certainty that terrorist “sleeper cells” are secreted in America.
Mark R. Levin (Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future)
Terrorists can recognize the difference between actual security and its mere appearance. You think they can’t see past a gun-free zone sign? It might as well say: “Terrorists welcome! Ready access to undefended scores of innocent children!” Please, get over the gun control distraction. Ask yourself what stops four men from going into a school with knives or bombs. I
Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
One of the Least Transparent Administrations in History President Barack Obama promised the most transparent administration in history, but our experience over the eight years of his administration was that the executive branch and its federal agencies were black holes in terms of disclosure. President Obama and his minions made remarkable assertions of secrecy over everything from White House visitor logs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to Operation Fast and Furious and even the photos of a dead Osama bin Laden and the details of the Islamic burial ceremony used for one of the worst terrorist organizers of the modern age. Judicial Watch filed well over three thousand FOIA requests with the Obama administration, many of which went unanswered. Our staff attorneys never had a day that wasn’t hectic—they were forced to file and litigate more than 250 FOIA lawsuits in federal court. Getting the administration to comply with our requests for information and documents under FOIA was like pulling teeth. Many of these lawsuits were filed just to get a “yes or no” answer from the administration on whether they had any responsive records. Administratively, federal agencies put up additional hurdles and stonewalled even the most basic FOIA requests. In many cases, we faced tough litigation fights, with Justice Department and administration attorneys and officials fighting hard to resist turning over records they were obligated under the law to disclose. And in many cases, like our fight to get former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, the administration seems to have misled Judicial Watch and federal judges, claiming that records did not exist that actually did exist or not conducting the legally required searches for the information and documents we were requesting.
Tom Fitton (Clean House: Exposing Our Government's Secrets and Lies)
Maybe Jack just felt sorry for her. Yeah. And Osama bin Laden hadn’t been a terrorist.
Kendra Elliot (Hidden (Bone Secrets, #1))
Although government officials have repeatedly said there is a rigorous process for making sure no one is unfairly placed in the databases, the guidelines acknowledge that all nominations of “known terrorists” are considered justified unless the National Counterterrorism Center has evidence to the contrary. In an April 2014 court filing, the government disclosed that there were 468,749 KST nominations in 2013, of which only 4,915 were rejected—a rate of about 1 percent.10 The rules appear to invert the legal principle of due process, defining nominations as “presumptively valid.
Jeremy Scahill (The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program)
the notion that critics of the drone program are being manipulated by propaganda from terrorist organizations “would be laughable, were it not so offensive towards civilian victims of drone strikes.” A
Jeremy Scahill (The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program)
In 1991 a Tamil Tiger (radical Sri Lankan terrorist), the “bra bomber” (actually it was a belt), didn’t sweat through her bomb, though, and she accomplished her goal, assassinating Indian prime minister Rajiv Ratna Gandhi. She was ruthless.
Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
Terrorists can recognize the difference between actual security and its mere appearance. You think they can’t see past a gun-free zone sign? It might as well say: “Terrorists welcome! Ready access to undefended scores of innocent children!
Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
On Sunday, evening, May 2, 2015, in Garland, Texas, an active-shooter incident didn’t end in a massacre. It ended when an armed police officer took the fight to the enemy, literally pushing toward them and killing the duo before they could massacre innocents in a crowded event center. Forget politics. Forget before and after. When the attack is initiated there is no negotiation, no thinking—only fighting, pushing, and close killing. The event in Garland wasn’t quite the soft target the terrorists thought it would be. They didn’t have the access to the defenseless civilians they thought they’d have. Defend yourself—now rather than later. Strength stops strength. Overwhelming strength stops massacres in their tracks.
Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
Hitler used tactics that worked in Germany: firing up fears of communists. He said in one speech that pro-German Englishmen saw Bolshevism as the true enemy. His account was surprisingly detailed. He said terrorists had always been associated in London with Bolshevik anarchists.
William Stevenson (Spymistress: The True Story of the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II)
The Democrats did play a role in Reconstruction—they worked to block it. The party struck out against Reconstruction in two ways. The first was to form a network of terrorist organizations with names like the Constitutional Guards, the White Brotherhood, the Society of Pale Faces, and the Knights of the White Camelia. The second was to institute state-sponsored segregation throughout the South. Let us consider these two approaches one by one. The Democrats started numerous terror groups, but the most notorious of these was the Ku Klux Klan. Founded in 1866, the Klan was initially led by a former Confederate army officer, Nathan Bedford Forrest, who served two years later as a Democratic delegate to the party’s 1868 national convention. Forrest’s role in the Klan is controversial; he later disputed that he was ever involved, insisting he was active in attempting to disband the organization. Initially the Klan’s main targets weren’t blacks but rather white people who were believed to be in cahoots with blacks. The Klan unleashed its violence against northern Republicans who were accused of being “carpetbaggers” and unwarrantedly interfering in southern life, as well as southern “scalawags” and “white niggers” who the Klan considered to be in league with the northern Republicans. The Klan’s goal was to repress blacks by getting rid of these perceived allies of the black cause. Once again Republicans moved into action, passing a series of measures collectively termed the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1871. These acts came to be known as the Force Bill, signed into law by a Republican President, Ulysses Grant. They restricted northern Democratic inflows of money and weapons to the Klan, and also empowered federal officials to crack down on the Klan’s organized violence. The Force Bill was implemented by military governors appointed by Grant. These anti-Klan measures seem modest in attempting to arrest what Grant described as an “invisible empire throughout the South.” But historian Eric Foner says the Force Bill did markedly reduce lawless violence by the Democrats. The measures taken by Republicans actually helped shut down the Ku Klux Klan. By 1873, the Klan was defunct, until it was revived a quarter-century later by a new group of racist Democrats.
Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
He also explained Operation Trojan, where Mossad relayed disinformation to be received by the US and Britain. They planted the Trojan, a communication device, deep inside the enemy territory. The device would rebroadcast prerecorded digital transmissions, which would be able to be picked up by Americans and the British. On the night of February 17th, two Israeli missile boats headed through the Mediterranean, letting four submarines and two speedboats disembark just outside the territorial waters of Libya. The submarines headed for shore and the agents headed inland with the Trojan device. They were picked up by a Mossad combatant who was already there, then they headed to the city, where they went to an apartment building less than three blocks away from the Bab al Azizia barracks known to house Qadhafi’s headquarters. They brought the device to the top floor of the building, activated it, then headed back to the beach. The combatant monitored the unit in the apartment for the next few weeks. The Trojan broadcasted messages during heavy communication traffic hours. They appeared as long series of terrorist orders to Libyan embassies around the world. The Americans began to perceive the Libyans as active sponsors of terrorism, while the French and Spanish were suspicious. The Mossad used America’s promise to retaliate against support for terrorism, to manipulate them into the ploy. Their intention was to get a country with better weapons to attack Libya. They succeeded. On April 14th, 1986, one hundred and sixty American aircrafts dropped over sixty tons of bombs on Libya. A deal for the release of American hostages in Lebanon was cut, forty Libyan civilians died, and an American pilot and his weapons officer died. For the Mossad, this mission was incredibly successful. However, it doesn’t highlight the intelligence agency in the same ways as other stories of operations. It showed deceit toward the Americans, who they would normally try to cooperate with. It “by ingenious sleight of hand, had prodded the United States to do what was right.” It showed the world what side the US was on in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Mike Livingston (Mossad: The Untold Stories of Israel’s Most Effective Secret Service)
He knew no matter what he did while Jackson was President, his job was safe, for he was there for one specific task, one the American public could never know about, one that even his own wife knew nothing about. One that had been handed down to him by his own father. He pressed the talk button. “Masters.”  “Sir, we have an Umbra Gamma Prime document here for immediate review.” “I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone and pressed the button to lower the glass partition separating him from the driver. “Jerry, turn us around, I need to get back to the office, fast.” His chauffeur of many years radioed the escort vehicles as he raised the partition, picked up his glass and gripped the overhead handhold. The mini-motorcade’s lead Lincoln Navigator cut left, jumped the median and blocked oncoming traffic. The Town Car limo locked up its brakes and followed, jostling its well-prepared VIP as the trailing Navigator cut across, assuming the role of lead vehicle. All three vehicles turned on their lights and sirens, leaving a trail of burnt rubber, smoke and a dozen confused drivers in their wake. Umbra Gamma Prime. It was one of the highest classifications of Top Secret there was in his business. In fact he had never had one cross his desk since he had taken the job, despite dealing with countless terrorist threats—both domestic and abroad—and having sent teams across the world in secret.
J. Robert Kennedy (The Protocol (James Acton Thrillers, #1))
Kasoro za Uzi zilizofanya zisitumiwe tena na kikosi cha usalama cha rais wa Marekani ni kutokuwa na shabaha imara katika umbali mfupi (hutawanya risasi na huleta madhara makubwa katika umbali mfupi hivyo kuweza kudhuru hata watu wasiokuwa na hatia) na kutokuwa na uwezo wa kutoboa kinga ya risasi dhidi ya magaidi wanaotumia mavazi ya kuzuia risasi, wanaotishia usalama wa rais wa Marekani. Gaidi mwenye mavazi ya kuzuia risasi aliweza kumdhuru rais kwa maana ya USSS kushindwa kumdhibiti. Badala yake, sasa USSS wanatumia FNP90 – zenye uwezo wa kutoboa kinga ya risasi, na ambazo hazileti madhara makubwa katika umbali mfupi na katika umbali mrefu. Bunduki hizi, zenye uwezo wa kubeba risasi 100 katika chemba zake mbili za Kampuni ya Beta ('Century Magazines'), zilitumiwa na magaidi wa Kolonia Santita dhidi ya Vijana wa Tume na dhidi ya polisi wa Tume ya Dunia ya Kudhibiti Madawa ya Kulevya.
Enock Maregesi
The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by a group of former Confederate soldiers; its first grand wizard was a Confederate general who was also a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. The Klan soon spread beyond the South to the Midwest and the West and became, in the words of historian Eric Foner, “the domestic terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.
Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
The secret of life is to have no fear.” —Fela
Mark Stephen Meadows (Tea Time with Terrorists: A Motorcycle Journey into the Heart of Sri Lanka's Civil War)
Only weeks before, McMahon had beaten back an attempt by the National Security Council staff to violate a presidential ban on political assassinations. “We received a draft secret executive order telling us to go knock off terrorists in pre-emptive strikes,” McMahon recalled. “I told our folks to send it back and tell them: ‘When the President revokes the executive order which precludes CIA from assassinations, then we’ll take this on.’ That hit the guys on the NSC staff. They went ballistic.
Tim Weiner (Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA)
I wondered whether Mum meant to be a mini terrorist, or if it just came naturally.
Gigi Blume (Secrets of a Hollywood Matchmaker (Backstage Romance, #2))
Hamas, the terrorist organization, called for a new intifada (a violent uprising)
Thomas Horn (The Rabbis, Donald Trump, and the Top-Secret Plan to Build the Third Temple: : Unveiling the Incendiary Scheme by Religious Authorities, Government Agents, and Jewish Rabbis to Invoke Messiah)
(The Iran-Contra Affair was a secret US arms deal in 1985 that traded missiles and other arms to Iran. Officially, the deal was struck to free Americans hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon. Secretly, however, the American government had sold the weapons and used the proceeds to support armed conflict in Nicaragua. The controversial scheme—and the ensuing political scandal—threatened to bring down the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The hub of much of the Contra activity was in Arkansas, while Bill Clinton was governor.)
Dylan Howard (Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Front Page Detectives))
Watch for the use of language,’ she said, ‘and remember that one man’s “terrorist” is another man’s “freedom fighter”.
Kathleen McGurl (The Forgotten Secret)
It’s been 10 Years since 9/11. Ten years, Gabriel repeated, and Saudi Arabia is still a cash machine for terrorists and Sunni extremist groups. There’s only one possible explanation. The deal with the devil has been renewed. The House of Saud side is willing to turn a blind eye to Islamic terror as long as the secret rage is directed outward, away from the oil fields.
Daniel Silva (Portrait of a Spy (Gabriel Allon, #11))
It’s been ten years since 9/11. Ten years, Gabriel repeated, and Saudi Arabia is still a cash machine for terrorists and Sunni extremist groups. There’s only one possible explanation. The deal with the devil has been renewed. The House of Saud is willing to turn a blind eye to Islamic terror as long as the secret rage is directed outward, away from the oil fields.
Daniel Silva (Portrait of a Spy (Gabriel Allon, #11))
Casolaro’s proposed chapter titles for The Octopus provide a glimpse into the trajectory of his research: Chapter 1: 1980—The Most Dangerous Year. Casolaro’s notes include sub-divisions entitled “Death of Paul Morasca, Death of Fred Alvarez,” “Resupply of Contras,” “Casey,” “Vesco,” “John Nichols,” and “Transition—Mideast.” Chapter 2: Backing up: The Post War Years. 1944-1950. When they met. Kim Philby. Chapter 3: Tag Team Compartments. 1959: Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, Europe, Albania, Golden Triangle, China, Formosa. He also brackets “Moriarty, [Marshall] Riconosciuto, Fat Tony.” Chapter 4: 1966: Making Friends With the Terrorist Underground. Dealers, Drugs & Money [additional unreadable line]. Chapter 5: What Went Wrong With Nixon and the Windfall/Surprise. Chapter 6: 1975: Australia With PM Houghton. Chapter 7: The Asian Underground. Chapter 8: Oil [unreadable] Controlling Countries. Chapter 9: The Big Crime—ICN, Yakuza & Terrorists, Triads. Chapter 10: 1980. Chapter 11: The role of Mossad. Chapter 12: KGB Underground. Chapter 13: Wackenhut. Chapter 14: Mideast—Beirut. Chapter 15: Iran Shah, Helms. Chapter 16: Iran & Iraq.
Kenn Thomas (The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro)
This “rendition” technique, in which a detained terrorist was shipped from one country to another without appearing in court, had lately become a preferred CIA method. It allowed the agency to ship suspects to allied countries for interrogation or back to the United States for trial, as it pleased. The practice, illegal within the United States but permitted overseas, drew on national security policy that dated to the Reagan administration, reaffirmed and revitalized by President Clinton.
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
There are other cases of this kind. For example, in San Diego the FBI apparently financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minute Men, transforming it into something called the Secret Army Organization specializing in terrorist acts of various kinds.
Noam Chomsky (On Language: Chomsky's Classic Works: Language and Responsibility and Reflections on Language)
The head of the Secret Army Organization—a provocateur in the pay of the FBI-drove past his house, and his companion fired shots into it, seriously wounding a young woman. The young man who was their target was not at home at the time. The weapon had been stolen by this FBI provocateur. According to the local branch of the ACLU, the gun was handed over the next day to the San Diego FBI Bureau, who hid it; and for six months the FBI lied to the San Diego police about the incident. This affair did not become publicly known until later. This terrorist group, directed and financed by the FBI, was finally broken up by the San Diego police, after they had tried to fire-bomb a theater in the presence of police. The FBI agent in question, who had hidden the weapon, was transferred outside the state of California so that he could not be prosecuted. The FBI provocateur also escaped prosecution, though several members of the secret terrorist organization were prosecuted.
Noam Chomsky (On Language: Chomsky's Classic Works: Language and Responsibility and Reflections on Language)
US Military Was Prepared to Act in Benghazi Contrary to what the Obama administration has told the American people, the US military was poised and ready to respond immediately and forcefully against terrorists in Benghazi, Libya. That’s what we learned in December 2015 from an email exchange from then–Department of Defense Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash to State Department leadership immediately offering “forces that could move to Benghazi” during the terrorist attack on Benghazi. In an email sent to top Department of State officials, at 7:19 p.m. ET, only hours after the attack had begun, Bash says, “we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” The Obama administration redacted the details of the military forces available, oddly citing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption that allows the withholding of “deliberative process” information. The Obama administration and Clinton officials hid this compelling Benghazi email for years. The email makes readily apparent that the military was prepared to launch immediate assistance that could have made a difference, at least at the CIA annex. The fact that the Obama Administration withheld this email for so long only worsens the scandal of Benghazi.
Tom Fitton (Clean House: Exposing Our Government's Secrets and Lies)
We still don’t have the full story on Benghazi, but thanks to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch we know a lot more and are in a position to continue to crack open the Benghazi cover-up. Take the email that showed the military was prepared, indeed was in the process of launching timely assistance that could have made a difference, at least at the CIA annex where two Americans died. The Washington Examiner correctly noted that the email “casts doubt on previous testimony from high level officials, several of whom suggested there was never any kind of military unit that could have been in a position to mount a rescue mission during the hours-long attack on Benghazi.” All this goes to underscore the value of Judicial Watch’s independent watchdog activities and our leadership in forcing truth and accountability over the Benghazi scandal. The lies and inaction by President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice (who is now Obama’s national security adviser) were monstrous. Rather than tell the truth, and risk political blowback for the Libya mess and the lack of security, the Obama administration abandoned those under fire and pretended that the attack had nothing to do with terrorism. Judicial Watch saw through the lies and began what has become the most nationally significant investigation ever by a non-governmental entity. Our Benghazi FOIA requests and subsequent lawsuits changed history. Our disclosure of White House records confirming that top political operatives at the White House concocted the talking points used by Susan Rice to mislead the American people in order save Obama’s reelection prospects rocked Washington. These smoking-gun documents embarrassed all of Congress and forced Speaker John Boehner to appoint the House Select Committee on Benghazi. And, as you’ll see, the pressure from our Benghazi litigation led to the disclosure of the Clinton email scandal, the historical ramifications of which we are now witnessing. If the American people had known the truth—that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go—and yet lied and covered this fact up—Mitt Romney might very well be president. Our Benghazi disclosures also show connections between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war—and confirm that the US knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists.
Tom Fitton (Clean House: Exposing Our Government's Secrets and Lies)
Telegram is a secure, encrypted chat, audio, and file sharing program for mobile phones that quickly became the preferred ISIS communications application. In September 2015, ISIS added the ability to create channels, which changed the app from simply a secret messaging app to a massive hidden forum platform ripe with content from the world’s active terrorist organizations. Multitudes of groups post in channels that are outside the scrutiny of Google and other search engines. Yet if you sign in on the phone app or via Telegram’s website today, you’ll find not only ISIS, AQ, and other terrorist channels, but a wide range of conversations. The
Malcolm W. Nance (Hacking ISIS: How to Destroy the Cyber Jihad)
any country which failed to live up to its international responsibilities and allowed terrorists to use its territory was likely to be a target of US special operations forces. “Those responsibilities include the requirement to stop terrorism within its borders,” O’Connell said. “And if you can’t do that as a sovereign nation, you can expect the United States to have to respond.
Michael Smith (Killer Elite: Completely Revised and Updated: The Inside Story of America's Most Secret Special Operations Team)
I was ashamed to find myself contemplating that for the traveller, Iran’s charms lay in its isolation. This was not a mindset I liked, or approved of; I didn’t want to be like the smug backpackers in The Beach, trying to keep their special place a secret. I wanted the Iranian people to reap all the benefits from engaging with the world and for the rest of us to wake up to the reality that Iran is not a nation of desert-dwelling terrorists.
Lois Pryce (Revolutionary Ride: On the Road to Shiraz, the Heart of Iran)
On the main foredeck, two more crewmen readied diving gear, while inside the main-deck saloon, seven men pulled on neoprene suits. The operators were crowded, but they were accustomed to living and working in close proximity to one another. As members of the elite and secretive Zaslon (Shield) Unit of SVR, this very team of paramilitaries had helicoptered across eastern Ukraine and Dagestan on direct-action missions. They’d killed terrorists and kidnapped local rebel leaders in Chechnya after sitting huddled together in the back of armored vehicles for hours on end, and they’d parachuted into Syria to assist with the escape of a Syrian Army general from a position being overrun by rebels
Mark Greaney (Gunmetal Gray (Gray Man, #6))
Cults and outlaw terrorists generally follow the above procedures by further rewiring of the fourth, socio-sexual circuit. (Governments usually leave that circuit alone, since government agents are largely puritanical-authoritarian and afraid to get involved at all with raw Eros.) It is no secret that the most powerful secret society of the middle ages, the Knights Templar, forced recruits to participate in both blasphemy and sodomy. Just as the deliberate nonsense of all cultish third-circuit semantics isolates the group from the rest of society, this initiation separated the Templars from the rest of Christendom; the alienation could easily be conditioned into a sense of superiority. The Mau-Maus in Kenya also insisted on one act of homosexuality to break the new member’s previous conditioning toward heterosexuality and monogamy. Other cults, some quite well known, attempt to repress sexuality entirely — another way of breaking the statistically normal imprinting of the fourth circuit.
Robert Anton Wilson (Prometheus Rising)
On the world stage, the Declaration of Peace was completed and signed in 2039 by every nation on the planet except for Sri Lanka. Tensions rose around the world as the Coalition of Nations grew uneasy with the silence of the secretive island. A decision was made to send every available tank, warship, drone and soldier to invade the uncooperative nation. The attack, known as the World Wide War, lasted only two minutes and left the entirety of Sri Lanka in ruin. It was later discovered that Sri Lanka had never been invited to the Declaration of Peace Summit, as their communications had been destroyed weeks prior by a record-breaking hurricane season. After the defeat of the terroristic island, the world rejoiced, entering the Age of Peace.
Marquis Aaron (ROOK)
The C.I.A. had identified individuals in the Taliban leadership who claimed to disagree with Mullah Mohammad Omar’s policy of providing sanctuary to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda because harboring terrorists deprived the Taliban government—formally known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan—of international recognition and aid.
Steve Coll (Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016)
Directorate S seeks to provide a thorough, reliable history of how the C.I.A., I.S.I., and Afghan intelligence agencies influenced the rise of a new war in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, and how that war fostered a revival of Al Qaeda, allied terrorist networks, and, eventually, branches of the Islamic State.
Steve Coll (Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016)