Quotes by Ronald Kessler

“Over the years, maybe one person has been uncovered by the FBI, and that was really a matter of luck, ... The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror.”

“The really hard thing is how do you get the information in the first place? How do you get someone to rat on someone like bin Laden? That is so difficult and that requires years and patience and money, ... Inside the CIA.”

“Bushs aides made the point that not everyone reads the Washington Post and the New York Times. Rather, the Bush people were like antimatter: rather than having the normal inclination to feed their egos by garnering attention, they had the opposite orientation and were nearly impervious to press criticism.”

“We plan to stay with this group over the next two years so that we can keep our fingers on the psychological pulse of this population.”

“Usually, its hard to get organized before the fact, but were hoping that this is the beginning of a cumulative process that will enable us to learn as much as we can about disasters.”

“This isnt like your mother dying, where you grieve for three months and then move on. These people have had their entire world shifted beneath them.”

“This initiative is a unique opportunity to help policy makers monitor the unmet needs of people whose lives were, and may continue to be, severely impacted by this unprecedented disaster. Following 9/11, policy makers have wanted to have just this kind of assessment tool to guide policy. This initiative is the result of much discussion and modeling on how to reach survivors of disasters, and is the first attempt to provide actionable information through an advisory group model.”

“Its a great loss for Harvard and a great gain for Yale. I came to Harvard in part because of him. Hes a wonderful guy and a great scientist.”

With the selection of Acting Secret Service Director Joseph P. Clancy as the director, President Obama has guaranteed that the agency will continue to lurch from one shocking security failure to another.

Whatever they do, criminals and non-criminals act in particular ways. Some writers, for instance, use computers, others pen and paper. Some write in the morning, some at night. Each writer has a distinct style, with variations in grammar, sentence structure, and voice.

The 9/11 commission recommended the appointment of a national intelligence director with budgetary authority to better coordinate the work of the intelligence community and resolve differences.

Because of the terrorist threat, the FBI and CIA have become as important as the military in preserving our freedom. Yet while thanking our military is standard practice in American life, no one thinks of thanking the FBI, the CIA, or the rest of the intelligence community for keeping us safe since 9/11.

While most Americans know about the Boston Tea Party, few are aware of the Liberty Tree and how important it was to fanning the flames of rebellion that led to the revolution in 1775 and the Declaration of Independence.

The truth is that no internal reviews or congressional hearings will change the Secret Services broken management culture. It needs better leadership.