“Jabir listened but was not convinced.  “Iraq and Iran haven’t gotten along for many centuries. Why should we now?”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“Yes, I never expected to see you!”
― Karl Braungart, Counter Identity

“I’ll be frank, Jerry. Aaron Morris telephoned here a week ago and wanted to know your whereabouts. I told him you were on leave. He said your wife called him about your whereabouts.”
― Karl Braungart, Counter Identity

“Sure as hell doesn’t seem that Williams’ study and findings were general. This man talked from fact. I bet this is the scientist and study they want.”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“And we are not pursuing military information on this trip. At least not about the Russian mafia exchanging Russian-Ukrainian tanks and electronics for their benefit in Syria.”
― Karl Braungart, Lost Identity

“Your long-term association with military intelligence is important. Let’s talk about what you might notice in them. Since this happened, one or two may have changed behavioral characteristics. Are there any with peculiarities different from when they started?”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“Remmich’s subconscious mind is controlled by us. He will get what we want.”
― Karl Braungart, Counter Identity

“Rolf Ekeus came round to my apartment one day and showed me the name of the Iraqi diplomat who had visited the little West African country of Niger: a statelet famous only for its production of yellowcake uranium. The name was Wissam Zahawi. He was the brother of my louche gay part-Kurdish friend, the by-now late Mazen. He was also, or had been at the time of his trip to Niger, Saddam Hussein's ambassador to the Vatican. I expressed incomprehension. What was an envoy to the Holy See doing in Niger? Obviously he was not taking a vacation. Rolf then explained two things to me. The first was that Wissam Zahawi had, when Rolf was at the United Nations, been one of Saddam Hussein's chief envoys for discussions on nuclear matters (this at a time when the Iraqis had functioning reactors). The second was that, during the period of sanctions that followed the Kuwait war, no Western European country had full diplomatic relations with Baghdad. TheVatican was the sole exception, so it was sent a very senior Iraqi envoy to act as a listening post. And this man, a specialist in nuclear matters, had made a discreet side trip to Niger. This was to suggest exactly what most right-thinking people were convinced was not the case: namely that British intelligence was on to something when it said that Saddam had not ceased seeking nuclear materials in Africa.

I published a few columns on this, drawing at one point an angry email from Ambassador Zahawi that very satisfyingly blustered and bluffed on what he'd really been up to. I also received—this is what sometimes makes journalism worthwhile—a letter from a BBC correspondent named Gordon Correa who had been writing a book about A.Q. Khan. This was the Pakistani proprietor of the nuclear black market that had supplied fissile material to Libya, North Korea, very probably to Syria, and was open for business with any member of the 'rogue states' club. (Saddam's people, we already knew for sure, had been meeting North Korean missile salesmen in Damascus until just before the invasion, when Kim Jong Il's mercenary bargainers took fright and went home.) It turned out, said the highly interested Mr. Correa, that his man Khan had also been in Niger, and at about the same time that Zahawi had. The likelihood of the senior Iraqi diplomat in Europe and the senior Pakistani nuclear black-marketeer both choosing an off-season holiday in chic little uranium-rich Niger… well, you have to admit that it makes an affecting picture. But you must be ready to credit something as ridiculous as that if your touching belief is that Saddam Hussein was already 'contained,' and that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair were acting on panic reports, fabricated in turn by self-interested provocateurs.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“...do not spare any reasonable expense to come at early and true information; always recollecting, and bearing in mind, that vague and uncertain accounts of things [are]... more disturbing and dangerous than receiving none at all.”
― George Washington

“When Green Beret Lieutenant James N. Rowe was captured in 1963 in Vietnam, his life became more than a matter of staying alive. In a Vietcong POW camp, Rowe endured beriberi, dysentery, and tropical fungus diseases. He suffered grueling psychological and physical torment. He experienced the loneliness and frustration of watching his friends die. And he struggled every day to maintain faith in himself as a soldier and in his country as it appeared to be turning against him. His survival is testimony to the disciplined human spirit.

He was gunned down in Manila in 1989”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Salty & Saucy Maine",

“This book is the result of the declassification of CSE. I am proud and privileged to make public the remarkable story of these hitherto hidden heroes and their veiled world of secret service to our nation. Your appreciation and thanks are worth more than all the medals and promotions we in CSE received. Never forget them. They didn’t just serve, their deeds made them heroes.”
― Don Wilson, Their Secret Lives

“and me? Well. you know. my father happens to be a mentally handicapped homosexual who ran away from Russia in 98. But nothing happens in God's world by mistake. History teaches us, the United States does not go to war with countries that have any weapons of mass destruction. So my job here, while I am here, is to start fucking American women in the Ass, when the American military (bunch of cowards) decides to invade some little Arab or south american country. Just to make these dumb shits feel some pain, you know? That's what we've been doing the past 10 years. That's my job. I want to go home, Russia. But these retarded Americans just can't figure it out. so we keep fucking them in the ass. As much as possible. until they stop fucking up little countries that are just trying to get their shit together. Fuck off, America. this Freedom shit isn't working out, you know? it's not working out. I didn't even get any pussy in college.”
― Dmitry Dyatlov

“Information warfare consists of everything a military force does to accurately sense and make sense of its interactions with its environment and enemy forces, preserve its ability to do so, and prevent the enemy from doing the same.”
― B.A. Friedman, On Operations: Operational Art and Military Disciplines

“Intelligence is not just information--it is information that has been acquired, processed, and analyzed based on its relevance for the commander, the staff, or the mission.”
― B.A. Friedman, On Operations: Operational Art and Military Disciplines