Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016 QUOTES

1 " In the Oval Office, President Bush told Khalilzad, “Musharraf denies all of what you are saying.” “Didn’t they deny, Mr. President, for years that they had a nuclear program?” 8 Bush said he would call Musharraf and arrange for the ambassador to meet with him, to discuss the accusations directly. Khalilzad flew to Islamabad. Beforehand, he sent Musharraf a gift, a crate of Afghan pomegranates. When they sat down, Musharraf thanked him, but added that he hated pomegranates—too many seeds. They talked extensively about Musharraf’s usual complaints about the Afghan government—too many Panjshiris in key security positions, too many Indian spies under diplomatic cover in Kabul and elsewhere. Khalilzad proposed a joint intelligence investigation between the United States and Pakistan to document any covert Indian activity in Afghanistan. “There are no Taliban here,” Musharraf said blankly. 9 "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

2 " One view at the highest levels of the U.S. embassy in Kabul by summer’s end was that Karzai “was a very clever madman—just because he was insane doesn’t mean he was stupid. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

3 " Come on, Wendy, Al Qaeda could not have done this,” Musharraf said. “They’re in caves. They don’t have the technology to do something like this.” “General, frankly, I disagree. They did this with box cutters.” 8 "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

4 " I believed in the Taliban when they first appeared,” Karzai later conceded. “I gave them fifty thousand dollars to help them out, and then handed them a cache of weapons I had hidden near Kandahar. . . . They were good people initially, but the tragedy was that very soon after they were taken over by the I.S.I. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

5 " The U.S.-led coalition dropped about twelve thousand bombs on Afghanistan that autumn, about 40 percent of them “dumb,” or unguided, according to an analysis by Carl Conetta of the Center for International Policy. Hank Crumpton at the Counterterrorist Center estimated that the campaign killed “at least ten thousand” foreign and Taliban fighters, “perhaps double or triple that number.” By the conservative estimate of Boston University political scientist Neta Crawford, between 1,500 and 2,375 Afghan civilians also died. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

6 " Black Label–sipping Pakistani generals with London flats and daughters on Ivy League campuses had been managing jihadi guerrilla campaigns against India and in Afghanistan for two decades. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

7 " Powell’s superiors at State had instructed her before she departed for Islamabad not to get into cabling wars with the U.S. embassies in Kabul and India over I.S.I.’ s conduct or other sources of controversy about Pakistan. But Khalilzad raised the temperature. In one cable, Powell felt that he had attempted to question her “loyalty and patriotism” simply because she had tried to describe Pakistan’s position of relative weakness in relation to the Taliban and the fact that the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan “has never ever been controlled. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

8 " The military-industrial complex was one of Pakistan’s binding forces, alongside Islam, national pride, suspicion of India and America, and cricket. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

9 " By the spring of 2004 it was evident that the Iraq war’s casus belli had been grounded in false intelligence reporting about Saddam Hussein’s possession of biological and nuclear weapons. Press leaks from the White House fingered George Tenet’s C.I.A. for this embarrassment "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

10 " there is an old adage: If the guerillas do not lose, they ultimately win. . . . "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

11 " Phrases like “hearts and minds” first arose in public discourse in the 1890s. The French called the strategy “peaceful penetration. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

12 " Schroen’s men had carried in $ 10 million in boxed cash. They handed out bundles like candy on Halloween. Schroen had recruited onto his team Chris Wood, the Dari-speaking case officer who had worked the Taliban account out of Islamabad. Wood ran the day-to-day intelligence reporting at the joint cell, collecting and synthesizing field radio reports about Taliban and Al Qaeda positions and movements. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

13 " 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

14 " Doug Lute noted to an interagency meeting that the Taliban appeared to be succeeding with very lean operating funds: “We spend $ 60 billion a year,” Lute remarked. “They need $ 60 million a year.” 7 "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

15 " Military history is rife with examples of generals and presidents who squander strategic advantage by failing to press a battlefield triumph to its conclusion. Here was the same story again, involving not only complacency but also inexplicable strategic judgment, fractured decision making, and confusion. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

16 " The gross domestic product of the United States in 2001 was about $10.6 trillion. The budget of the federal government was about $1.8 trillion. In fiscal 2001, the government enjoyed a $128 billion operating surplus. Yet counterterrorism teams at the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. working on Al Qaeda and allied groups received an infinitesimal fraction of the country’s defense and intelligence budget of roughly $300 billion, the great majority of which went to the Pentagon, to support conventional and missile forces. Bush’s national security deputies did not hold a meeting dedicated to plans to thwart Al Qaeda until September 4, 2001, almost nine months after President Bush took the oath of office. The September 11 conspiracy succeeded in part because the democratically elected government of the United States, including the Congress, did not regard Al Qaeda as a priority. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

17 " Musharraf allowed the C.I.A. to operate drones armed with Hellfires in designated sections of the tribal areas. The C.I.A. agreed to deny that Musharraf had authorized any such thing. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

18 " the Bagram conference, the idea was that Saleh and Kayani would exchange details about Al Qaeda and its allies. Detainees in N.D.S. custody had reported taking instructions in Mansehra, a mountain valley town in western Pakistan. Some even suggested Bin Laden might be hiding there. Saleh briefed Kayani on his intelligence. “Which house?” the Pakistani spy chief asked. “You’ll have to do the last one hundred yards yourself,” Saleh answered. “This is unbelievable,” Kayani said, meaning the N.D.S. reporting was not credible. Saleh said he would offer access to his source if Kayani agreed to work with the C.I.A. on the matter. “Are you telling me you are spying in my country?” “Yes. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

19 " C.I.A. had “a culture of insularity.” The attitude they projected was “Nobody should tell us what to do. We got it. We are special "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

20 " Integrating the military and diplomatic track is essential for success. . . . Nixon and Kissinger encountered this problem, and were defeated by it; when they began negotiating with Hanoi in 1969 there were 550,000 American troops in Vietnam, but under domestic pressure, Nixon unilaterally drew down to about 135,000 while Kissinger negotiated for almost five years. By the time they cut the final deal in later 1973, the two men were like the losers in a strip poker game, naked. They had no chips—or clothes—left with which to bargain; the result was a communist takeover of our South Vietnamese ally less than two years later. Roughly the same thing happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan, without even the negotiating. "

― Steve Coll , Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016