Cofer Black

“The plan we developed to deal with al Qaeda depended on developing sources of human and technical intelligence that could give us insights into his plans at the tactical level. This is easy to say but hard to accomplish.”

“The only way to address terrorism is to deal with the issues that create terrorism, to resolve them where possible, and where that's not possible to ensure that there is an alternative to violence.”

“I was an intelligence officer, not a policy-maker.”

“We worked to develop our own operations to advance U.S. counterterrorism objectives by penetrating terrorist safe havens and collecting intelligence that would inform policy and enable our own operations.”

“We operate under the law. Covert action authorities are communicated in a memorandum of notification.”

“Al Qaeda is not the organization now that it was before. It is under stress organizationally. Its leadership spends more time trying to figure out how to keep from getting caught than they do trying to launch operations.”

“No matter how many plots we uncover and disrupt, no matter how many terrorist organizations we degrade or destroy, another individual or group will rise to take their place.”

“Osama bin Laden's own words stated he has a war against the United States. He declared that American civilians should be considered as combatants.”

“We have to be mindful that there is the certainty that terrorists will attempt to launch multiple attacks against their enemy, which is us and our allies.”

“The Pakistani government under Musharraf is a strong and key player in the global war on terrorism, and their contribution has been second to none.”

“As long as there are people who are not happy with their lot in life, as long as the United States is perceived to somehow be the cause of this unhappiness, there will be terrorism.”