“When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won't tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, 'Well, you know: It's secret.'”

American intellectual, philosopher and linguist

Noam Chomsky is an American intellectual, philosopher, linguist, political activist, and social critic. He is widely known for his work in modern linguistics, and is sometimes called the father of that field. He has also played a major role in analytic philosophy and is regarded as one of the founders of cognitive science. Chomsky has held academic posts at the University of Arizona and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is institute professor emeritus. His work spans language, philosophy, politics, and social criticism, and his writing often reflects those wide-ranging interests.