Word: covert
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...President Clinton signed a top-secret order, approved by the congressional intelligence committees, that authorized the CIA to begin covert operations to break up bin Laden's terror network. The agency's counterterrorism center--200 operatives housed in a windowless warren of cubicles in the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters--had set up a special bin Laden task force. Analysts were assigned to read every word the Saudi had spoken or written. Computers with sophisticated "link analysis" programs were busy printing out diagrams of bin Laden's loose-knit network, which included thousands of Muslim fighters with varying degrees...
...then it is also a responsibility. I think most of us feel that responsibility even now. Phillips Brooks House is easily the largest organization on campus, with about one fifth of the student body participating in its programs. And the number of students who opt to defy Harvard's covert and not-so covert attempts to point all of us toward careers in consulting and investment banking in favor of jobs "with a conscience" is fast rising...
...reach it. Republicans grew fed up with Clinton's halfhearted, clandestine efforts, and key Democrats demanded direct talk about encouraging democratic change, while the White House and the CIA, spooked by past failures, stalled over new ideas. Around June, the White House finally delivered a top-secret covert-action memo to Congress, but it smelled like a rehash of tired, old schemes, and the Senate Intelligence Committee bounced it. Instead, it backed the $97 million Iraq Liberation Act, an ambitious bill designed to bring support for anti-Saddam dissidents out of the closet and funnel money and guns to them...
...devise a plan for uniting the disparate dissidents into a credible political force, "raising their profile" under the guidance of a senior official. (Before Sunday, no one was willing to take the assignment.) In coming months, the CIA will return to the drawing board to dream up another covert-action plan involving clandestine funds, recruitment among disgruntled military officers and stepped-up propaganda. But White House officials concede that "there's no magic pill there. You just don't run in and throw some secret things at Saddam...
Clinton's latest moves at least have the virtue of making the U.S. appear busy: pressing aggressive inspections, organizing a political opposition, plotting covert action, "preparing the battlefield" for insurrection. But the results are all too likely to prove insignificant when it turns out you can't cheaply subcontract a coup or ever track down 100% of Saddam's terror arsenal...