Word: ferret
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...commanders warned Colonel Vo Van Canh, the commander of the 23rd division, that they would give him air and artillery support, but that he would have to handle the ground fighting himself. Under personal pressure from President Nguyen Van Thieu to seize the initiative, Canh ordered the 23rd to ferret out the North Vietnamese before they could mount an attack. In a series of daily skirmishes, Colonel Canh's troopers swept the wooded ridge lines of the Central Highlands, preventing the enemy from concerted attack. The enemy's closest penetration in force fell a half-mile short...
...does not require massive forces, large-scale bombing or continual pursuit of the enemy. He contends that such tactics play into the hands of guerrillas by increasing casualties and enlarging the scope of the combat. Thompson emphasizes localized "police" actions to protect the population against guerrilla attacks and to ferret out subversives. That proved easier in Malaya, where the terrorists were often ethnically different from the local population, than in Viet Nam, where friend and foe may be indistinguishable. The Malaya guerrillas also had no handy sanctuaries across nearby borders...
...although I had escaped the trees, I wasn't out of the woods. There was still my operatic ignorance to contend with. So, making every effort to summon up my best Jacksonianly Democratic facade, I settled back, confident that the very commonness of my heart would ferret out a couple of passable truths or, at very least, an exploitable metaphor...
...intelligence learned of the mishap through ELINT (for electronic intelligence). Deployed on the ground, aboard reconnaissance aircraft, or inside ferret-type electronic satellites, ELINT's sensors can easily detect large explosions, even at great distances, from the electromagnetic disturbances that they cause in the atmosphere. If added proof of the Soviet troubles is needed, the Russians themselves have indirectly provided it. The chief of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Mstislav Keldysh, last month unexpectedly announced that the Russian effort to land men on the moon had been indefinitely delayed...
...more dazzling, personal, unorthodox, paradoxic your assumptions (paradoxes are not equivocations) the more interesting an essay is likely to be. (If you have a chance to confer with the assistant in advance, of course-and we like to be called "assistants," not "graders" -you may be able to ferret out one or two cosmic assumptions of his own: seeing them in your blue book, he can only applaud your uncommon perception. For example, while most graders are politically unconcerned, not all are agnostic. This is an older generation, recall. Some may be tired of seeing St. Augustine flattened...