Top Highlights

• The mandate of the Special Operations Branch was to “effect physical subversion of the enemy,” in three distinct phases: infiltrate, prepare the battlefield, and conduct sabotage and subversion.
• Men born of an “almost inhuman ability” to absorb any stressful situation and carry on into battle without letting mental concerns or emotions get in the way. Operators needed to be extremely competitive, self-reliant, stress-resistant, and stoic to the point of arrogant.
• Lodge-Philbin Act,
• Fedayeen-e Islam modeled their activities after history’s original assassins, the Hashashin, an eleventh-century strike force of Shiite fundamentalist warriors led by the enigmatic holy man Hassan-i Sabbah, from whom the word “assassin” derives.
• General Giap wrote a handbook on guerrilla warfare, People’s War, People’s Army, which was aggressively studied within the CIA.