Relentless Pursuit

Read the most by: boys and girls

The DSS and the Manhunt for the Al-Qaeda Terrorists Al-Qaeda's war on America did not start on September 11th, 2001. Just ask the Diplomatic Security Service. It was on February 26, 1993, that the United States was first attacked on its own soil by foreign terrorists. A zealous band of holy warriors determined to punish the U.S for stationing troops in Saudi Arabia packed over a ton of home-made explosives into the back of a rented van and then drove their bomb into the underground garage at the Vista Hotel, beneath the twin towers of the World Trade Center. They hoped to topple one mammoth tower into the other and kill 250,000 people or more. They ended up killing six and wounding over 1,000. A succession of such brazen crimes has revealed complex connections among terrorist groups with an implacable hostility to Western civilization. Outrages such as a huge plot in the Philippines to plant bombs on intercontinental airlines and to assassinate the Pope, the bombing of U.S. embassies, culminating in the African embassy bombings of 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, and the devastating attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, have made it clear that a worldwide network of terrorists led by Osama bin Laden is in a state of total war against the United States. On the front lines combating these terrorists in 150 countries around the world have been the 1200 agents of the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service. A little-known but highly effective branch of the government, it operates in the roughest precincts of the world. After a relentless international search, it was DSS agents in Pakistan who captured Ramzi Yousef. DSS agents have been in the vanguard of the War on Terrorism since before it was declared. In Relentless Pursuit, Samuel M. Katz reviews the escalating series of terrorist attacks on the US of the last decade and more and tells the gripping story of the DSS and its people, protecting us and our representatives here and abroad. Katz's detailed, personal, on-the-ground anecdotes bring home the contexts and linkages of the War on Terrorism that has been fought on our behalf by the DSS since the 1980s. Relentless Pursuit is a stirring tribute to an unsung group of brave Americans.