Kai Bird

“Khalid al-Hassan, the PLO’s virtual foreign minister at the time, later explained to the British journalist Alan Hart, “I was opposed to the playing of the terror card. But I have to tell you something else. Those of our Fatah colleagues who did turn to terror were not mindless criminals. They were fiercely dedicated nationalists who were doing their duty as they saw it. I have to say they were wrong, and did so at the time, but I have also to understand them. In their view, and in this they were right, the world was saying to us Palestinians, ‘We don’t give a damn about you, and we won’t care at least until you are a threat to our interests.’ In reply those in Fatah who turned to terror were saying, ‘Okay, world. We’ll play the game by your rules. We’ll make you care!’ ”
― Kai Bird, The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames

“As the sociologist Daniel Bell later observed, Oppenheimer’s ordeal signified that the postwar “messianic role of the scientists” was now at an end.”
― Kai Bird, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer