FOREIGN EXCHANGE, a new novel by Nick Hahn, due 2014

  PREFACE

Islamic extremists, if nothing else, are patient. They understand western culture and our complacency over time. Complacency is their ally and our achilles heel. There will be more attacks in the US, they will be massive and destructive, exposing an open artery in our defenses created by politicizing homeland security policy and procedures.  Western powers, including and most aggressively the United States, have increased global surveillance at the cost of their international standing. Phone taping and on-line surveillance have become technology art forms. There are no longer  “secure communications”.  Sophisticated systems worldwide, those of friends and foes alike, are being compromised in an ever widening arc of US National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping.  The moral conundrum of the end justifying the means is clarified in an American President’s oath of office, “…..defend without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion….”