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'The Secret Agent' remains the most brilliant novelistic study of terrorism as viewed from the blood-spattered outside. But 'Under Western Eyes' dares to leap inside - not only into the terrorist mind, but also into the troubled zone that divides West from East, 'the autocracy in mystic vestments.'

I was extended secret service protection during my presidential run in 1984, when I received the most death threats ever made toward a candidate.

The Secret Service is a strange group. They don't really have a leader. It's not set up like a military. Each one is supposed to be able to act like a leader when something comes up.

Terrorists, in ungoverned spaces, disseminate poisonous propaganda and training materials to attract troubled souls around the world to their cause.

Some of the bravest and the best men of all the world, certainly in law enforcement, have made their contributions while they were undercover.

I know people like to read about serial killers and spies, but most of us will never encounter these things. Sadly, most of the threats we encounter are at home.

Secret ops by secret forces have a nasty tendency to produce unintended, unforeseen, and completely disastrous consequences. New Yorkers will remember well the end result of clandestine U.S. support for Islamic militants against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s: 9/11.

I thought the Secret Service would protect me from the press, but they were at my house to protect me from assassins with guns, not with assassins with pencils.

The vast literature concerning whistleblowers shows that, far from weird extremists, they are really quite ordinary people: male and female, young and old, junior and senior, no more nerdy or obsessive than most hard workers.

Most people who make threats don't follow through. The most dangerous people are often those who never make threats. But 'most' and 'often' aren't what you are looking for when you're dealing with a scary person. You want to 'know.' And there is no knowing.