Sir,

I have read and then carefully re-read you with marked interest.

I cannot but confess that all this you and Mr. Max Boot say about this idea of creating a new structure based upon the OSS model sets me wondering whether suited units and services do not exist already. If ever, then Mr. Max Boot and you certainly mark a point, nonetheless, when you complain that existing structures tasked to fight terrorism are challenged by terrorists organizations on the ground of adaptability to quick changes and evolutions.

I assume they are, possibly.

Then, while trying to imagine what might be an “OSS II” in the XXIth century I remembered that someone has previously had a very similar idea in 2003; or earlier according to all likelihood. I name the popular novelist Tom Clancy, who made this idea the central theme of a novel he titled The Teeth of the Dragon. The methodology and policy of this fictional special operations service the author christens “The Campus” favors hasty ways of doing things, if I may say so.

Well, all this did seem unlikely to me at first glance; until I seriously wondered whether it shouldn’t suit the exceptional circumstances since they are as exceptional as they were in 1942, indeed.

Now, media and public opinion during WWII bore little resemblance with what they are today. That’s why we might reasonably hazard the guess that were the existence of such a service be brought to public knowledge at some point, then it would make a bit of a fuss.

That’s probably why, in The Teeth of the Dragon, Tom Clancy made The Campus an "off the books" intelligence agency freed from the shackles of Congressional oversight.

Please, take this comment as a mere remark in passing.

Best regards.