Operations
Since its inception, HRT members have been involved in many of the FBI's most high-profile cases, executing numerous operations involving domestic militant groups, terrorists, and violent criminals. The first test of the team's capabilities came in the summer of 1984, when the team deployed to Los Angeles as part of the security buildup prior to the 1984 Summer Olympic Games. Some cases have brought the HRT a lot of attention. The HRT came under increased public and Congressional scrutiny, along with federal law enforcement in general, due to what some saw as heavy-handed tactics used at Waco and Ruby Ridge.
On the other hand, the HRT has been involved in over 200 successful missions, both in the US and abroad. Many of these low-key operations have received little or no attention from the world press. Some higher-profile cases include the Waco Siege, Ruby Ridge, the capture of the suspected masterminds of the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Africa, and the hostage rescue operations of prison guards at Talladega, Alabama, and St. Martinville, Louisiana. All of these incidents led to changes in how and when the HRT is used by the FBI.
Read more about this topic: Hostage Rescue Team
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)