The Taliban is dead as a movement or a military factor in Afghanistan, the country's president said here Feb. 26....

President Hamid Karzai held a joint news conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after they met in Afghanistan's presidential palace....

"We strongly believe, with evidence, that they are defeated. They're gone," Karzai said, referring to the Taliban....

Rumsfeld echoed Karzai's assessment of the Taliban. "I've not seen any indication that the Taliban pose a military threat to Afghanistan," he said.

"We don't see a resurgence of the Taliban," Karzai said. "The Taliban as a movement does not exist anymore...."

--Armed Forces Press Service, 2/27/04

"I will say emphatically that there is no Mafia in this country and no national crime syndicate. Why don't those who talk about the Mafia name its leader or leaders? There has been no Mafia in this country for at least forty years. Now about a national crime syndicate: I say there is no such thing, and I say it not simply as a personal judgment but on the basis of talks with other enforcement officials."

--U.E. Baughman, chief of the U.S. Secret Service, quoted in The Washington Post, 9/2/61