On a late November afternoon shortly after the terrorist attacks in New York and the nation's capital, George Tenet, director of the CIA, called a meeting of higher-ups to discuss some frightening news: intelligence reports suggested that some Pakistani scientists were sharing nuclear secrets with al-Qaida. After Tenet ran through the specifics of the briefing, the audience - which included President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice - sat in a silence for a moment. Then Cheney proposed what he called a "different way" of viewing this and other threats.
"If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaida build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response," he said. "It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It's about our response."
This became the Bush administration's de facto doctrine, argues Suskind, and is the inspiration for the title of his new book examining the decision-making process behind the war on terror.
Suskind relies on a variety of inside sources, primarily from the CIA, to construct his insider account. Suskind took a similar approach with The Price of Loyalty, which detailed the inner workings of the administration from the vantage of ousted Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill.
The latest effort is an eminently readable, occasionally insightful book to add to the pile of accounts of Bush and the fight against terrorism. Suskind, who was a longtime reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has an eye for detail and catches a couple of fascinating scoops.
For instance, he dismantles the official storyline on the March 2002 capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan. Though this action was long touted as one of the war's major successes, Zubaydah was not a major terrorist operative, but rather a small, probably mentally ill bit player in al-Qaida. His diary was filled with the musings of a schizophrenic, and Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaida analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality." That view was reinforced by specialists at Langley Air Force Base.
Yet two weeks later, Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah in a major speech as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States."
To Suskind, the incident symbolized the relationship between Bush and Tenet. In the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, many Congressmen wanted to sack Tenet as a political scapegoat. But Bush steadfastly defended Tenet (who was a Clinton appointee) against the onslaught, earning his eternal respect in the process. "George Tenet would do anything his President asked," writes Suskind. "Anything. And George W. Bush knew it."
Though Suskind never explicitly states it, he clearly believes that it was this loyalty that led to "slam-dunk" reassurances on Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" and other spectacular intelligence failures.
On the whole, though, Suskind is sympathetic to the CIA. Despite routinely being attacked for failing to infiltrate al-Qaida, Suskind mentions at least two instances in which inside sources offered valuable information to the CIA.
In one case, a source told the CIA in advance about a planned cyanide attack on the New York subway in 2003. Inexplicably, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's second in command, ended up calling this operation off in advance.
In another, an informant approached the CIA with the location of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the Sept. 11 plot's mastermind. From this tip, American agents and Pakistani security services were able to apprehend one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of filler sandwiched between these anecdotes. But for a fast-paced account of the decisions behind the "War on Terror," readers would do well to tolerate it.
Be the first to comment on this article!