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Title: Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 by Bill Gertz ISBN: 0895261480 Publisher: Regnery Publishing Pub. Date: 25 August, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.44
Rating: 5
Summary: Head Are Going to Roll!
Comment: Bill Gertz shows again why even his adversaries rate him as America's premier intelligence reporter today. Gertz's expose of the intelligence failures that led up to 9-11 is going to shock the nation and cause some much needed soul searching in our intelligence community.
The book is written in terse, fact-based prose that often reads like a suspense thriller. Yet it's based on Gertz's solid news reporting experience on the spy and defense beat with the Washington Times, earning him a reputation as the man with the best top-secret leaker's rolodex in Washington.
Gertz is also a patriot. He takes names, kicks ..., and points the finger squarely at our intelligence agencies' politically correct, risk-averse bureaucatic culture for failing to provide the "human intelligence" necessary to prevent terror attacks. This is a book that delivers. If Gertz's advice is taken, some heads are going to roll, notably that of Clinton holdover George Tenet at CIA. America and the world will probably be a safer place as a result, and our spy networks will get a long overdue new set of teeth.
Rating: 5
Summary: Interesting, Instantly Engrossing, and Well Researched
Comment: If you need a Washington journalist with access to CIA and intelligence officials and documents, you need Bill Gertz. He has the access and the knowledge, and the trust of the intelligence community.
The book reads a lot like a Tom Clancy novel, transporting the reader instantly to the rocky hills of Afghanistan, and to the dusty cities of the Middle East, and then back to the paper covered desks of CIA intelligence analysts, and so forth. It names names, and tells stories of all intelligence agencies and intelligence gathering communities. Not just the CIA and the FBI, but the top secret NSA and other bureaus. It talks about the long term degradation of the CIA in particular, intensified by the political machinations of the Clinton administration.
You find out that thanks to Clinton, the last and best of CIA intelligence agents (that's spies) in Iraq, Robert Baer, was yanked back to the US and his cover shattered because it was brought to Clinton's attention that the NSA intercepted a memo within Iran saying they suspected that America was trying to assassinate Saddam Hussein, and they would rather stop Baer in his tracks than trust the CIA. Of course, Baer was simply staying alive and abreast of events in Iraq, doing a job no one else can do right now, nor will anyone be able to do it.
That is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg.
Perhaps we would be able to avoid war in Iraq if our espionage forces were supported these past 12 years. But we have zero "HUMINT" in Iraq and many other places we need it.
When you are done with this book, you'll be sad to know that George W. Bush, despite his sincere efforts in the war on terror, has not fired Clinton appointee George Tenet, figurehead of the CIA and one of its chief problems, and that no one in the CIA has been held accountable for the gross negligence of September 11th, nevermind Coleen Rowley's attempts to bring the issue to light to the tonedeaf liberal media. However, perhaps reform can be accomplished by Tom Ridge, the new Homeland Security Cabinet officer. Perhaps then, as vigilance has been returned to those affected by 9/11, vigilance and an effective organization will be returned to America's FBI, CIA, INS, and NSA.
Rating: 2
Summary: if the only paper you read is the Washington Times . . .
Comment: This is not a very good book. It has some interesting details, almost all from interviews, that some people might find worthwhile. But what Gertz is really trying to do is to serve up red meat for Clinton-haters, and he doesn't even deliver on this. If the only paper you read is the Washington Times and the only radio you listen to is Rush Limbaugh, then you'll find a welcome home in Gertz's angry book; but if you're seriously looking for answers to US intelligence failures, Gertz's relentless attacks on Frank Church, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Janet Reno, and John Deutsch will quickly become just plain contentious and unsatisfying, and you'll discover that Gertz has little else to offer but the kind of ideological firebombs you can find everyday on Rush Limbaugh or Fox News.
Gertz's main argument is that US intelligence agencies should have anticipated 9/11, but they didn't because they are cowering bureaucracies interested only in self-preservation, political correctness, and kowtowing to the 'Clinton Agenda'. While self-preservation is of course a valid (and timeless) accusation to lay on these agencies, Gertz relies too much on the latter two issues--PC & Clinton--to make his arguments, and there's just not nearly enough evidence to support this. A partisan-fueled argument could just as easily be laid upon the Bush administration, which hardly paid attention to terrorism until 9/11, as it was too busy worrying about missile defense systems and isolating China. For example, Gertz angrily points to Clinton & Deutsch-led affirmative action in intelligence agencies as a cause of its 'Breakdown', but offers no proof that the incompetence of people so appointed ever played any kind of role in intelligence failures. Gertz's recommendations for reforming US intelligence agencies are fairly sensible, but also entirely commonplace. You certainly don't need to spend [money] to find out what this book has to offer.
Unsurprisingly, Gertz doesn't address the damage that intelligence leaks published in his own Washington Times has done to the 'Breakdown' of US intelligence---Gertz's colleague Martin Sieff published an article on 21 August 1998 that tipped off bin Laden to US surveillance of his satellite telephone. Immediately after the article's publication, bin Laden stopped using this phone, and this has effectively removed him from intelligence observation ever since.
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Title: Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right by Ann H. Coulter ISBN: 1400046610 Publisher: Crown Pub Pub. Date: 25 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism by Sean Hannity ISBN: 0060514558 Publisher: Regan Books Pub. Date: 20 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists Criminals & Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores by Michelle Malkin ISBN: 0895261464 Publisher: Regnery Publishing Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Endangered America's Long-Term National Security by Robert Patterson ISBN: 0895261405 Publisher: Regnery Publishing Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism from Inside the Bush White House by Bill Sammon ISBN: 0895261499 Publisher: Regnery Publishing Pub. Date: 07 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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