The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration

-- Months before the latest Iraq war, the CIA recruited 30 Iraqi-Americans to visit their families and approach members of their families involved in that country's nuclear or WMD program. Every one of the thirty returned to America and reported the same message to their CIA contacts - the WMD programs had been dead for a decade. Their message was promptly ignored.

-- George Tenet was so incessantly busy cultivating his "good old boy" relationship with George Bush, he single-handedly allowed Donald Rumsfeld to militarize the American intelligence system and place it under Department of Defense control.

-- The CIA through its Operation Merlin apparently handed critical nuclear weapons design blueprints to Iraq and likely enhanced Iraq's ability to construct a nuclear WMD.

These are just a few of the inside stories James Risen tells in his stunning new book, STATE OF WAR. Risen, a long-time reporter for the New York Times, details the history of the CIA and American intelligence operations under the Bush II Administration, and the story is ugly enough to suggest that the phrase "American intelligence" has become an oxymoron. Risen himself compares the CIA's status by 2004 as "the government's equivalent of Enron." According to Mr. Risen, the CIA has been marginalized, slavishly devoted to technology-based spying to the detriment of first-hand, "feet on the ground" operations, increasingly flying blind in the countries where they are most needed, and politicized into ineffectuality, perhaps beyond repair,

Risen explores a wide range of the CIA operations. He begins with the problematic issue of interrogation (and systematic abuse) of terrorist suspects, focusing heavily on the case of Abu Zubaydah, the first high-ranking Al Qaeda leader captured after 9/11. The next chapter discusses "The Program," the NSA's program of domestic, warrantless spying on Americans authorized by George Bush (and revealed in the Times by Risen's reporting). This is followed by chapters on how the Bush Administration tainted and otherwise skewed intelligence information in the run-up to its long-planned war against Saddam Hussein, the national embarrassment of the search for Iraqi WMD, the repeated misreporting of the nature and strength of the Iraqi insurgency and the Administration's refusal to hear the truth from its own field personnel, the utter deterioration of post-invasion Afghanistan into the world's leading narcotics producer, the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, the Bush Administration's uncomfortably close relation to the Saudis, including the bin Laden family, and the U.S. lack of intelligence information regarding Iran and its nuclear weapons program.

According to Risen, senior CIA and DOD personnel have effectively been browbeaten into silence, unwilling to report uncomfortable truths for fear of demotion or loss of their jobs. Risen's view is that the Bush Administration is controlled by a handful of people (Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) who decide policy, look for (or force) the intelligence to match their plans, and ruthlessly sweep aside (or render impotent) anyone who disagrees (witness Colin Powell and Condi Rice, among others). Reading this book, one can only come to the conclusion that the recent Newsweek Magazine cover drawing was correct: George Bush does indeed live in a bubble, a clueless but happy camper.

To his credit, Risen supplies a wealth of detail to support his contentions. The flip side of this detail is that his writing can occasionally turn dense, a slog of names and places and circumstances as complicated as intelligence gathering itself can be. Furthermore, since the author rarely mentions his sources by name, his arguments sometimes feel more like speculations than facts, leaving the reader to wonder where each story falls on the "hard truth scale." Still and all, STATE OF WAR is a stunning and eye-opening look into the sorry state of American intelligence and this Administration's unprecedented manipulation of that system for its own ends. If just half of this book is true, it is more than enough reason to be worried.

Risen gives a very detailed look into the Bush White House and the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. What he shows is infighting and a shocking lack of competence within the various departments. The right hand never seems to know or care what the left hand is doing. It seems that at a time when our country needs leadership, we have to settle for the Keystone Kops. Tenet's incompetence, Rumsfeld's ego, Cheney's empire-lust and Condi's weakness all have conspired to undermine the national security. The most frightening conclusion to be made is that Bush is completely irrelevant in all this. He seems to be a fool motivated by his own narrow ideological and emotional impulses, and the perfect pawn for neocons hell bent on world domination. We are in deep trouble.

From a certain distance, this book is hilarious - the military-intelligence-statecraft conglomerate in and around D.C. seems to be the original gang that couldn't (or wouldn't) shoot straight. From the perspective of Americans who care about their country, the integrity of its government and their own future, it is sorrowful; deeply frightening and shaming. Also mystifying - why on earth would you do something so destructive unless that was your aim? We have a lot of enemies, in surprising places.

-- Months before the latest Iraq war, the CIA recruited 30 Iraqi-Americans to visit their families and approach members of their families involved in that country's nuclear or WMD program. Every one of the thirty returned to America and reported the same message to their CIA contacts - the WMD programs had been dead for a decade. Their message was promptly ignored.

-- George Tenet was so incessantly busy cultivating his "good old boy" relationship with George Bush, he single-handedly allowed Donald Rumsfeld to militarize the American intelligence system and place it under Department of Defense control.

-- The CIA through its Operation Merlin apparently handed critical nuclear weapons design blueprints to Iraq and likely enhanced Iraq's ability to construct a nuclear WMD.

These are just a few of the inside stories James Risen tells in his stunning new book, STATE OF WAR. Risen, a long-time reporter for the New York Times, details the history of the CIA and American intelligence operations under the Bush II Administration, and the story is ugly enough to suggest that the phrase "American intelligence" has become an oxymoron. Risen himself compares the CIA's status by 2004 as "the government's equivalent of Enron." According to Mr. Risen, the CIA has been marginalized, slavishly devoted to technology-based spying to the detriment of first-hand, "feet on the ground" operations, increasingly flying blind in the countries where they are most needed, and politicized into ineffectuality, perhaps beyond repair,

Risen explores a wide range of the CIA operations. He begins with the problematic issue of interrogation (and systematic abuse) of terrorist suspects, focusing heavily on the case of Abu Zubaydah, the first high-ranking Al Qaeda leader captured after 9/11. The next chapter discusses "The Program," the NSA's program of domestic, warrantless spying on Americans authorized by George Bush (and revealed in the Times by Risen's reporting). This is followed by chapters on how the Bush Administration tainted and otherwise skewed intelligence information in the run-up to its long-planned war against Saddam Hussein, the national embarrassment of the search for Iraqi WMD, the repeated misreporting of the nature and strength of the Iraqi insurgency and the Administration's refusal to hear the truth from its own field personnel, the utter deterioration of post-invasion Afghanistan into the world's leading narcotics producer, the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, the Bush Administration's uncomfortably close relation to the Saudis, including the bin Laden family, and the U.S. lack of intelligence information regarding Iran and its nuclear weapons program.

According to Risen, senior CIA and DOD personnel have effectively been browbeaten into silence, unwilling to report uncomfortable truths for fear of demotion or loss of their jobs. Risen's view is that the Bush Administration is controlled by a handful of people (Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) who decide policy, look for (or force) the intelligence to match their plans, and ruthlessly sweep aside (or render impotent) anyone who disagrees (witness Colin Powell and Condi Rice, among others). Reading this book, one can only come to the conclusion that the recent Newsweek Magazine cover drawing was correct: George Bush does indeed live in a bubble, a clueless but happy camper.

To his credit, Risen supplies a wealth of detail to support his contentions. The flip side of this detail is that his writing can occasionally turn dense, a slog of names and places and circumstances as complicated as intelligence gathering itself can be. Furthermore, since the author rarely mentions his sources by name, his arguments sometimes feel more like speculations than facts, leaving the reader to wonder where each story falls on the "hard truth scale." Still and all, STATE OF WAR is a stunning and eye-opening look into the sorry state of American intelligence and this Administration's unprecedented manipulation of that system for its own ends. If just half of this book is true, it is more than enough reason to be worried.

One of the few authoritative books on pre-Iraq war intelligence, Risen interviewed CIA agents and sources where possible. One of the surprises for Americans is that a group of Iraqi-Americans braved incarceration in Iraq to get information on WMD and the state of the Iraqi nuclear program BEFORE the war was launched. The courage and patriotism of these people could have saved many lives if the media had done their job.

Learn more about the intelligence-gathering process and those who perform it. Despite what was said about the CIA's "failures," it was not the agents, citizen assistance or analysts who failed America, it was America who failed to acknowledge or use their assiduously-collected information. Some may disagree, I found this book one of the best arguments for the discontinuation of secrecy in our government. Aside from exercising discretion to protect agents in the field, I could find no good reason why this information was not made public immediately after agents had returned and filed reports. It would have saved many young men and women on both sides from death, maiming, and worse. Had there not been such a clamping-down on the truth by this administration, this book would have been a 5 star offering. Nonetheless, Risen did an admirable job.

Doomed to repeat history, according to New York Times reporter James Risen in his shocking exposé of a tome, appears to be the course of the Bush administration. Just a month ago, on December 16, Risen was one of two reporters who broke the story alleging that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been conducting surveillance activities around numerous private communications. The mid-December timing of the story after the Iraq election is an understandable source of controversy since the story may have been held for over a year, but the revelation provides further evidence of the Bush administration's deconstruction of the Constitution.

In just one chapter of his halting book, Risen quotes extensively from anonymous sources in painting a picture of the spying program the NSA launched in 2002. It was done after the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began to capture high-ranking al-Qaida operatives overseas, taking their computers, cell phones and personal phone directories. According to the author, the CIA then turned the telephone numbers and e-mail addresses from the material over to the NSA, which then began monitoring the phone numbers. Anyone in contact with the telephone subscribers was investigated, and this consequently led to an expansion of the monitoring internationally as well as domestically. The justification given was that it was a time of war, Americans were facing a ruthless enemy and long-enforced rules had to be broken. The public was outraged, and Congress vowed to begin an investigation. As Risen points out, what makes the NSA's current secret domestic eavesdropping program far more of a threat than ever before is the explosion in digital telecommunications, including cell phones and e-mail.

Just as the specter of Watergate rears its head with the NSA spying activities, we also see President Bush condemning Iran for expanding their nuclear weapons program. The irony is that Risen discloses that the CIA carried out a Clinton-approved operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin) intended to delay Iran's nuclear capabilities by feeding them flawed blueprints for key missing components. The strategy has purportedly backfired and may actually have aided Iran. The author asserts that the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear scientist the operation used to make the delivery. Ironically, the blueprint may then have yielded useful information. In yet another chapter on so-called rogue operations, Risen divulges that a CIA officer mistakenly sent one of its Iranian agents information that could be used to identify virtually every spy the agency had in Iran. The book said the Iranian was a double agent who turned over the data to Iranian security officials. The information severely damaged the CIA's Iranian network, and quoted CIA sources as saying several of the U.S. agents were arrested and jailed. Both examples appear to reflect the self-inflicted consequences of the CIA's unsuccessful attempts to subvert Iran.

With regard to Iraq, Risen writes that the CIA ignored intelligence reports that Iraq had abandoned its nuclear arsenal plans more than a decade ago. Instead, it was the hard-line Israelis to whom Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, sought information, not the cautious CIA. Apparently Israeli intelligence officials frequently traveled to Washington to brief top American officials, even though CIA analysts advised that Israeli intelligence reports were dubious given that Mossad had obvious about the Arab world. In a vivid description, Risen characterizes Rumsfeld as an Iago-like master of all bureaucracy. The secretary outmaneuvered colleagues in the Cabinet, notably Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, in his quest for usable information to support the President's policies no matter how misinformed the source. The most penetrating and ironic insight Risen provides is Bush Sr.'s alleged disdain of his son's reliance on Rumsfeld and other neoconservatives for foreign policy guidance.

Regardless, the author reserves his harshest criticism for then-CIS director George Tenet, an ineffectual link who had to decide between the wise counsel of his analysts and field agents who advised caution when it came to Iraq, and Rumsfeld's brigade hungry for war. Intimidated by Rumsfeld, Tenet was busy courting his approval rather than briefing him on the facts. This allowed the neoconservative ideologues to press ahead with war, torture of prisoners and massive NSA eavesdropping. Along with George Packer's "The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq" and Kenneth Pollack's "The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America", Risen's book is essential reading on the current political malaise that is making mincemeat of the Constitution.

This book, when it was written in 2006, contained a summary of what just about anyone avidly reading any serious newspaper on the Iraq war would have already have known. Yes, the Bush administration did its best to twist the intelligence community's arm to come up with conclusions that the administration wanted. Yes, it established groups, like Douglas Feith's to do this. Yes, it intercepted Al Qaeda's phone calls and communications. Yet, Bush was alerted shortly before the 9/11 attacks that Al Qaeda was planning something large. In short, everything we have already heard a thousand times over (at least as of April 2012) is, once again, repeated in this book. All these stories are brought to life through the author's many connections in the intelligence community. Hence he provides further collaboration for what has already been said many times before and the book, in this regard, does serve a useful function (that is why this reviewer give is a three star rating). However, it just simply does not contribute anything new to public's knowledge base, at least as of 2012. For any reader who has simply kept up on the subject via the better known newspapers this book really does not have any additional value. Another negative, albeit slight, is that the audiobook is read by a very monotone and robotic voice.

"This [neoconservative] focus on reintergrating Iraq into the regional framework of order under US hegemony was no doubt heightened by the fact that Iraq challenged the US monopoly over the oil trade, maintained through the fact that oil transactions occur in US dollars. Since 1971...the dollar has...become the de facto world reserve currency... Overall, since the world economy is fundamentally oil-dependent, this...lends the US a dominant trading advantage...In November 2000, Iraq began trading its oil in euros, and profited handsomely in the process. Iran, Venezuela and Russia--all key oil producers--have also considered and/or moved towards switching to the euro..."

"The real reason the Bush administration wants a puppet government in Iraq--or more importantly, the reason why the corporate-military-industrial network conglomerate wants a puppet government in Iraq--is so that it will revert back to a dollar standard and stay that way..."

Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed

BEHIND THE WAR ON TERROR

From Part Two, Chapter Seven: "False Pretexts"

and

Quote by

Wiliam Clark

"The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War

with Iraq: a Macroeconomic and

Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth"

Independent Media Center, January, 2003

"If further proof is needed for my contention that much of today's conservative political theory is merely Marxism with the substitution of "bourgeois" for "proletariat" and "culture" for "class," it can be found in Joyce's call for enlisting art and literature in the service of Republican conservatism, a program that is indistinguishable, except in its content, from the aesthetic orthodoxy of American communities during the 1920's and 1930's...the literary and artistic techniques used by communists and fascists alike would be adopted to disseminate conservative ideology...

"The resemblance between Marxism and the classical liberal economic utopianism of the American right is a family resemblance. Marxism and free-market fundamentalism are squabbling twins, the offspring of the Enlightenment's naive belief in inevitable progress....Today's American conservatives, however, have adopted free-market fundamentalism, in its crudest forms, as their political religion...

"American conservatism, then, is a countercommunism that replicates, down to rather precise details of organization and theory, the communism that it opposes..."

Michael Lind, UP FROM CONSERVATISM

From Chapter 3: "The Triangular Trade: How the Conservative Movement Works"

and

Chapter Ten

Soaking the Middle: The Conservative Class War Against Wage-Earning Americans

"[A] very selective history [as compiled here of 19th and 20th century presidents] demonstrates there are many varieties of presidential lies. Some concern grand policy matters, some concern secret government activity...Sissela Bok, the author of LYING: MORAL CHOICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE, defines [a lie] simply as "an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a STATEMENT (emphasis his)"...I would propose a slightly different standard for White House occupants. If a President issues a statement, he or she has an obligation to ensure the remark is truthful... It is not enough for a president or White House contender to BELIEVE what he is saying is true; he/she [like scientists, doctors, journalists and other professionals whose careers are built on a basic understanding of honesty, research, integrity and the public trust] should KNOW it to be true--within reasonable standards...Lying in office not only poses a potential risk for [a sitting president], a president who lies is a risk to the nation. He might steer the country into a war under false pretenses. Or, if he comes to be regarded as untruthful by a significant portion of the public, he might fail to rouse the country for military action that is indeed warranted. A liar in the White House is a national security threat."

David Corn

THE LIES OF GEORGE BUSH

From the Introduction

(Published in 2003, before

the start of the Iraq war)

Do we live in a "virtual democracy"? Has the Constitution and the Jeffersonian principles which once formed the DNA of the American spirit become a screen saver for the Friendly Fascism of the modern American, Post World War II Police State?

Are we American citizens, so caught up in the suburban pleasure principle, waiting for personal pain to tell us that we need to change, while knowing that, like cancer, if we wait until something really hurts to go to the doctor we are probably going to die?

Is George Bush and Dick Cheney the new Nixon and Agnew, in a world with no (real) Woodward & Bersteins?

Thank God, we can at least say with some assurance that the answer to the last question is no--that is, the last half of it. With the courage of a muckraking warrior, James Risen shows what being a real American is all about, and, like few of his contemporaries today, brings true dignity and honor back to the profession of journalism. This book is far too important to get caught up in impotent conversations about whether it was right of him to do this because there might be Al Qaeda members in America with library cards; the world community is far more sophisticated and knowledgeable than Americans because American newspapers keep the truth from them all.

It's time to bring democracy back to our United States.

James Risen is an outstanding beat reporter. He works for the New York Times and has earned impressive credibility in the national security community. Consequently, "State of War; The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," is a stunning tier-one study of how we are losing the war in Iraq and how we have made Iraq the Super Bowl for jihadists.

Risen had expertly documented how the Bush war team cherry-picked tainted and overly optimistic intelligence...intimidated/seduced George Tenet...smacked down CIA analysts and other government authorities who raised pointed questions about the actual existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq...and allowed Dick Cheney & Donald Rumsfeld to railroad rivals in the State Department and other key branches of government.

It truly is tragic. In December of 2001, the Bush Administration had the Taliban on the run in Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden and the hard core of al Qaeda cornered in the White Mountains at Tora Bora, against the Pakistani border. But the Pentagon did not deploy enough American troops to seal off the area, on either side of the border because Army General Tommy Franks was under intense pressure from Rumsfeld to limit the number of U.S. troops being deployed to Afghanistan...in order to invade Iraq.

President Bush has unleashed so many competing forces in the Middle East that no one can safely predict the outcome. It would not be such a bitter affair in Iraq if there was a well prepared plan for war and its aftermath, or if the Bush team had not burned so many diplomatic bridges in the rush to war. Highly recommended.

Bert Ruiz

The book is well-written and believable. I think Risen has it right; Like most folks in power, this administration just didn't want it's preconceived notions questioned. The main problem with the book is that so few sources would go on the record. This problem has recently been lessened by a growing number of folks who have retired from the intelligence services or otherwise left the government who are now going on the record. Too bad the press seems so little interested in this broader story.

This book creates a reasonable framework for understanding the sequence of events that brought the U.S. to the current circumstances in Iraq. Not an uplifting explanation of the Bush Administration's stranglehold on truth and reason, but helpful in understanding the placement of blame outside of the administration for each and every failure. Easily read and followed.

Much has been said and written about the "failures of intelligence" that allowed the terrorists' attacks on us in 2001 to happen. Risen is an investigatory reporter for the New York Times who has thoroughly reviewed information from people inside and outside of the government about the 9/11 attacks. He presents a compelling case for failures of leadership and a lack of attention to existing intelligence rather than major failures of the CIA to explain how we were taken by surprise. This is an important book to read to understand what we do and do not know about the causes of the terrorists' attacks and how well we are addressing the issues that may protect us from future attacks.

First off let me discuss my rating of five stars. The book read as an apparent series of New Yorker style articles. Some of the chapters would make great topics for a whole book in themselves. Yet in tying these far ranging topics together the book provides the general reader (and voter) a place to go to get a broad short hand version of this administrations (and to some extent Clinton's) undermining of national intelligence. It is really a story told by anonymous sources. So my rating is for content and the books eye opening information. To most readers it will not come as a surprise to learn of the political militarization of American intelligence by neoconservatives lead by Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their enabler George W. Bush.
Risen is just informing us (and apparently many of our elected leaders) what our government is doing in our name, with our tax dollars. The CIA/Department of Defense misadventures are in them selves worth what is a very short read, they are after all, a kind of a wag the dog story (as in attack Iraq, take you eyes off Bin Ladin, allow Afghanistan to become a warlord "narco state", and ignore that most of the 9/11 highjackers came from Saudi Arabia).
Bush is now into his second term and we should begin to see early histories and memoirs which will, in future years, become the pebbles in the river of histories judgment of the Bush dynasty. No mater what you think or think that you know or want to believe I encourage you to spend a few hours and read Mr. Risen's book.

this book is revealing as to the overwhelming power of the presidency vs. its supporting departments, the senate and the congress in both domestic and world affairs. America is approaching dictatorship. The moves being made by the Bush administration are identical to those made by Hitler in the early thirties. The latter are outlined in detail together with the Vatican's support of Hitler and Mussolini at that time in the counterpart of this book in the world of religion - Lucien Gregore's 'Murder in the Vatican' in which he proves the murder of twelve men - all linked to the murder of John Paul I - the 33-day Pope.

this book is revealing as to the overwhelming power of the presidency vs. its supporting departments, the senate and the congress in both domestic and world affairs. America is approaching dictatorship. The moves being made by the Bush administration are identical to those made by Hitler in the early thirties. The latter are outlined in detail together with the Vatican's support of Hitler and Mussolini at that time in the counterpart of this book in the world of religion - Lucien Gregore's 'Murder in the Vatican' in which he proves the murder of twelve men - all linked to the murder of John Paul I - the 33-day Pope.

Even though James Risen presented most of the information to us without any third party's confirmation or a name specified I still find them very realistic and trustful. I think this book is a very good eye opener for the people who don't have much idea about what was going on behind the scenes before and after the 9/11 attacks.

This book gave me an excellent look and an understanding of how the Bush administration works or perhaps doesn't work.

Had I read this book pre Bush I never would have voted for him.

In 2000 I would never have believed that I would say this, but Bill Clinton was a better president than George W. Bush. This book brought it all into perspective.

I only just read the available preview and found this book to be eye opening, fascinating and well written, until he made a biased claim against Hillary Clinton that should have been directed towards any future President.

There was a lot of great information, in an organized format. However, having to constantly look up the definitions of various abbreviations such as IOG, WINPAC, NE Division, and CDP to name a few, definitely interrupted the flow of the book. It would have been a much better book if the author had taken the time to consistently write out the more obscure agency names instead of relying on abbreviations that the majority of the general public are unfamiliar with.

"People cannot stand too much reality."

C.G. Jung

as quoted in

THE LONG EMERGENCY: Surviving

the End of the Oil Age,

Climate Change, and

Other Converging Catastrophes

of the Twenty-first Century

by James Howard Kunstler

"We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of the world's population...In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task...to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security...We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization...the less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

George Kennan

US State Department

Policy Planning Staff

Excerpts of de-Classified Memo, 1948

"The state-sponsored schools will never tell you this, but governments routinely rely on hoaxes to sell their agendas to an otherwise reluctant public. The Romans accepted the Emperors and the Germans accepted Hitler not because they wanted to, but because carefully crafted illusions of threat appeared to give them no other choice."

Michael Rivero

FAKE TERROR: THE ROAD TO DICTATORSHIP

"Naturally the common people don't want war...That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along...All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Herman Goering

Germany, Third Reich

During his trial at Nuremburg

before he was hanged

"...Huey Long once said, 'Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism'. I'm afraid, based on my own long experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."

Jim Garrison, New Orleans

District Attorney, 1967

as quoted in the Conclusion of

THE WAR ON FREEDOM

by Nafeez Moseaddeq Ahmed

New York Times reporter James Risen has developed a shocking expose of the Bush Administration and "the Program": a method and process of overstepping every single legal process put in place to protect and defend the privacy and freedom of American citizens, via the Supreme Court, the Constitution and Congress, in order to empower the NSA and the CIA in the secret wiretapping of any American citizen it deems worthy of having their life secretly investigated. The implications of this program are more frightening than the program itself, raising unspeakable historical parallels for our time.

Unspeakable, that is, to those without the courage to stare reality in the face.

What is most shocking about this book will stand the test of time as a monument to the society we currently live in: its audience. How any educated person in America can be shocked by the contents of the book, given the machinations of our administration and the library's worth of investigative journalism that has come down the pike since 9/11--putting the legitimacy of the greatest terrorist attack on American shores into question--says more about our culture, obviously in its twilight years, than anything.

Read this. Own this.

Talk about this with your neighbors and work associates, and your children.

Pray for the future of our nation.

And for God's sake, let's all wake up, before the long good night arrives.

This book focuses on revelations about US Government and CIA action in regard to the War Against Terror. Its major revelation is that the NSA was authorized to spy within the United States on American citizens. On the surface this sounds as if it is simply a criminal violation of basic freedoms guaranteed the citizen in the Constitution. However one has to take into account the context of the Bush Government action. After 9/11 the most alarming and horrifying blow to US internal security in peace-time the US became aware of enemies that could strike from within. Imagine for instance had the many reports about suitcase nuclear weapons been true. Imagine that there were many more Al-Quaeda terrorists able to cause major infrastructure damage to the United States. The dangers were, and are tremendously great and unprecedented. In this context the effort to observe people who had connections with Al-Quaeda members, or with other terrorists does not simply make sense, it would seem an absolute duty of a government committed to protecting its citizens.

I am not qualified to comment on CIA operations, the relation of the CIA to other governments agencies. This is a major part of this book, but I do not feel I have really anything of value to say about it.

Another of the major stories is that the Government concealed information which showed that the Iraqi WMD program had long been dormant. If this is so, it is a serious charge. However I would also add that the jury is not completely out on Iraq WMD. There is still a line of opinion which says that much of the Iraqi WMD was transferred to Syria.

As to another major story, the Clinton administration foul- up in handing nuclear plans to Iran, this in my mind connects with the major failure during the Clinton Administration to properly prevent the Pakistanis from attaining nuclear weapons.

As to another basic question, the question of whether what Risen has done here is morally right, or in itself a breach of US security, I too would prefer to abstain. Obviously a reporter's obligation is to get to the truth, especially a truth deliberately concealed which may have criminal elements in it. On the other hand , there is the question of whether in doing so , he has somehow damaged the Security of the United States. My own tendency on this one would be to support Risen's efforts but not to the point of his seriously compromising overall US security.

I would make one more general point. The US is in a civilizational struggle against a radical form of Islam which aims to destroy it, and Western Civilization as a whole. This is not a joke, and it is not something which is going to go away suddenly overnight. The Terrorists will use any and all means they have to kill and destroy others. They have no respect for the freedom of others, for their culture, for their civilization. And their degree of hatred of the United States and all it stands for is outside all bounds.

The U.S. cannot use their methods of evil in contending with them. But it also cannot afford to completely tie its own hands, and let them walk through America preaching its destruction in mosques, and planning to blow up its cities.

The Bush administration has shown its willingness to overlook civil liberties in order to prevent terrorism.
This may be noble. But is it dangerous to the stability of our Constitution?

The problem, as James Risen frames it, should at least be considered. Learn about "the Program," a Bush Administration tactic used to systematically bypass all of the checks and balances put in place to protect the integrity of our republic. These fundamental protections include the due process of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Constitution.

According to Risen, this administration is doing an end-run around the very structures that ensure the continuance of our democracy.

This is a thoughtful contribution to the public dialogue.

The White House and radical conservative supporters have singled out this book for trashing; so beware. As a professional researcher and author I can attest that the book is well documented and supported by factual data. It contains vital information for the American electorate, which needs to know that this administration is one of the most dishonest, corrupt and incompoetent in the history of the United States. It came to power buy selling everything in Wahsington to the highest bidder and massive election fraud, and stays in power by subverting democratic processes and the U.S. Constitution. In the end, as this book demonstrates, truth wins out. The Bush administration, along with its corrupt religious right supporters, is going down in flames. Members of the CIA, NSA, Congress and other Washington insiders are now talking because they have had enough and will not be intimidated and bought off any more. If Bush cannot pay reporters and writers to publish lies, then he orchestrates hate campaigns against authors, as is the case in this book and in this review section.

There cannot be too many books that show the true side of the current administration. I am so tired of being labeled a liberal because I don't trust what is going on in Washington, DC. Now we finally see the emperor with no clothes and people should be shouting for impeachment!

Read this book and weep for our Constitution!

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance (and $17.16). This book is essential reading for those who want to know the score on their threatened civil rights, their president, and their privacy -- can there be homeland security without it? Sending a copy of 1984 to your congressman isn't enough. This book details what is happening here and now.

Why are so many negative reviews (on the first day of publication) coming from Virginia? I guess we should feel good our friends in Langley can read (and write) lickety split. If our intelligence community wasn't set back on it's heals after Valerie Plame, what will it take? Read this book.

Like some books written slightly about Saddam Hussein this book is too easy on the Iraqi dictator/mass murderer. Saddam's conquest of Kuwait does get some mention, plus the fact that much of the world wanting him to pull out of Kuwait not solely the USA desiring him to do so. But Saddam's ultra-deadly mass murder of Iraqi Kurds (182,000 dead kurds in one year alone) is not illustrated by this author well enough. Nor enough of Saddam's other enormous crimes against humanity are well illustrated here either. Plus there is no mention at all of Khadafi of Libya giving up his nuclear bomb project once he saw the USA and it's allies take Saddam down in 2003 and Khadaffi feared he (Khadafi) might be next to be taken out.

I've never seen a book so comprehensively trashed in such an unsubtle way by the usual suspects. Must be some fire here then and carefully read you can see it.

However one reviwer complains, no bleats, that the leaking of classified information should result in jail where the abuse of power which lead to the leak should be applauded. What sort of morality is that let alone logic?

Next we have 003 and a 1/2 (code number not IQ I hasten to add)complaining, no bleating again, about anyone who has the temerity to question the criminal acts involved in "rendition", better known as kidnapping in the civilised world, whilst his commander in chief with usual gobby aplomb shoots from the hip one of those well known soon to be regretted non-statesman like comments. He then tries to coin a phrase in the well known advertising field to describe illegal surveillance as some noble but warrantless (witless more like) act. If the US ever does get its democratic government back he tells us he wil be emigrating, spiffing, try Russia you'd be very welcome I fear. Ha, I just had to Putin that.

Another reviewer complains that this book helps US enemies. I know just like the CIA did when it helped N.Vietnam in its war with the souuth by transporting tons of heroin out of Laos via Air America to Vietnam and ensuring that about one third of the US Army there were turned into useless non combatant junkies.

Finall we have a US Citizen - so there are some Apaches left then - who states the obvious. Why blame Bush, he knows nothing. Well enough said then and an irrifutable fact I would suggest.

There is enough evidence now that something is seriously wrong with the organs of state in the US. The problem is convincing the US people that the world is not out to get them and if they stop clubbing all in their way you might get a better reception.

The problem is that books such as this seem to raise the hackles of even the most mild mannered because it seems to even read let alone quote it you are deemed a non patriot. In other words you can all follow the flock "bleat, bleat", or work it out for yourself. Have the guts to read it even if it's distasteful.

The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration describes secret operations of the Bush Administration's war on terrorism. Mr. Risen, a former and fully credible member of the American intelligence community and now a respected writer and analyst of America's global intelligence policies, is full of Bush Bashing. A lot of negative reviews, the Author is stated spending a lot of time on a quote attributed to President Bush where supposedly on being informed that a wounded terrorist cannot be interrogated because he's too muzzy from pain killers, he asked who authorized to give pain killers. Risen has no context for this quote. Risen also characterizes the alleged electronic surveillance of individuals in the US who may be in touch with members of al-Qaeda as "domestic spying." He also has quoted and FBI Agent who remained present for CIA operation where a terrorist suspect is apprehended and transferred to another country's custody. Risen says the NSA spying programme was launched in 2002 after the CIA began to capture high-ranking Al Qaeda operatives overseas, and took their computers, cell phones and personal phone directories. The CIA turned the telephone numbers and email addresses from the material over to the NSA, which then began monitoring the phone numbers - in addition to anyone in contact with the telephone subscribers. You only got to read the Book and finally rate it 0 to 3 or 4 or 5 stars - Entirely your choice. Can't say 'Great Pick' - So, here's controversial Pick.

Liberals, desperate to bash Bush have obviously been busy writing phoney positive reviews for this book. The books is riddled with false statements, unsubstantiated rumours, and the lack of credible references.

Some of the absurdities, just from the first section:

On page 2 he complains that George Bush has radically changed foreign policy. Whether you like it or not, George Bush was elected president, he is entitled to change foreign policy.

He said on page 2 that the voters voting for George W. Bush expected George W. Bush to repeat what George H. W. Bush did. What is the basis for this conclusion?

He talks about checks and balances in the executive branch. Please tell me where in the constitution it says that the executive power is invested in the president, the State Department and the Department of Defense, and they are to balance the power out. Absurd.

On page 4 he says, "the ease with which the Bush administration has been able to overcome the bureaucratic resistance throughout the government has revealed the weakness of both the military's officer corps and the ... intelligence community." Who elected the bureaucrats?

How convenient that the New York Times sat on this story until the book was ready for sale.

I urge you to buy this book and read it - to see liberal journalism at its pathetic worst.

This administration has shown itself to be willing to trample on the civil liberties of everyone, whether American or not, in its sophomoric pursuit of terrorists however defined. Mr. Risen, a former and fully credible member of the American intelligence community and now a respected writer and analyst of America's global intelligence policies, should not be besmirched with partisan attacks. Rather, he should be read, evaluated, considered for what he posits and then accepted or rejected for the quality of the contribution he makes, and not before. Cool heads will value this work.

NO HOLDS BAR. EVERYTHING IS explained in this MASTERpiece by Risen. I know big TOM had a lot of input on this book as far as fact checking ect and clearly it paid off! Toms efforts really prove himself as a professional writer.

This will be a common item on coffee tables around the world, once people realize what illegal activities are going on in our own whitehouse!

Just another attack on the Bush administration from a left-wing loon. Meanwhile, Obama is the most corrupt and inept POTUS ever. Let's see Risen write a book about fast-n-furious, Benghazi, Obama lieing to the american people about Obamacare, or any of the other countless scandals from this presidency.

This book popped up on my recommedations the other day. The title sounded interesting and I was hoping for some new dirt and revealing scandals. Instead I read a four year history of standard beaucratic renewal. With the events of September 11, as with every previous national security crisis (i.e. WWI, Pearl Harbor, the end of WWII etc. etc.) deep and immense changes were taken in the U.S. National Security and Defense Establishment. I failed to see why this was so earth shattering. As far as I could tell all of the problems that poor George Bush and Don Rumsfeld had to sort out were a direct result of the ending of the Cold War and as is always unfortunate true bureaucratic change never occurs until a large crisis presents itself.

I also hated the slant against George Bush, even ultra liberal Michael Moore at least tries to put in the other side of the story.

I guess the only people who will enjoy this book are liberals who blame George Bush for everything anyways and enjoy spending their money for yet another 200 pages of Bush Bashing.