Purchase
The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration
Free Press
January 2006
256 pages
ISBN: 0743270665
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
With relentless media coverage, breathtaking events, and
extraordinary
congressional and independent investigations, it is hard to
believe
that we still might not know some of the most significant
facts about
the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet beneath the surface
events of the
Bush presidency lies a secret history -- a series of hidden
events that
makes a mockery of current debate.
This hidden history involves domestic spying, abuses of
power, and
outrageous operations. It includes a CIA that became caught
in a
political cross fire that it could not withstand, and what
it did to
respond. It includes a Defense Department that made its own
foreign
policy, even against the wishes of the commander in chief.
It features
a president who created a sphere of deniability in which
his top aides
were briefed on matters of the utmost sensitivity -- but
the president
was carefully kept in ignorance. State of War
reveals this hidden history for the first time, including
scandals that will redefine the Bush presidency.
James Risen has covered national security for The New
York Times
for years. Based on extraordinary sources from top to
bottom in
Washington and around the world, drawn from dozens of
interviews with
key figures in the national security community, this book
exposes an
explosive chain of events:
- Contrary to law, and with little oversight,
the National Security Administration has been engaged in a
massive
domestic spying program.
- On such sensitive issues as the
use of torture, the administration created a zone of
deniability: the
president's top advisors were briefed, but the president
himself was
not.
- The United States actually gave nuclear-bomb
designs to Iran.
- The
CIA had overwhelming evidence that Iraq had no nuclear
weapons programs
during the run-up to the Iraq war. They kept that
information to
themselves and didn't tell the president.
- While the United
States has refused to lift a finger, Afghanistan has become
a
narco-state, supplying 87 percent of the heroin sold on the
global
market.
These are just a few of the stories told in State of
War. Beyond
these shocking specifics, Risen describes troubling
patterns:
Truth-seekers within the CIA were fired or ignored. Long-
standing rules
were trampled. Assassination squads were trained; war
crimes were
proposed. Yet for all the aggressiveness of America's
spies, a blind
eye was turned toward crucial links between al Qaeda and
Saudi Arabia,
among other sensitive topics.
Not since the revelations of CIA and FBI abuses in the
1970s have so
many scandals in the intelligence community come to light.
More
broadly, Risen's secret history shows how power really
works in George
W. Bush's presidency.
(New York, New York, December 16, 2005) - On the front
page
of today's New York Times, veteran national security
reporter James Risen writes that "months after the
September 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized
the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and
others inside the United States to search for evidence of
terrorist activity without the court approved warrants
ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to
government officials." That story has created a political
firestorm for the Bush administration. The New York Times
article states that the White House asked the Times not to
publish the article, saying that it could jeopardize
continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists
that they might be under scrutiny. The Times delayed
publication of the article for a year to conduct additional
reporting.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy