Richard A. Clark
From Publishers Weekly,From the first thrilling chapter, which takes readers into the White House center of operations on September 11, through his final negative assessment of George W. Bushâ€™s post-9/11 war on terror, Clarke, the U.S.â€™s former terrorism czar, offers a complex and illuminating look into the successes and failures of the nationâ€™s security apparatus. He offers charged (and, one must note, for himself triumphant) insider scenes, such as when he scared the devil out of Clintonâ€™s Cabinet to motivate them to fight terrorism. The media has understandably focused on Clarkeâ€™s charge that Bush neglected terrorism before the attacks on New York and Washington; but Clarke also offers a longer perspective on the issue, going back to the first Gulf War (when he was an assistant secretary of state) and makes some stunning revelations. One of the latter is that the U.S. came close to war with Iran over that countryâ€™s role in the terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. An important aspect of Clarkeâ€™s book is that it is only one manâ€™s accountâ€”and an account moreover that casts its author as hero and others (FBI, CIA, the military) as screw-ups; as has been seen in recent congressional hearings, administration officials (notably, Condoleezza Rice) have challenged its veracity. But those inclined to believe Clarke will find that he makes a devastating case about the Bush administrationâ€™s failure from the beginning (when Clarkeâ€™s position was downgraded and he was taken off the top-level Principals Committee) to make terrorism as high a priority as Clintonâ€™s did. In the face of the Bush teamâ€™s claim that they didnâ€™t know about a threat to the homeland, readers will be haunted by two small words: after mobilizing to confront the Millennium terror threat, Clarke reached what seemed to him the obvious conclusion regarding al-Qaeda: "Theyâ€™re here.",Copyright Â© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
War,Terrorism,History,Nonfiction
Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terrorâ€”What Really Happened