Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"[W]hile State of War has interesting and important new details, it also has almost no named sources....Nevertheless, obtaining details on an eavesdropping program as secret as the one discussed...is a monumental job of reporting." New York Times
Review
"[An] explosive little book....It is riveting, anonymously sourced and feels slightly overdramatized, but it has the odious smell of truth." New York Times Book Review
Review
"[A]n urgent contribution to the country's common good by a skillful and courageous reporter." Los Angeles Times
Review
"[E]minently readable and informative." South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Review
"A good bit of Risen's book will be familiar to anyone who keeps up with the news, but he has done a masterful job in pulling information together in one place and making sense of it." Sacramento Bee
Review
"Risen's book is both unsettling and unsatisfying." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
About the Author
James Risen covers national security for the New York Times. He was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2002 for coverage of September 11 and terrorism, and he is the coauthor of Wrath of Angels and The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife and three sons.
Table of Contents
A NOTE ON SOURCES
PROLOGUE
1. "Who Authorized Putting Him on Pain Medication?"
2. The Program
3. Casus Belli
4. The Hunt for WMD
5. Skeptics and Zealots
6. Spinning War and Peace
7. Losing Afghanistan
8. In Denial: Oil, Terrorism, and Saudi Arabia
9. A Rogue Operation
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX