Product Description

In A Pretext for War, acclaimed author James Bamford–whose classic book The Puzzle Palace first revealed the existence of the National Security Agency–draws on his unparalleled access to top intelligence sources to produce a devastating expos? of the intelligence community and the Bush administration.

A Pretext for War reveals the systematic weaknesses behind the failure to detect or prevent the 9/11 attacks, and details the Bush administration’s subsequent misuse of intelligence to sell preemptive war to the American people. Filled with unprecedented new revelations, from the sites of “undisclosed locations” to the actual sources of America’s Middle East policy, A Pretext for War is essential reading for anyone concerned about the security of the United States.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #123380 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-10
• Released on: 2005-05-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781400030347
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
James Bamford builds his case against America's intelligence agencies from the ground up, which makes for devastating reading not only for his subjects, but for anyone concerned with the nation's security or simply smart use of taxpayer dollars. Indeed, one can't help but cringe as the veteran journalist records the alarming post-Cold War floundering of the C.I.A., N.S.A., Defense Department, and succeeding administrations in the face of burgeoning terrorist threats that culminate with the attack on 9-11. Seemingly caught flatfooted by the demise of the Soviet Union, the U.S. intelligence community stumbles through the 1990s as it becomes institutionally hidebound and sluggish. During relatively peaceful times, its shortcomings, while not unnoticed, remain largely unaddressed. As Bamford sees it, with the arrival of George W. Bush, the situation goes from bad to worse. With the neocons in power, intelligence gathering is corrupted and politicized to create the grounds for going to war with Iraq. While much of what appears here has appeared earlier in works by Joseph Wilson, Richard Clarke, and others, Bamford pulls the loose ends together and adds new reporting to create a wide-ranging yet taut and absorbing expose of an American security apparatus that combines vast power with stunning ineptitude. --Steven Stolder

From Publishers Weekly
In this hard-hitting expose, investigative journalist Bamford (The Puzzle Palace; Body of Secrets) paints a damning portrait of an incompetent and politicized intelligence community. Before 9/11, he contends, the inadequacy of the CIA’s clandestine service hobbled its fight against Osama bin Laden, forcing it to rely on mercenary Afghan proxies and cruise missile drive-bys. Meanwhile, bread-and-butter undercover operations to infiltrate and monitor al-Qaeda were eschewed, and leads on the upcoming attacks bungled. After 9/11, he asserts, the Bush administration used the attacks as a pretext for a long-planned invasion of Iraq; a Defense Department intelligence unit was set up to tout trumped-up evidence against Saddam, which, Bamford says, CIA analysts were pressured into endorsing. Much of the book rehashes a now familiar critique of both the pre-9/11 lapses and the Bush administration’s selling of the war, but the author enriches it with a wealth of insider interviews that illuminate structural problems in the nation’s intelligence effort. Bamford lards his account with pointless mise-en-scene ("in the onyx darkness, George W. Bush switched on the brass sidelight next to his bed") and a gratuitous, if gripping, narrative of the carnage of 9/11. But when he gets down to analysis, his broad understanding of America’s intelligence institutions and procedures make this a must-read for anyone concerned about the current state of affairs.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
As debate continues to rage about the flaws in the American occupation of Iraq, James Bamford takes a fresh look at the run-up to the 2003 conflict, to examine how pre-war intelligence spurred the onset of war. Bamford, author of two earlier investigative studies of the National Security Agency, The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets, sets out in A Pretext for War to show that key figures in the Bush administration -- national security adviser Richard Perle, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith -- locked in a plan to wage war in Iraq well before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He charges that these four leading hawks manipulated the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency in a desperate attempt to justify a regime change in Iraq that they had been strategizing to bring about for years. He suggests further that the administration's rush to war grew out of a key and chronic blind spot in American policy circles: the failure to recognize the central role of the Palestinian cause in igniting Arab rage against the United States.

Bamford makes this case largely in the last third of his book. He uses the first two-thirds to meticulously lay out how the Sept. 11 aircraft were hijacked, the numerous intelligence and logistical failures that led to al Qaeda's successful strike and the reaction to the attacks in official Washington. Highly readable and well-researched, this account offers new insights into how the Sept. 11 hijackings occurred, while also showing how terribly ill-equipped and unprepared our defense systems were to deal with these kinds of attacks.

Other writers have also chronicled the overall failures and some of the panic, but Bamford found much new information that underscores just how chaotic and dangerous things really were in Sept. 11's immediate aftermath. For example, Bamford notes that two Air National Guard jets were scramble-ready and perhaps could have intercepted at least one of the suicide airliners, yet were assigned that day to unarmed bomb practice. Even if they had scrambled earlier, however, the fighter jets had no weapons to shoot down the hijacked jets. In fact, Bamford says, "on September 11, 2001, the entire United States mainland was protected by just fourteen planes spread out over seven bases."

Bamford goes on to track the reactions to the attack inside the NSA and CIA and supplies a chronology detailing when various senior administration officials were notified. For example, CIA director George Tenet received no word until well after the second aircraft had crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. The top military commanders were just as out of touch. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry Shelton, was en route to Europe, and his deputy, Gen. Richard Myers, was on Capitol Hill. "Through it all, the general in charge of the country's military was completely ignorant of the fact that the United States was under its worst attack in nearly two centuries," Bamford writes. "Nor did he know that about forty minutes earlier, the President had decided to declare war."

Bamford dislikes President Bush intensely and makes little effort to hide it. He re-examines the president's actions on Sept. 11, from when he heard of the attacks to his flight across the country before finally returning to Washington, and concludes that "disturbingly, the story George W. Bush often tells of his learning of the attacks cannot possibly be true." He reaches this conclusion by chronicling the appearance of the first video snippets of the crashes on television and determining that the president could not have seen the footage at the time he claimed he did. He also strongly implies Bush was a coward for not returning immediately to Washington, D.C., contrasting his actions to those of Lyndon Johnson after the Kennedy assassination. (While Bush's decision not to return to Washington is debatable, to assume that it arose out of cowardice -- without any confirming testimony from people who would know -- seems overly harsh. The early moments of the attacks were chaotic -- and Washington itself was a target.) Bamford treads less familiar and more interesting ground when he describes the secret sites to which Bush, senior cabinet members and congressional leaders were taken, and the atmosphere inside. Again, others (notably Sen. Tom Daschle) have provided similar accounts, but by skillfully integrating these scenes with his own interviews, Bamford paints a vivid picture of the leadership of the free world bracing for an apocalypse.

In reviewing America's intelligence breakdowns, Bamford focuses mainly on material familiar to most readers from the Sept. 11 hearings: the lack of coordination among intelligence agencies, the lack of human intelligence on al Qaeda and a casual inattention to the al Qaeda threat despite CIA Director George Tenet's 1999 declaration of war on Osama bin Laden. But here, too, Bamford uncovers fresh material, in his scathing report on the workings of the Alec Station, the secret CIA unit dedicated solely to tracking bin Laden and al Qaeda. Bamford effectively makes the case that the group, constantly underfunded and understaffed, made little difference: "After four years and hundreds of millions of dollars, Alec Station had yet to recruit a single source within bin Laden's growing Afghanistan operation. It was more than embarrassing -- it was a scandal."

For Bamford, though, the crowning scandal was the long-incubating plan to force Saddam Hussein out of power by military force. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and other key members of this war faction -- nicknamed the Vulcans -- had long been laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq. Administration insiders such as Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill have already made influential versions of this case in their recently published books, and Bamford relies on Clarke's own account of the immediate post-Sept. 11 security meetings to underline the depth of the administration's Iraq fixation.

Bamford traces the personal relations among the key players spanning several decades. Again he adds some interesting bits to the existing record: e.g., the Pentagon's distrust of the CIA's intelligence; internal turf wars among the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney over what kind of intelligence was used in planning for Iraq; and the Pentagon's establishment of separate intelligence shops to counter the CIA and DIA. Bamford also notes that it was the Vulcans Perle and Feith, together with senior State Department adviser David Wormser, who drafted the basic outlines of Bush's plan to oust Saddam, including the doctrine of preemption, back in the mid-1990s, when they were advising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu rejected the plan, which gathered dust until Bush's election, when the group returned to the corridors of power. Bamford says that the new fortunes of Perle, Feith and Wormser, together with Bush's personal determination to repay Saddam for his attempt to kill Bush's father, were instrumental in America's decision to go to war.

A Pretext for War suffers from some factual slips -- at one point, for instance, identifying Abram N. Shulsky as head of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans rather than William Luti. There are several repeated paragraphs and a frustratingly incomplete index -- all indications of a too hasty rush to publish.

However, Bamford does add to the public record in significant ways. His deconstruction of the role played by Ahmed Chalabi in feeding false information on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to U.S. intelligence agencies and reporters, especially Judith Miller at the New York Times, is especially timely. Chalabi has recently fallen from grace, and the New York Times is reviewing its reporting on WMD, publicly admitting it should have been more skeptical of some of its sources. The story of "Curveball," an Iraqi defector who provided information that was given great credence by both Pentagon intelligence and the national news media only to be debunked, is also instructive.

On balance, Bamford does a superb job of laying out and tying together threads of the Sept. 11 intelligence failures and their ongoing aftermath, using original research, the public record and a light, fast-paced writing touch. We have of course heard the brunt of Bamford's polemic indictment of Bush and the Vulcans before: that the United States invaded Iraq as the result of a "massive disinformation campaign, abetted by a lazy and timid press." Readers may find such claims a bit sweeping, but A Pretext for War nonetheless provides a useful, new and sobering stream of information -- especially as the fallout from the Vulcans' crusade looms as a potentially decisive issue in a crucial election year.

Reviewed by Douglas Farah
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

The one book to read if only one, not a substitute for many

I know Jim Bamford personally, and consider him to be one of the most capable of researchers and most objective of writers on intelligence matters. His deep personal relationships across the U.S. Intelligence Community make him the best possible reporter.

For those of us steeped in the literature, that routinely read both the daily reporting and the regular books, much of what Jim has put together here will be repetitive. This is, however, the very best book to read if you only have the time for one book on the topic of 9-11, the failure of U.S. intelligence, and the corruption of U.S. policy in using 9-11 as a pretext for invading Iraq and giving Bin Laden the best possible (i.e. most stupid) strategic response to 9-11.

This is the ideal book for any citizen who wants a professional "once over" tour of the various intelligence and policy pieces that broke down and allowed 9-11 to happen, and then allowed the entire "balance of powers" construct from our Founding Fathers to fly out the window. If you want to go deeper, see my thirteen Lists and 479+ other reviews of national security non-fiction.

The book is especially strong on the Rendon Group being used to illegally propagandize American citizens with U.S. taxpayer funds, on the abject failure of George Tenet in revitalizing U.S. clandestine operations, on the failure (treated more kindly) of Mike Hayden to bring the National Security Agency into the 21st Century, and on the very unhealthy merger of the U.S. neoconservatives that captured the White House, and well-funded Zionists in both America and Israel who essentially bought themselves an invasion of Iraq--a remarkable coincidence of interests: Jews paying to invade Iraq, Iranians using Chalabi to feed lies to the neo-cons so they would be deceived into thinking Iraq would be a cake-walk, and Bin Laden never daring to dream the entire U.S. population and all arms of government--including a passive media--would "sleep walk" into what this book suggests is one of the dumbest and most costly strategic errors in the national security history of the USA.

This book is not, despite some of the ideologically-motivated reviews below, an attack of George Bush Junior, as much as it is an appalled and informed review of how a complex government collapsed in the face of 9-11, and a handful of ostensibly patriotic and very myopic individuals were able to abuse their personal power because all of the professional counter-forces: the diplomats, the spies, the military professionals, the Congress, the media--every single one was not sufficiently competent nor sufficiently motivated to mandate a more balanced policy process that could understand the many global threats (terrorism and Iraq are actually two of the lesser ones), devise a comprehensive long-term strategy, and execute that strategy using *all* of the instruments of national power, including strong global alliances that lead all governments to fight all gangs in the most effective fashion possible.

We let kids play with matches, and they burned down the house.

An important book
Like one of the other reviewers here on Amazon, I am an intelligence analyst for the US government. Unlike that reviewer, I personally witnessed how the Bush administration fabricated, twisted, distorted, "cherry-picked" and otherwise misused intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. Many of us on the inside pretty much knew that this war was already a done deal more than a year before it actually happened - Final decisions technically may not have been made, but it was obvious from observing what went on on a day-to-day basis that the war was going to happen. If it had not been for Colin Powell, it probably would have happened much earlier. It was my personal experience in the run-up to this war that led me to read Bamford's book. I was curious to see how right he would get it. In the end, I feel he did a decent job. He has gathered good information, and he has been fairly thorough.

The only issues I really had with the book were that it seemed to meander or repeat itself in parts - a slight lack of organization, at least when you hold the body of the book up to his thesis - that we went to war in Iraq based on a pretext. I also was a little bored, personally, with the first two-thirds of the book, dealing with the events surrounding 9/11. Not that he didn't have good information there or that it wasn't well written, it just wasn't the reason I picked up the book. I was expecting more Iraq, less 9/11. I also felt that Bamford could have gone into more detail on the myriad of reasons that the administration actually had for invading Iraq. As Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged after the war, WMD was simply the easiest one for all the decision makers at the NSC to agree on. I also think Bamford gave a little too much credence to the idea that the President was motivated by the earlier Iraqi assassination attempt on his family.

I have seen reviews saying that Bamford approaches anti-semitism in his discussion of neoconservative ties to Israel and the question of Israeli pressure on the US to go to war. What Bamford presents here, however, are facts. It is a fact that many neoconservatives who are now in government have, previously, worked for organizations that basically put them on Israel's payroll. Many have worked for Israel-sponsored groups lobbying the US government on behalf of Israel. They have pushed to sway US foreign policy in directions that are very pro-Israel and very anti-Palestinian. It is clear that these individuals have Israel's interests at heart. What is not clear to me is whether they have the same loyalty to the United States. The Israeli government was also very enthusiastic for the Bush administration to go to war against Iraq, and was very emphatic in urging us not to delay the invasion. They also contributed at least some of the bad intelligence which helped support the administrations's push for war. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was publicly quoted (in the Israeli press) before the war as saying he intended to talk to President Bush and request that we move on to deal with Iran and Syria once we were done with Iraq. It is a fact that some US troops on the ground in Iraq, toward the "end" of the initial fighting, were under the impression that they would be moved to the Iranian border in preparation to invade Iran. In the end, it is a fact that our invasion of Iraq was more clearly in Israel's national security interests than it was ours.

Is this a "Bush-bashing" book? No. The author presents the facts, and the President just doesn't come off looking very good. Sorry about that, but the truth hurts sometimes. The President may not have been the one that made a conscious decision to mislead the American public, but it happened on his watch, and he bears the ultimate responsibility for it. He is not the only one responsible, of course. Many in the upper level of the intelligence community simply rolled over and let this happen. And then of course there's the case of Ahmed Chalabi and friends, who knowingly fed false information to US intelligence in order to manipulate US foreign policy. This war was a result of poor leadership, bad intentions and sloppy intelligence work.

What I find particularly disturbing are the reviews here on Amazon who pan this book not for its substance but its politics. These reviewers display the typical knee-jerk defensive reaction of the right (I'm an independent, just for the record) in attacking the author's politics instead of attempting to refute his arguments.

Read the book and form your own opinions.

An American horror story
Lest we forget, the first 60 pages of A Pretext for War give a harrowing replay of the hijackings of 9/11, as seen first from the Air National Guard's Northeast Air Defense Sector, tracking the planes on radar as they pursue their deadly course. The personal details, conversations and horror-struck impressions are a reminder of the shock felt by all caught in the glare of this monstrous enterprise.

During the attacks on the World Trade Towers, President Bush remained in the classroom photo-op in Florida and General Myers, the acting military commander, spent forty-five minutes in the office of Senator Max Cleland, interviewing for the position of top brass in Cent Com, unaware that the worst attack in this country's history was occurring. The extent of our lack of preparation is shocking at this point, inexplicable. The missing third plane was not yet located. One hundred and ten minutes after takeoff, the forth plane, American Flight 11, came to a fiery end and the attacks were over at last.

In the meat of the book, Bamford covers the spy apparatus in this country, from the Cold War efforts of the NSA to George Tenet's meteoric rise as the head of the CIA during the Clinton Administration and the importance of Presidential Daily Briefings. Piece by piece, Bamford builds a solid structure of information, moving toward his conclusion: we are not much better off now, two years later, in the area of surveillance in other countries. Then he segues into the parallel growth of Osama bin Ladin's efforts to establish an anti-American legion of American fighters, in spite of active interference by Saudi Arabia and the freezing of bin Ladin's assets. Critical to his cause is the continuing support of America for Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. The May 1996 Israeli "Grapes of Wrath" Invasion of Lebanon and the massacre at Qana gave bin Ladin his battle cry, but the incident was barely covered by the American press.

This book addresses certain specific issues that are pertinent to the direction of the country since the Iraq War, namely the current condition of our government agencies: CIA, DIA, FBI, NSA, etc., and whether they have incorporated the drastic changes necessary since the end of the Cold War. Some of the topics covered, thoroughly, I might add, are: manufactured intelligence in pursuit of a vote for war in Iraq, bypassing Congressional oversight of major policy decisions, Chalabi's part in supplying information and the money he received for that information, the Niger uranium connection, the pro-Israeli Neo-Cons, Bush's connection with Sharon, and redrawing the geopolitical map of the Middle East.

The COG, or Continuity of Government, has existed since its inception during the Eisenhower Administration. In its current form, a decision was reached not to reconstitute Congress, but to operate without this branch of government. A critical element in the balance of power, Congress is excised from the shadow government, including those next in line for succession, Majority Leader Dennis Hastert and President pro-tem Robert Byrd. Within a few hours after the decision, senior officials quietly disappeared from Washington, turning up in selected "doomsday" sites in Virginia and Pennsylvania.

After carefully reading Bamford's A Pretext for War, my main concern is the balance of power between the branches of government. Without Congressional oversight, there is no release of public information and no control of abuses that may arise. There is still a credibility gap in terms of what public information is accessible. The condition of our intelligence gathering agencies is critical and if they have been inept or remiss, these problems must be faced, even if the agencies are exposed to public scrutiny. As well, the continuing lack of Congressional oversight is troubling.

Bamford doesn't pull any punches in his assessment of the problems facing America in the current state of crisis. After reading Woodward's Plan of Attack and Dean's Worse Than Watergate, I am even more concerned about the state of our nation and the lack of transparency in the current administration. In addition, Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill's assertions make more sense when viewed in context with all the information recently published. Certainly, 9/11 permanently changed our world, but the blanket use of discretionary powers to protect us from the terrorists has created a host of other issues that must be discussed and exposed to the light of day and the democratic process. Luan Gaines/2004.