Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism [Hardcover]

Tim Naftali (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465092810 | ISBN-13: 978-0465092819 | Publication Date: May 3, 2005 | Edition: First Edition

In this revelatory new account, national security historian Timothy Naftali relates the full back story of America’s attempts to fight terrorism. On September 11, 2001, a long history of failures, missteps, and blind spots in our intelligence services came to a head, with tragic results.At the end of World War II, the OSS’s “X-2” department had established a seamless system for countering the threats of die-hard Nazi terrorists. But those capabilities were soon forgotten, and it wasn’t until 1968, when Palestinian groups began a series of highly publicized airplane hijackings, that the U.S. began to take counterterrorism seriously. Naftali narrates the game of “catch-up” that various administrations and the CIA played —with varying degrees of success—from the Munich Games hostage-taking to the raft of terrorist incidents in the mid-1980s through the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, and up to 9/11.In riveting detail, Naftali shows why holes in U.S. homeland security discovered by Vice President George H. W. Bush in 1986 were still a problem when his son became President, and why George W. Bush did little to fix them until it was too late. Naftali concludes that open, liberal democracies like the U.S. are incapable of effectively stopping terrorism. For anyone concerned about the future of America’s security, this masterful history will be necessary—and eye-opening—reading.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Blind Spot is that rare phenomenon: a great work of original research on a subject of great importance that is also lucidly written." Wall Street Journal" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

Advance Praise for Blind Spot:

"An engrossing narrative of mistakes, missed opportunities, and the occasional triumph, Blind Spot surprises and enlightens. Timothy Naftali's provocative analysis of US counterterrorism should force a profound reappraisal of our current efforts. This important and fascinating work is necessary reading for policymakers and the public alike." -Fareed Zakaria, author of The Future of Freedom

"You are going to want to read this book. With Blind Spot, Timothy Naftali has done everyone interested in the history of U.S. efforts to fight terrorism a great favor: he has combed through all the archives, interviewed all the key participants, and dug up a great many stories that have never seen the light of day before and put them all in one terrifically readable place. The result is a book that weaves the full tapestry of American efforts against the world's worst terrors, illustrating both the revealing details as well as the larger image of America's long unwillingness to take this threat seriously until the horror of 9/11 forced us to do so. Anyone who wants to understand that story will be well-rewarded by starting with this smart, splendid book." -Kenneth M. Pollack, author of The Threatening Storm, former director for Persian Gulf Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council

"In this fascinating, well-researched, and important book, Timothy Naftali has done an excellent job of using the lessons to history to illuminate one of the central issues of our time." -Michael Beschloss, author of The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945

"The best book yet on U.S. counterterrorism. America's current problems can be properly understood only if they are put in long-tern perspective, and Tim Naftali does this brilliantly. Blind Spot is a must-read." -Christopher Andrew, author of The Sword and the Shield

"The blind spot in Timothy Naftali's important book was the inability of American presidents, despite frequent warning, to recognize the danger posed by Osama Bin Laden. That a huge failure occurred has been obvious since 9-11, but Naftali, a leading scholar of American intelligence organizations, has something bigger on his mind than the now-familiar missed clues and failures to communicate. In this deeply researched book certain to spark controversy, Naftali argues that successful intelligence campaigns against Nazi and Soviet spies prove the United States knows how to run counter-terror operations. But until 9-11 the blind spot kept American presidents and the American people alike from seeing that the time had come to make hard decisions to fight new enemies already gathering to strike." -Thomas Powers, author of Heisenberg's War and The Man Who Kept Secrets

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First Edition edition (May 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465092810
• ISBN-13: 978-0465092819
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #439,152 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sound Familar?, October 11, 2006

By 

Retired Reader (New Mexico) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (Hardcover)

It would probably be useful to potential readers to explain what this book is not before discussing what it is. It is not a "secret history" in any sense nor is it a diatribe against either the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) or the Executive Branch of government. The book is a sober and sobering history of how the U.S. has dealt with issues of State and non-State terrorism from World War II through the catastrophe of September 11 2001. Naftali also does a great service by noting the obvious similarities between the operating techniques of counter-Espionage and counter Terrorism (especially domestic).

In this book Naftali chronicles the failure of our political and national security systems to effectively protect American lives and property from terrorist threats. Naftali does record those rare successes against individual terrorists such as Abu Nidal, but the thrust of his book is that on the whole we have had difficulty countering terrorism in any form. He gives a fairly detailed case study of the series of terrorist attacks against U.S. personal in Lebanon during 1983-1984. The perpetrators of these attacks were members of Hezbollah, a Shia terrorist organization sponsored by Iran and enabled by Syria. In the case of the bombing of the U.S. Beirut Embassy in 1984 as it turned out, if the CIA had reviewed its available evidence, especially imagery they would have seen that a mock up of the U.S. Embassy had been constructed and was being used to train for car bomb attacks against the real thing. This is not a matter of "connecting the dots"; it is a matter of knowing the target (in this case Hezbollah) and building rational indications lists. In the fallout from this series of disasters, the redoubtable Charlie Allen, a long time CIA employee, called attention to the existence of this imagery (hind site is always 20/20). As a result Allen was named the new National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for counter-Terrorism. To his credit, Allen almost immediately tried to make information sharing a part of IC culture by connecting all concerned agencies directly with the CIA center for photo interpretation. Needless to say the IC culture than as now was largely opposed to sharing anything and Allen's efforts came to naught. In the couple of chapters of this book Naftali does chronicle the efforts by the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to deal with the terrorist threat posed by the Osama bin Laden movement. Neither comes off very well in this, but the Bush administration comes off as the most indifferent, at least prior to 9/11.

This reviewer would recommend that prior to reading this book; interested readers should read "Inside Terrorism" by Bruce Hoffman to understand all the different manifestation of terrorism.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Robust review of history of U.S. counterterrorism policy, November 7, 2005

By 

Dukhi Lashenenkov (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (Hardcover)

While many recent works on terrorism focus almost exclusively on the most recent incarnation (Islamic jihadists), Naftali reviews the much broader historical counterterrorism landscape. Perhaps most interesting is the historical parallel he draws between the difficult decisions the Clinton and Bush II administrations faced prior to 9-11 and those faced by the Johnson and Nixon administrations. The author does a tremendous job of reinforcing that terrorism and U.S. efforts to combat it are nothing new, and that policymakers often find themselves faced with the same difficult decisions and repeating the same mistakes as their predecessors. Those readers who wish to read more than this book offers about counterterrorism policy since the late 1990s should read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars and Peter Bergen's Holy War, Inc.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Questionable history without an interesting thesis, August 26, 2005

By 

L. Slezak - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (Hardcover)

The recounting of contemporary histroy seems to focus more on the activities of the Republican administrations with a glossing over of the activities (or lack thereof) of the Democratic administrations. The most interesting fact related about the Carter administration is that they found it expedient to stall actions on counterterrorism by encouraging the debate of whether one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. I lost trust in the author's accounts when, after describing the importance of Abu Nidal and efforts against him in the 80's, he tells us that "Abu Nidal later died of natural causes in Baghdad". I still remember that those "natural causes" were reported by Iraqi Intelligence, in the months before the US invasion of Iraq, as "5 self-inflicted gunshot wounds". It seems very convenient to describe that as "natural causes" if you want to avoid the subject that Abu Nidal might have been performing some function in his years in Baghdad.