Customer Reviews

On the Brink: An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If one is a careful reader, this book provides a fascinating window on how CIA went about its business in the period prior to the tragic attacks of 9/11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom. This, one would suspect, was an unintended consequence of the book. The book is rather disjointed and episodic, but this is probably due to the fact that it is really the informal personal narrative of veteran CIA Officer Tyler Drumheller.

In order to look into the window on CIA activities, one has to sort through the narrative for interesting pieces of information. For example, early on in the narrative the reader learns that prior to 9/11 Drumheller, as chief of the European Division of CIA's Directorate of Operations and his leaders had agreed to "press harder on counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation issues in Europe" and that he "wanted to be more aggressive" in this effort. We are then told that this was really hard because the European security services had a different approach than we did. As an example, Drumheller noted getting a telephone tap in Germany was much more difficult than in the U.S. because the German services had to get taps cleared through a committee of parliament. Yet if the Germans didn't routinely tap telephones there would scarcely have been a legal procedure for doing so in place. Nonetheless one is left with the impression that this was a show stopper for CIA. Also apparently only after his retirement in 2004, did it occur to Drumheller that CIA could have attempted to recruit informants from the large expatriate Muslim population then living in Europe. Country to Drumheller's contention, the risk to CIA relations with their European counterparts would have been minimal, if the recruitment was handled properly. Again this risk was apparently a show stopper for CIA. Finally it is clear from this book that, as late as 2004, CIA still had only a minimalist understanding of the structure and nature of the al Qaeda terrorist movement and, according to Drumheller, was unable to determine if the target should be worked by the geographic divisions or as transnational issue by the Counter-Terrorism Center. This is pitiful.

The issue of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the role of a dubious informant called Curveball are also enlightening. Apparently the CIA office for non-proliferation (WINPAC) chose to accept Curveball at his word that the Iraqis had mobile biological warfare laboratories and weapons. Since Curveball was a German asset, Drumheller's division got involved and a nasty fight developed over Curveball's reliability. It is astonishing that in this fight it apparently did not occur to anyone to use CIA's all source charter to look for actual evidence to support or refute Curveball. Indeed apparently no one even bothered to check with bio-warfare experts such as those at Fort Dietrich to see if what Curveball claimed made any sense. Is this what our inflated intelligence budget is buying us?

"Drumheller's book is a lucid account ... hobbled only by its late arrival to the shelf."

I think the above quote from the Publishers Weekly review of "On the Brink" says it all. I'm still reading it, but there really isn't anything in it so far that hasn't already been discussed in exhaustive detail in news coverage before its publication and especially in the WMD Commission Report (aka "the Silbermann-Robb Commission Report). About the only thing that Drumheller's book adds to the public record is a little bit more detail. The reviewer who claims that the book contains "explosive insights" ought to read the WMD Commission Report and see if he or she still believes that afterwards (the report came out in early 2005).

Drumheller's book also suffers from his tendency to attribute what he thinks and believes about Iraq to everyone in the Intelligence Community. As someone who works in that community, I think I can safely say that he does not speak for me or a lot of other people --even inside his own agency.

Another thing about the book that I find rather annoying is that it overwhelmingly "CIA-centric." Drumheller obviously believes that there is the CIA and "all the little agencies who make the CIA possible." My agency isn't even in the index.

This is in stark contrast to the WMD Commission Report (which is available on the Internet --just Google it-- and also in a book of reports called "Desert Mirage." The Commission looks at the total Intelligence Community and what it got wrong and right.

So why pay good money for a book that tells you only one narrow part of the story? Why not download the report and get the whole thing for free? It's not like the report is hard to read or that it whitewashes anything that Drumheller decries.

Although Drumheller's book rambles some and feels incomplete, this can be forgiven since 1/6 of the original was excised by the CIA. I particularly liked the personal glimpse of this fine professional and his family, rarely seen due to the necessarily hidden and shadowy roles of CIA people. I would enjoy having these people as friends.

The book makes a significant contribution to our national security discussion. Specifically, it shows that a key part of the CIA (Drumheller's group)did not consider reliable the Iraqi source "Curveball" held by another European security service, and on whose reports the Bush administration based much of its false case for Iraq having biological weapons of mass destruction. Also important is the description of the Iraqi source in Saddam's inner circle identified by another European security service. This source reputedly claimed that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and Drumheller's agent kept trying to meet personally with this source. Drumheller makes a strong case that George Tenet and key Bush administration figures too willingly believed and trumpeted the fabricator, Curveball, but weren't interested in pursuing the Saddam associate. In other words, the administration had its mind made up to go to war with Iraq and wanted to hear and allow only that intelligence that supported its case. The administration's methods were to not-so-subtly intimidate CIA analysts and to "stovepipe" raw data directly to key Bush figures and discourage normal CIA vetting and analytical processes.

[...]. Concerning Silbermann-Robb Commission report and the Saddam inner-circle source who claimed no weapons of mass destruction, Drumheller writes: "I was questioned at length about (our agent's) tour around the world in pursuit of the Iraqi source, and I hoped the issue would be given a serious airing in the six-hundred page report when it was released on March 31, 2005. But the only references I can find are oblique and seem designed to head off any criticism of the administration for failing to consider the possibility that Saddam was not armed to the teeth. This is no doubt a consequence of the fact that the panel, for all its eminence, excluded from its considerations the behavior of the administration, as it submitted its report to the president."

The Drumheller book shows serious and professional work that believed in getting the facts, whatever they happen to show, rather than "fixing the facts around the policy", which is unfortunately what our administration required. And then for the administration to blame the intelligence community for the "wrong" intelligence about the weapons of mass destruction is a real travesty upon the dedicated CIA people who were trying to serve the best interests of our country. I highly recommend this book.

I had high expectations for this book and frankly was very disappointed. After having read "At The Center of the Storm" by George Tenet I was anticipating another perspective from a CIA insider on September 11th, the War on Terror and the circumstance surrounding "curveball". This book does not deliver the goods. To be honest I kept loosing interest in the material. I found the writing rambling and wordy. I felt like I was reading a very loosely related collection of notes, diary entries and fragments of essays all in need of a major edit job. We are told on page 231 of the hardbound edition that one sixth of the book was deleted by the CIA vetting process to protect sources. When you consider the wide margins, double-spacing, blank page at the end of chapters, and major deletions of critical material I would recommend you pass this book up.

It took courage for Tyler Drumheller to bring his story to the public. He gives his own account of how difficut it was to write this book, and one can see how he might have abandoned the project at any point. Yet his moral conviction that the story had to be told bore Drumheller through the task. The human interest aspect of this book is as fascinating as the public affairs aspect.

This is a rather rambling personal account by a former senior executive service member of the CIA. It also includes a fascinating "Episodes from the Life of a CIA Family" by co-author Elaine Monaghan as well as her Afterward which includes extensive excerpts from the Silberman-Robb report (with online URLs) which investigated the issues raised in this book. It's obvious that the author's operational division/group disagreed with its intelligence counterparts in CIA's WINPAC & other intel agencies. The tragedy was that the ops folks were right (this time). Of course, we have no idea how this one event fits into the overall scheme of things statistically. Apparently, the relatively lower level ops folks didn't have the credibility or juice needed on this issue. It's impossible to ascertain whether the fault lay with President & advisors or with CIA top executives (who voluntarily took the blame) since the text seems to disagree with the Silberman-Robb report in this regard. I think it was admirable that Monaghan included such extensive reporting on it. Still, one wonders at this fiasco--not that such a thing could happen, we're all human and this is after all human intelligence = humint, but at the apparent lack of creativity. For example, though the Germans initially denied US agents access to Curveball (they got access eventually--but too late), they could have asked to see him behind one-way glass (done all the time by police during questioning and for lineups) or at least provided the questions to the Germans to ask. It was the questions asked (after access was given) that provided the inconsistencies proving that Curveball was a fabricator. Most appalling, however, was the lack of any integration of intelligence data, even for a particular issue or source. Further, the data provided to users lacked context (i.e. the source WAS considered questionable by some CIA personnel--whether you agreed with them or not). Thus, they had a black & white, all-or-nothing approach to information & data--and they only provided those, NOT knowledge (which requires context). Only knowledge is actionable--not data or information (something out of context is valueless).

If you care at all about the politicization of intelligence in the runup to this war you must read this book. It's true that there are no blockbuster revelations but this is an insider's story of how the intelligence process was manipulated and abused and how good people got sucked into bad reporting.

The decision to go to war was a foreign policy disaster of still incalculable proportions. It is important that we try to learn what put us on this path. How did the CIA get it so wrong? Tyler Drumheller, the recently retired Chief of the European Division offers a first -hand account of the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to faulty and misleading intelligence reports. This is not a mea culpa for much of what went wrong was far beyond his purview. It is a story of human frailties in the face of power and the over zealous influence of the Cheneyites in the intelligence process

Drumheller reluctantly lays a lot of the blame on his friend George Tenet whose most grievous human failing was to love his job too much. He paid the price under the pressure of Cheney and Scooter Libby. He was the good soldier, but the "yes" men in good times are the villainous collaborators in bad times.

Much of the junk (sorry, no more appropriate word) that the Agency churned out in the runup to the war came from WINPAC, an arm of the Directorate of Intelligence of the CIA. Some of what WINPAC was using came from Curveball, an unreliable source in Germany run by the German Intelligence. Curveball was an alcoholic and his reporting was not corroborated by any other sources. Yet, this was the drunk who provided Secretary of State Powell with much of his dramatic information in his now infamous speech at the United Nations. Unfortunately, the Germans did not allow us direct contact to do our own vetting of this guy until it was too late

In the end Drumheller comes down on the side of those who believe that the Agency was used but he also makes it clear that analysts in the DDI were also responsible for not doing their homework and recognizing that Curveball was a single source, that Tenet was manipulated, that safeguards were missing that should have been there. Drumheller feels that Tenet "over-empowered" analysts at WINPAC by interrupting the chain of command. Analysts knew that their reporting was going through Tenet to the White House without any intermediate -level staff checking. This was a setup for disaster as relatively low level analysts could see the opportunity to make a splash for themselves. There was no firewall.

One sixth of this book was excised by the Agency This reviewer surmises, but has no proof, that all the passages pertaining to renditions and secret CIA prisons in Europe are on the cutting room floor in Langley. However, with the Democrats taking control of both the House and Senate, it is more than likely that Drumheller will have the opportunity to be heard on those subjects when asked to testify before a Senate or House committee in the coming months.

At its inception the CIA was envisioned as a truth teller to all the presidents, even when the truth is uncomfortable. However, on p.152 Drumheller observes that "Intelligence services react to the goals and prejudices of the political leadership". Nowhere in this book does Drumheller try to make the case that intelligence was deliberately distorted or omitted. What is clear is that there was a culture of intimidation and a pervasive sense that this Administration did not want to hear news that didn't fit into its agenda. In the end, the Agency failed in its mission and it is now paying the price. It must regain its credibility, its raison d'etre, or it will never be the same again. This book is a step in that direction.

It is crazy to say this, but there are far better books on this subject. This book lacks detail that you will see in "Curveball" by Drogin as well as other books. I imagine the CIA review ended up removing some of the really interesting information from this publication.

This book has little to offer. So the commander-in-chief didn't follow the CIA recommendations exactly -- well, who works for whom?

The story meanders rather disjointedly, and the left-wing basis becomes readily apparent when one reads about the political attitudes within the author's family. With respect to much of the content, I agree with Retired Reader's review, but not his rating. There is almost nothing to learn here for the general public.

Amazingly, the proper actions only came into focus after the author retired and 20-20 hindsight could be applied. Also the difficulty of getting wiretaps in Germany was ingenuous -- the Germans have been merrily wire-tapping people of interest with impunity for years as well as opening their mail (and all mail going or coming from specific countries or localities) and microfilming the contents. That the CIA couldn't obtain what was supposedly needed is a gross indictment of the agency. Also, every intelligence in the world recruits agents from citizens of target countries who are accessible in third countries, but apparently this hadn't occurred to the Chief of the CIA Clandestine Operations, Europe. Wow, so now we read about that and it's Bush's fault? What's the CIA going to do now that its leftist ideology is in line with Obama's?

That the CAI is a bloated bureaucracy and extremely risk-adverse cannot really be argued against. However, one obtains the feeling from this book that the author believes the reverse is true. Obviously the memories of individuals in this book have undergone modification based on subsequent events to make certain individuals look good and others bad. This is often the case with books like this, and earns them low ratings.

In short, there is almost nothing new in this book, and some details are highly questionable. This has been grist to the far-left media mill, but of little use to the US in any capacity. In essence, it is remarkable that the chief of an important department should have so little understanding of intelligence gathering, how it is accomplished and how it is analyzed. Perhaps that has been a major part of our problem, but rather than getting better, it now looks like it will get worse. Now we have a garden-variety political/bureaucratic hack who possesses no intelligence experience in the position of CIA Director.

It is important for individuals at management levels in the CIA to concentrate on their missions rather than promoting themselves at cocktail parties and political gatherings. If necessary they need to ready to resign in support of their positions and sacrifice themselves for the good of the country. For many reasons, bureaucrats, and especially those in the CIA, have been unwilling to do that. This book talks around those problems without addressing the central issues, and if the reader can penetrate the covering mish-mash, perhaps something can come out of it.

In short, I do not recommend this book to the general public, but it is an interesting read for intelligence professionals who understand the problems in the CIA bureaucracy and the lack of morale fiber within.

Almost incredible, how the ideological kidnapping by the Bush administration precipitated the retirement or resign of very senior officers at the CIA - without any regret.