The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror [Hardcover]

Ronald Kessler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2003

With the CIA at the core of the war on terror, no agency is as important to preserving America's freedom. Yet the CIA is a closed and secretive world-impenetrable to generations of journalists-and few Americans know what really goes on among the spy masters who plot America's worldwide campaign against terrorists.

Only Ronald Kessler, an award-winning former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, could have gained the unprecedented access to tell the story. Kessler interviewed fifty current CIA officers, including all the agency's top officials, and toured areas of the CIA the media has never seen. The agency actively encouraged retired CIA officers and officials to talk with him as well. In six years as director, George J. Tenet has never appeared on TV shows and has given only a handful of print interviews, all before 9/11, but Tenet agreed to be interviewed by Kessler for this book. He spoke candidly and passionately about the events of 9/11, the war on terror, the agency's intelligence on Iraq, and the controversies surrounding the agency.

The CIA at War tells the inside story of how Tenet, a son of Greek immigrants, turned around the CIA from a pathetic, risk averse outfit to one that has rolled up 3,000 terrorists since 9/11, was critically important to winning in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now kills terrorists with its Predator drone aircraft.

The book portrays Tenet as a true American hero, one who overcame every kind of Washington obstacle and the destructive actions of previous director John Deutch to make the agency a success. As Tenet said in a recent speech, "Nowhere in the world could the son of an immigrant stand before you as the director of Central Intelligence. This is simply the greatest country on the face of the earth."

The CIA at War discloses highly sensitive information about the CIA's unorthodox methods and its stunning successes and shocking failures. The book explores whether the CIA can be trusted, whether its intelligence is politicized, and whether it is capable of winning the war on terror. In doing so, the book weaves in the history of the CIA and how it really works. It is the definitive account of the agency.

From the CIA's intelligence failure of 9/11 to its critical role in preventing further attacks, The CIA at War tells a riveting, unique story about a secretive, powerful agency and its confrontation with global terrorism.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The war on terror is a sideshow to the larger struggle for the CIA's soul in this illuminating but partisan book. Investigative journalist Kessler gives a warts-and-all account of the CIA's checkered past up to the despondent 1990s, when the demise of Communism, official disparagement of human intelligence-gathering in favor of high-tech spying, and humiliations like the Aldrich Ames spy case, left the agency rudderless and demoralized. Kessler ties these lapses to a dysfunctional institutional culture that oscillated, he says, between paranoia and slackness, bureaucratic sclerosis and "cowboy" adventurism, and arrogant unaccountability and prissy human rights regulations. Kessler gives an absorbing and critical, if somewhat rambling, history of the agency and its problems, based on extensive interviews with past and present CIA officials and leavened with intriguing secret-agent lore. But when current CIA director George Tenet-a "gracious" and "politically savvy" leader whose "integrity and outspokenness" started a "healing process" that made the agency "focused, aggressive and effective"-arrives on the scene, Kessler's objectivity departs. He dismisses criticisms of the CIA's pre-Sept. 11 performance and the controversy over intelligence claims about Iraq (Tenet, he huffs, "would never tolerate any attempts to influence the CIA's conclusions"). Instead, Kessler extols the agency's successes in "rolling up" terrorists and laying the clandestine groundwork for the invasion of Iraq, while downplaying awkward loose threads like the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction the CIA insisted were in Iraq. Kessler's uncritical endorsement of Tenet-and of President Bush, another "focused" leader who "gets" intelligence, unlike the inattentive Clinton-lacks the insight displayed in the rest of the book. Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Kessler takes us from the formation of the CIA as an outgrowth of World War II OSS intelligence activities, when most agents were East Coast Ivy League elites focused on cold war scrimmages, through the current war on terror, where the enemy is often unknown and the agency elite are somewhat more diverse. Through numerous interviews with both agents and operatives, Kessler brings to life a world generally described only in fiction. While providing special insight into CIA successes associated with the post-9/11 war on terror, Kessler also portrays a demoralized agency that lost popular and political support because of its inability to detect traitors within its own ranks. This historically secretive and powerful agency has adjusted to modern warfare by integrating intelligence gathering with field operations. Kessler had unprecedented access to the agency, which is reflected in his up-to-date commentary on the war and administration policy. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312319320
• ISBN-13: 978-0312319328
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,338,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ronald Kessler is the New York Times bestselling author of nineteen non-fiction books about the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA.

Kessler began his career as a journalist in 1964 on the Worcester Telegram, followed by three years as an investigative reporter and editorial writer with the Boston Herald. In 1968, he joined the Wall Street Journal as a reporter in the New York bureau. He became an investigative reporter with the Washington Post in 1970 and continued as a staff writer until 1985.

Kessler's latest book is "The Secrets of the FBI." His previous book was "In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect." USA Today described the book as a "fascinating exposé...high-energy read...amusing, saucy, often disturbing anecdotes about the VIPs the Secret Service has protected and still protects.....[accounts come] directly from current and retired agents (most identified by name, to Kessler's credit)....Balancing the sordid tales are the kinder stories of presidential humanity...[Kessler is a] respected journalist and former Washington Post reporter....an insightful and entertaining story." Kessler and the book were featured on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Kessler has won seventeen journalism awards, including two George Polk awards--for national reporting and for community service. Kessler has also won the American Political Science Association's Public Affairs Reporting Award, the Associated Press' Sevellon Brown Memorial Award, the Robert Novak Journalist of the Year Award, and Washingtonian magazine's Washingtonian of the Year award. He is listed in Who's Who in America.

Ron Kessler lives with his wife Pamela Kessler in the Washington, D.C. area. Also an author and former Washington Post reporter, Pam Kessler wrote "Undercover Washington: Where Famous Spies Lived, Worked and Loved." His daughter Rachel Kessler, a public relations executive, and son Greg Kessler, an artist, live in New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You can't afford NOT to read this book, October 7, 2003

By 

"dplesq" (Basking Ridge, New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror (Hardcover)

Anyone interested in learning how the CIA operates (and for Americans that should be all of us) will find this book fascinating. Choc-a-bloc with anecdotes and infomation that is both scary and amusing, it's hard to put down. Did you know that former CIA director John Deutch place l7,00, that's right, THOUSAND, CIA files, some of which were classified as top secret on his unclassified home computer? Did you know that since 9/11 certain Arab countries such as Yemen have actively cooperated with the CIA in its' war against al Qaeda? Do you want to know what the CIA is doing to try to insure there is never another 9/11? Do you (as I do) question whether we should have invaded Iraq? Read Kessler's analysis of the information amassed by the CIA demonstrating that Sadam Hussein was concealing a program dedicated to developing weapons of mass destruction and then decide what you think about the decision. Clearly a fan of George Tenet, whose achievements are impressive by any standard, Kessler is nonetheless critical of the CIA in many respects, as well he should be. Don't criticize the CIA without understanding something about it. This book will help you do just that.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat misleading title, July 21, 2004

By 

Cowboy Neal (Dark Star) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror (Hardcover)

"Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror" makes it sound, at least to me, that the book will concentrate primarily on the battle against Al-Queda. However, Kessler doesn't get around to that until about 2/3rds of the way in; the first 2/3rds are essentially an overview of the history of the CIA from its inception; not that that isn't interesting, but do I really have to read about the Bay of Pigs and Irangate again? Also Kessler's writing style is dry, lacking flair, which shouldn't surprise me since he comes from a newspaper background. Overall, a mixed bag. For those interested in reading about the battle against Al-Queda, The Cell (the authors names escape me for the moment, but do a search and you'll find it) is far, far superior.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Welcome and Timely Compendium of Tenet's Accomplishments, February 25, 2004

By 

Scott Faust (Denton, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror (Hardcover)

As other reviews have noted, this book is partisan toward George Tenet's Directorship, but in my opinion this is most welcome at a critical time when there are many calls to scapegoat one the CIA's most effective directors.

Tenet followed a series of failed Directorships (no less than 5 in 7 years!) and has revived a cultural of confidence and intelligent risk taking in the Agency that is crucial to prosecution of the War on Terror. If the feckless (and invariably insubstantially supported) calls to fire Tenet are heeded it will not only be a crushing blow to morale within the CIA and the intelligence community generally, but will also send a message that the (all too recent) bad old days of political scapegoating have returned, and that operatives, agents and analysts should revert to C.Y.A. mode.

Tenets accomplishments are considerable. To relate just a few:

He began the process of reviving HUMINT after it had been gutted by his predecessors; he literally pounded the witness table in hearings urging policy makers to take the offensive against al-Qaeda, and identifying Bin Laden as the country's single most important covert threat, years before 911; he promoted Coffer Black, the Khartoum station chief, to head the CIA's Counterterrorism Center precisely because of his expertise on al-Qaeda and his aggressiveness; he increased the staff of the Counterterrorism Center from a few dozen employees to over 300, again years before 911, while also integrating FBI employees on special assignment and actively addressing institutional infighting that undermined the center.

Unlike the technophobic Freeh at the FBI (who probably DID need to be fired) Tenet has been a consistent booster of modernization and innovation. He supported and pushed development of the Predator drone, for instance. With a less far sighted Director (who would have deferred to the Defense Dept's plodding development of similar but ultimately overly complex and less effective systems) we wouldn't have had that vital resource available, which has been responsible for "smoking" many al-Qaeda operatives.

Another example of Tenet's embrace of effective innovation is his promotion of In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit org established in '99 that funds and develops CIA technology and software projects, incorporating and co-opting private sector innovations. Prior to this, private firms with cutting edge technologies avoided the CIA because of it's cumbersome procurement procedures.

Along the same line, Tenet installed the ex-marine and retired millionaire investment banker A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard as the CIA's executive officer with a charge to cut through the Agency's bloated bureaucracy. Among other bold reforms, Krongard eliminated an entire directorate -- the powerful but bloated and sluggish fourth directorate, of administration -- so that (as in a private firm) the CIA's various divisions now report directly to higher management.

As other reviews have also noted, the treatment of CIA directors previous to Tenet is unremittingly negative. While this is glaringly true, it's not quite as bad as it sounds. Taking William Casey as an illustrative example, Kessler's criticisms -- poor handling of congress, shaky and inattentive administrative skills, failure to kill some ill conceived and counter productive operations, etc -- are at least arguably fair and accurate. The deficiency is not one of commission, but is rather the omission of Casey's strengths. For instance, Casey is given no credit at all for his most important accomplishments: his development of the economic warfare strategy against the Soviet Union, and his cultivation of accurate intelligence on the previously murky status of the Soviet economy.