94 of 97 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Top Five Books on Topic, But Has Some Gaps, September 13, 2004
Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.
The negative reviews on this book are by people that have not read the book carefully (one appears to have not read it all, having only seen the author on television). I am comfortable, on the basis of my career in intelligence, my three published books on intelligence (two with forewords by Senators, one Democratic, one Republican), and my 1100+ reviews on non-fiction about national security issues, is saying that this book is easily one of the top five books on the topic that most Americans should consider reading. The other four are the Webster Tarpley's book
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition which displaced the utterly imcompetent and unethical 9-11 Commission Report, the Aspin-Brown Commission Report (1996), Jim Bamford's book,
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies and George Allen's book on the failure of intelligence in Viet-Nam,
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam There are many others, but for 9-11 and the urgently needed reforms to intelligence after 9-11 (three years ago, still no reforms of note), these are the five.
The book is most important as an unclassified record of what can be known about our failures--in both intelligence and in policy--as understood by the then serving Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). It does have gaps--it is much less detailed than the 9-11 Commission Report, harder to read than Jim Bamford's book, and suffers from considerable gaps in both what went wrong and what needs to be fixed, as covered by my own books as well as the many other intelligence reform books that I have reviewed in their own Amazon spaces. That does not diminish its relative value as a "touchstone" for all Americans.
There are, in my view, three compelling bottom lines in this book that cannot be ignored:
1) Senator Graham recognizes better than most that in the absence of public pressure for reform, there is little incentive for Congress or the Executive to take action. As one Member is reported to have told Amy Zegart "America still does not get it--it will take another 5,000 body bags." It is my view that the combination of intelligence community leadership misrepresentation ("its all better now, no need to make major changes" and the White House denial that there was an intelligence failure at all, which defies understanding, have led the country to fall asleep again--a point that "Anonymous" makes in
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror.
2) Page 243 covers both of the other two points. The first is that the Department of State has become a neglected orphan in US intelligence and US policy making about global threats, and this needs to change. It is worthy of note that the Department of State got it right on Iraq despite its small numbers and tiny budget, and I agree completely with Senator Graham--State has to get back in the business of being America's *primary* foreign and national security policy strategist. I put together
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest but State leadership at this time is intellectually and morally challenged (2007).
3) Although disappointing in its brevity, especially since both the Aspin-Brown Commission and the 9-11 Commission found cause to note the importance of open sources of information, Senator Graham also notes on page 243 that a primary corrective measure to the failure of the intelligence community to "connect the dots" and related "incestuous amplification" lies in combining a renewed primary by the Department of State with greatly increased investments in Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) such as Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02) is planning to put into the House Armed Services Committee legislation addressing 9-11 deficiencies.
Senator Graham joins Dick Clarke (whose book,
Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror I strongly recommend) in condemning both Saudi Arabian sponsorship of terrorism, and the bi-partisan Clinton-Bush pandering to the Saudi's, accepting despicable sustained actions by the government of Saudi Arabia against the government and people of the United States of America, for the sake of cheap oil (see also the book by Michael Klare, and by Robert Baer). While I distinguish to an extent between Saudi intelligence, which sponsors terrorism, and Saudi royalty, which tried to deny its roots in Arabia, the bottom line is that both governments knew that Bin Laden was being nurtured by Saudi intelligence, and both chose to ignore the danger.
Senator Graham ends his book by lamenting the lack of accountability in both intelligence and policy. He is completely correct. George Tenet failed to resurrect the clandestine service in the seven years he served as Director of Central Intelligence, and then had the audacity to tell the 9-11 Commission that he needed seven more years to do this, now that he realized it was broken. No way, Jose. It is time to fire all the losers that have been testifying to Congress on how they would do things differently, and bring in the people who resigned their commissions in order to go public from 1985-2001. It is noteworthy that both the House and the Senate have failed to ask the latter to testify--virtually all of the witnesses on 9-11 are from the crowd that allowed 9-11 to happen in the first place.
Intelligence matters, indeed. It is clear from this book that the public does not yet grasp this, and it is not clear from this book that Congress ever will. The current legislative proposals are still in lip-service, cosmetic mode. The Members are still too reliant on ignorant staff and still too prone to substitute press conferences for deep discussions with the top 15 practitioner-authors who know what is needed.
There *will* be another 9-11, and there *will* be a "nuclear hell-storm" in America, courtesy of Al Qaeda. You cannot have smart spies in the context of a dumb Nation.....
See also, with reviews:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
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137 of 147 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
America is hard to find, September 9, 2004
I spent an entire night reading this one. It simply boggles the imagination. I can't think of another sitting senator who's ever written such a book. Graham, who has served on the Senate Intelligence Committee for 10 years and chaired it for 18 months, contends that there's a Saudi Arabian connection to 9/11 that the Bush whitehouse is deliberately concealing.
Just one of many examples: it seems that a retired Saudi professor in California was enlisted by the FBI as a paid informant to keep tabs on Saudis in his area. Two of the 9/11 hijackers boarded with him. But when the Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenaed the FBI for information relayed by the professor, the White House ordered the FBI to refuse to give the info on the grounds of 'national security.'
From beginning to end, the White House has blocked public information about the Saudi connection to terrorism. Graham documents this bizarre resistance, and speculates that the reasons for it are complex. At least two factors play heavily: the national alliance with Saudi Arabia since WWII, and the oil dependency upon which that relation is built; and the Bush dynasty's personal relationship with the Saudi ruling family.
A chilling account of official misinformation. If even half of what Senator Graham says is correct, the country we now live in is different from the country we lived in four years ago.
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89 of 95 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Fear Lies Within...A Senator Divulges, September 8, 2004
Similar to an anonymous CIA officer's account of intelligence lapses in "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror", this book is a sizzler almost told as a morality tale with sadly no ending to echo the moral the author espouses. Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), former 2004 Presidential hopeful, has joined the growing ranks who have written well-timed books to reflect their disgust and confusion over the constant deceptions that seem to entangle the Bush administration in its bid for re-election. Graham has much in common with Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), who similarly derides the current administration in his recent book, "Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency". That book places more focus on the President's complete disregard for the U.S. Constitution and uses historical references to back up his claims. However, Graham, joined by former Gore speechwriter Jeff Nussbaum, has a more immediate target in mind, the allegedly close and protective relationship between the Bush family and the Saudi government. The consequences of this connection, according to Graham, have now resulted in over one thousand casualties in Iraq. In particular, he assails the Bush administration for the charade that is the Iraqi war, for failing to address the real war on terrorism and for ignoring a Saudi-funded al-Qaeda network that remains largely intact here in the U.S. Damning charges but ones he meticulously backs up in this book.
This Bush-Saudi connection is the same subject that Michael Moore emphasizes during the middle portion of "Fahrenheit 9/11". In both cases, it is difficult to deny that much of what he does claim is at minimum strangely coincidental and at worst immoral. Whereas Moore is mainly flippant in his approach, Graham is quite sober and provides a perspective commensurate with a conscience-stricken political insider tasked almost impossibly with investigating the full impact of the terrorist threat. After all, he was the co-chair of the joint House-Senate panel investigating 9/11 prior to the formation of the broader commission that resulted in the phenomenal "9/11 Commission Report". Interestingly, that book claims no connection exists between the Saudis and the 9/11 terrorists. Graham, however, provides compelling evidence that proves otherwise, in particular, the funding of two of the 9/11 hijackers by the Saudi government and the abrupt movement of forces from the bin Laden manhunt in Afghanistan to the more nebulous political landscape of Iraq, a move that surprised even General Tommy Franks.
The most intriguing and explosive charge in the book is the U.S.-based support network for al-Qaeda, as the war with Iraq has provided a helpful distraction to the detection of these individuals. Even members of the 9/11 Commission acknowledge that Graham may be right when he says the FBI never fully unraveled a support network that helped the hijackers. This book, coupled with "Imperial Hubris", gives as complete a picture as possible on the whole terrorist issue. "Intelligence Matters" is essential reading as it represents a wake-up call to those from President Bush downward to respond to the crisis of poor intelligence in the face of a serious terrorist threat. No matter how you vote in November, you need to read Senator Graham's account to be more fully informed.
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