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The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11

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The more you read about this administration, the more you piece together the inner workings and mechanizations of a dysfunctional leadership that spends more time on propaganda and plausible deniability than on governance.

Suskind paints a picture that is becoming all too familiar. Everything for Mr. Bush was funneled through the narrow straw of Dick Cheney who filtered all the information the president would see. This not only slowed the information process, it effectively buried it. (It seems Richard Clarke who wrote "Against All Enemies" was right).

Following the attack on 9/11, Cheney instituted the One Percent Doctrine: If there is one percent chance of a terrorist action, there should be a response. Considering that almost all events short of the laws of physics have a one percent chance, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies ran ragged around the world chasing minutiae that came to nothing instead of focusing on hard evidence and solid leads. These were thrown into the mix of nonsense dilluting intelligence efforts.

The CIA and FBI were also being harried to get results so the administration could use these successes for public consumption. In some cases, they were forced to end operations that might have borne fruit if the administration had not blown them by publicizing the investigations.

Do you remember when no WMD were found, and this administration blamed the intelligence community for giving them the wrong information? It turns out, according to Ron Suskind, that the White House kept sending back CIA reports that claimed there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin-Laden. We learn that CIA analysts and supervisors were livid when the White House constantly asked them if there was a connection between the two. Their reports were returned with their concluding paragraphs deleted or questions about Hussein and Osama added. In short, they cherry-picked and publicized mischaracterized and misinterpreted information to achieve their political ends.

Now enter George Tenet, fall guy, who has to take the hit for Bush and Cheney. The man who doesn't remember ever having said "it's a slam dunk" found that the administration had made public this statement he doesn't remember making. It was now time for Tenet and the CIA to take the fall for an administration that ignored its warnings. Tenet receives the Medal of Freedom for keeping his mouth shut. Blaming the CIA did have its consequences. Analysts whose reports were ignored or mischaracterized began leaking information to the press, information that embarrassed the White House.

Suskind said it best in his closing pages: "Mistakes can't be publicly acknowledged; certainty, even in the face of countermanding evidence, becomes a surrogate for courage; will stands in for earned--regularly tested--conviction." "... the self-interested use of classified materials to carry forward politcal ends; the very concealment of the true nature of what's been happening since 9/11 in favor of a sanitized, 'need to know' version--are all means that, whatever their advertised value, strike at the nation's character." This sums up his feelings about the Bush/Cheney administration. As a famous Amnerican once said, "any government that doesn't trust its people doesn't deserve the trust of the people."

If there is at least a one percent chance that Suskind is right, shouldn't the American people respond?

In the context of non-fiction literature, I consider this book to be the co-equal of Graham Allison's classic, "Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis." It joins Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" and the more detailed James Risen's "State of War" as core references. This book specifically and clearly documents three facts:

1) Vice President Cheney is impeachable for dereliction of duty and obstruction of due process in government as well as many violations of international and domestic law. While I do not see the President as quite the puppet some represent him to be, he is certainly childish and petulant and angry at his father (page 107: "I'm not going to be supportive of my father and all his Arab buddies.") Cheney and his neo-cons nurtured the young President's inclination to "unleash" Israel against the Palestinians, and Cheney is specifically impeachable for not providing the President with a copy of the Saudi Arabian memorandum of grievances that preceded a summit at the ranch which was of MAJOR importance to the entire Middle East situation. The author excels at showing how Dick Cheney has "experimented", from President Ford onward, with specifically NOT briefing the President, ostensibly to give him plausible denial but in this instance, more as a means of Cheney's deposing Bush as the actual head of State.

2) I cannot take the second step of suggesting that Bush himself is impeachable on the basis of this book. What I see--and the author excels at social-psychological insights across the entire text--is an insecure young man with excessive faith in his gut instinct, loosely-educated, hostile about experts and especially mature experts like Brent Scowcroft, and all too eager to prove his (inadequate) manliness by being belligerent and often a bully. "Bring it on." The author of this book combines analytic insights into the character of the President, with detailed discussion of the degree to which the White House completely ignored the policy process to "do what they want, when they want to, for whatever reason they decide." On the basis of this book, one can conclude that Cheney should be impeached and Bush still needs a good spanking from his father. In this context, the author provides a memorable quote on page 227, "America, unbound, was duly led by a President, unbound" and also "free from conventional sources of accountability."

3) The third major focus of this book is the combination of incapacity of the CIA and the FBI and the Pentagon in evolving to deal with the post-9/11 challenges. The FBI comes off as the most inept, consistently unable to do its job on the home front. Rumsfeld is next in line for condemnation, and while the author is very professional in his review, he quotes Rumsfeld as saying that "every CIA success is a DoD failure," and he quotes then Vice President Nelson Rockefeller as considering Rumsfeld to be "beneath contempt." One can only be stunned as the six years going on eight of having a government that is BOTH "out of control" AND inept. The CIA, and George Tenet, are featured as the least incompetent among the three. At a minimum, they did find and track Bin Laden over a week as he fled Afghanistan and the Pentagon refused to put US troops into Afghanistan's border region; and they did get other aspects right in relation to the policy debate that was not allowed to happen. The title of the book refers to the Vice President's decision that even a 1% probability of what he chose to emphasize, was sufficient to eliminate the policy process and all standards of evidence, sufficient to close out all reasoned debate.

There are a number of gems in this book that merit note:

1) Cheney was responsible for both intelligence and terrorism from day one of the Bush Administration, and was clearly derelict in his duty in ignoring both.

2) The book clearly lays out how the Administration's obsession with Iraq sidelined all CIA warnings including the 6 August warning and others. Bush is quoted in the book as having dismissed the last CIA briefing team, which made a frantic attempt to alarm him, as "OK, you've covered your ass now." Boy kings as "enfant's terribles!"

3) The book captures in detail the incompetence of the CIA and FBI as a general rule. On one page, the author quotes the Vice President as chewing out both agencies, saying "You don't cooperate for shit." On another page, he quotes George Tenet as telling the assembled Allied intelligence chiefs, "We don't know shit."

4) The author provides a superb review of successes in one area, following the money, but ends on a down note because now Al Qaeda and everyone connected to the financial support of Al Qaeda has gone "offline" to use couriers and cash. As the author says, we are now, again, deaf and blind. In passing the book puts Western Union out of business in the Arab world, at least among those desiring to do illegal transactions. In this context the author makes it clear that First Data volunteered to help, and confirms that the Bush Administration decided with great deliberation to ignore the FISA court and its *exclusive* mandate from Congress.

Other tid-bits:

1) CIA had the mastermind of the London bus bombings in its sights, but put him on a no fly list rather than help the UK track him.

2) Al Qaeda chose NOT to go after nuclear targets with the 9/11 bombings, "for fear it would go out of control." This suggests a reasoned enemy.

3) Brent Scowcroft produced a plan for intelligence reorganization that was sensible, and that was blocked by Cheney, who also blocked the 1992 intelligence reform effort.

4) Condi Rice is crucified in this book for a broken NSC process and lack of gravitas.

Book ends with Deuteronomy 16:20, justice twice, once for ends, one for means. This book fails the Bush Administration on both counts.

See also:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Bush's Brain

This latest offering from renowned journalist Ron Suskind, "The One Percent Doctrine", proves the wisdom of the old adage regarding truth being stranger than fiction. At the same time it also serves up a number of egregious examples of just how far reaching the terrible recklessness and near total disregard for truth and law in the fateful decisions made by the Bush administration in the three year wake of the events of 911 has been for the nation and the world at large. At heart, Suskind contends, is an absurd Cheny perception that even a "one percent' probability of a terrorist attack requires immediate pre-emptive action. Given such a fascistic and dangerous interpretation of America's presumptive place in the contemporary world, it is no wonder we have gone so recklessly far astray.

Indeed, it appears as though in making the world `safe from terrorism,' we seem to be have been willing to suspend any critical oversight of the Executive branch, to allow the current administration make a mockery of the supposed restraints existing among the several branches of the federal government, and to do so by so taking the U.S. Constitution on a plunge so deep into the depths of the icy blue waters of obfuscation and circular logic that one wonders if the Founding Fathers have the bends. Under the current circumstances, one has to wonder if the federal government is this free to so prevaricate, engage in character assassinations, withhold truth and important facts, and do whatever it deems prudent in the pursuit of its goals, regardless of its legality or illegality, then just what kind of constitutional republic we really have operating here. One that perhaps bears an uncanny resemblance to the early days of the Third Reich, when Hitler used similar arguments to shout down his opponents and subvert the laws, one by one. Sadly enough, like then, these days almost no rises to shout back in vocal defiance of this transparently solipsistic view of the separation of constitutional powers or the excesses of Executive action.

According to Suskind, there is overwhelming proof that those at the highest levels of the food chain within the insular Bush White House, including both Vice President Dick Cheney as well as the President himself, consciously and deliberately used the events of 911 as a screen to pursue preconceived goals, many of which, like Iraq, were actually virtually unrelated to the events surrounding 911, and that the pursuit of Saddam Hussein in particular was seen as constituting an opportunity to create an example of how the new America of the neoconservative right would deal with tyrants and enemies they found along the way toward the new American hegemony they lusted after. Now, firmly ensconced in the quicksand of Iraq (one dare not call it a quagmire!), these morons continue to recklessly shed American blood as they learn, with what has become painfully monotonous regularity, the limits of American power in a complex, multifacted world.

What is most frightening about Suskind's offering is the level of detail and example he provides to go over what many consider to be familiar territory already covered by Richard Clarke, Seymour Hersch, and a pursuing posse of notable others. Yes, indeed, the Bush team glossed over truths, disregarded inconvenient facts, disjointed other technical information to make it fit their preposterous cover stories, and honed the art of secrecy to a new cult of fascistic insistence that those who questioned their methods, arguments, or goals, were "unpatriotic" and are therefore somehow, unlike themselves, "unworthy to lead". They concocted a witch's brew of cover stories and different takes, employing a marketing and advertising firm to float various stories to the media in an attempt to determine which struck the most responsive chord.

They pressured Western Union and First Data Corporation into providing information covered by existing privacy laws, they held American citizens like Jose Padilla without charges for years without providing him any of the due process rights guaranteed by law. When the Supreme Court overturned this interpretation of Bush's right to do so by virtue of his status as Commander In Chief, the Justice Department found other questionable means to get their way. Indeed, the nation of laws is under assault by an administration that only knows what it wants and will do anything it needs to effect the outcome it desires. In the last six years they have effectively gutted the environmental regulations constraining corporate rape of the national parks, have blunted consumer protection, emasculated the EPA, EEOC, and FDA, and have looted the federal treasury to the tune of nine trillion dollars, all subsidized, at least temporarily, by foreign investment. In the end, however, those left to pay the bill will be those taxpayers not benefiting from the overly-generous tax cuts proffered like booty and tribute by the neo-conservatives to the upper reaches of the socioeconomic ladder. It makes the mind reel.

The saddest aspect of the book is the picture it paints of the principals; Mr. Tenet, a man all too willing to do anything he had to in order to both placate the President and please his constituency within the spy community; Ms. Rice, who plays fast and loose with honor and truth in service to the President's half-baked goals, Vice President Cheney, who looks more and more like the evil sorcerer, and the feckless George W. Bush, who seems to have mastered the Texas strut even while failing miserably to abide by the constitutional constraints incumbent in the office of the Presidency, and who in this account appears to be allotted the uneviable role of the sorcerer's apprentice. This is a great book, and one I can heartily endorse. Enjoy!

"The One Percent Doctrine" succeeds where many similar books have failed - by sparking an intense national debate about our response to global terrorism. You may strongly disagree with author Ron Suskind's conclusions, but you can't dismiss him out of hand as just another partisan hack a la Ann Coulter or Michael Moore. The research, evidence and exposition here are just too compelling to ignore.

Suskind, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, lays out his central thesis in a fairly straightforward way: America's war on terror following 9/11 is being severely undermined by a number of debilitating influences that continue today. Chief among these are...

-- The rampant political manipulation of government intelligence reports
-- Dysfunctional leadership in the White House
-- A pre-conceived neo-con agenda for Iraq
-- Over-confidence about America's military might
-- The unwillingness of some leaders to adapt to new realities

While Bush and Cheney certainly receive intense criticism in this book, Suskind does offer a healthy dose of balance. The war on global terrorism, he acknowledges, is very difficult indeed. Tactics that work this month may not work at all next month. Worst of all for Pentagon war planners, the constantly shifting and highly fragmented nature of terrorism tends to defeat our overwhelming superiority in firepower. What good is a stealth bomber in a crowded marketplace full of civilians?

Suskind's investigation into the portable cyanide bomb, earmarked for the New York subway system, illustrates that even the most committed minds cannot anticipate a terrorist's next move. Why did Zawahiri cancel the attack? We'll never know for sure.

It's helpful to remember that we've been in this situation before under previous administrations. Lyndon Johnson, for example, was emotionally ill-equipped to face the Vietnam quagmire until it was too late. Richard Nixon certainly misused CIA data for all sorts of nefarious purposes. And even Abraham Lincoln suspended key constitutional rights during the civil war.

What makes the current situation worse, says Suskind, is the tendency of the Bush administration to hide its failures beneath a cloak of self-defined patriotism and unnecessary secrecy. For my part, I'd respect the President much more if only he would admit his failures and ask for help from all sides of the political spectrum. We are all in this together, after all.

"The One Percent Doctrine" is a meticulously researched and fascinatingly presented portrait of an American administration which has absolutely run amok. Given that the United States of America is the preeminent global power, it is terrifying that its president, who is certainly not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, relies so very much on his "gut" and on forgetting that (and why) the Founding Fathers of America decided to keep religion and government firmly separate. (It is, additionally, no less terrifying that the people of the United States elected this person twice.) No less frightening is the semi-fascist who is "one heart attack away" from the White House, Dick Cheney. His "shoot first and don't even bother with the damn question later" approach to life has, as Ron Suskind thoroughly demonstrates, done more to increase visceral hatred for the United States in the Arab world (and not only) than anything else the USA has ever done before. Particularly as the 2008 election approaches, this book must be read to understand how far down the garden path Dubya and his black, black, black cardinal-behind-the-throne have led America. The ridiculous debates over gay marriage and such are absolute smokescreens to mask the fact that these men have run roughshod over civil liberties and American democracy as such. I applaud Ron Suskind for the hard work he has done in writing this fundamentally important book, and I invite everyone who is conerned about the future of America to read it!

This past week I read Ron Suskind's best-selling new book The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11. Going in, I wasn't sure what to expect from the author of the first major book criticizing President Bush (2002's The Price of Loyalty, about then-Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, which I have not read). Yet the subject matter was compelling enough for me to pick up the book. Now that I have finished reading it, I can say that this book is important enough to be required reading for all Americans who want to understand the nature of the post-9/11 threat this country faces and how we are responding.

The titular "one percent doctrine" is a reference to a quote by Vice President Cheney, in which he opines that catastrophic threats to the U.S. pose such a great danger that our country's response must be to react those threats with a 1% chance of occuring as being a certainty. Hence, it follows, preemption, unilateralism, etc.

Probably the first question many people have regarding this book: is it a partisan hatchet-job? The answer is no, and I admit being a little surprised myself here. Suskind's reporting of America's struggle to combat al-Qaeda in the pre-Iraq War years should earn him a medal. He provides an unsurpassed amount of detail into all the successes and setbacks of various U.S. counterterrorism operations.

Some parts of the book seem like Hollywood thriller material. My favorite story involved a CIA operation targeting "al-Qaeda's banker", Pacha Wazir. Afer quietly arresting Wazir and his associates, the CIA sent a few of its specially trained agents of Pakistani descent for an amazing undercover mission. Passing themselves off as distant cousins of Wazir, and explaining the latter's absence due to a family illness, the undercover agents took over Wazir's bank and continued to receive customers. This fantastic operation resulted in the capture of dozens of key terrorists.

Yet tempering triumphs like those are maddening passages like the one detailing how the U.S. bungled the apprehension of the eventual architect of the British 7/7/05 bombings due to bureaucratic tanglings. Another troubling story concerns the capture of Abu Zubaydah, originally thought to be a major al-Qaeda leader who was soon found to be just a menial agent, and worse, a certifiable schizophrenic. Suskind writes that despite this, "the United States would torture a mentally disurbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered." Zubaydah would conjure up several plot details about attacks on shopping malls, supermarkets, and banks, leading law enforcement to squander valuable resources. Yet he also ultimately told his interregators about Jose Padilla, leading to a mixed evaluation of the effectiveness of torture.

If there is any story arc to The One Percent Doctrine, it is that Suskind finds former CIA director George Tenet to be a tragic hero--he describes Tenet as being "the man most responsible, if anyone is, that America has not, again, been attacked" and laments how Tenet became the "fall guy" for the Bush administration over the lack of WMDs in Iraq. Suskind is a huge critic of the Iraq war, and toward the end of the book he takes leave of just-the-facts reporting to slam the White House (and then-National Security adviser Condi Rice especially) for the way they handled the runup to the war.

Considering that this book contains terrific reporting about so many things the American public doesn't know about the war on terrorism, I was a bit disappointed to see Suskind's personal viewpoint start to weigh heavier later in the book. Nonetheless, I stand by what I said before, that the book does not come across as overtly biased. There is definitely enough here for any open-minded reader to see both sides and come to their own conclusions.

My only other complaint about this book, one I made frequently though it is minor, is Suskind's penchant for "florid" writing. I think his terse and gripping account of terrorist plots or key Cabinet meetings would have been better off, from the reader's point of view, without being constantly interrupted by sentences like these "The connected planet creates all manner of loops, where knowledge spurs action, which is captured in image and word and then cycled back--the mythical perpetual motion machine comes to life."

Considering the insignificance of the criticisms I have mentioned, I would strongly recommend this book. Besides getting a front-row seat in the bleachers down at Gitmo Bay, I can't think of a way to feel more "in the know" about the war on terrorism than to read The One Percent Doctrine.

Mr. Suskind has completed an important work of journalism that should have us all considering and reevaluating what we think has been going on since 911--no matter what are political stripes are. After reading this I was forced to rethink some of my world views. You learn that US government is being forced to fight a new kind of war, one that officials truly do not yet have handle on. Who is the enemy? How do we find and engage them? Can we ever fully defeat them? The book reveals, that while there is plenty to be discouraged about there have been many times since 911 where the terrorist have been defeated saving possibly thousands of lives! But Suskind also shows how the terrorist have morphed their strategies after the government's early successes. This is a real life spy thriller with the lives of thousands at stake. There is more than one astonishing disclosure in this book, any one of which is worth the purchase price of this book. This has been the most fascinating work of nonfiction I have read in the last few years.

Before I read this book, I generally supported Bush. I figured he wasn't doing too good of a job with foreign policy - but felt that ultimately, who knew what was going on behind the scenes? Well, this book tells you what happened behind the scenes. Suskind tells some amazing stories that presumably, came from people who were in meetings with Bush, Cheney and most of all with George Tenet. The sources paint a picture that makes Bush look like an idiot, Cheney an evil-doer, and Tenet an all-american hero. I wish Suskind would have left it at that. But he adds on layers and layers of his own analyis. Some of it is fine, of course, but he seems to over-reach to make sure everyone realizes how horrible this administration is.

I know his sources must have some biases themselves, or else they wouldn't be so willing to talk to Suskind. But it's hard to ignore the basic facts. They're either lying, Suskind is lying or the administration is truly incompetent. After reading this book, let's just say I can't wait for this administration to be out of Washington.

this book is another outstanding and provactive book by the author. as usual his sources are great and the book reads like a novel.the subject is after 911 and the governments response with the cia and the politics its main focus; revelations in both areas.if you read this book also read COBRA 2. both these outstanding and well researched books will present to you a complete picture, good and bad what people in our government have done after 911.

What I mean by "scattered" is that the book could use a sharper focus. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind waded through mountains of documents and transcripts and notes from interviews and then published this as quickly as he could. He wanted to include all the important details he uncovered while they were topical, but he didn't really have the time to properly meld them into the narrative. The result is the book is a little less readable and engaging than it might have been.

Nonetheless, this is a fascinating account of how the Bush administration operates.

The "One Percent Doctrine" that forms the centerpiece and focal point is from Vice President Dick Cheney. Here's an example of how Cheney articulated it: "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." Cheney added, "It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence... It's about our response." (p. 62)

Looked at carefully this doctrine is really just a rationale for the Bush administration to do what it wants to do. The key point is the "one percent." If "it's not about...a preponderance of evidence," how do we know that there's a one percent chance? How do we know that it's not one tenth of one percent or one thousandth of one percent or a googleplex of one percent? We don't. And that is exactly the point of the Cheney Doctrine. As Suskind puts it, "A key feature of the Cheney Doctrine was to quietly liberate action from such accepted standards of proof... Suspicion...became the threshold for action." (p. 163)

Looked at in terms of our invasion of Iraq, the utility of the Cheney Doctrine to the Bush administration becomes clear. Was there a one percent chance that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction? Psychologically, since WMD are so scary, the answer was yes. But as far as evidence goes, the answer was no. Suskind writes: "...Cheney's doctrine was an audacious challenge to international legalities. Where once a discernible act of aggression against America or its national interest was the threshold for a US military response, now even proof of a threat is too constraining a standard." (p. 214)

I just wish the Cheney Doctrine had been applied to such things as global warming or stem cell research. Is there a one percent chance that the US will fall woefully behind the rest of the world in developing disease prevention and cure because we will not fund stem cell research? Is there a one percent chance that global warming is caused by human activities? In terms of the invasion of Iraq, perhaps Cheney and Bush ought to have asked, is there a one percent chance that invading Iraq will increase jihadist recruitment and will turn world opinion so against the US that we will lose effectiveness in our ability to fight terrorism?

It could also be said that by the logic of the one percent doctrine we really ought to have invaded North Korea and Iran.

Although Ron Suskind's assault on the Bush administration is not frontal, make no mistake about it, this book is yet another indictment. Much of the barrage comes from the experience of professionals in the intelligence community, most particularly from the experience of George Tenet who was director of the CIA until Bush allowed him to resign in June of 2004. The main thrust of Suskind's intent is to show that the Cheney Doctrine allowed the Bush administration to accept "as a guiding principle...that suspicion was an adequate threshold for preventative action" and thereby justify the invasion of Iraq.

Along the way, Suskind shows how the Bush administration also justified torture of detainees, how it lied to the American people and the world about the "evidence" for WMD in Iraq, how it made a phony connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and how in general secrecy and mendacity became hallmarks of the Bush administration.

There is a lot of insider knowledge in this book that could only have been gotten from people in the know whom Suskind does not identify. (Too bad.) He remarks in an "Author's Note" toward the end of the book that he'd like to mention their names and offer public thanks, but--to a one--I think they'd rather I not." (p. 350) Clearly this is the strength of this book, the sort of horse's mouth type of veracity that comes only from actually talking to those "deep inside."

One point that I found particularly interesting is the evidence here that Al Qaeda was responsible for the anthrax mailings that killed several people shortly after 9/11. (See pages 70-72 and 251-252.) We have not been made aware of this apparently because the Bush administration considers such knowledge too scary for consumption by the general public.

I also appreciated Suskind's statement that the neocons in the White House, led by Wolfowitz and Feith, thought that Saddam Hussein "was an easy mark...a demonstration model to show the new resolve of the United States and its postmodern rules of international behavior" (p. 214)--that is, to show that preemptive strikes were now policy, and aggressive wars might be in the offing from here on out. Actually this is the main reason for invading Iraq, that is, to flex new muscle and show the world that we will actually use our military strength.

One final observation from Suskind: "Cheney's nickname inside CIA was 'Edgar.' As in Bergen. The President would, by implication, be in the Charlie McCarthy role [that is, in the role of the puppet]. This isn't fair, but it is at least half true." (p. 213)