Sabotage: America's Enemies within the CIA [Hardcover]

Rowan Scarborough (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 16, 2007

Using his first-rate sources in all levels of national security-from field officers to high-ranking analysts to former intelligence heads-bestselling author Rowan Scarborough reveals how CIA bureaucrats are undermining President Bush and the War on Terror through disinformation, incompetence, and outright sabotage.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

How Bush-hating CIA Bureaucrats Are Sabotaging the War on Terror

Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, intelligence collection has become the number-one weapon in the effort to defeat al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. A plot penetrated is an attack stopped. And to the outside observer, the CIA has performed well as a key partner in the Bush administration's War on Terror. But as Rowan Scarborough reveals in this groundbreaking new book, significant elements within the CIA are undermining both the president and national security through leaks, false allegations, and outright sabotage.

Using his first-rate sources in all levels of national security--from field officers to high-ranking analysts to former intelligence heads--Scarborough paints a disturbing picture of partisan politics endangering the success of our campaigns abroad and the very lives of our soldiers and agents.

In Sabotage, you'll learn:

* How CIA analysts repeatedly leak details about classified intelligence programs with the dual intent of ending them and damaging the president
* How, on at least eight occasions, intelligence officials have made serious allegations of wrongdoing against the president's men--which turned out to be false
* Why, contrary to popular belief, the CIA has become predominantly liberal
* How a CIA turf battle prevented special operators from pursuing and capturing a notorious Taliban leader
* How current and former CIA officers fueled conspiracy theories that President Bush orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on America
* How a CIA leak to the New York Times deprived the U.S. of critical information in the War on Terror
* How press leaks by the CIA have damaged relations with our foreign allies in the War on Terror
* How a CIA analyst worked with Democrats to sabotage the nomination of John Bolton to the UN
* How Clinton's downsizing of the CIA led to the closing of stations in scores of jihadist breeding grounds--including Hamburg, Germany, where the 9/11 plot was hatched

The CIA's job is to collect facts and let the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department make national security policy. But, as Scarborough conclusively demonstrates, an agency that is supposed to be scrupulously nonpartisan has become increasingly political--during a time of war--against America's elected commander in chief.

About the Author

Rowan Scarborough, author of Sabotage, writes national security stories for Human Events. A Navy veteran, he covered the Pentagon for the Washington Times for nearly two decades, where he built a tremendous reputation for breaking news and covered national security for the Washington Examiner. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Rumsfeld’s War and has been featured on scores of radio and TV shows.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 229 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing; 1St Edition edition (July 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596985100
• ISBN-13: 978-1596985100
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,111,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The truth the bureaucrats at the CIA will hate to read, July 19, 2007

By 

J. Adams "History buff" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sabotage: America's Enemies within the CIA (Hardcover)

Scarborough has written about the Washington scene for the Washington Times and now the DC Examiner for many years. Unlike his counterparts at the Washington Post, he has access to the political policy people and does not rely on the bureaucrats who stumble and bumble for decades messing up the nation's spy agency before they retire. So Scarborough actually writes things that the agency's drones have spent their careers trying to cover up, which is, the agency's massively stupid approach to its job of protecting the USA via collecting actionable intelligence about our enemies.
This book does not go into the full history of the CIA screw-ups that Tim Weiner does in his Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA but concentrates more on recent history, where Wiener's book is rather poor, but shows that the country would probably be better served if we closed down the CIA and started again from scratch.
The great part of this book is that it reveals that most of the shoe clerks who view themselves as intelligence experts are really little different than their counterparts at the Agriculture Department, inept, lazy, and more willing to spend time covering up their incompetence than making the country safer by doing real intelligence work out in the field instead of from behind the desks in their air conditioned offices A great example is how the CIA did not have a single agent in Niger, one of the few countries able to produce yellowcake uranium, and which had sold thousands of tons of it to Saddam in the 1980's and 90's (where it still sits in warehouses) in spite of the proliferation of nuclear programs in Pakistan, Iran, North Korea and other places. The fact that the agency had to send an unemployed ex-ambassador, to visit this country for a week and then come back with a report that actually verified the Iraqis had tried to "improve trade" with Niger ( a country which has no other exports of value other than uranium) in spite of his claims notwithstanding, is but one example. Did the CIA insist on a written report after spending thousands for this boondoggle? Nope. Did they make him sign the standard confidentiality agreement for such assignments? Nope. Did they follow up with their counterparts such as MI5 in the UK? Yes. And ignored the MI5 information, which they still stand by to this day, that Iraq was trying to buy more yellowcake. (And this is not referring to the fake Italian documents planted many months after Wilson's wife suggested him for the mission)

There are many examples of just how effective the entrenched bureaucrats at the agency have been in fighting any attempt at reform, and the list of names of those who battled them and lost is very long.
As Wiener points out in his book, this is an agency that going back to Eisenhower, has a legacy of ashes, and as the hole in the ground where the World Trade Center once stood exemplifies, it is an agency whose incompetence has become lethal to those whom they are supposedly in business to protect. While there have been a few who have risen above the bureaucratic bumbling to do a good job in spite of the agency such as Michael Scheuer or Bob Baer, their small number vs. the thousands of Plames is an indictment of a very ineffective and weak agency that has successfully beaten down anyone sent over to reform it.
This is another good book, as was Ledeen's The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We'll Win. about just how bad the CIA does its job.
An important contribution to understanding how much trouble we are in by relying on a totally flawed agency.

44 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fair Question: Is the CIA a Traitorous Institution?, July 30, 2007

By 

David Thomson "Second Rate Eric Hoffer Imitator" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sabotage: America's Enemies within the CIA (Hardcover)

Rowan Scarborough demolishes the stereotype of the CIA as a bastion of reactionary conservatism. It is instead, he convincingly argues, a politically correct leftist institution similar to the professoriate of our "elite" universities. Many of the CIA's employees are contemptuous toward the U.S. Constitution. They even maliciously and arbitrarily betray our elected leaders. The CIA is, to be brutally frank, turning out to be the weak link in our fight against Islamic nihilism. It is literally endangering our lives and those of our loved ones. Sabotage is not too strong a description of the CIA's overall behavior. Might a case even be made that many of its operatives and bureaucrats are traitors? The author may not wish to go that far. I personally have no hesitation in doing so. You can make up your own mind.

Can the CIA even be saved? Would someone like the management specialist Peter Drucker conclude the situation is beyond hope? Was the Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan right on target when suggesting that the CIA be disbanded some two decades ago? Has it outlived its original usefulness? Such questions will unavoidably cross your mind while reading "Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA." You should obtain a copy immediately. It is truly that important of a book.

84 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ABSOLUTELY ON THE MARK!, July 13, 2007

By 

LORD CROM "LIBSTOMPER" (Ol VIRGINNY!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sabotage: America's Enemies within the CIA (Hardcover)

Bush should have fired every Clinton appointee as soon as he took office. There is a saying at the CIA that goes: "There are no spies or Republicans here." After Carter decimated the CIA in 1976 and Clinton finished the job, their intel output is nil. READ THIS BOOK!