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

Ron Suskind (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 20, 2006

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind takes you deep inside America's real battles with violent, unrelenting terrorists -- a game of kill-or-be-killed, from the Oval Office to the streets of Karachi.

You may think you know what the "war on terror" is.

But to know it "truly," you must read this book.

Suskind has written a riveting work of narrative nonfiction, filled with exclusive, historically significant disclosures that will echo across America and the world.

What is the guiding principle of the world's most powerful nation as it searches for enemies at home and abroad? The One Percent Doctrine is the deeply secretive core of America's real playbook: a default strategy, designed by Dick Cheney, that separates America from its moorings, and has driven everything -- from war in Afghanistan to war in Iraq to the global search for jihadists.

The story begins on September 12, 2001, the day America began to gather itself for a response to the unimaginable. Ultimately, that reply would shape the nation's very character.

Suskind tells us what actually occurred over the next three years, from the inside out, by tracing the steps of the key actors -- the notables, from the President and Vice President to George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice, who oversee the "war on terror" and report progress to an anxious nation; and the invisibles, the men and women just below the line of sight, left to improvise plans to defeat a new kind of enemy in an hour-by-hour race against disaster. The internal battles between these two teams -- one, under the hot lights; the other, actually fighting the fight -- reveal everything about what America faces, and whatit has done, in this age of terror.

Who is actually running U.S. foreign policy? Is there an operational cell, armed with WMDs, inside the United States? Have some of the world's most dangerous terrorists -- including leaders of al Qaeda -- been caught and accidentally released? Can America prevail in this struggle against enemies who are patient, ingenious, certain, and have clear tactical advantage?

With his unparalleled access to senior officials, past and present, Ron Suskind -- author of" The Price of Loyalty, "the most revealing book yet written on the Bush administration -- finally answers the questions that keep Americans awake at night.

And in this startling book, he reframes the debates that roil the globe.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this troubling portrait of the war on terror, America's intelligence agencies confront not just al-Qaeda but the Bush administration's politicized incompetence. Journalist Suskind (The Price of Loyalty) follows the triumphs and failures of the "invisibles"—the counterterrorism experts at the NSA, the FBI and especially the CIA—as they painstakingly track terrorists' communications and financial transactions, interrogate prisoners and cultivate elusive al-Qaeda informants. Unfortunately, he contends, their meticulous intelligence-sifting went unappreciated by administration policymakers, especially Dick Cheney, who formulated an overriding "one percent" doctrine: threats with even a 1% likelihood must be treated as certainties. The result was "the severing of fact-based analysis from forceful response," most glaringly in the trumped-up alarm over Iraqi WMDs. In dramatizing the tensions between CIA professionals and White House ideologues, Suskind makes his sympathies clear: CIA chief George Tenet, pressured to align intelligence with administration policy, emerges as a tragic fall guy, while President Bush comes off as a dunce and a bully, likened by some observers to a ventriloquist's dummy on Cheney's knee. Suskind's novelistic scene-setting—"Condi looked up, impatiently"—sometimes meanders. But he assembles perhaps the most detailed, revealing account yet of American counterterrorism efforts and a hard-hitting critique of their direction. (June 20)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

In November, 2001, Suskind writes, Vice-President Dick Cheney announced that if there was "a one percent chance" that a threat was real "we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." He added, "It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence." This view of a White House dangerously indifferent to facts is familiar from, among other sources, Suskind's "The Price of Loyalty," but he adds much here that is disconcerting, particularly regarding the embrace of torture. (It's hard to shake the image of Bush asking, literally, for Ayman al-Zawahiri's head, which the C.I.A. briefly thought it had found in a riverbed in Afghanistan.) Suskind, whose main source seems to be the former C.I.A. director George Tenet (to whom he is very kind), has made news with revelations about Western Union's coöperation with the C.I.A. and about a plan to release cyanide gas in subways, although it's not clear that this threat was more real than other phantom! s the White House chased.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (June 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743271092
• ISBN-13: 978-0743271097
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (143 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #456,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ron Suskind is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Way of the World, The One Percent Doctrine, The Price of Loyalty, and A Hope in the Unseen. From 1993 to 2000 he was the senior national affairs writer for the Wall Street Journal, where he won a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 82 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars One Percent Doctrine, 99 Percent Wrong. The Book 100 Percent Worth Reading September 20, 2006

By Edwin C. Pauzer VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

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? Read more ›

458 of 554 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Impeaches Cheney, Demeans Bush, Crucifies Rumsfeld and Rice June 26, 2006

By Robert David STEELE Vivas HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

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 Read more ›

628 of 767 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting Read From Ron Suskind! June 20, 2006

By Barron Laycock HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover

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! Read more ›