Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (Hardcover)

by Tim Naftali (Author) "WHAT IS THE CAPITAL OF ILLINOIS, SIR?..." (more)
Key Phrases: counterterrorism professionals, counterterrorism community, counterterrorism system, United States, White House, State Department (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Blind Spot is that rare phenomenon: a great work of original research on a subject of great importance that is also lucidly written." Wall Street Journal" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
In this revelatory new account-parts of which were written at the request of the 9/11 Commission-national security historian Timothy Naftali relates the full story of America's decades-long attempt to fight terrorism. On September 11, 2001, a long history of failures and missteps came to a head, with tragic results. But, says Naftali, it didn't have to be so.

The United States hasn't always failed at counterterrorism. At the end of WWII, the government had established a seamless system for countering the threats of Nazi terrorists. But those capabilities were soon forgotten, and it wasn't until 1968, when Palestinian groups began a series of highly publicized airplane hijackings, that the United States had to take counterterrorism seriously again. In Blind Spot, Naftali narrates the game of catch-up that various administrations and the CIA played-with varying degrees of success-from the Munich Games hostage-taking, to the raft of terrorist incidents in the mid-1980s, through the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. The learning curve was steep, yet these years brought unheralded achievements: the United States neutralized Abu Nidal, Abimael Guzman, and Carlos the Jackal-three of its greatest terrorist enemies. In riveting detail, based on newly researched documents, recently uncovered archival information, and interviews with the key participants, Naftali describes these earlier successes and explains why they did not translate into success against Osama bin Laden later in the 1990s.

Until 9/11, the domestic threat of terrorism was the largest blind spot in United States national security. For the first time, Naftali shows that holes in homeland security discovered by Vice President George H. W. Bush in 1986 were still a problem when his son became President, and why George W. Bush did nothing to fix them until it was too late. For anyone concerned about the future of America's security, this masterful, dramatic, and at times disheartening history is necessary and eye-opening reading.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (May 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465092810
• ISBN-13: 978-0465092819
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #457,132 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sound Familar?, October 11, 2006

By	Retired Reader (Maryland) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (Hardcover)

It would probably be useful to potential readers to explain what this book is not before discussing what it is. It is not a "secret history" in any sense nor is it a diatribe against either the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) or the Executive Branch of government. The book is a sober and sobering history of how the U.S. has dealt with issues of State and non-State terrorism from World War II through the catastrophe of September 11 2001. Naftali also does a great service by noting the obvious similarities between the operating techniques of counter-Espionage and counter Terrorism (especially domestic).

In this book Naftali chronicles the failure of our political and national security systems to effectively protect American lives and property from terrorist threats. Naftali does record those rare successes against individual terrorists such as Abu Nidal, but the thrust of his book is that on the whole we have had difficulty countering terrorism in any form. He gives a fairly detailed case study of the series of terrorist attacks against U.S. personal in Lebanon during 1983-1984. The perpetrators of these attacks were members of Hezbollah, a Shia terrorist organization sponsored by Iran and enabled by Syria. In the case of the bombing of the U.S. Beirut Embassy in 1984 as it turned out, if the CIA had reviewed its available evidence, especially imagery they would have seen that a mock up of the U.S. Embassy had been constructed and was being used to train for car bomb attacks against the real thing. This is not a matter of "connecting the dots"; it is a matter of knowing the target (in this case Hezbollah) and building rational indications lists. In the fallout from this series of disasters, the redoubtable Charlie Allen, a long time CIA employee, called attention to the existence of this imagery (hind site is always 20/20). As a result Allen was named the new National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for counter-Terrorism. To his credit, Allen almost immediately tried to make information sharing a part of IC culture by connecting all concerned agencies directly with the CIA center for photo interpretation. Needless to say the IC culture than as now was largely opposed to sharing anything and Allen's efforts came to naught. In the couple of chapters of this book Naftali does chronicle the efforts by the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to deal with the terrorist threat posed by the Osama bin Laden movement. Neither comes off very well in this, but the Bush administration comes off as the most indifferent, at least prior to 9/11.

This reviewer would recommend that prior to reading this book; interested readers should read "Inside Terrorism" by Bruce Hoffman to understand all the different manifestation of terrorism.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Robust review of history of U.S. counterterrorism policy, November 7, 2005

By	Dukhi Lashenenkov (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews

While many recent works on terrorism focus almost exclusively on the most recent incarnation (Islamic jihadists), Naftali reviews the much broader historical counterterrorism landscape. Perhaps most interesting is the historical parallel he draws between the difficult decisions the Clinton and Bush II administrations faced prior to 9-11 and those faced by the Johnson and Nixon administrations. The author does a tremendous job of reinforcing that terrorism and U.S. efforts to combat it are nothing new, and that policymakers often find themselves faced with the same difficult decisions and repeating the same mistakes as their predecessors. Those readers who wish to read more than this book offers about counterterrorism policy since the late 1990s should read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars and Peter Bergen's Holy War, Inc.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Questionable history without an interesting thesis, August 26, 2005

By	L. Slezak - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The recounting of contemporary histroy seems to focus more on the activities of the Republican administrations with a glossing over of the activities (or lack thereof) of the Democratic administrations. The most interesting fact related about the Carter administration is that they found it expedient to stall actions on counterterrorism by encouraging the debate of whether one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. I lost trust in the author's accounts when, after describing the importance of Abu Nidal and efforts against him in the 80's, he tells us that "Abu Nidal later died of natural causes in Baghdad". I still remember that those "natural causes" were reported by Iraqi Intelligence, in the months before the US invasion of Iraq, as "5 self-inflicted gunshot wounds". It seems very convenient to describe that as "natural causes" if you want to avoid the subject that Abu Nidal might have been performing some function in his years in Baghdad.