Best Laid Plans is a journalistic analysis of US government efforts against terrorism from 1979 - 1988. The arc of the narrative is from the US hostage crisis in Tehran during the Carter Administration to the Iran-Contra controversy during the last years of the Reagan Administration. The bulk of the text covers multiple terrorist attacks against US interests between those dates: the 1983 and 1984 bombings of the Marine Barracks and US Embassy in Beirut; the June 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847; the October 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro; the April 1986 bombing of LaBelle Disco (and Reagan's retaliatory strike against Libya ten days later); the numerous Americans kidnaped in Beirut in the mid-1980s and the US government's military, diplomatic and law enforcement responses to all these incidents. The authors are critical of both administrations but the time span emphasizes Reagan's two-term presidency. The authors note that Reagan attempted to use a military build-up to inhibit terrorist activity in the same way he believed it would inhibit international communist troublemaking.
The authors' conclusion is that terrorism is a threat to law and order not national security. As justification, they site the successful September 1987 rendition of Fawaz Younis; and 60 European arrests (during the 1980s) of terrorist suspects including one of the TWA 847 hijackers, Mohamed Ali Hamadi.
I wondered if the authors believed that for Israel, terrorism is a national security issue. I wondered if the authors still considered terrorism a law and order issue for the U.S. after the September 11 attacks; if not, had they reverted to the law and order issue perception after opposition to the Iraq War grew in 2005-2007. Does the August 2009 "compassionate release" of the one person convicted of bombing Pan Am 103, make the authors more supportive of treating terrorism as a national security issue rather than a law enforcement issue?
On the whole, this book is objective and covers a period of global terrorism forgotten by many who lived through it and unknown by others too young. It is objective enough to have received endorsements from both Henry Kissinger and Dan Rather.
Though currently out of print, I asked Simon and Schuster/Touchstone if they were considering a new edition of Best Laid Plans and was advised they were not. David Martin is still a national security correspondent for CBS News and John Walcott is Washington Bureau Chief for McClatchy newspapers. You'd think US government's efforts in dealing with terrorism since September 11 would justify a new edition with an updated afterward. In the 20 year period since its original publication, so much has changed, and yet so much has stayed the same. Perhaps the publisher could edit the subtitle: Best Laid Plans: US Government Battles Terrorism 1979-1988. Such a volume that would serve students of history and national security studies very well.
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Andrew Bentley
Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 24, 2015Verified Purchase
