Jack Goldsmith's "The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration" is a provocative and important first-hand account of a small piece of the legal war on terrorism. Jack Goldsmith served as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, the DOJ office in charge of providing authoritative legal advice to the President) for a brief time during the Bush II Administration.
The book is an easy read and is very engaging. Goldsmith describes how he got the job at OLC and the personalities of many of the President's and Vice-President's legal advisors that he dealt with regularly. Most importantly, Goldsmith describes the most famous - and for him, most difficult - decisions that he made by withdrawing two earlier legal decisions concerning torture.
Most interestingly, and despite the misleading title (Goldsmith doesn't argue that President Bush ran a terror presidency; instead, that his presidency was overshadowed by the terror threat), Goldsmith is not very critical of the overall legal posture of the Bush presidency. Instead, he criticizes the tactics taken by many in the administration for claiming overly-broad executive power when that posture was not necessary. Instead, that extreme view has caused a reaction against the President's legal policies. He also discusses how the fears of further terror attacks drove the policies in the White House. Finally, Goldsmith argues that this new emphasis on legal opinions is the result of the criminalization of warfare and the "gotcha" investigations that pervade Washington, D.C. He claims that these attitudes unnecessarily hinder (and place in jeopardy) the intelligence and military operatives responsible for implementing policies.
This is an illuminating book, although at times it is a bit short on details that leaves the reader wanting more substance - probably because many of the issues that Goldsmith worked on were and still are classified. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the legal policies and controversies during the early years of the War on Terror.
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