Peritz and Rosenbach provide a concise history of US law enforcement and counterterror operations and planning. The US government response to terror threats in the pre-9/11 era was risk averse and cooperation between agencies inexistent. After 9/11, the Bush Administration quickly changed the rules, and Peritz and Rosenbach meticulously describe the positives and negatives and checks and balances that created current policies, while also offering proposals for making the system better.
According to Peritz and Rosenbach, the Bush Administration got a lot right. Federal agencies like the FBI and CIA began working more closely together and cooperating with other domestic agencies as well as with foreign intelligence agencies. They note "that nearly every capture or killing of a suspected terrorist outside Iraq since 9/11 - more than 3,000 in all - was the result of CIA cooperation with foreign intelligence services." In fact, they note that the immediate weeks after 9/11 created an environment within the CIA Counterterrorism Center that spurred creative thinking and empowered analysts to figure out the best ways to protect the United States. The Bush Administration changed laws and allowed government employees to overlook bureaucratic red tape to get their jobs done.
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration went too far at times, and Peritz and Rosenbach note that Bush Administration decisions continue to cause troubles for the US federal government in prosecuting terrorists and maintaining cooperative relations with foreign intelligence agencies pivotal in the effort to track down and try terror suspects. The creation of new agencies like Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence added more bureaucratic oversight and red tape without providing anything new or beneficial. The areas in which the Bush Administration overstepped its bounds - for example, torture and illegal domestic wiretapping - placed the US in legal and ethical limbo and continue to plague the Obama Administration. New laws enable FBI agents the ability to better track terrorists and prosecutors to try them, but the bureaucracy continues to operate within a hierarchical structure that enfeebles intelligence analysis.
Through technological innovation, bureaucratic and intelligence cooperation, new laws, and new interpretations on international policy norms, the Bush and Obama Administrations were able to successfully tackle the threat of Al Qaeda and to track down the perpetrators of 9/11. Peritz and Rosenbach argue that the find, fix, finish doctrine came about through a process of trial and error. The Bush Administration tried a number of things, some of which worked, while others harmed America's conception of self. However, in the end, their thesis is that the system worked. The US government created a new successful set of policies that allows the US to combat the threat of terror, and early Bush Administration overreach was corrected and/or is currently being addressed. In this way, "Find, Fix, Finish" is similar to Jack Goldsmith's Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11 in which he argues that the federal system of checks and balances worked to correct government excesses.
"Find, Fix, Finish" is an exciting read, and will serve well as a college textbook or simply as an interesting work of history and policy proposal.
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