Intelligence Matters: The CIA, The FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America’s War On Terror – Bob Graham with Jeff Nussbaum
Intelligence Matters: The CIA, The FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America’s War On Terror – Bob Graham with Jeff Nussbaum, Random House (2004) 296pp. (S) ***
Like Robert Byrd’s Losing America, it’s always interesting to get a view from the inside when it comes to congressional activities. Also like Byrd, Graham (Democratic Senator from Florida) seems to in part be writing out of his frustration in his dealings with the current administration. Hence this in his earliest pages: “[Bush’s failures in office] constitute an indictment of president Bush’s leadership so serious that it warrants his removal from office.”(p.xvi) Indeed!
Much of Intelligence Matters is devoted to Graham’s work on the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 and his work as chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. From this vantage point, the reader is directed to a February 19,2002 meeting that Graham had with general Tommy Franks, the head of “Central Command,” in which Franks confides that war materiel was being moved out of the Afghan theater, to positions closer to Iraq. This is a stinging indictment of an administration that long before it publicly said so, was preparing for war with Iraq. Later, Graham writes of a phenomenon known as “incestuous amplification,” which he defines thusly: “People with the same point of view are invited to the table. They reach a conclusion. Their views are then vetted by people who hold the same beliefs. As a result, the original conclusion in endorsed and amplified.”(p.243) What better description of the aim and purpose of the Pentagon’s secretive “Office of Special Plans?”
There are other reasons as well that Graham cites for having a skeptical and cautious eye when it comes to hearing what the administration has to say. For instance, when the State Department released its statistics on international terrorism in April 2004, citing a thirty year low in incidents, only to be later called out and corrected, so that acts of global terrorism had indeed actually increased over the previous year. There was also the stonewalling by the FBI to not permit an informant, who had known two of the 9/11 hijackers, to speak to the Joint Inquiry Committee. Grahams’ hunch was that such uncooperativeness was being directed at a higher level than simply the FBI alone. Such is also his suspicion when a “leak,” apparently attributable to the committee, is disseminated widely in the press, it causes Graham to reflect: “I am not by nature a conspiracy theorist, but the fact that we were hit with this disclosure [leak] at the moment we began to make things uncomfortable for the Bush administration has stuck with me.”(p.140) Such is life in the era of Rovian dirty tricks.
If one is looking for a perspective from the inside of government mechanics, then Intelligence Matters if for you. Graham is both thoughtful and incredulous in the face of an administration that more often than not perceives Congress as an obstacle its megalomaniacal ends. While the title is Intelligence Matters, it could just as well be “Congress Matters.”
Like Robert Byrd’s Losing America, it’s always interesting to get a view from the inside when it comes to congressional activities. Also like Byrd, Graham (Democratic Senator from Florida) seems to in part be writing out of his frustration in his dealings with the current administration. Hence this in his earliest pages: “[Bush’s failures in office] constitute an indictment of president Bush’s leadership so serious that it warrants his removal from office.”(p.xvi) Indeed!
Much of Intelligence Matters is devoted to Graham’s work on the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 and his work as chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. From this vantage point, the reader is directed to a February 19,2002 meeting that Graham had with general Tommy Franks, the head of “Central Command,” in which Franks confides that war materiel was being moved out of the Afghan theater, to positions closer to Iraq. This is a stinging indictment of an administration that long before it publicly said so, was preparing for war with Iraq. Later, Graham writes of a phenomenon known as “incestuous amplification,” which he defines thusly: “People with the same point of view are invited to the table. They reach a conclusion. Their views are then vetted by people who hold the same beliefs. As a result, the original conclusion in endorsed and amplified.”(p.243) What better description of the aim and purpose of the Pentagon’s secretive “Office of Special Plans?”
There are other reasons as well that Graham cites for having a skeptical and cautious eye when it comes to hearing what the administration has to say. For instance, when the State Department released its statistics on international terrorism in April 2004, citing a thirty year low in incidents, only to be later called out and corrected, so that acts of global terrorism had indeed actually increased over the previous year. There was also the stonewalling by the FBI to not permit an informant, who had known two of the 9/11 hijackers, to speak to the Joint Inquiry Committee. Grahams’ hunch was that such uncooperativeness was being directed at a higher level than simply the FBI alone. Such is also his suspicion when a “leak,” apparently attributable to the committee, is disseminated widely in the press, it causes Graham to reflect: “I am not by nature a conspiracy theorist, but the fact that we were hit with this disclosure [leak] at the moment we began to make things uncomfortable for the Bush administration has stuck with me.”(p.140) Such is life in the era of Rovian dirty tricks.
If one is looking for a perspective from the inside of government mechanics, then Intelligence Matters if for you. Graham is both thoughtful and incredulous in the face of an administration that more often than not perceives Congress as an obstacle its megalomaniacal ends. While the title is Intelligence Matters, it could just as well be “Congress Matters.”
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