Book Review: ‘The Mission’ reveals troubling political meddling in CIA after 9/11
By JEFF ROWE The meeting place of facts ego ignorance and politics typically is a messy arena as Tim Weiner illustrates over and over in this powerful account of the Central Intelligence Agency actions since the attacks Related Articles Column Where are the shows about regular people fighting back Andrea Gibson Colorado state poet laureate queer activist and spoken-word artist dies at Literary prize honoring works promoting peace announces finalists Amelia Earhart soars back into the headlines in new book The Aviator and the Showman Arsenic in books Exhibit shows that several pages can kill The title The Mission The CIA in the st Century would seem to suggest a tidy academic-style analysis Instead it s a riveting account of a vital institution that descended into turmoil with agents after sometimes creating diabolical tortures and units operating seemingly on their own The author details an agency that buckled under pressure from the younger President Bush to find evidence that Saddam Hussein had developed chemical biological and nuclear weapons Compelling evidence was not to be unveiled but Bush pressed on anyway with a military campaign to topple Hussein killing American amenity members in the process Weiner leaves no doubt as to who is responsible in every misdeed and operational failure he describes everyone in this -page narrative is identified by name How Weiner persuaded so a large number of people to talk on the record is a journalistic feat that should make this book impossible to dismiss If The Mission has a fault it s that it is light on prescription how do we insure that the CIA remains faithful without political meddling to its mission gathering the intelligence needed to keep America safe The CIA must reclaim its original mission Weiner writes Know thy enemies To do that work the CIA has since its inception attracted a few of America s brightest and bulk dedicated willing to hazard their lives to get the information the nation s top political and military leaders need Consider counterterrorism expert Michael D Andrea for example Weiner writes that D Andrea worked hours per week obsessively pursuing al-Qaeda How he managed that pace as a chain smoker is unexplored Perhaps his vegetarian diet helped Half of the book details how the CIA swerved far out of its intelligence-gathering lane after the attacks and morphed into a paramilitary organization calling its torture tactics enhanced interrogation techniques and killing various thought to be terrorists absent the oversight that governs the military services For example one agent let a prisoner freeze to death in a dungeon-like fetid hellhole at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan In the agent s defense the post months and years were a time of pervasive fear of another attack and relentless pressure on the CIA to prevent that Various notable successes followed agents penetrated both the Kremlin and Saddam Hussein s establishment Knowledge is the essential tool of national safety and peace and The Mission makes it clear we let the CIA go off track at our peril A new cold war is slowly escalating toward existential danger the author writes Only good intelligence can prevent a surprise attack a fatal miscalculation a futile war AP book reviews https apnews com hub book-reviews
