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This is a book review that I wrote for The Egyptian Gazette -- it is scheduled to run Tuesday, June 16, 2015, which means it is intended for The Egyptian Mail;
It was a most instructive read;
This is a book review that I wrote for The Egyptian Gazette -- it is scheduled to run Tuesday, June 16, 2015, which means it is intended for The Egyptian Mail;
It was a most instructive read;
This is a book review that I wrote for The Egyptian Gazette -- it is scheduled to run Tuesday, June 16, 2015, which means it is intended for The Egyptian Mail;
It was a most instructive read;
The Great War of Our Time: the CIAs fight against terrorism. By Michael Morell. 2015. 384 pps. Twelve Books. ISBN: 9781455585663. $28.00. Michael Morell has written a gripping book that gives insight into the machinations of the Central Intelligence Agencys (CIA) management team and analysis process. Morells thirty-three year career at the CIA included positions such as deputy director, in which he was responsible for giving the president his daily intelligence briefing, and acting director, in which he was responsible for everything from covert operations, to congressional oversight review, to Family Day at the agencys headquarters. Because Morell is tenured in explaining complex and confounding intelligence reports, and with thoughtful pragmatic analysis, his book is easy to understand.
Morell gave the daily intelligence briefing to George W.
Bush before, during and after 9/11. Before 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney were dismissive of the CIAs repetitive warnings about bin Ladens looming al-Qaeda attack on US soil. Both Rumsfeld and Cheney had thought the intelligence community was being intentionally misled by al-Qaeda, as a way of diverting resources away from other more urgent threats against American interests. After 9/11, attitudes in the Bush cabinet changed dramatically. Morell talks of the vice presidents office bringing binders of evidence to the CIA, documenting Saddam Husseins Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program, evidence which, Morells top CIA analysts could not verify. Although the CIA and other world intelligence agencies were also lead to believe Saddam had the weapons, the weapons were never found after the invasion. How did that happen? Morell devotes much time to explaining the hows-and-whys of failed intelligence
analysis. Saddam, when captured, later said he thought the
US would never invade Iraq and that he was certain the CIA had had access to the inner circle of his regime and knew that there was no active WMD program. Saddam had overestimated the CIAs reach. Through this and other failures, we learn that intelligence analysis is far from perfect, and that there is always an element of gamble. For example, Morell informed President Obama that the information the CIA had on bin Ladens Abbottabad hide-out in 2011 was certain to only a 40%-60% level of confidence. This was the same level of confidence the CIA had had on Saddams WMD, and which was ultimately proven wrong. Obama never blinked. Morell describes watching the bin Laden raid from CIA headquarters in real time his heart was in his throat as the helicopter crashed. Why wasnt the Pakistani government informed of the bin Laden raid ahead of time? Morells personal feelings are that bin Laden had been tipped off in 1998, when the
Pakistanis would have been informed that President Clinton
was sending cruise missiles into Afghanistan, which were going to fly through Pakistani airspace. Morell was hardly prepared to make the same mistake twice. On the Arab Spring, Morell tells us, Forecasting revolutions is an inexact science. Although the CIA had been aware of, and writing intelligence briefs about, rising pressures in the Arab nations that would inevitably become uncontainable, there was little that could have been done about it; once in motion, the US was unable to steer the spontaneous uprisings away from the interests of militant Islamist opportunists. Morell had long known and respected Omar Suleiman, the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, and he was in regular contact with Suleiman through an intermediary during Egypts eighteen day uprising. Two years later, when the Egyptian military stepped in to stop the reckless and insular Mohammed Morsi from damaging the country beyond repair, Morell breathed a sigh of relief. He
stated his view to an unnamed Arab ambassador friend a
view which, was not in line with the White Houses position and made it perfectly clear that he thought the Egyptian military did the right thing by removing Morsi, democracy is more than free and fair elections. Author Michael Morell grew up in Akron, Ohio. His father was a blue-collar auto worker his mother, a homemaker. Neither was university educated. Morell never expected to work for the CIA, as his studies at the University of Akron were in economics, and he only half-heartedly applied to the agency after a professor friend made the suggestion. But Morells dedication, patriotism and determination come to the forefront in this book. He developed a deep respect for the intelligence community, describing his colleagues as, the finest people you will never know. The only critical remarks he makes about the two presidents he briefed, George W. Bush and Barak Obama, were that Bush sometimes made decisions too quickly, and that Obama sometimes took too long to make a decision.
These remarks do not appear as criticisms, rather, they are
the type of objective observations a career senior intelligence analyst would be expected to make. Edward Snowden is often portrayed as a whistle-blower, who exposed the over-reach of US governments meta-data collection program, and all in the name of protecting the civil liberties of American citizens. Morell sees Snowden quite differently. While Snowden was working as a trusted government contractor, he downloaded a million classified documents most of which he could not have read, and many of which he would never have understood and then went to the Chinese and the Russians with his cache. Hardly an act of patriotism. The meta-data mining programs Snowden exposed, were legal and approved by two presidents, from two different political parties, and are also under the review and authorization of the Legislative Branch, with the Judicial Branchs oversight. No, Snowden was not interested in anything other than narcissistic and self-aggrandizing
attention. Morell compares Snowden to other American
intelligence officers whom sold secrets to the Russians Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. Snowden has the same personality type: the disgruntled employee who feels he is smarter than, and underappreciated by, his supervisors. The amount of damage Snowden has done to US interests, is incomprehensible and will certainly not make his fellow citizens any safer. But the author never talks about the elephant in the room: Morell says nothing about the Valerie Plame incident. She was the CIA operative whose identity was leaked to the press through the office of then vice president Dick Cheney. That leak was a significant security breach, and at least one member of Cheneys staff was jailed for it. We dont hear Morells thoughts on the incident. Unless of course, Morell did write about it, and the CIA later redacted that chapter from his book.
Pete Willows is a contributing writer to The Egyptian
Gazette, and its weekly magazine version, The Egyptian Mail. He can be reached at willows@aucegypt.edu 7