State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration

With relentless media coverage, breathtaking events, and extraordinary congressional and independent investigations, it is hard to believe that we might not know some of the most significant facts about the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet beneath the surface events of the Bush presidency lies a secret history -- a series of hidden events that makes a mockery of many of the stories on the surface. This hidden history involves domestic spying, abuses of power, and outrageous operations. It includes a CIA that became caught in a political crossfire it could not withstand, even against the wishes of the commander-in-chief. It features a president who created a sphere of deniability, in which his top aides were briefed on matters of the utmost sensitivity -- but the president was carefully kept in ignorance. STATE OF WAR reveals this hidden history for the first time, including scandals that will redefine the Bush presidency.

About the Author :
James Risen covers national security for The New York Times. He was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2002 for coverage of September 11 and terrorism, and he is the coauthor of Wrath of Angels and The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife and three sons.

Review :
'James Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winner who covers national secrity for The New York Times, is a good prospector for front-page news stories. He drills in the right places, guided by insiders with privileged access to the secrets of power' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH [Risen's] terrifying new book... his research is exhaustive, and he shows that the CIA knew well in advance of the Iraq war that Saddam had no nuclear weapons, and not even a programme to develop them... Rather startlingly, Risen suggests that the US itself provided designs for a nuclear bomb for Iran. He also outlines the failure of military and diplomatic operations in Afghanistan, showing how a narco-state came into being, one that currently supplies 87% of the world's heroin. In horrifying details, he portrays the extent of domestic spying by the Bush administration, and discusses its support for torture in places such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. The United States, under Bush, has done a great deal of harm in the world, which will take decades of patient diplomacy, imagination and good will to rectify. One reads books like these with growing dismay.' GUARDIAN 'This book has already caused a political storm in the US with its revelation that the White House authorised the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on thousands of Americans without a warrant, but there is much else here to disturb the reader. Risen's central thesis is that the 9/11 attacks were used by Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's uncompromising Defence Secretary, and Vice-President Dick Cheney to hijack American security and foreign policy. As soon as the Taliban had been ousted in Afghanistan, they were campaigning to invade Iraq. If decisions went against them, they ignored them or convened another meeting, this time without their opponents, to get their way ... Risen sheds new light on how "hustlers and fabricators" were embraced if their information served the cause of war, while geniune intelligence was ignored ... carefully sourced' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 'As Risen points out, sometimes the best journalism depends on people who will speak only on condition of anonymity. On balance, his account does well what journalism is supposed to do: it provides what intelligence officers would call 'raw reporting', the initial account of what people heard and saw and what they made of it. Few can argue that its publication is not in the public interest' TLS 'This explosive little book opens with a scene that is at once amazing and yet not surprising: President George W. Bush angrily hanging up the phone on his father, who "was disturbed that his son was allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a cadre of neo-conservative ideologues to exert broad influence over foreign policy". This colourful anecdote is symptomatic of STATE OF WAR. It is riveting ... but it has the odious smell of truth ... James Risen may have become the new Woodward and Bernstein ... Fast-paced, quite mesmerizing ... Risen's tales are filled with color and details that lend credibility -- as well as drama -- to his reporting' INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE