Wilson Center August 2012 Newsletter

 

 

Suggested Reading List for 9/11: Eleven Years After

 

Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker.  Schmidt and Shanker provide an insider's tour of the many aspects of the U.S. government's response involving the military, the intelligence community, and law enforcement to terrorist activities over the past ten years.  They describes the evolution of the U.S. approach to confront an adaptive enemy and the complexity of the struggle.  In the process the U.S.  has fashioned an innovative and effective new strategy to fight terrorism.  

Manhunt: The Ten-year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad by Peter L. Bergen. Based on exhaustive research and unprecedented access to White House officials, CIA analysts, Pakistani intelligence, and the military, Bergen provides the details while covering the 10 year pursuit of bin Laden and of the twilight of al-Qaeda.  He paints a vivid picture of bin Laden's grim, Spartan life in hiding and his struggle to maintain control of al-Qaeda even as American drones systematically picked off his key lieutenants.  Bergen takes us inside the Situation Room, where President Obama considers the COAs (courses of action) presented by his war council and receives conflicting advice from his top advisors before deciding to risk the raid that would change history--and then inside the Joint Special Operations Command, whose "secret warriors," the SEALs, would execute Operation Neptune Spear. From the moment two Black Hawks take off from Afghanistan until bin Laden utters his last words, Manhunt reads like a thriller.

The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA's Clandestine Service by Henry A. Crompton. This book draws from the full arc of Crumpton's espionage and covert action exploits to explain what America's spies do and why their service is more valuable than ever. From his early years in Africa, where he recruited and ran sources, from loathsome criminals to heroic warriors; to his liaison assignment at the FBI, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, the development of the UAV Predator program, and the Afghanistan war; to his later work running all CIA clandestine operations inside the United States, he employs enthralling storytelling to teach important lessons about national security, but also about duty, honor, and love of country.

Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power by David E. Sanger.  Sanger had access to a number of high level sources and this book riled political Washington this summer over a number of "national security leaks".  He provides an inside look at the past three years of diplomacy, covert action and internal Administration deliberations.  In the process he explores how the Obama Administration has dealt with challenges in Iran, Afghanistan/Pakistan, hunting Al Qaeda, the Arab Spring, and Asia using a number of tools of 21^st century warfare including cyber-warfare, drones, intelligence, and Special Operations Forces. 

James Madison Rules America examines congressional party legislative and electoral strategy in the context of our constitutional separation of powers. In a departure from recent books that have described Congress as 'the broken branch' or the 'Second Civil War,' William Connelly argues that partisanship, polarization and the permanent campaign are an inevitable part of congressional politics. The strategic conundrum confronting both parties in the House of Representatives whether to be part of the government or part of the opposition provides evidence of how concretely James Madison's Constitution governs the behavior of politicians to this day. Drawing on a two-hundred year debate within American political thought among the Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Alexis de Tocqueville and Woodrow Wilson, James Madison Rules America is as topical as current debates over partisan polarization and the permanent campaign, while being grounded in two enduring and important schools of thought within political science: pluralism and party government.

 

Victory on the Potomac by James R. Locher, III.  War is waged not only on battlefields. In the mid-1980s a high-stakes struggle to redesign the relationships among the president, secretary of defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and warfighting commanders in the field resulted in the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. Author James R. Locher III played a key role in the congressional effort to repair a dysfunctional military whose interservice squabbling had cost American taxpayers billions of dollars and put the lives of thousands of servicemen and women at risk. Victory on this front helped make possible the military successes the United States has enjoyed since the passage of the bill and prepare it for the challenges it must still face. Victory on the Potomac provides the first detailed history of how Congress unified the Pentagon and does so with the benefit of an insider's view. In a fast-paced account that reads like a novel, Locher follows the bill through congressional committee to final passage, making clear that the process is neither abstract nor automatic. His vivid descriptions bring to life the amazing cast of this real-life drama, from the straight-shooting chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Barry Goldwater, to the peevishly stubborn secretary of defense, Casper Weinberger. Locher's analysis of political maneuvering and bureaucratic infighting will fascinate anyone who has an interest in how government works, and his understanding of the stakes in military reorganization will make clear why this legislative victory meant so much to American military capability.

 

 

www.amazon.com

www.barnesandnoble.com