A Pretext for War, James Bamford
A Pretext for War, James Bamford
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A Pretext for War
9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies

Author: James Bamford

Narrator: Ray Childs

Abridged: 4 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/08/2004


Synopsis

The bestselling author of Body of Secrets and The Puzzle Palace presents his most hard-hitting book to date—a sweeping, authoritative, and fearless account of the failures of America’s intelligence agencies and the Bush administration’s calculated efforts to sell a war to the American people.

In The Puzzle Palace, James Bamford revealed the existence of the NSA, the largest, most secretive, and best-financed intelligence organization in the world. In Body of Secrets, he took readers inside the ultrasecret agency, charting its deeds and misdeeds from its founding in 1952 to the end of the twentieth century. Now Bamford applies his relentless investigative drive and unparalleled access to intelligence sources to produce a headline-making book about the most pressing issues of the present day.

From the mishandling of the pre-9/11 threat to the unproven claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Bamford argues that the Bush administration has co-opted the intelligence community for its own political ends, and at the expense of American security.  Bamford makes the case that the Bush administration’s Middle East policy decisions, from overthrowing Saddam to ignoring the situation of the Palestinians, are driven by long-held beliefs and goals of an elite group of conservatives inside and outside of government.

A Pretext for War homes in on the systematic weakness that led the intelligence community to ignore or misinterpret evidence of the impending terrorist attacks of 9/11—a failure rooted in the refusal to acknowledge the central role of the Palestinian cause in igniting Arab rage against the United States.  Compounding the errors, the Bush administration’s immediate response to 9/11 was to call for an attack on Iraq, and it subsequently invented justifications for the preemptive war that has ultimately left the United States more vulnerable to terrorism.  

A Pretext for War is an unprecedented, utterly convincing exposé of the most secretive administration in history.  

About The Author

JAMES BAMFORD, the author of the bestsellers Body of Secrets and The Puzzle Palace, has written extensively on national security issues, including investigative cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Formerly the Washington investigative producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and a distinguished visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, he lives in Washington, D.C.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Will on October 18, 2023

James Bamford - image from BrowseBiography.com. A very interesting book. Spookdom is Bamford’s turf. He has written about the NSA (Body of Secrets, a very good look at that agency) and the world of spying. He presents mucho specificity in support of the fact that the Iraq invasion had little or not......more

Goodreads review by Eric_W on April 15, 2010

James Bamford makes a convincing case that the United States was ill-served by our intelligence communities before 9-11 in Pretext for War. Part of the problem was the agencies were still fighting the Cold War and agents were enjoying the perks traditional with service in overseas embassies: good fo......more

Goodreads review by Ushan on December 24, 2010

The first part of this book tells how the American intelligence agencies failed to prevent 9/11; I was already familiar with the story from other books including Bamford's The Shadow Factory. They deemed infiltrating Al-Qaeda too difficult, which would have come as a surprise to John Walker Lindh an......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on January 25, 2014

I won't call this a formal review. It's more a personal commentary about the book and about the issues the book raises. Review does take place, however. Some personal background: back in the day, I was a solid supporter of Bush-43, and the case for and decision to make war on Iraq. I remember thinkin......more

Goodreads review by Tim on February 21, 2008

This book makes me very sad because if it really is true what this book is telling us then we have caused the deaths of thousands of service men and thousands of Iraqi civilians because of the personal vendetta of president Bush. This book details the lies and deceptions that the Bush administration......more


Quotes

“Probably the best one-volume companion to the harrowing events in the war on terrorism since 1996.” –Time“Highly readable and well-researched. . . . Bamford does a superb job of laying out and tying together threads of the Sept. 11 intelligence failures and their ongoing aftermath, using original research, the public record and a light, fast-paced writing touch.” –The Washington Post Book World “A damning portrait of the country’s intelligence agencies. . . . Bamford unearths new details . . . to create a vivid, unsettling narrative. . . . Highly persuasive.” –The New York Times"Not only contains significant new information, but also combines that information with previously known material to make . . . sense of Sept. 11 and its aftermath. . . . A vital book." –Milwaukee Journal Sentinel