15
The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack
Category: Hardcover
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0307382133
Manufacturer: Crown Forum
Release Date: 2007-11-13
Average Customer Review: 
(From 23 total reviews)
List Price: $26.95
Amazon Price: $9.77 (31 new 15 used available)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours (Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping)
Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon web site at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.
Editorial Reviews
Product Description:
“You make a mistake, there are dead people.”
—FBI Special Agent Art Cummings, head of international counterterrorism operations
Drawing on unprecedented access to FBI and CIA counterterrorism operatives, New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler presents the chilling story of terrorists’ relentless efforts to mount another devastating attack on the United States and of the heroic efforts being made to stop those plots.
Kessler takes you inside the war rooms of this battle—from the newly created National Counterterrorism Center to FBI headquarters, from the CIA to the National Security Agency, from the Pentagon to the Oval Office—to explain why we have gone so long since 9/11 without a successful attack and to reveal the many close calls we never hear about. The race to stop the terrorists, Kessler shows, is more desperate than ever.
Based on exclusive interviews with FBI Director Robert Mueller, CIA Director Michael Hayden, White House Counterterrorism Chief Fran Townsend, and dozens of key intelligence operatives at all levels, The Terrorist Watch:
• tells the previously unreported story of how the United States helped thwart the 2006 London terrorist plot, broke up terrorist cells in Canada, and prevented numerous other attacks
• reveals how the CIA and FBI have rolled up more than 5,000 terrorists worldwide since 9/11
• provides a stunning insider’s account from the FBI agent
who spent eight months debriefing Saddam Hussein after his capture
• pinpoints press leaks that have resulted in CIA agents’ deaths, caused foreign countries to stop cooperating on key investigations, and even tipped off Osama bin Laden to U.S. surveillance
• destroys numerous media myths, such as the canard that the FBI and CIA still don’t cooperate on investigations
• discloses the truth about the number of U.S. mosques where imans preach jihad
• shows how the intelligence community has radically changed its mission—and how the media have misled the public about those changes
Never before has a journalist gained such access to the FBI, the CIA, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the other agencies that are doing the unheralded work of finding and capturing terrorists.
Ronald Kessler’s you-are-there narrative tells the real story of the war on terror and will transform the way you view the greatest problem of our age.
Customer Reviews
Absurdly Biased by Loyd E. Eskildson
“The Terrorist Watch” reads like a recruiting brochure - oversimplified and biased hype. Example I - attributing the FBI’s computer backwardness entirely to former Director Louis Freeh, ignoring the fact that Attorney General Ashcroft heatedly refused requests by Mueller (Freeh’s replacement) for funds to improve computer systems and anti-terrorism efforts. Example II - asserting the U.S. has won in Afghanistan, and ignoring how blunders allowed bin Laden to escape into Pakistan.
Another problem is sometimes muddled statements - eg. whether the “20th hijacker” was Zacarias Moussauoi (taking flight lessons in Eagan, Minnesota) or al-Qahtani (refused entry in Orlando after providing vague answers to immigration questions).
As for the claim “rolling up more than 5,000 terrorists worldwide since 9/11,” that’s non-credible given the almost non-existent resulting convictions. Nor is it supported by the confirmed fact (per U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) that an estimated 75 percent of 3 million applicants for immigrant benefits - green cards, work visas, and a host of other documents - at a major federal processing center were not screened through the U.S. terrorism watch list over the past four years.
Then there’s the periodic reports of failed airport security checks, unchecked materials shipped via airplanes, and ocean-borne cargoes; terrorists’ names not added to the “Do Not Fly List,” and infants and government critics who are listed.
Finally, Kessler is also totally oblivious to the unsupportable costs of U.S. terrorism efforts. Bin Laden’s weakening of the American economy means he’s winning the “War on Terror” even if there’s never another attack on the U.S.
Look out — lots of hype and fear mongering by RJB
After watching Kessler on Book Span TV, I immediately browsed the book at Borders and thought it was just part of the neo-con propaganda machine. More fear mongering and complaints about the so-called liberal obstructionists. I take issue with his statement that some FBI or CIA agent might compromise their work because they fear lawsuits; they should fear more for not doing their jobs and should be able to get the necessary approvals to charge ahead. What is a democracy without safeguards!
As for the recommendations, it’s the usual suspects - Woosey Woolsey et al. It would have been simpler to say that Joseph Goebbels approved it; that would have summarized it best. I don’t think a NewsMax hack like this adds to the intelligence debate that the nation is currently engaged in.
Creating Fear by Trudy Bond
Kessler’s book attempts to frighten those who would differ with the U.S. government’s attempts to violate international law with torture as well as preemptive warfare. There is so proof of the direct causal relationship in the premise of his book. The argument for violating and limiting individual freedoms that this country was based on has no true foundation, only what the author and others would like the commons to believe.
It’s A “Media Watch,” Not A “Terrorist Watch” by Lowell B. McKenna
This book started with promise, featuring interviews with numerous FBI agents from the street level on up about the war on terror. Where it sticks to chronicling their stories, the book has some merit. But the reporting is quickly overshadowed and ultimately buried by the author’s diversions into relentless media-bashing and a shamelessly uncritical defenese of the Bush administration.
Instead of being an insightful look at how the FBI deals with the complexity of the war on terror, the book ultimately shifts sharply into politics and in the process becomes unreadable for those who do not share its pro-Bush, anti-media, rights-be-damned outlook on the world.
By the end of the first half, Kessler’s voice vastly outshouts the words his supposed subjects. I bought the book because I wanted to read about the FBI and the CIA, not about the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Similar Products
Tags: 911, al-qaida, cia, conservatism, couterterrorism, espionage, fbi, fisa, hussein, intelligence, iraq, islamofascism, nctc, nsa, terrorism