A Pretext for War

9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies

By: James Bamford

Narrated by: Ray Childs

Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

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 ultra-secret agency, charting its deeds and misdeeds from its founding in 1952 to the end of the 20th 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 hones 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 expose of the most secretive administration in history.

Want to learn more about the author and A Pretext for War? Listen to James Bramford on the June 8, 2004, edition of Fresh Air.

©2004 James Bamford (P)2004 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Much of the information and many of the theories in Mr. Bamford's book will be familiar to readers from earlier magazine and newspaper articles, and other books....But Mr. Bamford unearths new details about everything from the identity of one of the disclosed locations used by Vice President Dick Cheney after 9/11...to the failures of a special CIA unit charged with tracking Osama bin Laden, and he connects the many dots, both old and new, to create a vivid, unsettling narrative." (The New York Times)

Listen to this audiobook!

A Pretext to War has slipped through the cracks of many 9/11/Iraq War/terrorism books over the last few months. That is really too bad, because this is the sleeper hit that more people should hear. This superb work by acclaimed security writer and author James Bamford covers 4 areas really well: the timeline of the hijackings, the holes in the intelligence and security apparatus, the neo-con planners Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz and how they have spent decades building the case for pre-emptive war (the enthusiasm for war against Syria, Lebanon and others is quite disturbing), and finally how the case for the was sold to Congress, the UN and the American public. The full picture is extremely disturbing and infuriating. An excellent narration really adds to the quality of the audiobook. Listen now before the election!

Want to know about the timing of events on 9/11

This book reports about the events leading to and happening on 9/11 in a thrilling fashion with a detailed account of events. A truly fantastic book!

Nonsense

This is a tedious, unresearched and unbelievable tirade. Some books are just embarassing to have in the mix.