In this book, Clarke settles all accounts, taking major aim at the George W. He cried "wolf" a great deal, but the wolf finally arrived at our doorstep, just as he predicted. Unlike his superiors in the Bush White House and some of his counterparts at the Central Intelligence Agency during the Clinton administration, Clarke recognized the religiously inspired threat from militant Islamists. (Readers should also consult The Age of Sacred Terror by Clarke's colleagues at the CSG, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon.) It is, however, the single best account of the global antiterrorist problem and the failures of a weakened Clinton presidency and the blindness of the Bush administration in understanding the gathering global reach of al Qaeda that led to 11 September. The book Clarke has written of those years is by his own observation egocentric and missing the essential roles of other players in the antiterrorism process. But it provided unique witness to how decisions were made in response to real security threats. His position as the principal official at the Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG) for the better part of a decade gave him a unique if somewhat channeled view of global political violence. Richard Clarke was an unconventional Washington bureaucrat who served in two White House administrations that had experienced significant acts of violence directed by radical Islamists.
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