Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism

By Timothy Naftali

Book Overview

In this revelatory new account, national security historian Timothy Naftali relates the full back story of America's attempts to fight terrorism. On September 11, 2001, a long history of failures,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465092810
• ISBN13: 9780465092819
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Sound Familar?

It would probably be useful to potential readers to explain what this book is not before discussing what it is. It is not a "secret history" in any sense nor is it a diatribe against either the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) or the Executive Branch of government. The book is a sober and sobering history of how the U.S. has dealt with issues of State and non-State terrorism from World War II through the catastrophe of September 11 2001. Naftali also does a great service by noting the obvious similarities between the operating techniques of counter-Espionage and counter Terrorism (especially domestic). In this book Naftali chronicles the failure of our political and national security systems to effectively protect American lives and property from terrorist threats. Naftali does record those rare successes against individual terrorists such as Abu Nidal, but the thrust of his book is that on the whole we have had difficulty countering terrorism in any form. He gives a fairly detailed case study of the series of terrorist attacks against U.S. personal in Lebanon during 1983-1984. The perpetrators of these attacks were members of Hezbollah, a Shia terrorist organization sponsored by Iran and enabled by Syria. In the case of the bombing of the U.S. Beirut Embassy in 1984 as it turned out, if the CIA had reviewed its available evidence, especially imagery they would have seen that a mock up of the U.S. Embassy had been constructed and was being used to train for car bomb attacks against the real thing. This is not a matter of "connecting the dots"; it is a matter of knowing the target (in this case Hezbollah) and building rational indications lists. In the fallout from this series of disasters, the redoubtable Charlie Allen, a long time CIA employee, called attention to the existence of this imagery (hind site is always 20/20). As a result Allen was named the new National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for counter-Terrorism. To his credit, Allen almost immediately tried to make information sharing a part of IC culture by connecting all concerned agencies directly with the CIA center for photo interpretation. Needless to say the IC culture than as now was largely opposed to sharing anything and Allen's efforts came to naught. In the couple of chapters of this book Naftali does chronicle the efforts by the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to deal with the terrorist threat posed by the Osama bin Laden movement. Neither comes off very well in this, but the Bush administration comes off as the most indifferent, at least prior to 9/11. This reviewer would recommend that prior to reading this book; interested readers should read "Inside Terrorism" by Bruce Hoffman to understand all the different manifestation of terrorism.

Counterterrorism Prior to 911

I found Blind Spot to be a refreshing look at terrorism prior to when it became a sexy topic. Blind Spot is a highly informative tome on what was happening in this country in terms of terrorism pre 911. It takes you from the early days in August 1969 when Palestinian terrorists hijacked TWA Flight 840 to the current battle with Al Qaeda. Having worked on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States or as you all will be more familure with the 911 Commission he knows that which he speaks. If you want to learn what your US Government was doing about terrorism prior to 911 then this is the book you need to click on and proceed straight to the check out page.

Robust review of history of U.S. counterterrorism policy

While many recent works on terrorism focus almost exclusively on the most recent incarnation (Islamic jihadists), Naftali reviews the much broader historical counterterrorism landscape. Perhaps most interesting is the historical parallel he draws between the difficult decisions the Clinton and Bush II administrations faced prior to 9-11 and those faced by the Johnson and Nixon administrations. The author does a tremendous job of reinforcing that terrorism and U.S. efforts to combat it are nothing new, and that policymakers often find themselves faced with the same difficult decisions and repeating the same mistakes as their predecessors. Those readers who wish to read more than this book offers about counterterrorism policy since the late 1990s should read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars and Peter Bergen's Holy War, Inc.

Highly recommended.

If you like to konw more about modern and contemporary history, this book is for you. The author collected information from different sources for the 9/11 commision and expanded it further for this book. It's better than a mistery book as you know some of the fact but you didn't know all it happened behind the scenes. My wife's granfather was a spy after WWII and I found references of his work in this book too.

Blind Spot rocked

It was a good book, educating as well as very interesting. A great telling of our History with counterterrorism.