Amazon.com
Seymour Hersh has been a legendary investigative reporter since 1969 when he broke the My Lai story in Vietnam. His considerable skill and well-placed sources inside the government, intelligence community, military, and the diplomatic corps have allowed him access to a wide range of information unavailable to most reporters. Chain of Command is packed with specific details and thoughtful analysis of events since the attacks of September 11, 2001, including intelligence failures prior to 9/11; postwar planning regarding Afghanistan and Iraq; the corruption of the Saudi family; Pakistan's nuclear program, which spread nuclear technology via the black market (and admitted as such); influence peddling at the highest levels; and the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, among other topics. The book collects and elaborates on stories Hersh wrote for The New Yorker, and includes an introduction by the magazine's editor, David Remnick, on Hersh's background and his sources.
Part of Hersh's skill lies in uncovering official reports that have been buried because government or military leaders find them too revealing or embarrassing. Chain of Command is filled with such stories, particularly regarding the manner in which sensitive intelligence was gathered and disseminated within the Bush administration. Hersh details how serious decisions were made in secret by a small handful of people, often based on selective information. Part of the problem was, and remains, a lack of human intelligence in critical parts of the Middle East, but it also has much to do with the considerable infighting within the administration by those trying to make intelligence fit preconceived conclusions. A prime example of this is the story about the files that surfaced allegedly detailing how Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger in order to build nuclear weapons. Though the files were soon proven to be forgeries, the Bush administration still used them as evidence against Saddam Hussein and therefore part of the reason for invading Iraq. In these pages, Hersh offers readers a clearer understanding of what has happened since September 11, and what we might expect in the future. --Shawn Carkonen
From Publishers Weekly
Based on previously published articles and supplemented by fresh revelations, this book by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Hersh, who writes for The New Yorker and has authored several books (The Dark Side of Camelot, etc.), charges the Bush administration with being propelled by ideology and hamstrung by incompetence in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas. One former intelligence official observes that the Bush administration staffers behaved "as if they were on a mission from God," while another laments, "The guys at the top are as ignorant as they could be." It’s no surprise, then, that the dissenters want to talk or that the Hersh, who has a reputation for integrity and enviable inside access, ferrets them out, assembling critiques from diverse, mostly unidentified sources at home and abroad. According to Hersh, the dire conditions that "enemy combatants" suffered at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, presaged detainee abuses at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. Hersh reveals the depravities purportedly occurring at Guantánamo and argues that Donald Rumsfeld wasn’t the only one responsible for what happened at Abu Ghraib: "the President and Vice President had been in it, and with him, all the way." The book also covers some familiar ground, exploring pre-9/11 intelligence oversights and the administration’s misconception that Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Israel, Turkey and the Kurds would jump on the democracy bandwagon after the invasion of Iraq. But Hersh reserves his sharpest words for President Bush, suggesting the "terrifying possibility" that "words have no meaning for this President beyond the immediate moment, and so he believes that his mere utterance of the phrases makes them real." Hersh’s critics may dismiss these explosive, less than objective conclusions. For others, however, this sobering book is the closest anyone without a security clearance will get to operatives in the inner sanctums of America’s intelligence, military, political and diplomatic worlds.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Renowned (and sometimes reviled) for investigative feats extending back to My Lai, Seymour M. Hersh is a muckraker and proud of it. He picks up rocks to expose the ugly crawly things beneath, a specialty that most recently helped bring to light the prisoner-abuse scandal in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. In Chain of Command, Hersh draws upon his Abu Ghraib stories along with others that first appeared in the New Yorker, all touching in one way or another on President Bush and his advisers' conduct of the global war on terror. He takes a dim view of the Bush administration, charging it with incompetence, dishonesty and recklessness.Hersh directs most of his fire against Donald Rumsfeld and the senior civilian officials in the office of the secretary of defense. These are the people, he writes, who manipulate intelligence, wink at torture and assassination, and play fast and loose with the Geneva Conventions. Rumsfeld and key deputies such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Stephen Cambone give the back of their hands to "Clintonized" generals whom they think display insufficient ardor, and wage war against foot-draggers at the State Department and the CIA with greater ferocity than they muster against Saddam Hussein or al Qaeda.Hersh could have provided a major look at the post-Sept. 11 Pentagon, but Chain of Command is a missed opportunity -- an exercise in recycling that shoves previously published articles between hard covers in hopes of approximating a larger whole. The result amounts to little more than a miscellany -- a book without a spine. Throughout, Hersh maintains a tone of high dudgeon and apparent shock. But only the reader who has managed to sleep through events since Sept. 11 -- or whose worldview has been shaped entirely by Fox News and the Weekly Standard -- will find much here that qualifies as especially startling. Further detracting from the value of Chain of Command is Hersh's reliance on unidentified sources. However helpful blind quotations are in decoding the daily version of reality propagated by government officials, using them becomes increasingly problematic the further events slip into the past. Few hard facts embellish Hersh's account, but anonymous opinions abound: from former officials and military officers, from aides and advisers once reputedly close to Bush's inner circle, from "consultants" retained by government agencies -- all of them nameless. Hersh tries to make a virtue of necessity: "There is honor in their anonymity." In fact, their anonymity makes it impossible to assess motive, veracity or credibility. Given the passage of time since much of this material first appeared, Hersh might have added depth and detail to his initial reporting, reducing its hearsay quotient. He has not. Nor has he situated his stories in a larger context. Apart from an angry conclusion that denounces President Bush for "terrorizing the nation" and declares that "the deepening American quagmire in Iraq will not end until there is a change of leadership in Washington," he offers little by way of analysis. In place of reflection, Hersh vents his outrage at those in authority whom he wants held accountable. This is unfortunate, for despite Hersh's preference for the sensational rather than the substantive, Chain of Command contains the makings of what might have been an important book. The context of this book-that-might-have-been derives directly from the question that the chattering classes took up within days of Sept. 11 and have yet to resolve: How much had really changed about the way America would conduct itself in the world? For the Bush administration, many of whose leading members had long chafed at restrictions limiting the use of American power, the answer to that question was clear from the outset. What had changed? Everything. When he announced in late September 2001 that the United States confronted an entirely "new kind of war," Rumsfeld declared that henceforth "no fixed rules" would govern decisions on when and how to employ U.S. forces. Ever since Sept. 11, Hersh writes, "President Bush and his top aides have seen themselves as engaged in a war against terrorism in which the old rules did not apply." Hersh does not return to this passing observation, but it cuts to the heart of the matter. Abandoning old rules meant chucking out old inhibitions -- about the need for allies and the sanctity of treaties, about the efficacy of force and the proper role of the armed services, about morality and the rule of law. In retracing the steps that culminated with Abu Ghraib, Chain of Command suggests the unhappy consequences that come from discarding traditional norms of statecraft and commonsense notions of prudence in favor of boldness and risk-taking fueled by ambition, ideology and unstinting confidence in the utility of military power. As one of Hersh's shadowy sources observes, "Now we're going to be the bad guy, and being the bad guy works." Events have yet to demonstrate that it does. In the meantime, this imperfect book provides an oblique but timely reminder of why rules exist in the first place: to guard against the failings to which human beings with all their frailties and foibles are prone and for which, in public life, others -- 19- and 20-year-old soldiers -- are obliged to pay. Reviewed by Andrew J. Bacevich Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
Book Description
Since September 11, 2001, Seymour M. Hersh has riveted readers -- and outraged the Bush Administration -- with his stories in The New Yorker, including his breakthrough pieces on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Now, in Chain of Command, he brings together this reporting, along with new revelations, to answer the critical question of the last three years: how did America get from the clear morning when hijackers crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to a divisive and dirty war in Iraq?
Hersh established himself at the forefront of investigative journalism thirty-five years ago when he broke the news of the massacre at My Lai, Vietnam, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Ever since, he's challenged America's power elite by publishing the stories that others can't, or won't, tell. In exposés on subjects ranging from Saudi corruption to nuclear black marketeers and -- months ahead of other journalists -- the White House's false claims about weapons of mass destruction, Hersh has cemented his reputation as the indispensable reporter of our time.
In Chain of Command, Hersh takes an unflinching look behind the public story of President Bush's "war on terror" and into the lies and obsessions that led America into Iraq. He reveals the connections between early missteps in the hunt for Al Qaeda and disasters on the ground in Iraq. The book includes a new account of Hersh's pursuit of the Abu Ghraib story and of where, he believes, responsibility for the scandal ultimately lies. Hersh draws on sources at the highest levels of the American government and intelligence community, in foreign capitals, and on the battlefield for an unparalleled view of a crucial chapter in America's recent history. With an introduction by The New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, Chain of Command is a devastating portrait of an Administration blinded by ideology and of a President whose decisions have made the world a more dangerous place for America.
Download Description
"
Since September 11, 2001, Seymour M. Hersh has riveted readers -- and outraged the Bush Administration -- with his stories in The New Yorker, including his breakthrough pieces on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Now, in Chain of Command, he brings together this reporting, along with new revelations, to answer the critical question of the last three years: how did America get from the clear morning when hijackers crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to a divisive and dirty war in Iraq?
Hersh established himself at the forefront of investigative journalism thirty-five years ago when he broke the news of the massacre at My Lai, Vietnam, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Ever since, he's challenged America's power elite by publishing the stories that others can't, or won't, tell. In exposés on subjects ranging from Saudi corruption to nuclear black marketeers and -- months ahead of other journalists -- the White House's false claims about weapons of mass destruction, Hersh has cemented his reputation as the indispensable reporter of our time.
In Chain of Command, Hersh takes an unflinching look behind the public story of President Bush's ""war on terror"" and into the lies and obsessions that led America into Iraq. He reveals the connections between early missteps in the hunt for Al Qaeda and disasters on the ground in Iraq. The book includes a new account of Hersh's pursuit of the Abu Ghraib story and of where, he believes, responsibility for the scandal ultimately lies. Hersh draws on sources at the highest levels of the American government and intelligence community, in foreign capitals, and on the battlefield for an unparalleled view of a crucial chapter in America's recent history. With an introduction by The New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, Chain of Command is a devastating portrait of an Administration blinded by ideology and of a President whose decisions have made the world a more dangerous place for America."
About the Author
Seymour M. Hersh has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, four George Polk Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes, many of them for his work at the New York Times. In 2004, he won a National Magazine Award for public interest for his pieces on intelligence and the Iraq war. He lives in Washington, D.C. Chain of Command is his eighth book.
Home
