Volume 49, Number 15 · October 10, 2002
Secrets of September 11
By Thomas Powers
The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI
by Ronald Kessler
St. Martin's, 488 pp., $27.95
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob
by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill
Perennial, 389 pp., $14.00 (paper)
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
by Robert Baer
Crown, 284 pp., $25.95
Al-Qaeda: In Search of the Terror Network that Threatens the World
by Jane Corbin
Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 315 pp., $24.95
The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It
by John Miller and Michael Stone, with Chris Mitchell
Hyperion, 336 pp., $24.95
Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror
by Rohan Gunaratna
Columbia University Press, 272 pp., $22.95
The second job of any intelligence organization, after identifying where danger lies, is to protect its secrets. In theory the secrets are being kept from enemies so that the organization—the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Central Intelligence Agency, say—can pursue the rest of its important work, but in practice the secrets held most tightly are those that can wreck careers, let cats out of bags, or bring a halt to operations—the secrets of failure kept from public exposure. The glacial progress of the investigations of the two most damaging spies in American secret history, Aldrich Ames at the CIA and Robert Hanssen at the FBI, may be explained in part by the queasy certainty of high agency and bureau officials that they were going to catch unshirted hell when the news got out. Of course, the longer the wait the worse the explosion, but who wants trouble today when it can be put off until tomorrow—and maybe even left to ruin the career of the next person to fill the job?
Review, 7561 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |