Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism Book

In this revelatory new account-parts of which were written at the request of the 9/11 Commission-national security historian Timothy Naftali relates the full story of America's decades-long attempt to fight terrorism. On September 11, 2001, a long history of failures and missteps came to a head, with tragic results. But, says Naftali, it didn't have to be so. The United States hasn't always failed at counterterrorism. At the end of WWII, the government had established a seamless system for countering the threats of Nazi terrorists. But those capabilities were soon forgotten, and it wasn't until 1968, when Palestinian groups began a series of highly publicized airplane hijackings, that the United States had to take counterterrorism seriously again. In Blind Spot, Naftali narrates the game of catch-up that various administrations and the CIA played-with varying degrees of success-from the Munich Games hostage-taking, to the raft of terrorist incidents in the mid-1980s, through the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. The learning curve was steep, yet these years brought unheralded achievements: the United States neutralized Abu Nidal, Abimael Guzman, and Carlos the Jackal-three of its greatest terrorist enemies. In riveting detail, based on newly researched documents, recently uncovered archival information, and interviews with the key participants, Naftali describes these earlier successes and explains why they did not translate into success against Osama bin Laden later in the 1990s. Until 9/11, the domestic threat of terrorism was the largest blind spot in United States national security. For the first time, Naftali shows that holes in homeland security discovered by Vice President George H. W. Bush in 1986 were still a problem when his son became President, and why George W. Bush did nothing to fix them until it was too late. For anyone concerned about the future of America's security, this masterful, dramatic, and at times disheartening history is necessary and eye-opening reading.Read More