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Originally Posted by bradclark1
Got the book yesterday and am on page 76. It's mainly covered Bush seniors efforts to staff juniors cabinet. The Bush's are extremely tight with Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia. Its covered Rumsfeld's becoming Sec Def and his battle(?) to gain control of the military. Rumsfeld is a wierd bird that wants to control everything and everyone and no detail is too small.
He sends out a huge amount of snow flakes(quick messages) for meticulous information, so many that it's hard for people to do their jobs. He won't sign them because that gives him deniability (? for whatever reason) but everyone knows where they come from. He's a centralist. He made a minor attempt to even stop the Chief of Staff from being able to talk to the president. He's very self important and has an ego to match. He's a big believer in covering his ass. He will dress down anybody in front of anyone but if pushed back he doesn't quite know how to handle it.
I'm now in the section where it is June and Tenet is getting pretty excited because he can't get the NSC to understand that something big is going to happen. Rumsfeld questions his sources etc.
Get the book. Its a hard one to put down and is well written. Cost $20 right now on sale. If you happen to be in a book store read pages 48 to 52.
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Hmmm. I don't have a US copy of the book as I'm in the UK but I did take a look at the British copy from P.49 which is the beginning of Chapter 6 along to page 53 ending with the paragraph that begins "SHELTON HAD BEEN CHAIRMAN since 1997."
If this is the passage in the book that you are referring to then it doesn't reflect well or enhance the reputation of Condaleeza Rice. The fact that after the release of the book "State of Denial" Rice denied that any such meeting with Tenet and Black took place and then for her own staff to embarrassingly have to come out a day later and say that in fact a meeting did take place makes Rice look kind of silly. In the book however it is not a case of Rice appearing silly. Rather she looks distracted, even bordering on negligent. And while Rice seemed distrated with other issues such as missile defence, Rumsfeld questioned and appeared highly sceptical of the intelligence that Tenet and Black were presenting. Direct from the book with my own emphasis in bold:
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They both felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. Bush had said that he didn't want to swat at flies. As they all knew, a coherant plan for covert action against bin Laden was in the pipeline, but it would take sme time. In recent closed-door meetings the entire National Security Council apparatus had been considering action against bin Laden, including the use of a new secret weapon: the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, that could fire Hellfire missiles to kill him or his lieutenants. It looked like a possible solution, but there was a raging debate between the CIA and the Pentagon about who would pay for it and who would have authority to shoot. Besides, Rice had seemed focused on other administration priorities, especially the ballistic missile defence system that Bush had campaigned on. She was in a different place.
Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long. "Adaults should not have a system like this", he said later.
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How far are you into the book now Brad? Anything else of note that you have picked up on?