The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
Author: Jane Mayer
A dramatic and damning narrative account of how America has fought the
"War on Terror"
In the days immediately following September 11th, the most powerful people in the country were panic-stricken. The radical decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of utter chaos and fear, but the key players, Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, used the crisis to further a long held agenda to enhance Presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment.
THE DARK SIDE is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world-- decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author, Jane Mayer, relates the impact of these decisions—U.S.-held prisoners, some of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.
THE DARK SIDE will chronicle real, specific cases, shown in real time against the larger tableau of what was happening in Washington, looking at the intelligence gained—or not—and the price paid. In some instances, torture worked. In many more, it led to false information, sometimes with devastating results. For instance, there is the stunning admission of one of the detainees, Sheikh Ibnal-Libi, that the confession he gave under duress—which provided a key piece of evidence buttressing congressional support of going to war against Iraq--was in fact fabricated, to make the torture stop.
In all cases, whatever the short term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, and our country's place in the world, and its sense of itself. THE DARK SIDE chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history, one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.
The New York Times - Alan Brinkley
a powerful, brilliantly researched and deeply unsettling book…The Bush administration is not, of course, the first or only regime to violate civil liberties. John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt all authorized or tolerated terrible violations of civil and human rights, all of them in response to great national and global crises. In some respects, the Bush administration is simply following a familiar path by responding to real dangers with illegal and deplorable methods. But Jane Mayer's extraordinary and invaluable book suggests that it would be difficult to find any precedent in American history for the scale, brutality and illegality of the torture and degradation inflicted on detainees over the last six years; and that it would be even harder to imagine a set of policies more likely to increase the dangers facing the United States and the world.
Publishers Weekly
Following the paper trail left by the blank check the government and the citizenry gave the Bush administration after 9/11, Mayer tracks the nuanced and specific actions that have resulted in a devaluation of American ideals both domestically and abroad. Her talent lies in identifying the key moments, cases, actions and decisions that proved pivotal in empowering a monarchical executive power to avoid checks and balances. Mayer's comprehensive and detailed approach certainly ranks her work higher among the scores of books on the Bush administration. Richard McGonagle has a powerfully resonant and gruff voice that is at times deliberate and works effectively with the tone of this book. Occasionally, however, he seems distant, not monotonic, but projecting the sense he is just going through the motions. A Doubleday hardcover (reviewed online).(Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Christopher Rager - Library Journal
New Yorker writer Mayer (Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988) here examines the Bush administration's controversial policies following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. She focuses on the administration's disregard for international law, specifically its contempt for the Geneva Convention guidelines regarding the humane treatment of prisoners of war. The gravity of her riveting exposA©, which unfolds like a spy novel, is enhanced by actor/narrator Richard McGonagle's (
Table of Contents:
Panic 1Blame 11
The Warning 28
Men of Zeal 44
Detainee 001 72
Outsourcing Torture 101
Inside the Black Sites 139
The Experiment 182
The Memo 213
A Deadly Interrogation 238
Blowback 261
Cover-up 295
Afterword 327
Acknowledgments 336
Endnotes 338
Bibliography 361
A Note on Sources 370
Index 372
Book review: James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights or The Republic
The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration
Author: Jack L Goldsmith
A central player's account of the clash between the rule of law and the necessity of defending America.
Jack Goldsmith's duty as head of the Office of Legal Counsel was to advise President Bush what he could and could not do...legally. Goldsmith took the job in October 2003 and began to review the work of his predecessors. Their opinions were the legal framework governing the conduct of the military and intelligence agencies in the war on terror, and he found many—especially those regulating the treatment and interrogation of prisoners—that were deeply flawed.
Goldsmith is a conservative lawyer who understands the imperative of averting another 9/11. But his unflinching insistence that we abide by the law put him on a collision course with powerful figures in the administration. Goldsmith's fascinating analysis of parallel legal crises in the Lincoln and Roosevelt administrations shows why Bush's apparent indifference to human rights has damaged his presidency and, perhaps, his standing in history. 8 pages of photographs.
The New York Times Book Review - Anthony Lewis
…the record of Bush and his lawyers on torture…is grippingly examined by Jack Goldsmith in The Terror Presidency. Goldsmith is a conservative Harvard law professor who was assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for nine months in 2003-4. That is where official government opinions on the law are prepared. John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general in the office, prepared the 2002 opinion defining torture narrowly and asserting that the president had supreme power to order its use. Goldsmith withdrew that opinion and replaced it with a much more modest one. It took courage to do that, because he was treated as a traitor by some in the administration—notably David Addington, then Vice President Cheney's counsel, now his chief of staff. And it has taken courage to write this book…Goldsmith's arguments are the more convincing because they are not premised on traditional liberal or civil libertarian views.
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
Similar portraits, of course, have been drawn by reporters and other former administration insiders, but Mr. Goldsmith's account stands out by virtue that he was privy to internal White House debates about explosive matters like secret surveillance, coercive interrogation and the detention and trial of enemy combatants. It is also distinguished by Mr. Goldsmith's writing from the point of view of a conservative who shared many of the Bush White House's objectives (and who was an ideological ally of John Yoo, one of the main architects of the administration's legal responses to a post-9/11 world and the author of some of the very opinions Mr. Goldsmith would later call into question). But he found himself alarmed by the Bush White House's obsession with expanding presidential power, its arrogant unilateralism and its willingness to use what he regarded as careless and overly expansive legal arguments in an effort to buttress its policies.
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