The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth

Few today remember it, but as the sun rose over the eastern seaboard on September 11, 2001, it was understood that the Central Intelligence Agency spied on our nation's enemies and the Department of Defense waged war on them.Flash forward a dozen years to today, and those roles have to a large extent switched. The CIA's main brief has become counter-terrorism, with great emphasis placed on capturing or killing those believed responsible for acts against the United States or who may be contemplating such acts. Spying and analyzing information created by such, the agency's traditional roles, have taken a decided backseat.This evolution is studied in The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by Mark Mazzetti (@MarkMazzettiNYT), the Pulitzer Prize-winning national security correspondent for The New York Times. It is an excellent book, filled with fascinating details that in turns may anger, amaze or amuse the reader.Mazzetti provides a brief but illuminating history of the Central Intelligence Agency, which rose from the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS was action oriented, with agents taking the fight to the enemy through sabotage as well as arming resistance groups. That wartime focus on action was intended to be just a part of the newly-created CIA, a means of providing presidents with a way of quickly and quietly taking action, while the primary focus was on intelligence-gathering.Having a dedicated group available to do whatever needed doing anywhere in the world proved irresistible for even the most moderate presidents, however, and that created a dangerous cycle:"The residents of the Oval Office have turned to covert action hundreds of times, and often have come to regret it. But memories are short, new presidents arrive at the White House every four or eight years, and a familiar pattern played out over the second half of the twentieth century: presidential approval of aggressive CIA operations, messy congressional investigations when the details of those operations were exposed, retrenchment and soul-searching at Langley, criticisms that the CIA had become risk-averse, then another period of aggressive covert action."-- Mazzetti, Mark (2013-04-09). The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth (Kindle Locations 684-688). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.During the 1960s and 70s the agency was involved in clumsy assassination attempts as well as sponsoring coups and inciting rebellion, but it was the Iran-Contra affair that defined the mindset of many who were working at CIA on 9/11. To those who survived the internal purges and federal prosecution resulting from that embarrassing chapter (look it up, kids), the idea that the agency would create a huge paramilitary wing dedicated to hunting and killing -- mostly by drone missile strike -- would be pure fantasy.The book isn't just a look at the CIA. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, DoD was already facing a lingering identity crisis before 9/11 as the proponents of "traditional" (i.e., heavy armor formations) land warfare faced a world without a credible opponent. After the terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield yearned to have what the CIA had: a nimble force free to take action anywhere in the world. He already had specially-trained troops at Special Operations Command and through careful manipulation of existing and post-9/11 laws Rumsfield was able to expand the scope of his department to unheard-of levels.But the one thing Rumsfield did not have available was information -- intelligence -- about the far-off places where he wanted to send his special operators. First off the CIA was doing less and less spying, and secondly both agencies were in competition for the same thing: the billions of dollars coming from Congress for the Global War on Terror. Ever willing to break free of conventional thinking, whether wise or not, Rumsfield set up his own intelligence-gathering operation within DoD.There are some true "shake my head" moments detailed in the book, such as the Virginia socialite who decides to become a player in the anarchy of Somalia and the astounding development of outsourcing key intelligence and security activities to private contractors like Blackwater, as well as an examination of the drone program. The hot-and-cold relationship between Pakistan's spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the CIA is also a major piece of the book.Throughout, Mazzetti's prose is clear and his command of the subject total, making the book very readable as well as informative. I was pleased to see he maintains a journalist's impartial stance, reporting information from all sides of the issues without bias or opinion. Frankly, the author doesn't need to opine, as the people he interviewed are more than happy to lay out not only pros and cons but also their personal views.Although still digesting the information, I believe this cautionary tale is well worth reading and I highly recommend it. The pendulum has swung so far from "risk-adverse" that I'm not sure what manner of event it would take to rein in the current CIA, or if we should. Still, the agency is like a weightlifter who only works one arm: the hunters and killers in the Counterterrorism shop are buff and muscular, while the analysts on the "intel" side are atrophied and weak. I'm not sure that's wise.

This book is about the fundamental changes that have occurred in the CIA and the US govt as to how to wage war against non-state enemies in the post 9/11 world. In presenting a composite picture of these changes, the author shows how the roles of the CIA and the Pentagon have overlapped and even switched. He raises moral and ethical questions associated with conducting 'war' on a country without ever declaring 'war', killing 'enemies' in foreign lands by remotely piloted drones and outsourcing espionage and killing to private firms and mercenaries. These are thought-provoking questions to ponder about.Mark Mazetti traces the philosophy of the CIA over the past fifty years as follows: In the 1960s, the CIA was allowed to carry out assassinations overseas as part of its job. In the 70s, President Ford reversed all that, forbidding the CIA from being a killing machine and instead making it focus on intelligence gathering and spying as its primary job. However, 9/11 changed all that yet again, with the CIA getting into the business of tracking down Islamic extremists, incarcerating and torturing them overseas. The adverse reaction to this practice and the Congressional indictments that followed, made them choose the silver bullet of killing terrorists abroad again through remote-controlled drones without opting for on-the-ground assassination squads. In doing so, the American government has outsourced the basic functions of spycraft to private contractors, making the American way of war morph from clashes between tank columns - into the shadows, outside the declared war zones. In the process, the constraints on who can be killed, where they can be killed and when they can be killed have been conveniently blurred.The author says that the challenge of Al-Qaeda has led the Pentagon, the CIA and the US Govt into paradoxical and inconsistent positions. The Clinton administration, though opposed to the CIA carrying out the assassination of Osama bin Laden through hit-squads, was okay with killing him through Tomahawk missiles. In the same way, President Obama, though a liberal, finds no contradiction in embracing and expanding the killing program through the drones, which has resulted in the deaths of substantial number of civilians, non-combatants and even allies, apart from suspected terrorists.Mark Mazetti clearly believes that the CIA should not stray away from its primary mission of spying and gathering intelligence. He attributes this 'straying' as the reason for the CIA getting blind-sided by the Arab Spring events in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in 2010-12. Though it is tempting to agree with this, I remember reading in Tim Werner's book, 'The Legacy of the Ashes', about the CIA getting blindsided by many world events even before 9/11. For example, the CIA did not foresee India going for an atomic blast in 1998. Nor did they foresee the sudden collapse of Communism in 1990-92 or even the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in 1991. The CIA has the image of an all-powerful God-like entity in the eyes of developing countries. However, in reality, it is probably just a massive bureaucracy struggling to make sure that its left-hand is aware of what the right-hand is doing.I found the chapters on the CIA's role in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia quite absorbing and revelatory. The sections on Pakistan show that the US got quite fed up with the 'double game' of the ISI and the Pak army, resulting in giving full rein to the CIA to violate the country's borders. Years before the assault on Osama bin Laden in 2011, the Navy Seals had landed inside Pakistan and conducted operations in Damadola in the Bajaur agency without the Pak army ever being aware of it. This seems to have given the confidence for the later invasion to kill OBL. The US never informed President Musharraf of special operations that were carried out inside Pakistan. During the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, the CIA slipped in many covert officers into Pak without the ISI's knowledge under the cover of relief efforts. The book paints a dismal picture of Pak-US relations at all levels. There are fascinating accounts of how the CIA pursued al-Shabab in Somalia and killed the American citizen Anwar al-Aulaki in Yemen.After reading the book, I am compelled to think that this spree of 'killing by remote control' could end dangerously, similar to making the atomic bomb and waging cyber-warfare. The atomic bomb was seen as a way to bring fascism to its end in Japan without loss of of American lives. But the nuclear weapon has since proliferated and has come to threaten all of us. Similarly, internet viruses like Stuxnet were deployed towards a 'bloodless' destruction of Iran's nuclear program. But, it also got out of control, resulting in more cyber espionage and state-sponsored viruses threatening the highly-networked infrastructures of the advanced industrial nations. We are likely to see in future many countries following the 'US lead' in waging war (without declaring war) and killing citizens of another country through remote controlled drones, exacerbating tensions among nations and power-blocks.It is possible that the US has let another dangerous genie out of the bottle.

Like new with no marking on papers, good read for anyone interested in Afghan/Pakistan was after 9/11

This book gives a useful insight into the inner sanctums of the CIA and how at times it manages to work free of political control.It is clearly written and extremely credible.

Good book...chapters seem random and disconnected but the overall picture is clear

Excellent book

One would expect an experienced journalist and a Pulitzer prize winner to organize his material coherently and crisply. Sadly, many journalists today seem incapable of writing simple clear prose. The book is interesting in parts but could have been written better. One also suspects that a great deal of CIA skulduggery has been glossed over. The internal wranglings and politics of the CIA could have been easily omitted. On the whole an average book.