Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Like I imagine so many thousands of others, I spent the last month counting down the days till the release of this book, contenting myself alongside everyone else with the tidbits revealed in the media. Ultimately, like some sort of hard-core Harry Potter fan, I used a connection at a local bookstore to get a copy at five AM, and spent this morning reading five-hundred of the most disturbing pages of revelations I've seen since the publication of Bob Woodward's State of Denial last year. Anyone who claims this book is former CIA director George Tenet's self-exonerating backlash against his former agency or his one-time boss, President George W. Bush, has not yet read At the Center of the Storm, and is in for a surprise. If no other part of this book is read, I'd urge anyone to turn to the chapter entitled "They Want To Change The World" and then defy anyone to walk away without feeling slightly less secure. Yes, Tenet does give his side of the story for his now-infamous "slam dunk" remark, and has select critical words for the current administration, particularly Secretary of State Rice, and Vice President Cheney, but instead of using this work as a vituperous denunciation of Washington insiders, he makes what I found to be a responsible criticism of exactly what was mishandled in the time between September 11, 2001, and the period that followed the end of the (first stage of the) Iraq War, and what has come to be termed the occupation of that country. Still, what kept me glued to these pages, what frightened and disturbed me, and what is sure to outshine the revelations on the conduct of the Bush administration and be most discussed in weeks ahead, is Tenet's revelations on the tenacity of the west's greatest foe, al-Quida (to use this book's spelling), its murderous ambitions, and the scope of what he maintains are some of its plots for mass-homicide. In At the Center of the Storm, Tenet writes of al-Qaida's 2003 plans for a gas attack on New York City's mass transit system. He tells of that organization's efforts to persuade scientists in Pakistan to sell it nuclear materials, and Tenet writes with a chilling detachment as he tells of bin Laden's meetings with Pakistani leaders with a goal of attaining that same technology. Most disconcerting of all is Tenet's statement that these meetings, including a face to face session between bin Laden and the Pakistani president, took place in the summer of 2001, mere weeks before 9-11, leading to the conclusion that things could actually have been so much worse than they were. Tenet also has a mixed opinion on the Saudis as partners in the fight against global terrorism. On one hand he is critical of Prince Naif's frequent unwillingness to provide names of suspects, and accuses him of indifferent vacillation, and yet Tenet also has praise for (now) King Abdullah, and writes that without Saudi cooperation, US efforts to defend itself would be greatly hampered, perhaps past the point of effectiveness. At the Center of the Storm is an engrossing read written by a credible source who one feels is coming clean here, as well as telling his side of things. Part insider's take on recent politics and policy, part revelation of the state of danger in our tumultuous world, it will become a best seller, and deserves to be.