"Was America's Intelligence Community To Blame for Sept 11?"

The principal premise of best selling author Bill Gertz's book Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11, is that there was a monumental screw up of the intelligence community in Washington.

There are certainly many revelations of the book that are nothing more than a rehashing of various news stories presented over the past year by the media. Nevertheless, the synthesizing of this information definitely helps the reader to better understand the root causes of the breakdown.

Gertz provides the reader with impressive evidence to support his contention that Sept 11th could have been prevented, if the intelligence community had worked together in harmony. In order to defend his case, the author relies heavily on information gleaned from congressional hearings, court documents, classified memos, foreign governmental reports and letters, speeches and personal interviews with some of the former employees of the intelligence services.

Each chapter examines a different branch of the US intelligence apparatus and how they were all guilty of incompetence. He further adds that even Congress was a partner and should likewise share the blame, and its oversight of intelligence-or lack of it, or wrong use of it- is a prime cause of the intelligence breakdown that led to September 11.

No doubt the reader will find some of Gertz's findings lethal. For example, he refers to the Phoenix Memo, where special agent Kenneth Williams from his Phoenix office wrote to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001 that they should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities/colleges around the world. More than a year before Williams was involved in investigating some of the students attending this civil aviation universities and colleges. The FBI never took his warning seriously, and as mentioned in the book, "it did not get analyzed, and it was not shared with other intelligence agencies or even other FBI field offices, except New York."

Although at times the wealth of information may be difficult to immediately digest, there is no doubt a bitter aftertaste left in one's mouth once you ponder over some of the author's findings. This information packed book is nevertheless a welcome and discussion-provoking addition to the growing body of literature on this important subject matter.

Reviewed by Norman Goldman
Posted November 19, 2002