Book Review: "The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11" by Ron Suskind (2006)

"The One Percent Doctrine", a look at the war on terror from 9/11 to the 2004 US Presidential election from Wall St. Journal reporter Ron Suskind, was originally released in hardcover about a year ago. It was at the top of "best of" lists for 2006, so I picked up the paperback version when it was released in mid-May.

The title of "The One Percent Doctrine" is taken from Dick Cheney's assertion that even if there is a one percent chance that a terrorist attack against the United States might take place, it is imperative that the American government proceed as though it was an absolute certainty. However, this is not the unifying premise of the book. What Suskind does is take four major themes - terrorist financing, the power wielded by Cheney within the Administration, the negotiations with Moammar Ghadafi which led to the abandonment of Libya's nuclear program, and the ongoing battle for the hearts and minds of the American public as the Iraq war didn't go as planned in the months following the 2003 invasion - and weaves them around each other in a weak narrative, peppered with other anecdotes about Washington bureaucratic infighting, the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and US-Saudi relations, to name a few.

(One notable excerpt details how the mastermind of the 7/7 bombings, Mohamed Sidique Khan, was known to US authorities for months in advance due to information gleaned via the "illegal" wiretap program, but they were afraid to do anything with it due to potential controversy. He went on to kill 56 and injure over 700 that day.)

Important as well is the fact that Suskind offers a retelling of events that would have personality clashes and relationships be one of, if not the, primary driver of international affairs. I'm vastly underqualified to comment on this, but given the ambitious, gossipy, power-driven world of the Beltway, suffice it to say that I believe that while certainly valuable, taking the likes of Suskind, Woodward and Bernstein as authoritative would be a mistake, in my view, since nothing is verifiable and embellishment is part and parcel of what they do.

Suskind also veers closely, but not quite, towards the tone of the "gotcha" school of journalism, whereby high-and-mighty investigative reporters elevate themselves on the pedestal of the moral high ground, second-guessing the decisions made by elected and unelected officials alike while wrapping themselves in the cloak of journalistic freedom and invoking the principle of the free press whenever their ethics or accuracy are put to question - as though that makes up for the fact that by the very nature of the work, they are forced to take considerable license and leeway as they piece their recounting of events together.

In terms of analysis, he makes mention of the "tipping point" theory, which has been done better elsewhere and by others, but outside of self-absorbed ramblings about the vitality and role of the fourth estate towards the conclusion, there's not much more. All told, though "The One Percent Doctrine" is nothing remarkable, it provides a decent contextual piece for other, superior works like "The Looming Tower" and George Tenet's memoirs, which is perhaps a reflection of my own bias towards the accounts from those who have actually done it rather than observers from the press, "Tower" aside.

"Fiasco" comes out in paperback in six weeks, so I'll be all over that one as well to see how it matches up.

Overall rating: 6/10