A revealing new audiobook from the former CIA Director George Tenet.
Beginning with his appointment as Director of Central Intelligence in 1997, Tenet unfolds the momentous events that led to 9/11 as he saw and experienced them: his declaration of war on al-Qa'ida; the CIA's covert operations inside Afghanistan; the worldwide operational plan to fight terrorists; his warnings of imminent attacks against American interests to White House officials in the summer of 2001; and the plan for a coordinated and devastating counterattack against al-Qa'ida laid down just six days after the attacks.
Tenet's compelling narrative then turns to the war in Iraq as he provides dramatic insight and background on the run-up to the invasion, including a firsthand account of the fallout from the inclusion of "sixteen words" in the president's 2003 State of the Union address, which claimed that Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium from Africa; the true context of Tenet's own now-famous "slam dunk" comment regarding Saddam's WMD program; and the CIA's critical role in an administration predisposed to take the country to war. In doing so, he sets the record straight about CIA operations and shows readers that the truth is more complex than suggested in other versions of recent history offered thus far.
Through it all, Tenet paints an unflinching self-portrait of a man caught between the warring forces of the administration's decision-making process, the reams of frightening intelligence pouring in from around the world, and his own conscience. In AT THE CENTER OF THE STORM, George Tenet draws on his unmatched experience within the opaque mirrors of intelligence and provides crucial information previously undisclosed to offer a moving, revelatory profile of both a man and a nation in times of crisis.
The former CIA director doesn't tell all, but what he reveals about his job and the secret agency he directed enters some dark passages. He remembers dry-mouthed rides to brief the president each morning and how he came to drink wine from an antler on a raucous trip to the Russian state of Georgia. Narrator Arthur Morey keeps himself out of the limelight with a treatment void of theatrical voices, relying instead on variations in pitch and tone to sound engaged. Too often, Morey allows himself a truculent voice when the author's words don't justify one. George Tenet reads a preface and a prescient afterword, chilling in its warnings for our future. For being a perceptive personal history written by an experienced spy, this audiobook is a "slam-dunk." J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
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