Against All Enemies

Authors: Richard A. Clarke

BOOK: Against All Enemies

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Praise for
Against All Enemies

“A highly readable, often exciting, and authoritative account of America's most dangerous immediate problem, how to deal with terrorism and al Qaeda. It is also the story of one man's effort to make the complex bureaucracy of the federal government respond to undefined but devastating threats as well as to unforeseen emergencies. It is an important book.”

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The New York Review of Books

“Dick Clarke has struck a chord because his passionate efforts reflected those great American virtues of ingenuity and brashness. Even if he was a bit of a cowboy, loading up his .357 sidearm to return to the West Wing the night after 9/11, at least he was not dozing through High Noon.”

âMaureen Dowd,
The New York Times

“[Richard Clarke] served his nation very, very wellâ¦The book is the book, and you can read it and make your own judgment as to whether it's accurate.”

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Colin Powell

“Few books command days of banner headlines on publication. But then few authors have been quite so intimately involved with current events as Richard Clarke, until last year one of President Bush's most important advisers on counterterrorismâ¦[An] entertaining book, with tense, thrillerish accounts of how events unfolded in the White House Situation Room on September 11, plenty of hardbitten dialogue, and easily digested history to keep the pages turningâ¦The picture he paints of Bush's White House is grimly compelling.”

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Birmingham Post

“Clearly, the President preferred flattering myths to hard facts about 9/11. Now, with the publication of Richard Clarke's memoir,
Against All Enemies,
we know why.

“Mr. Clarke is a nonpartisan professional who has devoted his life to national security, serving four Presidents of both parties during a distinguished public career that spanned 30 yearsâ¦His book confirms in detail what some of us have long suspected: During the first nine months of 2001, the Bush administration largely ignored loud alarms about al Qaeda sounded by Mr. Clarke, by CIA director George Tenet and by other former Clinton administration officials.”

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The New York Observer

“Mr. Clarke's book is a rare literary phenomenon, a thriller, contemporary history and kiss-and-tell all rolled into one, before being bound with dynamite and fired crashing through the widows of the Oval Office.”

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The Times
(London)

“Washington will be abuzz for some time over Clarke's recollections.”

âThe Washington Post Book World

“Fascinating and highly detailedâ¦grippingâ¦The book is far more a road map of an ongoing war than a political potboiler. And it's unlikely we've heard the last from Clarke, which should keep top administration officials in a state of high anxiety.”

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BusinessWeek

“Richard Clarke's revealing book
Against All Enemies
makes clear that he is perhaps the single most improbable hero American liberals have ever reveredâ¦He was a strong believer in the use of U.S. military powerâ¦Some of his views might ordinarily be greeted with a dollop of skepticism were it not for the fact that Clarke was right, clearly and spectacularly so, about one big thing, the biggest of all: al Qaeda and the threat its terrorism has posed to the United States.”

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Los Angeles Times

“Serious, thoughtful, passionate, detailed and alarming.”

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The Winston-Salem Journal

“The best part of Richard Clarke's book,
Against All Enemies,
is that it reads like an MRI of how the federal government works in this country. It reveals a nasty, treacherous, back-stabbing arena of high-stakes politics, where money, patronage, personal grudges and wars where our kids are killed are concocted. It's down, dirty and terrifying.”

âNew York Daily News

“Clarke was once a far-sighted, hard-nosed, aggressive counterterrorism official, just the kind of guy you want fighting Osama bin Laden.”

âNational Review

“A scathing indictment of Bush and his administration's failure to deal with the terror threats prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.”

âThe Toronto Star

“Every footprint Clarke has left leads back to his obsession with terrorismânot moneyâ¦But here's the point: Clarke was right.”

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The Nation

“His version of events strongly supports other eyewitness accounts.”

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The New Yorker

“Richard Clarke has been consistently right on the facts, and the White House and its apologists consistently wrong. Which is why the White House is waging such a ferocious and unconscionable campaign of character assassination against Mr. Clarke.”

âBob Herbert,
The New York Times

“[Richard Clarke] had been worrying about al Qaeda for a decade, and yet even as he saw terror flames growing on the horizon, the Bush people pushed him asideâ¦Clarke, warts and all, seems to be thinking about the truthâwhich means he is thinking about the national interest, as well as the long haul of history.”

âJames P. Pinkerton,
New York Newsday

“I found Clarke to be one of the few heroes in the Bush White House. He was a career bureaucrat who served under four presidents and one of the first officials to recognize the seriousness of the threat posed by al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalists.”

âGerald Posner,
New York Newsday

“Clarkeâ¦represents Bush's worst nightmare: an undeniable insider with no obvious history of partisanship who has challenged his performance on the one issue that he cannot afford to surrender.”

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New York Newsday

“Clarke's accusations go to the core of Bush's main reelection message: that he is the wartime commander-in-chief doing everything he can to keep America safe from terrorists.”

âThomas DeFrank,
New York Daily News

“The body of evidence Clarke marshals to make his case is deep and compelling. That probably is why the White House already has ginned up its efforts to discredit both Clarke and his thesis. Whom to believe? There are many good reasons to believe Clarke.”

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Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“To colleagues in four administrations, Mr. Clarke was the go-to guy, the senior official who knew the often-arcane workings of budgets and could make the creaky bureaucracy move. Obssessed with averting terrorist attacks on his watch, he was quick to identify threatsâand bully people into addressing them.”

âRichard W. Stevenson,
The New York Times

“To those inclined to accept the smears of Clarke and his book by right-wing pundits and Republican activists, bear in mind the abundant external evidence that substantiates Clarke's âinsider' testimony.”

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San Francisco Chronicle

“This is an angry yet authoritative polemic that demands to be read by anyone interested in the exercise of American power and the threat of Islamic terrorism.”

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The Sunday Times
(London)

“This book is not just another hysterical anti-Bush polemic but a forensic glimpse into the entrails of government written by a registered full-blooded Republican and a White House veteran. If the American people believe him, it could cost Bush the electionâwhich is why the White House has become the fiercest enemy of
Against All Enemies.
”

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The Scotsman
(Edinburgh)

“The book itself is far more valuable than the hype surrounding it.”

âAndrew Sullivan,
The Sunday Times
(London)