Ron Suskind
Encyclopedia
Ron Suskind is a Pulitzer Prize
winning American journalist
and best-selling author
. He was the senior national affairs writer for The Wall Street Journal
from 1993 to 2000 and has published the books A Hope in the Unseen
, The Price of Loyalty
, The One Percent Doctrine
, The Way of the World and Confidence Men
. He won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing
for his series of articles in the Wall Street Journal that later became his first book, A Hope in the Unseen. Suskind is equally known for his series of prominent best-selling books cataloging the inner workings of the George W. Bush Administration
and related issues of the United States
' use of power.
, was a brother of the SPE fraternity, lived on The Lawn
during the 1980-1981 school year, and was the university's 2005 valediction
speaker. He received a master's degree
from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
in 1983.
In 1990, Suskind went to the Wall Street Journal, and became senior national affairs reporter in 1993. In 1995, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for two articles on Cedric Jennings, a science student at inner-city Ballou High School
who wanted to go to MIT. He left the Journal in 2000.
Suskind has written four books, and published in periodicals including Esquire and The New York Times Magazine
. In 2004, he discussed his book, The Price of Loyalty, on CBS's 60 Minutes
In 2006 he discussed The One Percent Doctrine on the Colbert Report, and in 2008 he discussed The Way of the world on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart He also appeared on NBC's "The Today Show", ABC's Nightline and PBS's Charlie Rose
. In 2001 and 2002, he was a regular contributor to "Life 360," a joint production of ABC and PBS. Between 2004 and 2008, he appeared frequently on Frontline, the PBS series.
White House. The first article focused on presidential adviser Karen Hughes
(June 2002). White House Chief of Staff
Andrew Card
said that the pragmatic Hughes was "the beauty to Karl's beast
", referring to top advisor Karl Rove
. According to Card, her resignation signified a political shift in the administration further to the right
. Suskind's second Esquire story (December 2002) about Rove carried the comments and a long memo from Bush's former head of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community initiatives
John DiIulio
, the first top official to leave the White House and speak candidly about his experiences. DiIulio criticized the Bush administration for having "no policy apparatus" and fixating on political calculation, and was quoted as saying "it's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavelli
s," although he later recanted that characterization.
In 2002, Suskind began contributing to the series "Profiles in Courage for Our Times"(Hyperion). The series included other esteemed and award-winning writers including Bob Woodward
, Michael Beschloss
and Anna Quindlen
.
On October 17, 2004, Suskind's cover story in the New York Times Magazine, titled "Without a Doubt: Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush", revealed that the president was planning to partially privatize Social Security
as his first initiative if re-elected—a disclosure that prompted controversy in the final two weeks of the campaign. The article popularized the term "reality-based community
", based on a conversation with a Bush aide who criticized Suskind and other people who "believe solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality".
honors students in Washington, D.C, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. These articles would later form the starting point of his first book, A Hope in the Unseen (Doubleday/Broadway, 1998). The story chronicles the two year journey of Cedric L. Jennings, a fiercely intelligent and religious honor student who aspires to escape his blighted Washington D.C. upbringing by going to an Ivy League university.
The book met with overwhelming critical and commercial success. It was chosen by the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Monthly and Booklist as one of the best books of the year. The New York Times Book Review called it “An extraordinary, formula-shattering book”. David Halberstam
called it "A beautiful book of a heroic American struggle." The book has been a regular selection in college courses on American culture, education, sociology and creative writing, and has been a required reading for incoming freshmen at many universities. In 2008, the book was selected as part of the “One Maryland, One Book” program.
The book was especially noted for its influence on the debate over affirmative action
. Upon its release in 1998, affirmative action had become one of the preeminent domestic social issues facing the country. In their review of the book, CNN
declared "As more voters, politicos and talk-show hosts write off affirmative action as a well-intentioned anachronism, A Hope in the Unseen should be required reading for would-be opinion-mongers." In his review for Newsday, Bill Reel stated "I changed my thinking about affirmative action. I was against it, now I am for it. The agent of change was a mind-opening book - "A Hope in the Unseen" by Ron Suskind."
The book also drew high praise for its innovations to writing style—using exhaustive reporting to place readers inside the heads of characters. The Chicago Tribune
called the book, "the new, new nonfiction."
meeting after President George W. Bush
took office. The book was met with both commercial and critical acclaim.
Among the many claims in the book, which drew from numerous sources and more than 19,000 internal government documents, was that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
and the U.S. occupation of Iraq was planned from Bush's first U.S. National Security Council
meeting in January 2001. This lay in sharp contrast to the widely held perception that concerns over Iraq only came to the forefront after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Administration officials have contended that O'Neill confused contingency plans with actual plans for invasion.
Rather than denying his allegations, Bush officials attacked O'Neill's credibility, while answering that regime change in Iraq
had been official U.S. policy since 1998, three years before Bush took office. However, O'Neill's claims called into question the relationship of the Iraq occupation to the post-9/11 War on Terrorism
. After the cover sheet of a packet containing classified information was shown during a 60 Minutes
interview of O'Neill and Suskind, the United States Department of Treasury investigated whether both men had improperly received classified materials. It concluded in March, 2004 that no laws were violated, but that inadequate document handling policies at the Treasury had allowed 140 documents which should have been marked classified to be entered into a computer system for unclassified documents. The documents were among those subsequently released to O'Neill in response to a legal document request and then given to Suskind.[1]
especially in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The doctrine itself is defined as,
Suskind's investigative report, published in his book The One Percent Doctrine, claimed that al-Qaeda
leaders were plotting to attack the New York City Subway
. Excerpts of the book were published in the June 18, 2006 issue of Time
. The book, based on interviews with more than a hundred sources, concluded that U.S. foreign policy since 9/11
was driven by Vice President
Dick Cheney
and his doctrine that "if there's a one percent chance" of weapons of mass destruction
being given to terrorists "we need to treat it as a certainty." The doctrine, Suskind asserts, freed the administration from the dictates of evidence and allowed suspicion to be a guide for action.
One of Suskind's many assertions, that a suspect in the London subway bombings was on a US "no fly" list and attempted to enter the US, has been challenged by the US government. The FBI described Suskind's reporting on this single matter as "inaccurate", and issued a statement saying "the author has intertwined facts... causing some confusion."
The book met with commercial and critical acclaim. It was a New York Times Bestseller and received an immense amount of acclaim in the journalism community. Frank Rich
called it a "Must read bestseller" while Michael Hill stated "If Bob Woodward is the chronicler of the Bush administration, Ron Suskind is the analyst.... A page-turning, blow by blow, inside-the-administration account...Historians will be grateful for it as they write the many final drafts in the decades to come."
and cultural connection. Among these stories are the tales of an intelligence official working to combat nuclear terrorism
, a detainee lawyer fighting for rights at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a young Pakistani man interrogated under the White House
, an Afghan teenager who spends a year in American high school, and former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto
as she returns to Pakistan
to challenge President Pervez Musharraf
.
The Way of the World marked the fullest return of the investigative narrative form that shaped Suskind’s first book, A Hope in the Unseen. This powerful technique was praised by many in reviewing “Way of the World”. In his assessment for the Literary Review
, Michael Burleigh noted the linked vignettes that formed the bedrock of the narrative. “Using a series of interwoven stories, some hopeful, others disturbing, Suskind explores whether the United States and the Muslim world will ever be able to find mutual respect and understanding.... This is a hugely important field that has never been so well examined.” Similar encomium was used in analyzing Suskind’s capabilities as a storyteller. The Sunday Times declared “Suskind is never unsympathetic to his characters, who he appears to have debriefed intensively. He is a romantic, a writer who clearly believes that his country has betrayed its past, its values and its moral compass by failing to tell the truth about the war." Perhaps the most substantial testament to Suskind’s return to a narrative style came from the New York Observer. “Moving.... Mr. Suskind is a prodigiously talented craftsman.... It’s all here: a cast of characters that sprawls across class and circumstance to represent the totality of a historical moment.... These hard times, Mr. Suskind’s book suggests, call for a nonfiction Dickens.”
Mark Danner
, reviewing the book for The New York Times
, writes that "These narratives and others perform, in Mr. Suskind’s hands, an intricate arabesque and manage, to a rather remarkable degree, to show us, in this age of terror, 'the true way of the world.'" It is around the stories of these characters that the book frames the debate about how America lost much of its moral authority in recent years and how it is struggling, often through the actions and initiative of individuals, to restore it.
The Way of the World sparked controversy upon publication for a series of disclosures centered on Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti
, the head of Iraqi intelligence under Saddam Hussein
. The book reveals that British and American intelligence entered into a dialogue with Habbush before the invasion of Iraq, in which he revealed that Saddam possessed no weapons of mass destruction and did not take an American invasion seriously. The book also contends that the Central Intelligence Agency
resettled Habbush, paid him $5 million, and forged a document in his name alleging that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta trained in Iraq
.
The White House, former CIA director George Tenet
, and former CIA officer Robert Richer
, an important figure in the book, were quick to deny involvement in fabricating the Habbush letter
, denials that were echoed in an official CIA statement, saying of Suskind's claim that the White House ordered the agency to forge a letter from Habbush: "It did not happen."
Suskind responded to the Rob Richer's denial, circulated by the White House, by posting on his website a partial transcript of a taped conversation with Richer in which the two discuss the Habbush forgery. In response to the official CIA statement, Suskind told The Washington Post
that the disclosures and details in his book are backed up by hours of interviews and that there is "not a shred of doubt about any of it." On August 11, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers
announced that his committee would look into the matter of the Habbush letter
and a variety of other disclosures in the book.
The Way of the World debuted at number 3 on the New York Times bestseller list, but some remarked that its revelations did not produce the outrage or scandal that would seem to attend a White House-run disinformation campaign aimed at U.S. public opinion. The layers of the controversy have nonetheless deepened with the revelation that Ayad Allawi, the initial source of the Habbush letter
, was at CIA headquarters the week before the letter emerged, and a piece in The American Conservative
by Philip Giraldi
that claims an "extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence community" confirmed that the Vice President's Office was behind the Habbush letter, but that "Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans
", not the CIA, carried out the forgery.
Many of the disclosures in The Way of the World received less attention than the Habbush controversy, but the inside story the book tells about Pervez Musharraf
's actions toward Benazir Bhutto
during the last months of the her life was picked up in the Pakistani press and dovetailed with a growing movement calling for the impeachment of the (now former) Pakistani president. Speaking to another aspect of the book, Mark Danner
, in his review for The New York Times
, writes that "the revelation of an effort to steal and sell fissile material in Georgia’s now celebrated 'breakaway region' of South Ossetia
... is only the most terrifying of a dozen or more newsworthy disclosures in this book." Suskind cites the battle against nuclear terrorism
as the most pressing crisis the United States needs to restore its moral authority in order to combat and details an ambitious attempt to infiltrate the worldwide nuclear black market, called the "Armageddon Test."
that began in the U.S. in 2008, and the attempts by President Barack Obama
's White House to combat it.
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning American journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and best-selling author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
. He was the senior national affairs writer for The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
from 1993 to 2000 and has published the books A Hope in the Unseen
A Hope in the Unseen
A Hope in the Unseen is the first book by author and journalist Ron Suskind, published in 1998. The book is a biographical novel about the life of Cedric Jennings through his last years in high school and first years in college...
, The Price of Loyalty
The Price of Loyalty
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, is a 2004 book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind. The book was the first to provide critical insight into the events that led up to the Iraq War...
, The One Percent Doctrine
The One Percent Doctrine
The One Percent Doctrine is a nonfiction book by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind about America's hunt for terrorists since September 11th.On July 24th 2006, it reached number 3 on the New York Times Best Seller list....
, The Way of the World and Confidence Men
Confidence Men
Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President is a book by Ron Suskind, published by HarperCollins on September 20, 2011....
. He won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing
Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing
The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing has been awarded since 1979 for a distinguished example of feature writing giving prime consideration to high literary quality and originality. The Pulitzer Committee issues an official citation explaining the reasons for the award.-List of winners and their...
for his series of articles in the Wall Street Journal that later became his first book, A Hope in the Unseen. Suskind is equally known for his series of prominent best-selling books cataloging the inner workings of the George W. Bush Administration
George W. Bush administration
The presidency of George W. Bush began on January 20, 2001, when he was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...
and related issues of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
' use of power.
Early life and career
Suskind was born in Kingston, New York, to a Jewish family. He attended the University of VirginiaUniversity of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
, was a brother of the SPE fraternity, lived on The Lawn
The Lawn
The Lawn is a large, terraced grassy court at the historic center of Jefferson's academic community at the University of Virginia. The design shows Jefferson's mastery of Palladian architecture...
during the 1980-1981 school year, and was the university's 2005 valediction
Valediction
A valediction , or complimentary close in American English, is an expression used to say farewell, especially a word or phrase used to end a letter or message, or the act of saying parting words- whether brief, or extensive.For the greetings counterpart to valediction, see salutation.Alternatively,...
speaker. He received a master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is one of Columbia's graduate and professional schools. It offers three degree programs: Master of Science in journalism , Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in communications...
in 1983.
In 1990, Suskind went to the Wall Street Journal, and became senior national affairs reporter in 1993. In 1995, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for two articles on Cedric Jennings, a science student at inner-city Ballou High School
Ballou High School
Ballou Senior High School is a public school located in Washington, D.C., United States. Ballou is a part of the District of Columbia Public Schools. The current principal is Rahman Branch...
who wanted to go to MIT. He left the Journal in 2000.
Suskind has written four books, and published in periodicals including Esquire and The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
. In 2004, he discussed his book, The Price of Loyalty, on CBS's 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
In 2006 he discussed The One Percent Doctrine on the Colbert Report, and in 2008 he discussed The Way of the world on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart He also appeared on NBC's "The Today Show", ABC's Nightline and PBS's Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose
Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993...
. In 2001 and 2002, he was a regular contributor to "Life 360," a joint production of ABC and PBS. Between 2004 and 2008, he appeared frequently on Frontline, the PBS series.
Articles
In 2002 Suskind wrote two stories in Esquire that marked some of the first stories to show the inner workings of the George W. BushGeorge W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
White House. The first article focused on presidential adviser Karen Hughes
Karen Hughes
Karen Parfitt Hughes is the Global Vice Chair of Burson-Marsteller. She served as the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the U.S. Department of State with the rank of ambassador. She resides in Austin, Texas.-Early life:Born in Paris, France, she is the daughter...
(June 2002). White House Chief of Staff
White House Chief of Staff
The White House Chief of Staff is the highest ranking member of the Executive Office of the President of the United States and a senior aide to the President.The current White House Chief of Staff is Bill Daley.-History:...
Andrew Card
Andrew Card
Andrew Hill Card, Jr. is a Republican American politician, former United States Cabinet member, and head of President George W. Bush's White House Iraq Group. Card served as U.S. Secretary of Transportation under President George H. W. Bush and the White House Chief of Staff under George W. Bush...
said that the pragmatic Hughes was "the beauty to Karl's beast
Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast is a traditional fairy tale. The first published version of the fairy tale was a rendition by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune américaine, et les contes marins in 1740...
", referring to top advisor Karl Rove
Karl Rove
Karl Christian Rove was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush until Rove's resignation on August 31, 2007. He has headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives...
. According to Card, her resignation signified a political shift in the administration further to the right
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
. Suskind's second Esquire story (December 2002) about Rove carried the comments and a long memo from Bush's former head of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community initiatives
White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, formerly the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is an office within the White House Office that is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States.-Under George W. Bush:OFBCI was...
John DiIulio
John DiIulio
John J. Dilulio Jr. is a political scientist. He currently serves as the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, he served as the first director of the White House Office of...
, the first top official to leave the White House and speak candidly about his experiences. DiIulio criticized the Bush administration for having "no policy apparatus" and fixating on political calculation, and was quoted as saying "it's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavelli
Mayberry Machiavelli
Mayberry Machiavelli is a satirically pejorative phrase coined by John J. DiIulio Jr., Ph.D., a former George W. Bush administration staffer who ran the President's Faith-Based Initiative...
s," although he later recanted that characterization.
In 2002, Suskind began contributing to the series "Profiles in Courage for Our Times"(Hyperion). The series included other esteemed and award-winning writers including Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward
Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....
, Michael Beschloss
Michael Beschloss
Michael Richard Beschloss is an American historian. A specialist in the United States presidency, he is the author of nine books.- Early life :...
and Anna Quindlen
Anna Quindlen
Anna Marie Quindlen is an American author, journalist, and opinion columnist whose New York Times column, Public and Private, won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992. She began her journalism career in 1974 as a reporter for the New York Post...
.
On October 17, 2004, Suskind's cover story in the New York Times Magazine, titled "Without a Doubt: Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush", revealed that the president was planning to partially privatize Social Security
Social Security debate (United States)
This article concerns proposals to change the Social Security system in the United States. Social Security is a social insurance program officially called "Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance" , in reference to its three components. It is primarily funded through a dedicated payroll tax...
as his first initiative if re-elected—a disclosure that prompted controversy in the final two weeks of the campaign. The article popularized the term "reality-based community
Reality-based community
Reality-based community is an informal term in the United States. In the fall of 2004, the phrase "proud member of the reality-based community" was first used to suggest the commentator's opinions are based more on observation than on faith, assumption, or ideology...
", based on a conversation with a Bush aide who criticized Suskind and other people who "believe solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality".
A Hope in the Unseen
In 1995 Suskind wrote a series of articles cataloging the struggles of inner-cityInner city
The inner city is the central area of a major city or metropolis. In the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland, the term is often applied to the lower-income residential districts in the city centre and nearby areas...
honors students in Washington, D.C, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. These articles would later form the starting point of his first book, A Hope in the Unseen (Doubleday/Broadway, 1998). The story chronicles the two year journey of Cedric L. Jennings, a fiercely intelligent and religious honor student who aspires to escape his blighted Washington D.C. upbringing by going to an Ivy League university.
The book met with overwhelming critical and commercial success. It was chosen by the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Monthly and Booklist as one of the best books of the year. The New York Times Book Review called it “An extraordinary, formula-shattering book”. David Halberstam
David Halberstam
David Halberstam was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and historian, known for his early work on the Vietnam War, his work on politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and his later sports journalism.-Early life and education:Halberstam...
called it "A beautiful book of a heroic American struggle." The book has been a regular selection in college courses on American culture, education, sociology and creative writing, and has been a required reading for incoming freshmen at many universities. In 2008, the book was selected as part of the “One Maryland, One Book” program.
The book was especially noted for its influence on the debate over affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
. Upon its release in 1998, affirmative action had become one of the preeminent domestic social issues facing the country. In their review of the book, CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
declared "As more voters, politicos and talk-show hosts write off affirmative action as a well-intentioned anachronism, A Hope in the Unseen should be required reading for would-be opinion-mongers." In his review for Newsday, Bill Reel stated "I changed my thinking about affirmative action. I was against it, now I am for it. The agent of change was a mind-opening book - "A Hope in the Unseen" by Ron Suskind."
The book also drew high praise for its innovations to writing style—using exhaustive reporting to place readers inside the heads of characters. The Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
called the book, "the new, new nonfiction."
The Price of Loyalty
The Price of Loyalty was published on January 13, 2004. The book, which chronicled the two-year tenure of United States Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, took readers deep inside the Bush Administration and was the first work to authoritatively assess the conduct and character of the Bush presidency. While the book covered a wide array of foreign and domestic issues, it is particularly notable for its portrayal of events that culminated in the Iraq War. Perhaps the most significant accusation was that the War in Iraq had been planned as early as the first National Security CouncilUnited States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
meeting after President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
took office. The book was met with both commercial and critical acclaim.
Among the many claims in the book, which drew from numerous sources and more than 19,000 internal government documents, was that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
and the U.S. occupation of Iraq was planned from Bush's first U.S. National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
meeting in January 2001. This lay in sharp contrast to the widely held perception that concerns over Iraq only came to the forefront after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Administration officials have contended that O'Neill confused contingency plans with actual plans for invasion.
Rather than denying his allegations, Bush officials attacked O'Neill's credibility, while answering that regime change in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
had been official U.S. policy since 1998, three years before Bush took office. However, O'Neill's claims called into question the relationship of the Iraq occupation to the post-9/11 War on Terrorism
War on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
. After the cover sheet of a packet containing classified information was shown during a 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
interview of O'Neill and Suskind, the United States Department of Treasury investigated whether both men had improperly received classified materials. It concluded in March, 2004 that no laws were violated, but that inadequate document handling policies at the Treasury had allowed 140 documents which should have been marked classified to be entered into a computer system for unclassified documents. The documents were among those subsequently released to O'Neill in response to a legal document request and then given to Suskind.[1]
The One Percent Doctrine
The One Percent Doctrine Suskind's third book, published in 2006. The book is about the evolution of the foreign policy of the younger Bush's AdministrationGeorge W. Bush administration
The presidency of George W. Bush began on January 20, 2001, when he was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...
especially in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The doctrine itself is defined as,
Suskind's investigative report, published in his book The One Percent Doctrine, claimed that al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
leaders were plotting to attack the New York City Subway
New York City Subway
The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the City of New York and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, a subsidiary agency of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and also known as MTA New York City Transit...
. Excerpts of the book were published in the June 18, 2006 issue of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
. The book, based on interviews with more than a hundred sources, concluded that U.S. foreign policy since 9/11
Foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration
During his campaign for election as President of the United States, George W. Bush's foreign policy platform included support for a stronger economic and political relationship with Latin America, especially Mexico, and a reduction of involvement in "nation building" and other small-scale military...
was driven by Vice President
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
and his doctrine that "if there's a one percent chance" of weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...
being given to terrorists "we need to treat it as a certainty." The doctrine, Suskind asserts, freed the administration from the dictates of evidence and allowed suspicion to be a guide for action.
One of Suskind's many assertions, that a suspect in the London subway bombings was on a US "no fly" list and attempted to enter the US, has been challenged by the US government. The FBI described Suskind's reporting on this single matter as "inaccurate", and issued a statement saying "the author has intertwined facts... causing some confusion."
The book met with commercial and critical acclaim. It was a New York Times Bestseller and received an immense amount of acclaim in the journalism community. Frank Rich
Frank Rich
Frank Rich is an American essayist and op-ed columnist who wrote for The New York Times from 1980, when he was appointed its chief theatre critic, until 2011...
called it a "Must read bestseller" while Michael Hill stated "If Bob Woodward is the chronicler of the Bush administration, Ron Suskind is the analyst.... A page-turning, blow by blow, inside-the-administration account...Historians will be grateful for it as they write the many final drafts in the decades to come."
The Way of the World
The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism was published on August 5, 2008. The book weaves together an array of stories that follow a diverse group of individuals engaged in the modern challenges of national securityNational security
National security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic, diplomacy, power projection and political power. The concept developed mostly in the United States of America after World War II...
and cultural connection. Among these stories are the tales of an intelligence official working to combat nuclear terrorism
Nuclear terrorism
Nuclear terrorism denotes the use, or threat of the use, of nuclear weapons or radiological weapons in acts of terrorism, includingattacks against facilities where radioactive materials are present...
, a detainee lawyer fighting for rights at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a young Pakistani man interrogated under the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
, an Afghan teenager who spends a year in American high school, and former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto was a democratic socialist who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996....
as she returns to Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
to challenge President Pervez Musharraf
Pervez Musharraf
Pervez Musharraf , is a retired four-star general who served as the 13th Chief of Army Staff and tenth President of Pakistan as well as tenth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. Musharraf headed and led an administrative military government from October 1999 till August 2007. He ruled...
.
The Way of the World marked the fullest return of the investigative narrative form that shaped Suskind’s first book, A Hope in the Unseen. This powerful technique was praised by many in reviewing “Way of the World”. In his assessment for the Literary Review
Literary Review
Literary Review is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at Edinburgh University. Its offices are currently on Lexington Street in Soho, London, and it has a circulation of 44,750. Britain's principal literary monthly, the magazine was...
, Michael Burleigh noted the linked vignettes that formed the bedrock of the narrative. “Using a series of interwoven stories, some hopeful, others disturbing, Suskind explores whether the United States and the Muslim world will ever be able to find mutual respect and understanding.... This is a hugely important field that has never been so well examined.” Similar encomium was used in analyzing Suskind’s capabilities as a storyteller. The Sunday Times declared “Suskind is never unsympathetic to his characters, who he appears to have debriefed intensively. He is a romantic, a writer who clearly believes that his country has betrayed its past, its values and its moral compass by failing to tell the truth about the war." Perhaps the most substantial testament to Suskind’s return to a narrative style came from the New York Observer. “Moving.... Mr. Suskind is a prodigiously talented craftsman.... It’s all here: a cast of characters that sprawls across class and circumstance to represent the totality of a historical moment.... These hard times, Mr. Suskind’s book suggests, call for a nonfiction Dickens.”
Mark Danner
Mark Danner
Mark David Danner is a prominent American writer, journalist, and educator. He is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Danner specializes in U.S. foreign affairs, war and politics, and has written extensively on Haiti, Central America,...
, reviewing the book for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, writes that "These narratives and others perform, in Mr. Suskind’s hands, an intricate arabesque and manage, to a rather remarkable degree, to show us, in this age of terror, 'the true way of the world.'" It is around the stories of these characters that the book frames the debate about how America lost much of its moral authority in recent years and how it is struggling, often through the actions and initiative of individuals, to restore it.
The Way of the World sparked controversy upon publication for a series of disclosures centered on Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti
Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti
Tahir Jalil Habbush al Takriti is a former Iraqi intelligence official who served under the regime of Saddam Hussein. He is currently a fugitive.-Forged 2003 Habbush letter:...
, the head of Iraqi intelligence under Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
. The book reveals that British and American intelligence entered into a dialogue with Habbush before the invasion of Iraq, in which he revealed that Saddam possessed no weapons of mass destruction and did not take an American invasion seriously. The book also contends that the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
resettled Habbush, paid him $5 million, and forged a document in his name alleging that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta trained in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
.
The White House, former CIA director George Tenet
George Tenet
George John Tenet was the Director of Central Intelligence for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, and is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University....
, and former CIA officer Robert Richer
Robert Richer
Robert Richer was the associate deputy director of operations of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the number two in command of the Operations Directorate, the part of the Agency responsible for human operations overseas, where he served under Jose Rodriguez.He took early retirement in...
, an important figure in the book, were quick to deny involvement in fabricating the Habbush letter
Habbush letter
The Habbush letter, or Habbush memo, is a handwritten message dated July 1, 2001, which appeared to show a link between al Qaeda and Iraq's government...
, denials that were echoed in an official CIA statement, saying of Suskind's claim that the White House ordered the agency to forge a letter from Habbush: "It did not happen."
Suskind responded to the Rob Richer's denial, circulated by the White House, by posting on his website a partial transcript of a taped conversation with Richer in which the two discuss the Habbush forgery. In response to the official CIA statement, Suskind told The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
that the disclosures and details in his book are backed up by hours of interviews and that there is "not a shred of doubt about any of it." On August 11, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers
John Conyers
John Conyers, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1965 . He is a member of the Democratic Party...
announced that his committee would look into the matter of the Habbush letter
Habbush letter
The Habbush letter, or Habbush memo, is a handwritten message dated July 1, 2001, which appeared to show a link between al Qaeda and Iraq's government...
and a variety of other disclosures in the book.
The Way of the World debuted at number 3 on the New York Times bestseller list, but some remarked that its revelations did not produce the outrage or scandal that would seem to attend a White House-run disinformation campaign aimed at U.S. public opinion. The layers of the controversy have nonetheless deepened with the revelation that Ayad Allawi, the initial source of the Habbush letter
Habbush letter
The Habbush letter, or Habbush memo, is a handwritten message dated July 1, 2001, which appeared to show a link between al Qaeda and Iraq's government...
, was at CIA headquarters the week before the letter emerged, and a piece in The American Conservative
The American Conservative
The American Conservative is a monthly U.S. opinion magazine published by Ron Unz. Its first editor was Scott McConnell, his successors being Kara Hopkins and the present incumbent, Daniel McCarthy....
by Philip Giraldi
Philip Giraldi
Philip Giraldi is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency and a columnist and television commentator who is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a group that advocates for more even handed...
that claims an "extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence community" confirmed that the Vice President's Office was behind the Habbush letter, but that "Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans
Office of Special Plans
The Office of Special Plans , which existed from September 2002 to June 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and headed by Feith, as charged by then-United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to supply senior George W. Bush administration officials with...
", not the CIA, carried out the forgery.
Many of the disclosures in The Way of the World received less attention than the Habbush controversy, but the inside story the book tells about Pervez Musharraf
Pervez Musharraf
Pervez Musharraf , is a retired four-star general who served as the 13th Chief of Army Staff and tenth President of Pakistan as well as tenth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. Musharraf headed and led an administrative military government from October 1999 till August 2007. He ruled...
's actions toward Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto was a democratic socialist who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996....
during the last months of the her life was picked up in the Pakistani press and dovetailed with a growing movement calling for the impeachment of the (now former) Pakistani president. Speaking to another aspect of the book, Mark Danner
Mark Danner
Mark David Danner is a prominent American writer, journalist, and educator. He is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Danner specializes in U.S. foreign affairs, war and politics, and has written extensively on Haiti, Central America,...
, in his review for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, writes that "the revelation of an effort to steal and sell fissile material in Georgia’s now celebrated 'breakaway region' of South Ossetia
South Ossetia
South Ossetia or Tskhinvali Region is a disputed region and partly recognized state in the South Caucasus, located in the territory of the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic....
... is only the most terrifying of a dozen or more newsworthy disclosures in this book." Suskind cites the battle against nuclear terrorism
Nuclear terrorism
Nuclear terrorism denotes the use, or threat of the use, of nuclear weapons or radiological weapons in acts of terrorism, includingattacks against facilities where radioactive materials are present...
as the most pressing crisis the United States needs to restore its moral authority in order to combat and details an ambitious attempt to infiltrate the worldwide nuclear black market, called the "Armageddon Test."
Confidence Men
Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President was published on September 20, 2011. It describes the financial crisisLate-2000s financial crisis
The late-2000s financial crisis is considered by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s...
that began in the U.S. in 2008, and the attempts by President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
's White House to combat it.
External links
- Official website
- "Without a Doubt: Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush", cover story in The New York Times MagazineThe New York Times MagazineThe New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
, October 17, 2004
- "Without a Doubt: Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush", cover story in The New York Times Magazine
- Online discussion with Ron Suskind at Washingtonpost.com, August 12, 2008
- In-depth discussion of The Way of the World, with Amy GoodmanAmy GoodmanAmy Goodman is an American progressive broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter and author. Goodman is the host of Democracy Now!, an independent global news program broadcast daily on radio, television and the internet.-Early life:Goodman was born in Bay Shore, New York...
on Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
, August 13, 2008 (video, audio, and print transcript) - Suskind Interview on Hannity & Colmes, air date August 15, 2008 http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=3032103&referralPlaylistId=playlist