I bought this book for a read on a long flight and found it very engaging. If you've ever been curious to get a better sense of what was happening behind the veil of government secrecy during the time after 9/11, this will go pretty far in satisfying that curiousity.

Interesting look at the "cheney doctrine". If interetsed in the 9/11 story give this a listen.

Ron Suskind is excellent and The Price of Loyalty was a great book. I found that The One Percent Doctrine was a bit late to the party in that I had read most of this in previous texts on the same topic.
Maybe I'm oversaturated with material in this area and this would serve as a good primer for those that haven't already explored the War on Terror, post 9/11 books.
Some of the anecdotes were presented in a cartoonish way and the moral of the story is redundant at this point, i.e. Bush administration is secretive and flawed in a big way.

"The One Percent Doctrine" by Ron Suskind is a very compelling book. Addressing the Bush Administration's reactions to the events on 9/11/2001, it provides a detailed and very interesting analysis of what transpired within the intelligence community. To the CIA, the success of Al Qaeda's attack was a groin shot to their service, and there was a tremendous effort to find and kill Al Qaeda operatives. You can tell by the narrative that Suskind admired many within the CIA, Tenet in particular, whom he characterizes as a tragic victim of the ethically challenged Bush cronies.

The basic thesis the book addresses is ultimately the driving force behind the Bush Administration, namekly, "the Cheney doctrine". This notion, of considering a one percent probability threat as if it were a certainty, came to define U.S. foreign policy after 9/11. The implications behind the Cheney doctrine are quite alarming, but very explanatory towards the behavior of the Bush administration. That a country like Iraq, that had never attacked the U.S., could by atleast potentially being a threat, be invaded by the United States shows the degree to which the Cheney doctrine resonated within the administration.

On an individual level, the doctrine also resonated. That detainees, by their just their potentially being a threat, were subjected to that detainment without legal recourse, or were potentially subjected to torture. Americans could be spied upon, because they are a potential threat. The Geneva conventions could be ignored on the basis of potential threat. Any uncertainty, could be used as the basis for unlawful actions by an out of control executive branch. All in the guise of keeping us safe!

Cheney, a long-time believer in an imperial Presidency, used the 9/11 attacks for his own agenda. "The One Percent Doctrine" is the story of how it all came to be. Suskind's admiration for the ground-level intelligence officers contrasts sharply against his disdain for the Bush administration.

The picture Suskind paints of George W. Bush, is one of a weak President who was easily led by strong-willed subordinates. In this regard, his analysis is consistent with many other authors such as Thomas Ricks in the book "Fiasco." Despite the tough talk, Bush is ultimately ruled by his gut, and his gut usually went with whoever sounded the most sure of themselves. In the immortal words of Carl Sagan, "I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain.....is likely to get me into trouble." In the words of Bill Engvald, "there's your sign."

Suskind is to be commended for putting together this book. I suspect that 100 years from now, when people try to understand the tragedy that was the Bush administration, Suskind's book will be one of the first to be examined as well as Fiasco by Thomas Ricks. Our nation's collective over-reaction to the attacks on 9/11/2001 have undermined our Republic in ways that may take the hindsight of history to fully appreciate. Suskind does an admirable job of examining the period as a contemporary. A very important and significant book.

Suskind's "One-Percent Doctrine" is an in-depth look into the "war on terror" and the administration in-fighting regarding it. The title derives from Vice President Cheney's idea that if a there is a one-percent chance that someone can harm the US we must act like it is a certainty. (Which I think is lower than the chance I get four of a kind if someone's already made their flush on the flop). The book is analytical, but never enough. Yet it does reveal some questions: How is government supposed to react? Is it the Civil Service and in Uniform military that we should listen to or our elected officials?
This stems from the idea of how to approach such a strategic problem as Al Qaeda and Usama bin Laden. Do they hate our freedom? If that is said enough, people begin to believe that we cannot fight them logically instead we can only crush them using force. Yet, many inside the government, from Secretary Powell on down, saw that these terror actions were connected to a global strategy. From this point, Suskind shows that unless we understand what they are trying to achieve we cannot win the war on terror and the one-percent doctrine is just flailing around at perceived threats (and inventing threats such as Iraq.)
The crux of this flailing is the competition between the civil servants at the CIA and the political appointees at the Department of the defense. Suskind sees the CIA operatives as good foot soldiers and patriots. Many of them are experts in their fields and are willing to risk life and limb to use their expertise to defend the country. Yet, the Bush-Cheney group did not trust the CIA because they are often wrong (including the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the fall of the Soviet Union). This bureaucratic infighting was among the things that obscured the real goal of protecting the country.
Yet, Suskind does not get a few things. First, the whole thing is politically motivated to keep Republicans in power (if UBL was so bad why didn't they try to capture him, if not to continue the fear factor? if they really cared about the "war on terror" why did they release the name of an undercover CIA agent for purely political reasons?). He finds Condoleezza Rice an almost tragic figure instead of the political operative she proved to be - sacrificing the validity of her position as National Security Advisor to win an election. Suskind also gives George Tenet a pass on most things - he must have been a source for the work. I mean really, "slam dunk!" and his admitted delinquency to do his job that allowed the "16 words" into the State of the Union.
The book is good journalism. Unfortunately while the book delves into the "war on terror," it maintains the stance that the policy is misguided. Suskind does not see that forest for the trees. Each of these trees - the one-percent doctrine, the dereliction of duty by the President in letting UBL get away, the treasonous acts of the vice-president's office in releasing Valerie Plame's name, the complete disregard for international law in the Iraq invasion, and the hubris that we don't have to know anything about our enemies to win - have all lost us the war on terror and sacrificed the future of our country to the likes of China, Iran and Europe. But Suskind doesn't see it. I give the book 3 stars because of his lack of "big-picture" insight, but would put it on the first tier of books you should read!

Brilliant. One of the best I've ever read. When the CIA isn't being pressed to produce intelligence on erroneous foregone conclusions (WMD in Iraq) or play political football (with 16 words in a State of the Union address), they're doing some amazing things across the world. With remarkable details, Suskind describes sting operations, finance tracking webs, and heads-of-state collaboration between countries and agencies. He convincingly heralds George Tenet on the latter; I'm interested now to read his memoir, just published last year...