Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • A Pretext for War

  • 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
  • By: James Bamford
  • Narrated by: Ray Childs
  • Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 rating)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
A Pretext for War cover art

A Pretext for War

By: James Bamford
Narrated by: Ray Childs
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £7.99

Buy Now for £7.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Dereliction of Duty cover art
The Finish cover art
Top Secret America cover art
Intelligence Matters cover art
Body of Secrets cover art
The Shadow Factory cover art
Playing to the Edge cover art
I Am Legend cover art
Putin's Wars cover art
Against All Enemies cover art
Washington Bullets cover art
The Cell cover art
The Hacker and the State cover art
Hard Measures cover art
Hunting in the Shadows cover art
Spies, Lies, and Algorithms cover art

Summary

In The Puzzle Palace, James Bamford revealed the existence of the NSA, the largest, most secretive, and best-financed intelligence organization in the world. In Body of Secrets, he took readers inside the ultra-secret agency, charting its deeds and misdeeds from its founding in 1952 to the end of the 20th century. Now Bamford applies his relentless investigative drive and unparalleled access to intelligence sources to produce a headline-making book about the most pressing issues of the present day.

From the mishandling of the pre-9/11 threat to the unproven claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Bamford argues that the Bush administration has co-opted the intelligence community for its own political ends, and at the expense of American security. Bamford makes the case that the Bush administration's Middle East policy decisions, from overthrowing Saddam to ignoring the situation of the Palestinians, are driven by long-held beliefs and goals of an elite group of conservatives inside and outside of government.

A Pretext for War hones in on the systematic weakness that led the intelligence community to ignore or misinterpret evidence of the impending terrorist attacks of 9/11, a failure rooted in the refusal to acknowledge the central role of the Palestinian cause in igniting Arab rage against the United States. Compounding the errors, the Bush administration's immediate response to 9/11 was to call for an attack on Iraq, and it subsequently invented justifications for the preemptive war that has ultimately left the United States more vulnerable to terrorism.

A Pretext for War is an unprecedented, utterly convincing expose of the most secretive administration in history.

Want to learn more about the author and A Pretext for War? Listen to James Bramford on the June 8, 2004, edition of Fresh Air.
©2004 James Bamford (P)2004 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Much of the information and many of the theories in Mr. Bamford's book will be familiar to readers from earlier magazine and newspaper articles, and other books....But Mr. Bamford unearths new details about everything from the identity of one of the disclosed locations used by Vice President Dick Cheney after 9/11...to the failures of a special CIA unit charged with tracking Osama bin Laden, and he connects the many dots, both old and new, to create a vivid, unsettling narrative." (The New York Times)

What listeners say about A Pretext for War

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 0 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 0 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.