I mentioned James Bamford’s new book “A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies” in passing in a previous post. This is a hell of a book, and I want to make a point of highly recommending it.

Bamford is already well known for covering the intelligence community. Specifically he’s published two highly regarded books about the National Security Agency, the first of which was published back when NSA still stood for “No Such Agency.”

In “A Pretext for War” Bamford puts together an incredibly detailed account of the events related to 9/11, Afghanistan and the Iraq war. Bamford comes up with some amazing specifics about the origins of the Iraq war plan- it turns out the original war plan was conceived many years before 9/11 as a strategy to make Israel safer. In the mid-90’s, while working for a pro-Israel group and advising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Richard Perle and Doug Feith proposed that Israel should find a way to get the United States to invade Iraq and install a Israel-friendly government. Netanyahu rejected the idea. The idea was repackaged slightly by Perle and Feith when Bush took office, and 9/11 was the perfect opportunity to enact it.

Bamford explores details of the Continuity of Government plan, or COG. COG has existed since the Eisenhower Administration- it’s a shadow government which is in place in case the leaders of the country are killed. In this shadow government, the Congress is eliminated. (Yes, it’s pretty obvious which branch came up with this plan…)

Should all the officials in the line of succession be killed ordinary citizens from all over the country chosen in advance as a part of COG are set to rise up and take control.

At this point I have to reiterate- this isn’t tin-foil hat stuff- this is an actual plan drawn up in the ’50s and it’s still alive today.

Also covered in the book: Curveball, Chalabi, Judith Miller’s moronic reporting, Wilson’s debunking of the Niger yellowcake story, which, despite recent headlines, remains debunked- it’s all here.

There are a few minor issues with the book- a few repeated paragraphs, which are possibly an indication of how quickly this book was published.

None the less, there is a lot of new information, and I really would encourage everyone to check this one out.