The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump by Andrew G. McCabe is a natural book to read after having read Comey's A Higher Loyalty.
Started: 2/23/2019
Completed: 3/20/2019
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Stephen Power (he posted that he was reading it on his Twitter account and told me that it "holds up")
Review:
I really like the balance and understanding of this book: "...[The Clinton Administration] wanted so badly to see [democracy and free-market capitalism take root in Russia] that they failed to understand how firmly organized crime had taken hold in all of the former Soviet republics...You have to wonder what might have happened if the US government had taken Russian organized crime more seriously during those years--but beyond a certain point, it's also pointless to wonder. Nobody can see everything."
"The job of working counterterrorism [sic] is to...foil plans of attack which meant to pitch the world into a black hole of anxiety and fear..." seems obvious. Nonetheless, it is simply not stated. Nobody thinks of this who isn't involved in the details of counter terrorism. Terrorism seeks to cause terror, so, of course, counter terrorism works to stop things that might cause terror. Makes sense. Counter intuitive in a weird way. It is certainly worth remembering that this is the goal of counter terrorism.
"[I] [s]hould have understood that whatever we concluded about [Hillary Clinton's email server investigation] was not going to be thoughtfully considered but rather ground to powder for political warfare....When is the right time to act from skepticism and cynicism, rather than from faith in a society you have always believed in?" Shows a man who works hard to think things through. He appears to be someone who considers past decisions and tries to learn from them. These are both good qualities and the qualities we hope for in executive positions within the government.
As a whole McCabe did a good job of explaining himself and showing how and why he made the choices he did. It definitely holds up!
I really like the balance and understanding of this book: "...[The Clinton Administration] wanted so badly to see [democracy and free-market capitalism take root in Russia] that they failed to understand how firmly organized crime had taken hold in all of the former Soviet republics...You have to wonder what might have happened if the US government had taken Russian organized crime more seriously during those years--but beyond a certain point, it's also pointless to wonder. Nobody can see everything."
"The job of working counterterrorism [sic] is to...foil plans of attack which meant to pitch the world into a black hole of anxiety and fear..." seems obvious. Nonetheless, it is simply not stated. Nobody thinks of this who isn't involved in the details of counter terrorism. Terrorism seeks to cause terror, so, of course, counter terrorism works to stop things that might cause terror. Makes sense. Counter intuitive in a weird way. It is certainly worth remembering that this is the goal of counter terrorism.
"[I] [s]hould have understood that whatever we concluded about [Hillary Clinton's email server investigation] was not going to be thoughtfully considered but rather ground to powder for political warfare....When is the right time to act from skepticism and cynicism, rather than from faith in a society you have always believed in?" Shows a man who works hard to think things through. He appears to be someone who considers past decisions and tries to learn from them. These are both good qualities and the qualities we hope for in executive positions within the government.
As a whole McCabe did a good job of explaining himself and showing how and why he made the choices he did. It definitely holds up!
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