The Dark Side, Part 3 of 6

In the third section of Mayer's The Dark Side, a shocking revelation is made. While it would seem as though the terrorists who scarred the country on that fateful day would have planned for their attacks completely under the radar, that was not the case; the CIA, at several points in time, had information on individuals that would eventually prove significant to the attacks of September 11th. The CIA knew of several meetings, one in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where members of Al-Qaeda were meeting. As they attempted to gather intelligence, a number of things fell through the cracks. The CIA was working with the Malaysians to obtain valuable information about the meeting. They were unable to record the conversation. When two marked individuals left for Bangkok, no one tracked them, they got away. Eventually, they found there way to Los Angeles where they were roaming abroad. "By March 2000 fully fifty or sixty individuals within the CIA knew that two Al Qaeda suspects ha come to America-but no one officially notified the FBI about this" (Mayer 153). It was the CIA's responsibility to notify the FBI of any domestic threats. From researched information, Mayer writes, "The two guys' names were just sitting in someone's outbox. It just didn't get done" (Mayer 16).

"What 9/11 is really all about was the lack of follow-up on these two people, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi" (Mayer 17). How could the CIA make such a gigantic blunder? Yes, while the CIA was attempting to track many other individuals, they had become caught up in a frenzy of work, but a blunder that cost the lives of many Americans is unforgivable. Mayer attempts to explain the blunder. A former top officer of the CIA stated, "The problem, he said, was not a lack of urgency, but rather a failure of management" (Mayer 16). He goes on to say, "In short, the errors were painfully mundane: misfiled paperwork, inattentive government employees, misunderstandings and miscommunications - just commonplace incompetence" (Mayer 16). The loss of countless American lives could have been prevented if the CIA were doing their jobs. It was not an inability to target those who threatened America, it was an inability to follow through on a task.

The Dark Side, Part 2 of 6

The second section of The Dark Side, author Jane Mayer writes about the actions taken by those in the executive branch immediately following the September 11th attacks. Threatened by foreign terrorists, those around the president (the president included) proceeded to act quickly so as uphold national security. The two men who held the most authority in the United States began at ground zero; they were to determine what enabled to terrorists to carry out their attacks. Bush and Cheney believed one of the reasons terrorists were able to attack the US was because the US was "soft...and that Bin Laden didn't feel threatened" by the United States (Mayer 56). The US had been introduced to an enemy that, although known, was never seen as a threat. However, as the result of an intelligence failure, the attacks were able to unfold. The President and Vice-President looked to conservatives on the right, seeking a means to best solve the national security crises. The executive branch, with the consultation of those on the right, came to the conclusion that "there was too much international law, too many civil liberties, too many constraints on the President's war powers, too many rights for defendants,...and too much meddling by Congress and the press" (Mayer 71).

Those in power determined that, in order to bolster national security and reduce terrorist threats, the executive branch needed to be granted more power and that achieving a secure nation would have to come at the expense of citizens giving up certain civil liberties. These endeavors could not be accomplished legally; they would act against the constitution. After September 11th, VP Cheney and others looked around America for the nation's smartest, most well-trained lawyers. Once an elite team of lawyers had been found, the executive branch "came up with legal justifications for a vast expansion of the government's power in waging war on terror" (Mayer 76). At the time, some in Bush's administration were skeptical of the means the administration was taking to deal with the new crises. Bush concluded that if what they were doing failed, they should at least leave the office stronger than it was when they entered it. It was through the lawyers that they could do this. The constitution would be abused, but it would happen behind closed doors. During the administration "The lawyers authorized previously illegal practices, including the secret capture and indefinite detention of suspects without charges" (Mayer 80).

The Dark Side, Part 1 of 6

The Dark Side, written by Jane Mayer, is a non-fiction narrative on the changing atmosphere of American ideals following the September 11th attacks. As the narrative begins, we are given a brief background on Former Vice-President Dick Cheney's involvement in top-secret programs during the Reagan Administration. His involvement in these programs was in an effort to prepare for worst-case scenarios such as an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet union. At the time, the threat of a Soviet attack was very real and those who were preparing for it took it very seriously. Mayer writes, "Every year, usually during congressional recesses, Cheney would disappear in the dead of the night. He left without explanation to his wife, Lynne Vincent Cheney, who was merely given a phone number where he could be reached in the event of emergency" (Mayer 1). The need for such secrecy faded as the Cold War came to an end, but Cheney's experience would be needed in the future. Never feeling the threat from outside groups, "Terrorism hadn't ranked anywhere near the top of the Bush administration's national security concerns in the beginning of the administration" (Mayer 6). Shortly after the Bush administration replaced Clinton's administration, combating terrorism would be one of the foremost issues of the day.

On September 11th, a series of events occurred that were unrivaled in US history; terrorist attacks had taken place in a number of locations on US soil. The nation was shocked, but no one was more prepared to handle the situation than Vice-President Cheney. Despite his Cold-War experience, which perfectly set him up for dealing with the situation, when an ultra-sensitive sensor that detected the presence of lethal substances in the white house - when it signaled, Cheney believed he had become contaminated. He believed the terrorists were targeting him through biological warfare. Because of this, he took a number of precautions such as taking a different route from the capitol to the white house in an armored car every single day. A change was seen in Cheney, a fearful one: "An old family friend found him changed after September 11, 'more steely, as if he was preoccupied by terrible things he couldn't talk about' " (Mayer 6). The executive branch and the entire country were shocked by the September 11th attacks, but that is not to say they were completely surprised. Al-Qaeda, they believed, was behind it. "Having underestimated Al Qaeda before the attacks, Bush and Cheney took aggressive steps to ensure that they would never get similarly blindsided again" (Mayer 5). It was these aggressive steps that set the stage for an expansion of presidential powers that would go against American ideals.