Days after Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in March 2002, President George Bush boasted that the 30-year-old aide to Osama bin Laden had been 'œone of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.' The CIA and FBI soon learned better, says Ron Suskind. Zubaydah's diary, once translated, revealed him to be an expendable support staffer with symptoms of multiple personality disorder. Instead of correcting the mischaracterization, Bush apparently urged his CIA director to hide the discovery and to begin experimenting with rough interrogation techniques. Soon, nationwide security alerts were being sent out about potential attacks on malls, banks, and supermarkets. In short, says Suskind, the United States had just discovered its capacity to 'œtorture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.'
Suskind's 'œriveting' new book seeks to show how such disheartening anecdotes spring from a single dangerous idea, said Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times. The book's title, The One Percent Doctrine, refers to a philosophy spelled out by Vice President Dick Cheney shortly after 9/11. If there's even a one-in-a-hundred chance that terrorists are ready to use weapons of mass destruction against the U.S., Cheney reportedly told his colleagues, the administration 'œmust act as if it were a certainty.' Evidence, in other words, didn't much matter anymore, said Barton Gellman in The Washington Post. The new equation obviously angered the now-retired intelligence professionals 'œwhose point of view dominates this book.' But in giving them an ear, Suskind has been rewarded with 'œseveral scoops' about the war on terror, including last week's headline-worthy account of al Qaida's aborted 2003 plot to poison New York's subway system.
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