Based on interviews with 75 key participants and over 3 1/2 hours of exclusive interviews with Bush, "Plan of Attack" is part presidential history charting the decisions made during 16 critical months; part military history revealing precise details and the evolution of the Top Secret war planning under the restricted codeword Polo Step; part a spy story as the CIA dispatches a covert paramilitary team into northern Iraq six months before the start of the war. This team recruited 87 Iraqi spies designated with the cryptonym DB/ROCKSTARS, one of whom turned over the personnel files of all 6000 men in Saddam Hussein's personal security organization.
What emerges are astonishingly intimate portraits: President Bush in war cabinet meetings in the White House Situation Room and Oval Office, and in private conversation; Dick Cheney, the focused and driven vice president; Colin Powell, the conflicted and cautious secretary of state; Donald Rumsfeld, the controlling war technocrat; Geo Tenet, the activist CIA director; Tommy Franks, the profane, demanding general; Condoleezza Rice, the ever-present referee and national security adviser; Karl Rove, the hands-on political strategist; other key members of the White House staff and congressional leadership; and foreign leaders ranging from British Prime Minister Blair to Russian President Putin.
Plan of Attack provides new details on the intelligence assessments of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and the planning for the war's aftermath.
Background Information
George W. Bush was elected president in a hotly contested election in 2000, becoming only the second son of a president to gain the office. The Central Intelligence Agency succeeded the Office of Strategic Services after World War II as the country's espionage service. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 with the intent of destroying Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist.