This is an ambitious, meticulous examination of how U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s has led to partial or total cover-ups of past domestic criminal acts, including, perhaps, the catastrophe of 9/11. Peter Dale Scott, whose previous books have investigated CIA involvement in southeast Asia, the drug wars, and the Kennedy assassination, here probes how the policies of presidents since Nixon have augmented the tangled bases for the 2001 terrorist attack. Scott shows how America's expansion into the world since World War II has led to momentous secret decision making at high levels. He demonstrates how these decisions by small cliques are responsive to the agendas of private wealth at the expense of the public, of the democratic state, and of civil society. He shows how, in implementing these agendas, U.S. intelligence agencies have become involved with terrorist groups they once backed and helped create, including al Qaeda.

CONTENTS:

Acknowledgments
Preface. The America We Knew and Loved: Can It Be Saved?

1 Introduction: Wealth, Empire, Cabals, and the Public State
2 Nixon, Kissinger, and the Decline of the Public State
3 The Pivotal Presidency: Ford, Rumsfeld, and Cheney
4 Brzezinski, Oil, and Afghanistan
5 Carter’s Surrender to the Rockefellers on Iran
6 Casey, the Republican Countersurprise, and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, 1980
7 Afghanistan and the Origins of al Qaeda
8 Al-Kifah, al Qaeda, and the U.S. Government, 1988–98
9 The Pre-9/11 Cover-up of Ali Mohamed and al Qaeda
10 Al Qaeda and the U.S. Establishment
11 Parallel Structures and Plans for Continuity of Government
12 The 9/11 Commission Report and Vice President Cheney
13 The 9/11 Commission Report and Cheney’s Deceptions about 9/11
14 Cheney, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Continuity of Government
15 Conclusion: 9/11 and the Future of America

Notes
Glossary of Open Politics
Bibliography
Index

AUTHOR:

Peter Dale Scott is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (1993) and Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1996), both from UC Press.