Interesting insight but heavily redacted | Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal...

Not as good as I thought it would be | Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander | Gary Berntsen, Ralph Pezzullo

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	• Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander Gary Berntsen, Ralph Pezzullo Three Rivers Press, 2006 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 118 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Awesome!

I like this story even better than Body of Lies. I wish there were more books like this. My favourite so far.

Interesting insight but heavily redacted

I read through this book in about a day and found the insights into the book very interesting but the redactions made it often annoying and hard to read. Some of the redactions seemed very silly since the sources where open sources like ABC or CNN. Some of the redacted information could be easily deduced from context or other sources but it made reading the book difficult. If you're going to read this book you should read a long with other sources in that it provides great context and a different perspective and other sources might make the reading a little easier. I hope a second, less redacted, version is published soon.

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Not as good as I thought it would be

I was quite enthused to get this book. I'm very interested in the CIA and covert ops as well as the history of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, this book was a dissapointment in several ways. First of all, what I was most interested in learning more about was the abysmal decision to let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora. Who made the decision and why? Unfortunately the author spends only a few pages on that question. (To be fair a significant part of the discussion is blacked out). Also, I found the tone of the book to be very self serving. Mr. Bernsten presents himself as some kind of CIA superhero. He never makes a mistake, gets scared, and can go for days without sleep. At the same time he is constantly being let down by mindless cowardly bureacrats back home. However, even with those critiques I have to admit the book was a page turner, interesting and exciting.

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More on the initial fighting in Afganistan

An interesting introduction to the people involved on the ground in the early stages of the war in Afganistan. This book picks up where "First In" by Gary Schroen ends. Gary Berntsen was Gary Schroen's replacement as the CIA man on the ground coordinating their efforts.

The focus is on the CIA teams and their Northern Alliance allies.

Berntsen, like Schroen, thinks very highly of himself. He respects the capabilities of the military members working with his teams and often compliments them on their skills. Later in the book, there are references to Billy Waugh, a long-time Special Forces soldier. For Waugh's perspective on this point in time, read "Hunting the Jackal".

Overall a good book about very brave men who were willing to take significant risks for their country. It is amazing that so few men on the ground could accomplish so much.

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An illuminating report on the victory in Afghanistan

The book explains how the USA initially got militarly involved in Afghanistan in october 2001 and won the war against the Talibans in a few months, before the long and painful ground occupation by the army. The writer himself was the CIA officer who in first person led the civilian team that determined the successes of the airforce bombings. The use of a few highly trained Special Forces squads, the launch of intelligent bombs and missiles, the wise cooperation with northern alliance commanders and troops led to a brilliant military success. An extremely interesting read which I recommend.

I only complain about the abundance of black lines on the text that represent the work done by the CIA censor and that could be adjusted and eliminated instead of being printed, they make no sense. Another critic may be addressed to the author who sometimes describes himself in a very apologetic manner. Nonetheless a highly recommended read.

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The Book the CIA Doesn?t Want You to Read

Gary Berntsen, the CIA?s key commander coordinating the fight against the Taliban forces around Kabul, comes out from under cover for the first time to describe his no-holds-barred pursuit?and cornering?of Osama bin Laden, and the reason the terrorist leader escaped American retribution. As disturbingly eye-opening as it is adrenaline-charged, Jawbreaker races from CIA war rooms to diplomatic offices to mountaintop redoubts to paint a vivid portrait of a new kind of warfare, showing what can and should be done to deal a death blow to freedom?s enemies.

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