Jawbreaker - book review

The jacket cover for Gary Berntsen's "Jawbreaker" claims this is "The book the CIA doesn't want you to read!" I find that a little hard to believe since the CIA has already apparently had their chance at redacting sensitive information leaving wide swaths of black ink on about 75% of the pages. Sometimes one black line apparently stands for several pages of redaction while at other times a small rectangle of black eliminates a single word that obviously wasn't very important to the story. The book's subtitle is "The attack on Bin Laden and al-Qaeda: a personal account the CIA's key field commander". That's another good hint that the CIA isn't too upset about the book being published. I personally think they rather enjoy seeing a successful book which details a CIA mission that was exciting, action-packed, and 99% successful. Only at the very end of the book do we find that second guessing on the part of the White House or Pentagon may have cost us the opportunity to kill Bin Laden at the end of the Afghan war.

The book is both detailed and moving. I got the feeling of being swept up with Gary Berntsen's "Jawbreaker" team, a small group of CIA agents pulled together from around the world with the express mission of coordinating the US and Afghan (Northern Alliance) forces in eliminating the Taliban and al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan. It is amazing what can be done with $8 million in cash and the air power of the most heavily armed nation in the world at your beck and call. I'm not downplaying the heroism and talent the Jawbreaker team displayed. But this is no rogue unit defeating the Taliban on their own. Once given the green light, they had tremendous logistic and air support for the daunting mission.

Berntsen has also given us a glimpse of the Northern Alliance and the difficulty of coordinating a group of warlords who are as interested in protecting their own power and turf as they are any loyalty to Afghanistan. Several of the warlords have a history of switching sides to whoever appears to be winning the battle. And several of the groups aided al Qaeda in the face of the US effort to capture or kill all members of that group.

Money, equipment, and weapons talk. All this was used in the war by the US directly as well as for hostage negotiations, taking over territory, and winning the "loyalty" of Northern Alliance armies. The book makes it perfectly clear that conventional warfare just doesn't work in situations like Afghanistan. You might not like your allies but you hate your enemies even worse.

Overall, an enjoyable book.