Warrick's "The Triple Agent"

An interesting review of Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick's new book, "The Triple Agent," about the suicide bombing of the CIA's outpost near Khost, Afghanistan, that killed eight Agency employees.  The review is interesting for two reasons:

First, the Post (to its credit) allows the reviewer to say some really negative things about one of their own, i.e.

"Warrick’s account is . . . sometimes prone to the lazy phrase (“eye-popping,” “blowing off steam”), descriptive rather than reflective, anonymous in voice rather than textured and, notwithstanding the gutsy ending-first structure, undaring of prose. He has a skill with words but lacks a felicity with them, and he is not much interested in exploring the large moral questions his tale raises.
"He is also firmly establishmentarian. . . .  He also lapses now and then into stenographic journalism"

Second, although the reviewer may be critical of Warrick's prose, he praises Warrick on the book's substance, especially the depiction of the CIA's desperation to get a human source close to the al-Qa'ida senior leadership.  As I note in my book, one of the reasons it took so long to get bin Laden was the adulation he enjoyed throughout all levels of al-Qa'ida. 

Whereas Aguinaldo, Noriega, or Saddam's locations were ultimately revealed by a trusted subordinate, the CIA was unable to recruit a single asset with access to bin Laden’s inner circle despite several years of effort. As former senior U.S. counterterror official Roger Cressey told Peter Bergen, an al-Qa'ida operative betraying bin Laden would be like “a Catholic giving up the Pope.” Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of Al Quds al Arabi newspaper, similarly reflected: “I don’t believe they will surrender him. He’s adored by the people around him. For them, he is not a leader. He is everything. He’s the father; he’s the brother; he is a leader; he is the imam.”

This desperation led Agency officials to overlook several red flags that should have alerted them to the fact that Humam Khalil al-Balawi had returned to the jihadist fold and was feeding them false information, and ultimately to the loss of eight courageous Americans.