A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies

This book by James Bamford came up once on Lex Fridman in the episodes we index. That mention was a genuine on-air recommendation, not just a passing reference. The people who brought it up: Scott Horton. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.

The bestselling author of Body of Secrets and The Puzzle Palace presents his most hard-hitting book to date--a sweeping, authoritative, and fearless account of the failures of America's intelligence agencies and the Bush administration's calculated efforts to sell a war to the American people.In The Puzzle Palace, James Bamford revealed the existence of the NSA, the largest, most secretive, and best-financed intelligence organization in the world. In Body of Secrets, he took readers inside the ultrasecret agency, charting its deeds and misdeeds from its founding in 1952 to the end of the twentieth century.