The nephew of former national security adviser Zbigniew, New York Times Magazine
contributor Brzezinski (Casino Moscow
) believes that the domestic American antiterrorist effort has lost momentum and that a new era of American intelligence has yet to dawn. He shows how the Department of Homeland Security has so far failed to connect federal and local authorities, expertly compares the U.S. as open society with Israel as security state, and recounts a chilling tale of the arrest and months-long detention of an Egyptian immigrant who had no connection to terrorists. Brzezinski goes on to imagine a U.S. of 2008, where a student and his associates are surveilled by a radio frequency identification system that can monitor just about anything and are guilty until proven innocent. A war game by a fictional White House staff grapples with a potential terrorist attack, while real terrorist attack response drills in U.S. cities show high levels of unpreparedness. Brzezinski's first-person at times mixes incongruously with policy analysis, and some assertions and speculations (such as "For Israel, abandoning the ruinous settlements and returning the land to the Palestinians was not likely to end terror") go unelaborated. But this breezy overview is bolstered by good reporting and grounded extrapolation. Agent, Scott Waxman of the Scott Waxman Agency.
(Sept. 7)
