Drift

Goldwater’s dust-up with the Reagan administration—and Casey in particular—was well documented in newspapers of the day.

Chapter 5: Stupid Regulations

To understand Ronald Reagan’s thinking during the Iran-Contra operation (and its aftermath) I relied on his own words, gleaning what I could from his White House diaries, his testimony in the Poindexter trial, notes from internal White House meetings, and texts of his contemporaneous speeches and press conferences. The “Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran/Contra Affair” (including Representative Dick Cheney’s minority report) provided much detail on the affair, but the “Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters,” authored by prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, is the definitive source. Walsh also wrote a pretty good book, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up.

I was able to access the minutes from the June 25, 1984, National Security Planning Group meeting at the National Security Archive website at George Washington University. The National Security Archive is a wonderful resource in general—dogged, aggressive, fair, and with mad organizational skills that would please even the most persnickety Virgo.

Aside from the aforementioned books about Reagan, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984–1988, by Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus, and Robert Timberg’s The Nightingale’s Song were great sources.

On the question of Ed Meese and executive power, it’s worth anybody’s time to read Charlie Savage’s landmark book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy. And thanks to the New York Times for publishing verbatim the remarkable exchange between Attorney General Ed Meese and Sen. Daniel Inouye I’ve excerpted in this chapter.

Chapter 6: Mylanta, ’Tis of Thee

I relied as much as I could on the contemporaneous notes and diaries and the memories of the key players in the run-up to the First Gulf War. All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings, along with A World Transformed, which the former president wrote with Brent Scowcroft, provided the backbone of the chapter. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf each wrote autobiographies. And Karen DeYoung’s biography Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell is helpful for anyone who wants to understand the general’s thinking. There was a lot of good DC-based journalism around that time, but R. W. Apple’s reporting on Washington on the verge of war was particularly sharp and uncompromising. Michael R. Gordon was already doing great work covering military matters.

C-SPAN has the video of the Ron Dellums press conference on the occasion of announcing his lawsuit. The PBS series Frontline has a useful reference website on the First Gulf War.

Chapter 7: Doing More with Less (Hassle)

The October 1995 “Report of the Defense Science Board: Task Force on Quality of Life” and the August 1996 “Report of the Defense Science Board: Task Force on Outsourcing and Privatization” were useful guides to the fiscal situation and thinking at the Pentagon in the 1990s. Anthony Bianco and Stephanie Anderson Forest did farsighted and smart reporting on the rise of private military contractors in BusinessWeek.

The United States General Accounting Office (GAO) reports on LOGCAP operations published in February 1997 and September 2000 provided details into both the benefits and costs of civilian augmentation in the Balkans.

The best reporting on the DynCorp sex-trafficking problems was done by Kelly Patricia O’Meara in the Washington Times magazine Insight and by Robert Capps in Salon. A November 2002 report by Human Rights Watch, “Hopes Betrayed: Trafficking of Women and Girls to Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina for Forced Prostitution,” is a harrowing portrait of that world. Kathryn Bolkovac’s memoir of her experiences in Bosnia, The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors, and One Woman’s Fight for Justice, was a useful guide to the culture inside DynCorp.

Again, I drew largely from the memoirs of Dick Cheney and Colin Powell, as well as Karen DeYoung’s biography of Powell, to understand their thinking about the budget realities at the Pentagon during the George Herbert Walker Bush administration. Rise of the Vulcans, by James Mann, provided further detail. “Defense Strategy for the 1990s: The Regional Defense Strategy,” published in January 1993, and authored by Cheney, was useful reading, as was the Clinton administration’s “National Performance Review. Report on Reinventing the Department of Defense,” published in September 1996.

Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry by P. W. Singer provides great information about MPRI and other private military operations; so does author David Isenberg’s Shadow Force.

To understand the conflict in the Balkans and the Clinton administration’s response, I recommend A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power. I also drew on reports by the US State Department and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; President Bill Clinton’s autobiography, My Life; and writings by Clinton administration officials Madeleine K. Albright and Nancy Soderberg.

Chapter 8: “One Hell of a Killing Machine”

There has been much good reporting on the drone warfare and other secret and privatized military operations in recent years. For bringing to light what the government would prefer to be essentially secret, credit is due Jane Mayer, James Risen, Mark Mazzetti, Greg Miller, Julie Tate, Nick Turse, Jeremy Scahill, and Eric Schmitt. The Long War Journal and New America Foundation have made it their mission to track each and every drone strike in Pakistan, and should be commended for it.

Thanks to David Corn for the “million years” quote from John McCain in 2008.

The reporting at the Army Times proved a great source throughout, but especially on the issues of the Guard and Reserves.

Chapter 9: An $8 Trillion Fungus Among Us

A number of official government and military reports on the nation’s nuclear program, as well as congressional testimony of Air Force generals, helped in telling the recent (and not so recent) history of American nuclear weapons. The GAO’s March 2009 report for a House subcommittee, entitled “NNSA and DOD Need to More Effectively Manage the Stockpile Life Extension Program,” explains the Fogbank problem.

For the events surrounding the Minot-Barksdale whoopsie and the general