In a new book entitled The Threat on the Horizon, national security scholar Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor in the department of international affairs, offers a comprehensive insider’s account of the Aspin-Brown Commission of 1995-1996, a landmark inquiry into the activities of America’s secret agencies.
Johnson served as special assistant to the chairman of the commission, and this book provides a unique window into why the terrorist attacks of 2001 caught the U.S. by surprise, and why the intelligence community failed again in 2002 when it predicted that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
This examination shows how the U.S. struggled to confront new global threats that followed the collapse of the Soviet empire, and why Washington, D.C., was unprepared for the calamities that would soon arise. The book features the first comprehensive account of how the U.S. tried and failed to reshape its intelligence policies to meet the new threats emerging in the 1990s. An insider’s account by a noted expert takes readers deep into the world of the intelligence community and a crucial yet little-known story that furthers understanding of the roots of 9/11.