the great war of our time by michael morell

I did not expect such bluntness from so high ranking a former official, but this is exactly the same answer I have received off the record from four other very senior, very experienced decision makers in the long war. Morell: So I think that foreign intelligence services, the good ones, the good ones, have everything on any unclassified network that the government uses, whether it’s a private server or a public one. Hewitt: As a professional matter, do you believe that at least one or perhaps many foreign intelligence servers, services have everything that went to and from that server? I don’t know who gave her that advice, but it was not good advice, and you know, she’s paying a price for it now. Morell: So I don’t think that was a very good judgment. I asked him about former Secretary of State Clinton’s decision to conduct her official business on a private server in her own house. One exchange, towards the end of our conversation, caught the eye of reporters at Politico, The Daily Caller and elsewhere - as it should have. It is unusual for me to spend as much time as I did with Morell, but I could easily have gone twice as long, so vast is his experience with “the great war of our time.” I conducted an extended interview with Morell on Friday - the complete audio and transcript of which are posted at. This is not a book for partisans (Presidents Bush and Obama both come in for praise and criticism) but one for future decision makers. Morell has spent nearly 15 years on the front lines of the war against Islamic fanaticism, and his book must be read and taken seriously by everyone in this war. He was also in London on the day of the 7/7 attacks there. Morell was President Bush’s briefer for the year 2001 and was thus with him on 9/11. But whatever one thinks of that particular controversy, this book is about the whole war. Morell was wrapped up in the “talking points” fiasco over Benghazi. Morell isn’t grinding any axes here - he is an equal opportunity assessor of Republicans and Democrats, the Agency and its critics, and especially - unsparingly - of himself.

Everyone running for president should read both books, but it is doubtful that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will, because the former book indicts her husband and the latter herself.

Combine Wright’s and Morell’s books and you have a history of the rise of Islamist fanaticism vis-a-vis the United States from the end of World War II to the present. There are few truly “must read” books out there, but along with Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, Morell’s new The Great War of Our Time is one of them. Michael Morell spent 33 years in the CIA, rising to be its acting director for a time, and finishing a distinguished career as the Agency’s Deputy Director.

The great war of our time by michael morell