The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth

In a way, all of this was summed up in the wars fought after September 11. The president overwhelmingly controlled those wars, and yet his ability to create a goal that could be reached, or define a means of achieving it, became impossible.

cold-blooded need for control.

In time I witnessed several such discussions between McChrystal and various senior leaders from partner agencies. These paraphrases of our organization’s core narrative would often go as follows: We clearly share a determined adversary—one that, unlike our organizations, is networked and thus moves with incredible speed. In the Task Force, we are n