The Price of Loyalty: George W.
Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul
O'Neill, is a
2004 book by
Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Ron Suskind. The book was the first to
provide critical insight into the events that led up to the
Iraq War.
The Price of Loyalty was
met with both commercial and critical success, and was the first
book by Suskind to be a #1
New York
Times best-seller.
Overview
Published in early 2004,
The Price of Loyalty chronicled
the tenure of
Paul O'Neill as
Treasury Secretary during the
Bush Administration. Like all treasury
secretaries, O'Neill was the top domestic advisor to the president,
as well as a member of the pivotal
National Security
Council. The book featured over 19,000 documents provided by
O'Neill from his first two years with the Bush Administration.
Among the most damaging accusations in the book was that invasion
of Iraq was on the agenda as early as February of 2001, nearly 7
months before the
September 11
attacks.
Reception
The book was met with both commercial and critical success. It
debuted as a #1 Bestseller on the
New York Times
Nonfiction list on February 1st 2004.
O'Neill harshly criticizes the President, blasting his economic
policies and alleged "detachment" from the
cabinet process. He described Bush's
behavior at cabinet meetings as being like "a blind man in a
roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."
O'Neill was frustrated about what he perceived to be a lack of
vigorous debate between administration officials and the formation
of sound, coherent policy on the important issues. He longed for
the return of the "
Brandeis briefs"
that were used in the
Nixon and
Ford administrations in which he
had previously worked.
The book also claims that the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was not a
reaction to the
attacks of
September 11, but was instead a campaign in the planning stages
ever since Bush took office, with potential oil spoils charted in
early documents.
Rather
than denying his allegations, Bush officials attacked O'Neill's
credibility, while answering that regime
change in Iraq
had been
official U.S. policy since 1998, three years before Bush took
office. However, O'Neill's claims called into question the
relationship of the
Iraq
occupation to the post-9/11
War on
Terrorism.
After documents containing classified information were shown during
a
60 Minutes interview in which
O'Neill promoted the book, a Department of Treasury investigation
concluded in 2004 that no laws were violated, but that inadequate
document handling policies at Treasury had allowed 140 documents,
which should have been marked classified, to be entered into a
computer system for unclassified documents. The documents were
amongst those subsequently released to O'Neill in response to a
legal document request.
Experiment in Transparency
To confirm the validity of his sources, the following was posted on
Ron Suskind's official website.
References
- http://thepriceofloyalty.ronsuskind.com/thebushfiles/
- http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04083/289971.stm
External links
Wikis
Map
Search