Fans of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” mini-series have been introduced to the character Jon Snow, but only readers deep into George R.R. Martin’s unfolding epic (five of seven projected volumes have been published) know of Ygritte and this line which she speaks repeatedly to the young, courageous but inexperienced hero. Honest civilians who read Joby Warrick’s new and incredibly riveting book “The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole Who Infiltrated the CIA” will acknowledge and accept a similar admonition about the limits of their own understanding of the war being waged every day from the wild border lands of Afghanistan and Pakistan across the many theaters into which global jihadism is metastasizing.
Warrick is the Washington Post’s national security correspondent, and readers can be forgiven if they mistake his new work of nonfiction for one of the recent best-selling spy thrillers from Alex Berenson, Vince Flynn, Daniel Silva or Brad Thor. “The Triple Agent” is all too real, however, and tragically so for it details the catastrophe that befell the CIA on Dec. 30, 2009, when an al Qaeda operative penetrated the agency’s inner sanctum in Khost, Afghanistan, and caused grievous carnage.
Alongside the inspiring stories of some extraordinary American heroes serving half a world away in a variety of capacities from head of station to security professional is a detailed account of how and why the drone war is waged against the nation’s enemies.
From the thoroughness of the targeting specialists to the precision of the weaponry to the particulars of the very heavy burden that CIA Director Michael Hayden passed on to Leon Panetta, who in turn passed it on to David Petraeus, “The Triple Agent” leaves its audience wiser and hopefully far more humble in the judgments they render on the war from the sky and its morality.
The vast majority of civilians knows nothing of these details, and most can’t be bothered to read even an extremely well-written, fast-paced account of one key battle in this ongoing war.
This lack of knowledge — combined with laziness — didn’t stop some talking heads and arm-chair constitutional lawyers from issuing condemnations of Friday’s killing of Anwar al-Awlaki. There is sadly a large cadre of men and women who have never rendered a real-world decision with anything like the enormous consequences of those made routinely by the senior commanders in this war, and who have never served in a senior position in government which actually required legal opinions that would impact the safety of Americans, but who nevertheless can opine with certainty that the killing of al-Awlaki was “unconstitutional” or “immoral.”
Al-Awlaki was actively involved in plotting the death of Americans via terrorist acts and encouraging such acts across the globe. There isn’t a serious student of the jihadist movement that disagrees with this assessment. Al-Awalki was thus an enemy combatant the president could and rightfully did order killed. Not to have acted to remove such a danger to the nation would have been an abrogation of the president’s oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.
If some fool in Congress shares the idiotic sputterings of the professional posers on the tube and the Internet, he or she can bring a resolution of impeachment and the list of proud sponsors can put the question to the voters next fall. It would indeed be a “high crime” to order the unlawful killing of an American citizen. But this wasn’t unlawful, not even close. It was necessity, and it is war — war against a ruthless and talented enemy.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
