Must respectfully disagree. Sure seems like he gets the nature of behind-the-scenes maneuvering.
Whether his claims are *true* or not, I cannot say. But he lays out a plausible case that the Vice President and Secretary of Defense are each urging the President to come down on opposite sides of the issue.
I can agree with that. Maybe it’s a “tone of voice” sort of thing....
“Sure seems like he gets the nature of behind-the-scenes maneuvering.”
That “nature” is known by any student who watches it, it is not in question. The facts are. Simply having an understanding of a context (and having some history to back up that understanding) does not automatically provide credit for the facts you seek to put in that context.
Given the period when Mr. Reidel rose through the ranks in U.S. intelligence circles - when the wholesale destruction of our own human intelligence abilities took place - I am not certain I can even grant him great authority for his experience. His generation of intelligence managers failed (not entirely their fault) on 9/11; but that was only the demonstration of their failure, not the beginnings of it.