A Political Warning Disguised as Thriller

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: November 29, 2005

Here is the plot of the former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke's new book, "The Scorpion's Gate": there is trouble again in the Middle East, and the United States is on the verge of getting involved in another war. An arrogant, gung-ho secretary of defense and his eager-beaver under secretary are intent on regime change in a certain Arab country with huge oil reserves. They charge that this nation's government has ties with Al Qaeda and is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. The "SecDef," who has a taste for pre-emptive wars and a simultaneous desire to reconfigure the armed services, is regarded with skepticism by many members of the uniformed military, but he enjoys the confidence of the president. When it becomes clear that intelligence estimates do not support the SecDef's theories - and in fact suggest that his invasion plans could further destabilize the Middle East - a small band of intelligence analysts and military officers decide to see if they can thwart the rush to war.

In his much-discussed 2004 nonfiction bestseller "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," Mr. Clarke criticized the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror and its willful determination to go to war against Iraq, but this time he is not talking about real events - he is writing fiction.

Though Mr. Clarke's fast, twisty plot could easily be turned into an implausible Tom Cruise action-adventure movie, "The Scorpion's Gate" is less interesting as a Tom Clancy-esque thriller than as a kind of parable. Indeed its often absurd plot is primarily a vehicle for its author to lay out his views about the current Iraq war (and its role in further radicalizing the Arab street), the precariousness of the current Saudi regime and the dangers posed by Iran - a country, Mr. Clarke argues, that not only benefited from the American invasion of its neighbor, but also embodies the very threats the Bush administration lodged against Iraq (i.e., its support of terrorism and its alleged pursuit of nuclear capabilities).

The story Mr. Clarke tells in these pages takes place several years in the future: the United States has finally pulled out of Iraq, and Iraq has become closely aligned with Iran, which, bolstered by its success there, has ambitious plans to widen its sphere of influence in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the Saudi regime has collapsed, and the former Saudi Arabia has become a new country called Islamyah, a country whose ruling council is torn between radicals, eager to impose a strict Wahhabi rule, and moderates, who are in favor of reform and modernization.

Three countries have designs on Islamyah's oil reserves - Iran, China and the United States - and the novel's heroes become convinced that the invasion of Islamyah, being secretly planned by America's defense secretary, Henry Conrad, will put those three nations on a collision course toward nuclear war. Mr. Clarke's heroes, who fought in Iraq and lost comrades there, blame the SecDef, "who didn't think it out, had no plan, put in too few troops," and the neo-cons who pushed for war. Their friends died, as one puts it, "because some set of lunatics from a think tank escaped and took over the Pentagon." Needless to say, Mr. Clarke's fictional secretary of defense bears more than a passing resemblance to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, just as his neo-con cronies seem meant to conjure associations with Paul D. Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense, and company.

Determined to head off another war, Mr. Clarke's heroes - Marine Maj. Gen. Bobby Doyle, Vice Adm. Brad Adams and Rusty MacIntyre, deputy director of the new Intelligence Analysis Center - begin investigating the SecDef's charges about Islamyah's terrorist ties. They will get vital assists from an influential senator, a British intelligence agent and an American newspaper reporter, but their investigations will take a series of harrowing turns, as the clock to war winds down.

Many of the views on terrorism, the Middle East and American foreign policy delineated in these pages were previously sketched out by Mr. Clarke in the final chapters of "Against All Enemies," and they were also treated in fictional form in a long futuristic tale that he published last January in the Atlantic Monthly. In that short story, Mr. Clarke (until recently a contributor to the New York Times Magazine), envisioned a world in which the war in Iraq had led to more terrorist attacks on the United States, to bombings in malls, casinos, subways and trains, which in turn lead to a crackdown on civil liberties at home; after his fictional president launches a pre-emptive attack against Iran, there is a coup in Saudi Arabia and a Iranian-led cyberattack that cripples the American economy.

Why has Mr. Clarke turned to fiction as a venue for his arguments? No doubt it's a way to say - or imply - things about the Bush administration that he can't quite come out and say in an essay, as well as a way to satirize the intelligence bureaucracy and neo-conservative policy making. It's also a way for Mr. Clarke to dramatize his arguments and try to reach a broader audience.
As the opening chapter of "Against All Enemies" (which provided an insider's account of what happened at the White House on 9/11) demonstrated, Mr. Clarke has a flair for creating vivid, you-are-there narratives, but "The Scorpion's Gate" still reads like a journeyman effort: there are awkward passages of exposition shoehorned into the early portions of the story and stilted conversations meant to convey key information to the reader. Although one of Mr. Clarke's heroes, Rusty MacIntyre, is a credible enough creation, most of his characters have the cardboardy feel of generic figures in a thriller. The action sequences, based on Mr. Clarke's knowledge of spy tradecraft and military maneuvers, are decidedly more gripping, though even they pale in comparison to the real-life drama of terrorism, governmental bungling and bureaucratic infighting that the author laid out in his nonfiction account of 9/11 and the war against Iraq.