Investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman has been mulling over Iranian mullahs for more than two decades while covering the
byzantine world of Middle Eastern politics, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. In Countdown to Crisis – The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, Timmerman produces the first-ever inside account of Iran’s clandestine nuclear program.
Utilizing contacts with dozens of Iranian defectors and officials, previously classified
documents, and high-level sources throughout the government and intelligence community, the New York Times best selling author pulls the Persian rug out from the Iranian clerics that have been mobilizing to kill during four U.S. presidential administrations. Readers alarmed by Iranian
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent call for the annihilation of Israel will take no comfort in Timmerman’s electrifying book.
Impressively detailed yet easy to understand, Timmerman blows the lid off the Iranian shell game, exposing the real probability that one of the three countries named in President Bush’s axis of evil already has enough enriched material for 25 to 30 bombs. Throughout Countdown Timmerman drops one bombshell after another, including:
Dramatic new evidence that Iran orchestrated the 1996 downing of TWA Flight 800 – and that then White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke instructed the intelligence community to “back off” theories of foreign terrorist involvement because it would discredit his earlier analysis;
Stunning new evidence of Iran’s culpability in the 9/11 plot – including documents the CIA tried to withhold from the 9/11 commission because they had bungled so many earlier warnings involving Al-Qaeda;
Ex-President Bill Clinton’s attempt to burnish his legacy by renewing diplomatic relations with Iran and releasing their assets – while his Treasury Department destroyed hundreds of files involving those same assets because Treasury officials testified to our own government they didn’t exist.
“Because of significant gaps in our knowledge, the U.S. is unlikely to know whether Iran possesses nuclear weapons until after the fact,” Timmerman quotes from a 1998 Washington, D.C. report.
Eight years later the Iranians are playing cat and mouse with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations' Security Council, spin the bottle with an assortment of terrorist groups, a game of nuclear chicken with the Israelis, and pin-the-nuclear-tipped-tail-on-the-American-donkey. In his appendix Timmerman includes 50 pages of previously classified documents and photos, many never before published, proving Iran’s support of the insurgents in Iraq and Iran’s nuclear intentions.