“Extreme Measures”, A Fictional Defense of CIA Tactics

Beginning with Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe, American history is replete with examples of fiction being the best way to explore the problems and issues facing our nation.  After all,  “Huck Finn” (which I reread earlier this summer) provides us an insight into race relations far beyond the scope of any number of non-fiction tomes.

Today, when CIA interrogation techniques are front and center in our political debate (or perhaps second only to health care and the death of Ted Kennedy), one novelist stands out on the cutting edge, providing unapologetic commentary using a cast of gritty and seedy fictional  characters.

While in real life, the line between good and evil is often blurred, Vince Flynn has no problem separating them in his novels.   He began more than a decade ago with “Transfer of Power”, an intriguing look at how our laws could be affected be, of all things, a coordinated plot to assassinate Supreme Court justices.

While he will neither win a Pulitzer Prize or be uttered in the same sentence as Mark Twain by posterity, Flynn serves up quick reads which resonate on three levels.  His main character, Mitch Rapp is a CIA counter-terrorist operative who wouldn’t hesitate to kill any number of bad guys to get at the truth, but in the process he’s always bumping up against senators and staffers in Washington who would slow down or stop his best efforts, often for reasons of personal gain.

Thus we have the action sequences of infiltrating terrorist cells juxtaposed against scenes in Washington offices and chambers.  Throw in  personal crises of the protagonists (as one would expect from any novelist) as the third element, and Vince Flynn’s novels, while not always memorable, are always something I look forward to devouring (they define the term “quick read”).

“Extreme Measures”, written a year ago and widely available now, is about as topical as you could get.  Mitch Rapp and his colleague Mike Nash are off to the Middle East to interrogate two caputured terrorists who could provide information about a terrorist cell about to hit Washington D.C.

They burst onto an Air Force base and break all the rules to get to the subjects.  Meanwhile, in typical Flynn fashion, we cut back and forth to a South American location where the active terrorists are training and finalizing their plans.

Back in the Middle East, Flynn is arrested for breaking American laws (he struck the terrorist), and we cut to Washington where not one but three Senate committees are investigating CIA techniques.  The bad guy here is actually a bad gal in the form of  Senator Londsdale (Barbara Boxer kept coming to mind as I read this although Flynn places Lonsdale in Missouri) who wants Rapp’s head on the plate more than the terrorists.

The terrorists hit D.C. at the very time Rapp is defending himself before the Senate Judiciary Committee, how delicious!  Of course, had Rapp not been prevented from using his techniques back in the Middle East, he would have discovered the information in the nick of time to prevent the attack, and America and innocent citizens would have been saved.  Good would have prevailed.

Maybe.

It’s all so simplistic, but it’s also great fun, and if you get the chance, pick up “Extreme Measures” at your local library (I also ran across several copies with prices slashed at Building 19, so it’s out there).  You might just want to go back and read the other nine or ten book Flynn has written.  Reading them is a lot like eating cotton candy; you feel good while you’re doing it only to later wonder why you liked it so much, a true guilty pleasure.

Here’s a passage in which Lonsdale is debating with another senator:

“My committee will go where the facts take us.”

“You will do great harm to an organization (the CIA) that is trying its best to protect us from our enemies.”

“I would like to remind the senator from Virginia that we are a nation of laws.  And it is our job to make sure those laws are obeyed.”

“And I would like to remind the senator from Missouri that nowhere in the Constitution does it say we should go out of our way to afford those protections to our enemies.”

Good stuff!

And timely!

Here’s Rapp addressing the senators who are trying to hold his feet to the legal fire:

“And the terrorists who intentionally target civilians?  Who holds their feet to the fire and makes sure they follow the Geneva Conventions?  We all know the answer to that.  They did not sign the Genevea Conventions and never will.  They in fact go out of their way to break almost every rule of the Geneva Conventions set forth, yet in our infinite wisdom we have decided to afford the the protections of a document that they spit on.”

If you want the CIA investigated in depth today, see if you feel the same way after reading Vince Flynn’s “Extreme Measures”.  It should make even the most ardent left winger question his or her own thought processes.

I’m left wondering why Flynn, a young deb0nair type if the picture on book jackets is any indications, is not out on Fox News or other outlets promoting his writing.  He’d be a hit and book sales would undoubtedly soar.

Finally, a confession.  I first learned of Flynn during the 1999 race for Manchester mayor when a candidate referred to ”Transfer of Power” in response to the question:  what book have you read most recently.

Would it spoil the impact if I revealed that candidate was…..

Bob Baines?

Tis true.