Attaches II - Retribution - Scanlon

 

Chuck Scalon's "Retribution" is a supposedly a work of fiction.   Scanlon, however, has been in the places of knowledge necessary to know the truth.  A position that few writers of this genre could ever dream of having been.  This is a book about the contribution military attachés make to our government's understanding of intelligence, politics, and the worldwide military situation.  This is a fuzzy business.  What military attachés do is not quite politics and not quite intelligence collection.  Their work occurs everyday and emerges from the simple associations and friendships acquired as liaisons between the military and our political ambassadors.  Military attachés are not spies-- they serve a different government function.  Yes they gather information and produce assessments of the political and military environment on the ground in various countries, but they do not do it covertly -- And they do much more.  They also move information forward to their host country's leaders that pertains to the cause and necessity of various US actions.  It is within this give and take of information that the true intrigue of the military attaché can rival the best Fleming, Ludlum and le Carré have to offer -- but instead of some fictional double agent played by Matt Damon in the movies, these military attachés are real people.  They do not live in the shadows. They exist in the real world and you can find them at every US Embassy with their office number on the phone list.  Scanlon's contribution to this genre comes not from the fast paced edge of your seat suspense of a spy novel but the no kidding, inner workings of a huge government bureaucracy that has not been optimized to either get along, agree, or share the same perspective on a problem.  Whereas the final scenes do force you to turn each page, it is the immense nature of the problem, trying to take disparate information from multiple world wide sources to form a greater understanding of a larger problem, that rings true more certainly than the "shaken, not stirred" variety.  But this book is larger than the life of the military attaché it describes.  Within it's pages is the shocking reality that Scanlon was writing about the terrorist events that would transform our country in 2001, three years before they happened.  The personalities involved are now household names and the events as they might occur are now well known -- they were not in 1998.  Perhaps these published warnings to our country were missed when Retribution was published in 1999.  However, in 2008, the call to action is still as valid as it was back then.  The bad guy never sleeps -- neither should we.