Quotes from James Risen

A 2011 study by the Pentagon found that during the ten years after 9/11, the Defense Department had given more than $400 billion to contractors who had previously been sanctioned in cases involving $1 million or more in fraud.

During the darkest years of the Iraq war, between 2004 and 2008, there were at least thirty-five convictions in the United States and more than $17 million in fines, forfeitures, and restitution payments made in fraud cases in connection with the American reconstruction of Iraq. But the midlevel officers, enlisted personnel, contractors, and others who have been caught account for only a tiny slice of the billions that have gone missing in Iraq. The biggest thieves have been far more elusive.

The drone is the ultimate imperial weapon, allowing a superpower almost unlimited reach while keeping its own soldiers far from battle.

The object of terrorism is to use violence or the threat of violence to create fear and alarm," says Jenkins. "And so terrorism has worked. Certainly, we have been the major contributors to that. We have scared the hell out of ourselves.

Today, at least $11.7 billion of the approximately $20 billion the CPA ordered sent to Iraq from New York is either unaccounted for or has simply disappeared.

To most of America, war has become not only tolerable but profitable, and so there is no longer any great incentive to end it.

Between May 2003 and June 2004, while the CPA was in operation, Basel was in charge of all the cash flights and said he never lost a single dollar. All of the cash that arrived at the Baghdad airport got to its destination downtown, he insisted. "Absolutely, all the money I guarded got to where it was supposed to go," Basel said, emphatically.

Overall, the United States spent $63 billion of its own money on Iraq's reconstruction throughout the war.

Barack Obama has had a love affair with drones. By 2012, the CIA had conducted six times more drone strikes in Pakistan during the three years of the Obama administration than the agency had conducted under the entire eight years of George W. Bush,

Bremer issued orders that effectively purged the Iraqi government of Baath Party members and then disbanded the Iraqi Army, virtually guaranteeing an anti-American insurgency.

Today, the CIA relies so heavily on outside contractors that many case officers have learned that the way to get ahead is to quit—and then come back the following week to the same job as a contractor making twice as much money.

The United States is now relearning an ancient lesson, dating back to the Roman Empire. Brutalizing an enemy only serves to brutalize the army ordered to do it. Torture corrodes the mind of the torturer.

Before the war on terror, the U.S. military had a well-earned reputation for the humane treatment of prisoners of war.

Why is torture the worst interrogation method? Produces unreliable information Negative world opinion Subject to war crimes trials Used as a tool for compliance

Mitchell and Jessen were advocating torture tactics that had been originally designed to break men and force them to spout lies and propaganda, but they claimed that these techniques were not torture, and that they would elicit the truth, not lies and propaganda. In the upside-down world of the global war on terror, their explanations were widely accepted.

Morgan's studies show that the use of the SERE simulated torture techniques impairs memory and prompts inaccurate answers from those subjected to the tactics. Mitchell and Jessen's methods, Morgan said, create a mental state that makes it difficult to remember information accurately—making the credibility of all statements suspect.

Coughlin came to believe that the Department of Veterans Affairs had an inherent conflict of interest that hobbled its ability to conduct honest research. The VA was charged not only with conducting research on medical conditions afflicting veterans but also with paying the benefits to veterans who suffered from those conditions. Whenever VA researchers discovered a new health problem, the VA had to pay out more money. The VA thus had an incentive not to discover new illnesses among veterans.

Pentagon auditors told Smith that as of the end of 2003, about $1 billion in KBR's supposed costs in Iraq were not credible and should be thrown out.

There were more than 1,200 government organizations and nearly 2,000 private companies working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence programs, the Washington Post found in 2010, and more than 850,000 people in America had top-secret clearances, producing 50,000 intelligence reports a year. The U.S. intelligence budget alone has at least doubled since 2001, and by 2013, stood at more than $70 billion a year,

The money quickly began to disappear into the rucksacks and footlockers of the officers and enlisted personnel who had access to it; some was mailed home to wives and girlfriends. The stealing in Iraq reached epic proportions.

America has become accustomed to a permanent state of war. Only a small slice of society—including many poor and rural teenagers—fight and die, while a permanent national security elite rotates among senior government posts, contracting companies, think tanks, and television commentary, opportunities that would disappear if America was suddenly at peace. To most of America, war has become not only tolerable but profitable, and so there is no longer any great incentive to end it.

This book will save lives. As I read Bottle of Lies, I was so stunned by the revelations that I tried to think of works of comparable significance, and the first one that came to mind was Silent Spring. What Rachel Carson did for our understanding of the perils facing the environment Katherine Eban has now done for our understanding of the threats to our health from the drugs we take every day. Bottle of Lies is Katherine Eban's masterwork of global investigative reporting.

You can be seduced to do this," Zimbardo added. "It's easy for people to delude themselves into thinking that they will be the ones who will do it the right way. Self-delusion is a powerful force for evil.

I wrote Pay Any Price as my answer to the government's campaign against me.