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How the US government missed the story:

Underlying the US failed policy towards Afghanistan was, in Gutman’s view, a failed understanding of the realities on the ground. Specifically, Gutman thinks the US gravely underestimated the threat posed by the sanctuary Al-Qa‘ida enjoyed in Afghanistan. As Gutman puts it, the US government missed the story in Afghanistan because it failed to understand the consequences of Bin Laden and Al-Qa‘ida’s “hijacking” of the Afghan regime. No one in the government was aware of the extent to which Bin Laden was whispering instructions in Mullah Omar’s ear. After the Taliban’s big setback in May of 1997 when it unsuccessfully tried to capture the Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, Bin Laden stepped up his assistance of weapons, money and equipment to the Taliban and earned Mullah Omar’s gratitude. The US pleaded again and again for Mullah Omar to hand over Bin Laden despite clear signals that he would not do so. In the light of this stalemate, a change in US policy was, according to Gutman, long overdue.

Gutman went on to assert that when the grasp of reality is wrong, policy is also likely to be wrong. Gutman thinks US policy towards Afghanistan in the 1990s was a failure. Gutman called the Clinton Administration’s remedy to the increasing threat perception from Al-Qa‘ida a “quick-fix”. This quick-fix was an attempt to neutralize Al-Qa‘ida with covert operations planned and executed by the intelligence community instead of creating the wider diplomatic approach Gutman thinks was needed.

How the media missed the story:

Gutman himself got interested in the story because of what appeared to him as a media that largely ignored what was going on in Afghanistan. Stationed in Europe covering the Balkans, Gutman said he was following Afghanistan from a distance and felt guilty that South-Asia was neglected by his colleagues. Gutman pointed to several instances when the media should have picked up on the increasing threat posed by Al-Qa‘ida. The first instance appeared when Bin Laden landed in Afghanistan in 1996. According to Gutman, this important event received minimal media coverage. Two years later another big event was also largely neglected by the media. After successfully capturing the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in August 1998, the Taliban sought revenge for its losses the previous year and massacred thousands of civilians. This was not reported by the US media, which was then preoccupied with covering the US embassy bombings in East Arica and the subsequent US air strikes in Afghanistan.

Gutman’s conclusions:

Gutman offered a mixed assessment as to whether the government and media have learned from their pre 9/11 failures. He criticized the government for letting the intelligence community take a majority of the blame for the failures to foresee 9/11 and also the media for jumping on that bandwagon and not scrutinizing the politicians more closely. However, Gutman did say that he thought the US policy making community has started to debate foreign policy more thoroughly and that a revamped foreign policy approach is in the making. Gutman said he hoped his book can be a contribution to this change. For Gutman, this change entails that even if the intelligence community should continue to play an important role in the shaping and execution of US foreign policy, it must be incorporated into a broader policy agenda that includes a diplomatic presence even in far-flung areas of the world. As for his own colleagues’ role, Gutman called for the media to pick up the thread if the government or the public does not pay attention to certain issues or regional areas. Moreover, he asserted that if the government is restricting the media’s access to an issue, the media should see it as a sign that there is a story there worth digging up. For Gutman, that has to be the media’s ultimate responsibility.