The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth

The “Knife” in Mazzetti’s title is drawn from a metaphor used by DCIA John O. Brennan while he served as President Obama’s counterterrorism and domestic security advisor to describe America’s approach to waging war against al Qa‘ida. The nation, Brennan observed in a May 2010 speech, must “prudently” use force, relying at times on a “scalpel” rather than a “hammer.” 1 It is Mazzetti’s thesis that the scalpel approach, meaning the selective use of armed drones and small paramilitary forces, is far from the neat surgical incision that the word seems to imply. Instead, he argues, the scalpel approach has created enemies as well as destroyed them, has “short-circuited the normal mechanisms” for going to war, and has turned the CIA into a “killing machine” consumed with “man hunting.”