Doling out dollars

Bush at War. By Bob Woodward. Simon & Shuster, 378 pp., $28.00.

In late September 2001, just two weeks after the destruction of the World Trade Center, a covert paramilitary team crossed a high mountain pass into northeast Afghanistan to launch the first phase of what President George Bush has called a "war for civilization," a "war without end" and (in a June 2002 speech) a "titanic struggle against terror." On the floor of their Russian-made CIA helicopter was a large metal suitcase containing $3 million in nonsequential $100 bills. The team's leader told Bob Woodward that he laughs whenever he sees undercover agents on television who are supposedly carrying $1 million in a slim attaché case--he knows from experience that it won't fit.

Doling out a million here and a million there is routine work for a CIA operative, "Gary" told Woodward. (CIA operatives are identified in the book only by their first names; even their relatives back home probably think they are organizing Junior Achievement clubs in New Delhi.) What was unusual this time was not the amount of money he had been given but the freedom he had to dole it out as he wished to local warlords of the Northern Alliance.