"The War on Freedom" is a thorough review of not only the immediate history of the Sept. 11 destruction of the World Trade Center, including lengthy accounts of the bumbling by the FBI and the CIA, but also is a detailed narrative of pertinent elements of Middle East history commencing in about 1980.

The emphasis is on Afghanistan, the rise of the Taliban, and initial United States support of this organization and other like-minded groups engaged in the effort to throw the Soviets out during the 1980s and early '90s, so as to prevent them blocking our access to pipeline routes to the Caspian Sea oil fields. It also documents in great detail the information pertaining to precursor events and personages, available to the FBI and the CIA, and their failure to act on it during 2000 and 2001 to give "heads up" to the military, the Congress, the executive branch and to the American public.

Even a short synopsis of this text is too lengthy to attempt for this review.

The gist of the account is that these agencies seem to be guilty of culpable dereliction of duty, lack of coordination within their respective organizations as well as with other groups, non-exercise of common sense bordering on stupidity, and in-house empire-building to the near exclusion of the performance of their missions. The work is scholarly, though repetitive to the point of boredom, by an author who has obviously meticulously researched his subject. So far, so good.

I have no quarrel with the historical account nor with the narrative of the floundering amounting to incompetence on the part of our investigative branches of the Justice Department, nor with the numerous references - over 700 - offered as documentation. I think the reader eventually gets a comprehensive, balanced, and fair picture of the events of the last 25 years or so about the relationship of the United States to the Middle East.

There are two main aspects to this. One is regarding our increasing dependence on oil and our subservience to what amounts to blackmail by the OPEC countries, subverting our efforts, commencing with the Nixon administration, to develop alternate energy sources. The other is our increasing alienation of the Moslem world by what it perceives as our support of Israel in preference to the Palestinians in efforts to bring about peace in the region, as well as our having reestablished the Shah of Iran.

The final event, the airborne attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the unknown target of Flight 93, the author shows as a logical outcome of the creation of ill-feeling in the extremist Moslem world as a result of this history.

My criticism of the main text is that it is so repetitive as to be tiresome, but one can overcome this by judicious scanning. Where this book puts me off is the two sections gratuitously included by a John Leonard, apparently associated with the publisher, Tree of Life Publications. These are (1) "Foreword: a Synopsis," and (2) "Backword: Where would we be without our Wars?" The burden of these sections is that the Bush administrations have deliberately invited retaliation against this country so as to realize an excuse to go to war for the purpose of acquiring a pipeline route to the Caspian Sea oil fields, the objective being augmenting oil profits for certain members of these administrations.

These people are stated to have purposely withheld, and failed to act upon, information directly related to the events leading to Sept. 11, 2001, including names of possible perpetrators. He draws what he regards as a parallel with the supposed deliberate baiting of the Japanese through the oil and steel embargo of 1940-41 by the Roosevelt administration so as to create the Pearl Harbor attack, while deliberately withholding from General Short and Admiral Kimmel pertinent and timely information which had it been available might have enabled them to prevent the disaster.

I believe that such conclusions are completely unjustified, unnecessarily inflammatory, as well as being libelous. It may be certainly true that stupidity and lack of imagination and dedication had unintended consequences in both situations, and that kind of thing may make one unhappy. But accepting complicity is much too much of a stretch, at least for this reviewer.

In reading these parts of the book you will have to resist the temptation to throw it against the wall. I tried to search the Internet using Googol to find out more about this guy and Tree of Life, but this process turned up more than 2,000,000 listings for the name John Leonard, and life is too short. My impression is that he is at least a Bush/Roosevelt-hater.

The author of the main text is not, but he pulls no punches in telling about the official foul-ups. That part of the book is worth at least scanning, but the before and after commentary is not, unless you enjoy being angry.