In his farewell Washington Post "White House Watch" blog entry, journalist Dan Froomkin mentions Ron's first book on the Bush Administration, "The Price of Loyalty" as well as singles him out for his reporting on the Bush Administration.
Froomkin had been a columnist for the Washington Post since 1997. He was editor of the washingtonpost.com from 2001 to 2003. His "White House Watch" series provided a fantastic analytical look at the inner workings of the past two administrations.
Froomkin asserts that while overall coverage of the errs of the Bush Administration were in many ways insufficient, Ron lead the pack in quality reporting.
"It's now very clear that the Bush years were all about kicking the can down the road - either ignoring problems or, even worse, creating them and not solving them. This was true of a huge range of issues including the economy, energy, health care, global warming - and of course Iraq and Afghanistan.How did the media cover it all? Not well. Reading pretty much everything that was written about Bush on a daily basis, as I did, one could certainly see the major themes emerging. But by and large, mainstream-media journalism missed the real Bush story for way too long. The handful of people who did exceptional investigative reporting during this era really deserve our gratitude: People such as Ron Suskind...."
Also this
"I started my column in January 2004, and one dominant theme quickly emerged: That George W. Bush was truly the proverbial emperor with no clothes. In the days and weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, the nation, including the media, vested him with abilities he didn't have and credibility he didn't deserve. As it happens, it was on the day of my very first column that we also got the first insider look at the Bush White House, via Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty. In it, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described a disengaged president "like a blind man in a room full of deaf people", encircled by "a Praetorian guard," intently looking for a way to overthrow Saddam Hussein long before 9/11. The ensuing five years and 1,088 columns really just fleshed out that portrait, describing a president who was oblivious, embubbled and untrustworthy."
With the debate on torture white hot, and the abundance of information being released on Bush Administration interrogation-policy, Ron's 3rd book, "The One Percent Doctrine" has been all over the news.
Most recently, In his washingtonpost.com blog today, Dan Froomkin singled out Ron's repertorial efforts.
"I should point out, by the way, that this is not the first time it's been abundantly clear that detainees made up stories to please their torturers. Fully three years ago, in his explosive book The One Percent Doctrine, investigative reporter Ron Suskind described at length how Zubaida "confessed" to made-up plots, thereby sending "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each...target."
Renowned Berkeley economics professor Brad Delong blogged about Ron's first book, "The Price of Loyalty"
"One of the threads of Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty is that Mitch Daniels simply did not do his job as Bush's OMB Director. The OMB Director is the principal--indeed, the only--voice inside the White House for fiscal prudence, for trying to ensure that the money the government spends is spent well and that the resources the government raises are adequate for the spending plans the White House evolves. While he was Bush OMB Director, Daniels simply did not do his job."
Professor Delong's blog "Grasping Reality with Both Hands" has become one of the most popular places to receive insight into modern economics in recent months.
Times Op-Ed columnist Frank Rich cited Ron's book "The One Percent Doctrine" in his most recent column entitled "Who is to Blame for the Next Attack?". The article mentions the prescient message of "The One Percent Doctrine" and how it has become so relevant, even three years after the book's release.
Here is an excerpt from the article...
"Another reporter who was ahead of the pack in unmasking Bush-Cheney propaganda is the author Ron Suskind. In his 2006 book on the American intelligence matrix, "The One Percent Doctrin," Suskind wrote about a fully operational and potentially catastrophic post-9/11 Qaeda assault on America that actually was aborted in the Bush years: a hydrogen cyanide attack planned for the New York City subways. It was halted 45 days before zero hour - but not because we stopped it. Al-Zawahri had called it off."
Additionally...
"What are the lessons of this period?" Suskind asked when we spoke last week. "If you draw the wrong lessons, you end up embracing the wrong answers." They are certainly not the lessons cited by Cheney. Waterboarding hasn't and isn't going to save us from anything. The ticking time-bomb debate rekindled by Cheney's speech may be entertaining on "24" or cable-news food fights, but is a detour from the actual perils before the country. "What we're dealing with is a patient foe who thinks in decades while we tend to think more in news cycles," Suskind said. "We have to try to wrestle this fear-based debate into something resembling a reality-based discussion."
The first chapter of the new Blueprint for Accountability series from the Culture Project will be called "Working the Darkside". The Blueprint for Accountability is a new monthly political series presented by the Culture Project and performed at the Times Center in New York.
It was announced today that Ron Suskind will be joining the New York City based "Culture Project in it's upcoming new series "Blueprint for Accountability".
