In the days immediately following September 11th, the most powerful people in the United States were panic-stricken. The radical decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of utter chaos and fear; but the key players, Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, used the crisis to further a long-held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in US history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment. The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world - decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author Jane Mayer relates the impact of these decisions: US-held prisoners, many of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.
In all cases, whatever the short-term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, the US's place in the world, and its sense of itself.