The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power

David Sanger takes listeners into the White House Situation Room to reveal how Washington penetrated Tehran’s nuclear secrets, leading President Bush, in his last year, to secretly step up covert actions in a desperate effort to delay an Iranian bomb. Meanwhile, his intelligence chiefs made repeated secret missions to Pakistan as they tried to stem a growing insurgency and cope with an ally who was also aiding the enemy—while receiving billions in American military aid.The Inheritance takes listeners to Afghanistan, where Bush never delivered on his promises to rebuild the country, paving the way for the Taliban’s return. It examines the chilling calculus of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, who built actual weapons of mass destruction in the same months that the Bush administration pursued phantoms in Iraq. And it explores how China became one of the real winners of the Iraq war, using the past eight years to expand its influence in Asia and lock up oil supplies in Africa.