White House Warriors by John Gans

White House Warriors:
How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War

By John Gans
(University of Pennsylvania)

W.W. Norton, 2019
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=4294997644 

This revelatory history of the elusive National Security Council shows how staffers operating in the shadows have driven foreign policy clandestinely for decades.
When Michael Flynn resigned in disgrace as the Trump administration’s national security advisor the New York Times referred to the National Security Council as “the traditional center of management for a president’s dealings with an uncertain world.” Indeed, no institution or individual in the last seventy years has exerted more influence on the Oval Office or on the nation’s wars than the NSC, yet until the explosive Trump presidency, few Americans could even name a member.
With key analysis, John Gans traces the NSC’s rise from a collection of administrative clerks in 1947 to what one recent commander-in-chief called the president’s “personal band of warriors.” A former Obama administration speechwriter, Gans weaves extensive archival research with dozens of news-making interviews to reveal the NSC’s unmatched power, which has resulted in an escalation of hawkishness and polarization, both in Washington and the nation at large.