Review: Tom Rosenstiel looks at murky politics after attack

"The Good Lie" (Ecco/HarperCollins), by Tom Rosenstiel

Ex-Army investigator and political fixer Peter Rena and his partner, Randi Brooks, are taking on their next adventure in the swamp of Washington, D.C., and the central event is a deadly attack on a diplomatic complex in North Africa. This may sound familiar to many.

The team of Rena and Brooks quickly find themselves assigned by the president to find out what happened and why. There are careers at stake, from the White House on down, as well as foreign policy goals of an administration winding up its term.

Author Tom Rosenstiel, a veteran reporter and observer of the Washington political scene, has carefully researched — with the help of other Washington veterans — how such political fiascos can tie the capital city in knots.

His effort to realistically capture such an unfolding event requires the reader's attention, especially to the many characters introduced early. Recreating a convoluted disaster like this diplomatic attack and the subsequent "Star Chamber" inquiries, with its paralysis of guilt and suspicion, is no easy feat.

Rosenstiel, with his vivid descriptions of the city, its neighborhoods and halls of government, as well as the interplay of the powerful people there, is up to the task.

Rena and his team of investigators rapidly learn that the circumstances of the attack are very different than first reported — and very troubling.

As they interview more veterans of the intelligence business and navigate through the churning political waters, Rena, Brooks and their assistants uncover more disturbing details about the diplomatic attack.

Rosenstiel seems intent on exploring the many different kind of scandals and misadventures that can unfold in the nation's capital.

In the first Rosenstiel book about Rena and Brooks, "Shining City," he traces a more straightforward story about the vetting of a Supreme Court choice and the background threat of a shadowy killer. In "The Good Lie," he takes on the tougher, more complex task of looking at how the capital city descends into paranoia after the deadly diplomatic attack in North Africa.

Watching what Rena and Brooks take on next, if they have another adventure ahead of them, should be both interesting and an education.

Will Lester, a political writer for The Associated Press for a dozen years, is an editor in the AP's Washington Bureau.

Follow Will Lester on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wjlester

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn’t order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, according to an official familiar with the determination.

While U.S. officials believe Putin was ultimately responsible for the death of Navalny, who endured brutal conditions during his confinement, the intelligence community has found “no smoking gun” that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death — which came soon before the Russian president's reelection — or directly ordered it, according to the official.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Soon after Navalny’s death, U.S. President Joe Biden said Putin was ultimately responsible but did not accuse the Russian president of directly ordering it.

At the time, Biden said the U.S. did not know exactly what had happened to Navalny but that “there is no doubt” that his death “was the consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”

Navalny, 47, Russia’s best-known opposition politician and Putin’s most persistent foe, died Feb. 16 in a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated.

He had been behind bars since January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Russian officials have said only that Navalny died of natural causes and have vehemently denied involvement both in the poisoning and in his death.

In March, a month after Navalny’s death, Putin won a landslide reelection for a fifth term, an outcome that was never in doubt.

The Wall Street Journal first reported about the U.S. intelligence determination.

FILE - Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny gestures while speaking during his interview to the Associated Press in Moscow, Russia on Dec. 18, 2017. U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn't order the death of Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader, in February of 2024. An official says the U.S. intelligence community has found "no smoking gun" that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death or directly ordered it. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)