This book addresses a critical question embedded within a heated debate about American intelligence: have Western experts fundamentally failed to understand the dynamics, leaders, and culture of the Middle East? Using the most recently declassified documents, interviews, and Arabic sources, the book examines seminal case studies culminating in Egyptian President Anwar el Sadat's dramatic assassination on live television. It explores how the most knowledgeable and powerful intelligence agencies in the world have been so notoriously caught off guard in this region.