About the Author

Scott Ritter is a former Marine intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union, implementing arms control agreements, and on the staff of General Norman Schwartzkopf during the Gulf War, where he played a critical role in the hunt for Iraqi SCUD missiles. From 1991 until 1998, Mr. Ritter served as a Chief Inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, leading the search for Iraq's proscribed weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Ritter was a vocal critic of the American decision to go to war with Iraq. He is author of 9 books, and is widely interviewed.

Reviews

"Ritter's riveting personal history of nuclear arms control as seen from the inside, with its intense personal and institutional conflicts, could not come at a more propitious moment. Ritter is telling us that America's dispute with Russia today must not prevent the renewal of serious arms talks, with all of their difficulty." SEYMOUR HERSH, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Investigative Journalist

"Scott Ritter's book could not be timelier. He transports us back to an era where the world stood on the brink of a nuclear apocalypse. With an intimacy and eye for detail that only comes from having experienced the events he describes firsthand, Ritter walks us through the threat posed to the world by intermediate-range nuclear missiles, and the amazing work done by the American inspectors and Soviet factory workers tasked by their respective governments to eliminate them. In the process, Ritter and the characters in his narrative help create the conditions for one-time enemies to learn to live together in peace." --DANIEL ELLSBERG, author, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner

"An absorbing account of how the U.S. verified the key agreement that ended the Cold War. Should be read and absorbed by all who wonder how we can overcome the rush to war today."
--JACK MATLOCK, former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union

"Scott Ritter's page-turner focuses on his role as inspector monitoring Soviet implementation of the US - Russia INF treaty of 1987 -- a near-miraculous agreement under which an entire class of short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles was actually destroyed... Scott gives us a fascinatingly intimate account of the bumpy on-site road to effective inspection/verification. Bumpy even in the presence of the mutual trust existing at the time. That trust is now squandered. God help us."
--RAY McGOVERN, Former senior CIA analyst for Soviet/Russian affairs