*snip* First as national security adviser and later as secretary of state, Ms. Rice often argued against the hard-line approach that Mr. Cheney and others advanced. The vice president’s staff was “very much of one ultra-hawkish mind,” she writes, adding that the most intense confrontation between her and Mr. Cheney came when she argued that terrorism suspects could not be “disappeared” as in some authoritarian states. In November 2001, she writes, she went to President George W. Bush upon learning that he had issued an order prepared by the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, authorizing military commissions without telling...