Reviews (1)

Great Book
One of the finest books I ever read. It is the thrilling tale of Gary Schroen's experience in Afghanistan. His thrilling accounts of his interactions with Afghani warlords, are simply incredible. ... Read more

Book Description

Inside the Wire is a gripping portrait of one soldier's six months at the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - a powerful, searing journey into a surreal world completely unique in the American experience.

In an explosive newsbreak that generated headlines all around the world, a document submitted by army Sergeant Erik Saar to the Pentagon for clearance was leaked to the Associated Press in January, 2005.His account of appalling sexual interrogation tactics used on detainees at Guantanamo Bay was shocking, but that was only one small part of the story of what he saw at Guantanamo --and the leak was only one more strange twist in his profoundly disturbing and life-changing trip behind the scenes of America's war on terror.

Saar couldn't have been more eager to get to Gitmo.After two years in the army learning Arabic, becoming a military intelligence linguist, he pounced on the chance to apply his new skills to extracting crucial intel from the terrorists. But when he walked through the heavily guarded, double-locked and double-gated fence line surrounding Camp Delta -- the special facility built for the "worst of the worst" al Qaeda and Taliban suspects - he entered a bizarre world that defied everything he'd expected, belied a great deal of what the Pentagon has claimed, and defiled the most cherished values of American life.

In this powerful account, he takes us inside the cell blocks and interrogation rooms, face-to-face with the captives.Suicide attempts abound.Storm-trooper-like IRF (initial reaction forces) teams ramp up for beatings of the captives, and even injure one American soldier so badly in a mock drill -- a training exercise -that he ends up with brain seizures.Fake interrogations are staged when General Geoffrey Miller - whose later role in the Abu Ghraib fiasco would raise so many questions - hosts visiting VIPs.Barely trained interrogators begin applying their "creativity" when new, less restrictive rules are issued by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

When Saar takes over as a cosupervisor of the linguists translating for interrogations and gains access to the detainees' intelligence files, he must contend with the extent of the deceptions and the harsh reality of just how illconceived and counterproductive an operation in the war on terror, and in the history of American military engagement, the Guantanamo detention center is.

Inside the Wire is one of those rare and unforgettable eyewitness accounts of a momentous and deeply sobering chapter in American history, and a powerful cautionary tale about the risks of defaming the very values we are fighting for as we wage the war on terror. ... Read more

Reviews (37)

Overall, it wasn't bad
I am currently assigned the Naval Station in GTMO.I read this book, and found it very easy to read and follow.It had an interesting plot and told a good story.

Before anyone who is reviewing this and is convinced that this book deserves a bad review decides to scan down to the next one, please hear me out.I have never worked inside the camp.I know several people who have, but I have never done more than drive down the road inside.I don't know what goes on in that camp, and like many other sailors and government employees here, I listen to CNN talk about what is happening less than a mile away from me on television everyday.I cannot draw a conclusion about the truth behind statements and stories contained in this novel because I simply don't know.I bought this book after reading mixed reviews because I wanted this former soldier's perspective on what happens back there...not caring whether it was true or not.I hear so much about what goes on in there I don't know what to believe anymore.

But with all of that said, I believe the book was very well written.It was easy to read, and was very hard to put down. It doesn't go into as much political depth as I had expected, which was OK, because I don't like reading books like that.It is simply one man's views of what goes on there.

I only gave this book four stars for one reason.The information that the author adds about the Naval base itself is very true for the most part.He describes buildings and placesin a way that anyone who has been here for a while and knows their way around the base would be able to pick them out in a heartbeat.However, he mentions some things in the book that completely off the wall, and crazily un-true about the base itself.These are included as so called "rumors" but are just silly in my opinion.This is the only reason I gave it four stars, but like I said, it was overall a good novel.

Before I close though, I would like to add that I believe you have to have an open-minded opinion of the goings-on at GTMO before you dive into this one.The personnel that openly bashed this book after it's release were careless, and downright rude.Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but next time it should be displayed with a bit more couth.

Its nice to know so many GITMO personnel buy books!
After reading the reviews, I was very suprised at the number of former/current GITMO personel that buy and review books on amazon.com This is truly an untapped market! Evidently this is the ONLY book being read at GITMO, since they have never reviewed anything else on amazon.com Ok, Im finished with the sarcasm.
The book was an easy read. The details were disturbing. Is it fact/fiction? Its up the reader to decide. Unfortunately we dont have any nice digtal photos floating around on the internet to verfiy the author's account.
Many are quick to dismiss his version of events. But then again, if someone had written a book about soldiers in Iraq leading detainees around on leases, making them masterbate, stacking them naked in a pyramid...I would be inclined to think it was fiction too. Now if only we could find some photos from GITMO.

A Real Profile in Courage
Erik Saar's book has all the credibility of the Onion or at this point Newsweek. It strikes me that anyone with a dissenting view of the book is labeled right wing etc or that they will not post their real names. After seeing some of the responses on here and on Blogs I can not blame anyone for not posting their real name as I can see hate mail direct towards them. As Americans we seem to have a disturbing trend to want to believe in all conspiracies no matter how far fetched. The Iraq prison scandal has shown that clearly as is Erik Saars book. My hunch is that some of the positive reviews on here also believe that the government has Aliens in Area 51 and that the CIA killed Kennedy.
There is a true patriot from both GTMO and Abu G, Specialist Joseph Darby who was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. The annual honors recognize acts of political courage. Darby was the first to report abuse at the prison. He turned over pictures that included images of prisoners chained together in sexual poses. Spc Darby did not write a book and is not making money over what he saw and felt was wrong. He took a stand and did what is morally right which is more than I can say for Erik Saar.
While this book is well written it is far from the truth and it is amazing looking through interviews with Saar that his story changes and he seems to stick to doing interviews on the far left fringe of things.
I am neither left nor right, I make educated choices and decisions based on the facts and Saar book lacks facts and has a lot of conjecture. As the Newsweek story has shown not everything in print is the truth and a stronger more in depth review of Saars book will show the same. I would love to see Saar's NOCER's for the time as well as the interrogation plans that show Saar was in the booth. I have a feeling most of what he said he saw is stuff he heard happened etc. It also strikes me as odd that Saar as an Arabic linguist never advanced beyond E5 despite the points being low and the need for Arabic linguists being great. I also noticed he has two good conduct awards. This means he did at least 6 years active duty. The average soldier makes E5 in 3-4 years and E6 in Saars MOS he should have had it in 5 with ease. I have a feeling there is more to look at with this young man than meets the eye.
SPC Joseph Darby is a true American hero, not Saar, America should be offended at those who commit abuses and question the government and challenge it for better government and leaders, but we should also be offended at those that chose to try and profit from situations such as this and make matters worse and instead in flame things needlessly.

a thoughtful read
this book was written by someone who had actually been at
guantanamo and for that reason, if none other, deserves
better attention than some previous reviewers want to give it.the author gives us chapter and verse but of course, it is up
to the reader to accept or challenge, but the challenges
should come from readers who come to the book without
built-in prejudices.

saar was a participant in events and i thoroughly appreciate
his view of that history.

An important and accessible work
This book gives us an alternate view into the workings of the Guantanamo detention facility.Before this book almost all of the information we have received has been second hand, either from officials in Washington or commentators.None of these people have actually been there, day in and day out, as part of the operation.

Other reviewers have cast aspersions on the veracity of this book.My objective opinion is that Sgt. Saar's story rings true.For instance, we are told of a farmer who had no idea why he was there, and had not been charged with any crimes.If we were paying a bounty to Northern warlords for capturing terrorists, but not validating their claim that the people presented are terrorists, it seems reasonable that the warlord would pick up local farmers and tradesmen as easy money. It seems that they would certainly be easier to find and capture than real terrorists.In any case, the problems illustrated by this book would be easy for the government to check out.

Some of the reviewers have impugned Sgt. Saars motivations and patriotism.While it is difficult to speak of another's motivations, writing this book is the definition of patriotic right and duty.The fact that we are able to criticize our government is at the heart of what being an American is all about.The free press is the ultimate check on the behavior of our government - the fourth branch.

I believe that the most important point in the book is not the fact that we have violated international treaties and our own principals at Guantanamo, but that it hasn't worked.I remember the mood after 9/11.The world had shifted and only an extraordinary response would keep us safe.But this doesn't give us leave to forget about leadership, training, organized execution and oversight.We seem to have been making mistakes, but ignoring the outcome - the lack of good intelligence and the problems in moral and performance.Sgt. Saar is doing us a service by providing valuable feedback.The question is, will the leadership receive it from this source, as they didn't get it from proper oversight.

You might have noticed that I was using the pronoun "we" when I spoke of activities described in the book.This was unintentional, and when I focused on it, I felt it might have been presumptuous.I certainly wasn't there.I was living in safety and comfort in the presence of my loved ones while Sgt. Saar and the others were doing their countries work in Guantanamo.On reflection, I decided to leave the pronouns where they lay.The military is the shield that protects us, but our surrogates.The soldier shows the world how we respond to difficult situations.

Sgt. Saar's response has been both courageous and appropriate. This is an important book.

... Read more

Amazon.com

Amid his efforts to expose the Russian mob, Robert I. Friedman learned from the FBI that "the most brilliant and savage Russian mob organization in the world" had put a $100,000 price on his head. Reading Red Mafiya, it's not hard to see why: this is a brave book about a troubling subject. Friedman, a freelance journalist, describes the research behind it: "I ventured into the Russians' gaudy strip clubs in Miami Beach; paid surprise visits to their well-kept suburban homes in Denver; interviewed hit men and godfathers in an array of federal lockups; and traveled halfway around the world trying to make sense of their tangled criminal webs, which have ensnared everyone from titans of finance and the heads of government to entire state security services." Their racket involves heroin smuggling, weapons trafficking, mass extortion, and casino operation, among other activities. "Blending financial sophistication with bone-crunching violence, the Russian mob has become the FBI's most formidable criminal adversary, creating an international criminal colossus that has surpassed the Colombian cartels, the Japanese Yakuzas, the Chinese triads, and the Italian Mafia in wealth and weaponry," writes Friedman. They've even penetrated professional hockey, as Friedman shows in an eye-opening chapter ("Federal authorities have come to fear that the NHL is now so compromised by Russian gangsters that the integrity of the game itself may be in jeopardy").

Red Mafiya benefits from a breezy narrative in detailing a master criminal operation whose influence on the United States is growing rapidly. Russian mobsters already have siphoned off millions of dollars in foreign aid meant to prop up their country's economy--and they may have a more direct impact on American national security concerns in the years ahead: "The Russian mob virtually controls their nuclear-tipped former superpower," writes Friedman. Now, there's a scary thought. Lifting the Iron Curtain seems to have been a mixed blessing: it let freedom in, and organized crime out. --John J. Miller ... Read more

Reviews (39)

Brain to Pinky: "Take over the world!"
RED MAFIYA by Robert Friedman is a report on some of the figures and actions of the Russian mob in the United States today. Although, there are some claims that this book is "anti-Semitic," the author is himself Jewish. Friedman was a brave author to write and publish this because of the nature of the criminals he is trying to expose.

The Russian mob has been making tremendous headway in its criminal undertakings since it first took root in the 1970's. It is made up of many Soviet emigres who were brought over to the US because of some of their "refugee" status. Many are Jews brought over through the auspices of Jewish aid and refugee organizations. The two largest centers of Russian mob activity are Brighton Beach (in Brooklyn) and Miami. Many of its members are brilliant and highly educated, some holding PhDs in engineering, mathematics and economics. They have been involved in pretty much everything in which illegal money is to be made: the drug trade, prostitution, sex-clubs, gasoline bootlegging to avoid excise taxes, money laundering, arms deals, extortion, possibly rigging NHL games, jewelry theft and smuggling, the list goes on and on...

One of the reasons for the Mafiya's success is that is has two entire countries to base themselves in: Russia and Israel. Russia is completely corrupt with a crumbling economy and infrastructure. Israel offers a safe haven because it does not extradite its citizens and any Jew fleeing peresecution can seek refuge there. Israel also has very lax banking laws, to encourage the income of capital, so billions of dollars have been illegally laundered there over the years. Most of the top players in the Russian mob are Jewish, including Elson, Agron, Nayfeld, Balagula, noted author Yuri Brokhin, politically connected orthodox Rabbi Ronald Greenwald, Ludwig "Tarzan" Fainburg and the most powerful, Semion Mogilevich. Some, like Ivankov, are not Jewish but hold Israeli citizenship. The fact that many of the mobsters are Jewish is mentioned by Friedman as a cause of law-enforcement's lack of motivation in tackling the issue because it would inflame extremly sensitive political interests. Prominient names appear in this book who have had cameos with mobsters--all the way up to Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

Oh, for a return to the Bad Old Days of the Cold War
RED MAFIYA by Robert Friedman is a disquieting book. In it, he chronicles the waves of arrival and expansion of the Russian mob in the US. The first wave came during the period of the Cold War, when the criminals arrived in the guise of Jewish dissident refugees, settling in Brighton Beach, New York. The second wave came after the dissolution of the USSR, when the new freedoms allowed by perestroika opened the floodgates to the Russian "wiseguys", some with previous connections to the KGB and military, now swarming into Miami, Denver and Los Angeles. Since then, the Red Mafiya has relentlessly extended its tentacles into, and sometimes completely around, such diverse activities and entities as the Russian government, Wall Street, the Russian and Swiss banking systems, the State of Israel, and the US National Hockey League. One of the Mafiya's most startling characteristics is the viciousness of its members. A viciousness forged into a steely hardness under Soviet totalitarianism, and which makes the dons of the Italian Mafia look like a bunch of kindly grandfathers. It causes one to look fondly back on the bad old days of the Cold War, when at least the Soviet security apparatus had its indigenous criminals under some measure of control, i.e. in some Arctic gulag where they could tear at each other's throats instead of ours.

I have mixed feelings about this book. First of all, it's not one I would've bought on my own - it was a gift. I mean, living in Southern California I 'm well aware that there are loathsome elements "out there": mafias of whatever national origin, Latino gangs, Armenian gangs, Chinese gangs, Vietnamese gangs, South American drug cartels. Hell, maybe even brotherhoods of Eskimo assassins for all I know. The best I can do is stay out of their way, much as I avoid dog excrement on the sidewalk. There's not much I can personally do about them except support law enforcement agencies with my tax dollars, which, by the way, are legally extorted from me at 33% or more of my income. (I might well wonder which group is hurting me the most.) On the other hand, as the author points out, the damage that the Red Mafiya is doing to the Motherland may eventually cause a disgusted populace to elevate to leadership a Hitler-like figure - and he's going to have nukes to play with. This is a scary thought. On that basis, I have to applaud Friedman on the courage it took to write such a fine and informative piece of investigative journalism in the face of extreme personal danger. Honor is due.

Antisemitic and Russophobic Thrash by a self-hating Jew
Robert I. Friedman (who recently died) was a terrorist loving, antisemitic and russophobic thrash peddler. His books are full of obscene innuendo and downright libel. He never backs up his sources and engages in Jew-bating (his previous books) and Russophobic rants (Red Mafiya). As a Jew from the Soviet Union and a proud Zionist, I consider Friedman to be as antisemitic and dangerous to the Jewish community as David Duke and Louis Farrakhan.

Poorly written, disorganized, and antisemitic
No, it did not escape me that Friedman is jewish. This book is nonetheless little more than a poorly structured, and poorly referenced screed.

Friedman makes a habit of giving information that is supposedly culled from confidential government reports and other official and important sounding sources without ever backing them up with a reference list, footnotes, or end notes that would lend them any real credibility. He could simply be making this stuff up and one would have no way to confirm or deny any of it.

Further, nearly every time he mentions a new mobster or badguy of some sort, he trips all over himself in his haste to inform us that this person is jewish. If this book was all you had to go on, you would come away thinking that every Russian Jew that comes to the US is some sort of gangster.

Finally, the writing is so poorly structured it's hard to tell why he bothered having chapters with different titles. He may as well have written the whole thing as a single gigantic paragraph.

I recommend you read anything else.

This book is ULTIMATELY RACIST and RUSSOPHOBIC
I have read passages from this book and can say only this--a pure Racism. I do not deny that there are Russian Mobsters in America. They are vicious thugs and they must be dealt with swiftly and justly. I certainly not deny that current Russian Regime is corrupt and authocratic and it is the cause of concern.

However, in this book, Mr. Friedman does not separate mobsters from hundreds of thousands of ordinary decent Russian/Russian-Speaking Immigrants who made the America their home since early 70's and made a great contribution to the American society. For him, all Russian Emigres are either mobsters or somehow connected to mobsters. If you think this book is not Racist consider just a few passages:

"In Russia, Tarzan [nickname for one of the mobsters] told me
dishonesty is a trait that is bred from the womb. Deprivation teaches Russians to be cunning predators--it's only way to survive, he said." (Page 122)

" "The Russians didn't come here to enjoy the American Dream," New York State Tax agent Roger Berger says glumly. "They came here to steal it." "(Intro, Page xx)

"Like many young Russian emigres in East Berlin, Tarzan joined a mob crew" (Page 124)

If this is not a Racism and Russophobia--than what ? If anyone takes all these passages seriously, the next logical step would be for him or her to demand that Russians in America should be confined to concentration camps, thrown out of the country or be discriminated against in any ways possible. Whatever Mr. Friedman tells about his Russian Jewish roots does not excuse him for filling the book with such vicious passages. Any book that teaches people to hate other people because of their national or ethnic origin is a CRIME AGAINST GOD. ... Read more

Book Description

Charlie Wilson's War was a publishing sensation and a New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times bestseller. In the early 1980s, a Houston socialite turned the attention of maverick Texas congressman Charlie Wilson to the ragged band of Afghan "freedom fighters" who continued, despite overwhelming odds, to fight the Soviet invaders. Wilson, who sat on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee, managed to procure hundreds of millions of dollars to support the mujahideen. The arms were secretly procured and distributed with the help of an out-of-favor CIA operative, Gust Avrokotos, whose working-class Greek-American background made him an anomaly among the Ivy League world of American spies. Avrakotos handpicked a staff of CIA outcasts to run his operation and, with their help, continually stretched the Agency's rules to the breaking point. Moving from the back rooms of the Capitol, to secret chambers at Langley, to arms-dealers' conventions, to the Khyber Pass, this book presents an astonishing chapter of our recent past, and the key to understanding what helped trigger the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and ultimately led to the emergence of a brand-new foe in the form of radical Islam. ... Read more

Reviews (70)

History We Didn't Know
Mr. Cline's epilogue accurately asserts that America's support of the Afghans in their war against the Soviet Union is a part of American history we really do not know about --- and he is right. This detailed history gives us that history.

More than a book about a "war", or rather America's largest covert operation ever, this is a book that chronicles the congressional machinations and maneuvering of one congressman who made sure he was on the committee that counted - the appropriations committee.

Mr. Cline relates how this liberal democratic communist hating congressman from eastern Texas - Charlie Wilson - fell in love with the mujahideen and the Afghan cause after the Soviet invasion. In this incredibly detailed chronicle, Mr. Clive tells how he began his mission with the power of the purse without a realistic game plan. Then how a "black sheep" CIA operations officer bought into the war and began to focus the money and energy. Ultimately, a young operative came on board who put the proper strategy in place to truly take on the Soviets and, not only bleed them, but beat them.

Cline has done incredible research. The book is filled with detail that is at times amusing, interesting, fascinating, ironic, historically fascinating and then, just plain head-shaking. One of the best aspects of the book is that Clive interviewed many of the amazing cast of characters after the events had completely unfolded. He added their restrospective perspective on some of the events which added perspective.

This book is a well-told account of a part of our history not only unknown to the American public, but also obviously unknown to most of the Congressmen who voted to fund the "war" to the tune of billions of dollars. It is also the story of some VERY unique renegade characters who pull off this huge covert war. It is clear that the million and billions put into the war was orchestrated by two to three men.

When I started this review I had pegged this for four stars. As I wrote, I changed it to five. The history and characters are so amazing and Mr. Clive relates it all so well that it has to be five.

The epilogue is disturbing as it looks at the support of the Afghanis in the light of post 9/11 - probably a subject worthy of another book. But knowing now the history of our support for the mujhahideen against the Soviets, I feel Mr Clive has given me a better understanding of Afghanistan's (and Islam's) role in the world and America's place in it for the last twenty-five years. This is an important book, well-written and amusing to boot.

What Nonfiction should Aspire to
Prior to reading this book I had no idea who Charlie Wilson was. After reading it, I am both amazed and dismayed. On one hand I was happy to learn that members of our government could exercise the kind of flexibility, tenacity, and skill to run a massive operation against the Soviet Union below the radar of public opinion and Congressional oversight. On the other hand, I was also horrified to learn that a congressman from a Texas backwater with no national mandate could manipulate the system to such a degree.

It's just that kind of book - one that will make you question your assumptions, while enjoying a rollicking spy yarn that Ian Fleming could not have dreamed up. It also offered support to those who believe that individuals create history, rather than events being shaped by "historical" forces.

Finally, one cannot read the book without constantly wondering about the "blow-back" of the CIA's actions in Afghanistan. While no one can legitimately question the fact that it was a good thing to defeat the Soviet invasion, the post-war situation is one we're dealing with today. How many of the Afghanis we trained and armed joined the Taliban? How many have taken the training they learned from Pakistani surrogates in bomb-making, assassination, and other arts of terrorism and are applying it against the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere?

This disquieting book doesn't have the answers, but it's a great start.

utterly amazing
If this were fiction I would have to give it three stars or less for being unbelievably over-the-top. Would you beleive that an alcoholic sex-maniac liberal Democrat Congressman illegaly ran the biggest covert program in the history of the USA without ANY kind of sanction from the Executive branch!?!
Depending on your point-of-view, Rep. Wilson's endless escapades that included drunk hit-and-run car crashes and wasting endless amounts of taxpayer money on flying his many girlfriends around the world will either amuse or disgust you. Likewise the Congressman's one-man foreign policy that was entirely invented by him and approved of by no one. You will be awed by the courage of the Afghans who were literally willing to die to the last man to expell the Red Army from their land. You will also be disgusted by these same Afghans who would rape their Russian prisoners until they died and also took liberties with pack mules supplied by the CIA.
In this post 9/11 world you will wonder if arming the most violent and primitive people on the face of the Earth with modern weapons and giving them a taste for taking down a superpower was a bright idea after all.

It's not the story it's the message...
Apparently many more awake than i knew the story Crile tells (in great detail) in this book of how 1) the Cold War really ended, and 2) why the Middle East is a hotbed of fundamnentalist Jihad-ism today. (Both very important topics.)

as fate would have it i heard of the book because of my interest in Middle Eastern dance, more popularly known as "belly dancing." (Crile's descriptopns of his personal dancers performance was not one of the more credibility enhancing parts of the book-- i never heard of such behavior by any belly dancer here in California where we have a large active group engaged in promoting it as an art form and in support of peace.)

But in this day and age of global terrorism, I read the book-- sometimes ponderous and overweghted with questionable details-- to get to the postscript. To see how all this led to today's envoromnent where America is hated, not loved, and we here at home are so baffled about it all.

In this i was not disappointed. A must read for those seeking an explanation for this crisis of global relations and world peace.

Cowboy Geopolitics
Author George Crile has documented America's initial plunge into the cauldron of fundamentalist Islamic politics in an account that is both eye-opening and disturbing. His protagonist is a yahoo congressman from Texas who flouts both American law and Muslim culture for the purpose of killing Russians in 1980s Afghanistan. Crile suggests that the germ of Charlie Wilson's passion for this cause is a subconscious lust to avenge the sadistic killing of his boyhood dog. Crile is apparently smitten with his hero, whom he attempts to portray as a glamorous daredevil. To this reader, however, Charlie Wilson comes off as a reckless lout and bully, a truly Ugly American. Wilson's testosterone-fueled machinations pried the lid off a Pandora's box of Muslim hatred, and our grandchildren will have to live with the consequences - if we make it that far. ... Read more

Book Description

“Robert Baer was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East.” --Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker

“Robert Baer [was] one of the most talented Middle East case officers of the past twenty years.” —Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Atlantic Monthly

In See No Evil, one of the CIA’s top field officers of the past quarter century recounts his career running agents in the back alleys of the Middle East. In the process, Robert Baer paints a chilling picture of how terrorism works on the inside and provides compelling evidence about how Washington politics sabotaged the CIA’s efforts to root out the world’s deadliest terrorists.


On the morning of September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the terrible result of that intelligence failure with the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the wake of those attacks, Americans were left wondering how such an obviously long-term, globally coordinated plot could have escaped detection by the CIA and taken the nation by surprise. Robert Baer was not surprised. A twenty-one-year veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations who had left the agency in 1997, Baer observed firsthand how an increasingly bureaucratic CIA lost its way in the post–cold war world and refused to adequately acknowledge and neutralize the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalist terror in the Middle East and elsewhere.

A throwback to the days when CIA operatives got results by getting their hands dirty and running covert operations, Baer spent his career chasing down leads on suspected terrorists in the world’s most volatile hot spots. As he and his agents risked their lives gathering intelligence, he watched as the CIA reduced drastically its operations overseas, failed to put in place people who knew local languages and customs, and rewarded workers who knew how to play the political games of the agency’s suburban Washington headquarters but not how to recruit agents on the ground.

See No Evil is not only a candid memoir of the education and disillusionment of an intelligence operative but also an unprecedented look at the roots of modern terrorism. Baer reveals some of the disturbing details he uncovered in his work, including:

* In 1996, Osama bin Laden established a strategic alliance with Iran to coordinate terrorist attacks against the United States.

* In 1995, the National Security Council intentionally aborted a military coup d’etat against Saddam Hussein, forgoing the last opportunity to get rid of him.

* In 1991, the CIA intentionally shut down its operations in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, and ignored fundamentalists operating there.

When Baer left the agency in 1997 he received the Career Intelligence Medal, with a citation that says, “He repeatedly put himself in personal danger, working the hardest targets, in service to his country.” See No Evil is Baer’s frank assessment of an agency that forgot that “service to country” must transcend politics and is a forceful plea for the CIA to return to its original mission—the preservation of our national sovereignty and the American way of life.


From The Preface
This book is a memoir of one foot soldier’s career in the other cold war, the one against terrorist networks. It’s a story about places most Americans will never travel to, about people many Americans would prefer to think we don’t need to do business with.

This memoir, I hope, will show the reader how spying is supposed to work, where the CIA lost its way, and how we can bring it back again. But I hope this book will accomplish one more purpose as well: I hope it will show why I am angry about what happened to the CIA. And I want to show why every American and everyone who cares about the preservation of this country should be angry and alarmed, too.

The CIA was systematically destroyed by political correctness, by petty Beltway wars, by careerism, and much more. At a time when terrorist threats were compounding globally, the agency that should have been monitoring them was being scrubbed clean instead. Americans were making too much money to bother. Life was good. The White House and the National Security Council became cathedrals of commerce where the interests of big business outweighed the interests of protecting American citizens at home and abroad. Defanged and dispirited, the CIA went along for the ride. And then on September 11, 2001, the reckoning for such vast carelessness was presented for all the world to see.


... Read more

Reviews (124)

Everything you need to know about the CIA in the 90's
Baer began as a CIA agent in the 80's. His book sputters through his life in the CIA. It reads like a book written by an amateur and barely roped in by his editor. But his experiences are fascinating. He spent most of his time overseas in the spy trenches with the people who matter today. His ability to use names, dates and locations is amazing. It's not dry at all. It's not James Bond but it is real life. There are lots of names you see on TV today and lots of research regarding terrorism. The last part of the book is a stinging slap to the face of the Washington DC political Babylon. He effectively demonstrates the power of money and big oil in the US capital. The focus on money in the 90's left us vunerable on 9/11. Baer shows you how it was done.
This is a must read for everyone concerned with terrorism.

A great treatise on what's gone wrong with intelligence
Robert Baer does an excellent job of drawing the reader into the shadowy world of the covert world of intelligence. His elaboration (as much as he can divulge) of the training and operations of case officers is both fascinating and worrysome. Fascinating, because it allows laymen get a glimpse of what "could have been" if they too had pursued the life of being a "spy" (come on...admit it, we all have that fantasy), and worrysome because he outlines the CIA and intelligence community's not so slow drift toward reliance on technical means to get intelligence, rather than the days-old practices of the human side of the world's second oldest profession. His elaboration on names that are all too familiar now to those of us who study the mid-east weaves an incredibly complex and captivating web. Immediately after finishing Baer's book, I started on American Jihad, and the web just grows more tangled. Truly a great read, though, and is highly recommended for anyone who wants the "down and dirty" side of espionage. It is all the more important now that we are trying to rebuild it.

Gripping account of the CIA of from the 70's and 80's
Reading this book is like sitting down with a colorful crusty old man who schelped for the CIA for most of his career. Great metaphors, Baer goes into how he was recruited and his hunt for the creeps that murdered over 200 U.S. Marines during the 1980's in Bierut. If you like that kinda "counter-intelligence" thing then this book is a fascinating read.

See No Evil
This book succeeds equally well on two levels. On the primary level it is a fascinating and action packed memoir of a CIA operative who served in some of the most dangerous and inhospitable places imaginable. Its author, Robert Baer, writes from first hand experience and is not shy about sharing his opinions. His writing style is clear and easy flowing. The stories he has to tell are as relevant as today's headlines. For example, in one section of the book titled "You're on Your Own", Baer tells an appalling tale of his adventures in Northern Iraq leading a team in what turned out to be a rather half-hearted effort of the Clinton administration to depose Saddam Hussein. In this activity he even crossed paths with the Iraqi Shi'a Ahmad Chalabi who then as now was adept at fabricating stories of dubious plausibility. In sum any general reader would find this book both a good read and highly thought provoking.

On a second level, Baer's book should be read by any one interested in the subject of the U.S. Intelligence process and its reform. Baer was a practicing intelligence officer for almost 20 years and became a terrorist expert the hard way by dealing directly with such terrorist associations as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizballah on a daily basis. In this account of his intelligence operations, Baer provides a good deal of evidence that Iran, at least in the 1990's, was a state sponsor of terrorism and that Shi'a and Sunni terrorist groups were at willing to make a common cause against the U.S. and Israel. If you read between the lines of this book, it is obvious that Baer has developed a pretty significant target knowledge base on Middle Eastern terrorism which is still relevant today. Yet, no where in this book does anybody talk about intelligence requirements, collection plans, the venerated intelligence cycle or any of the other jargon so dear to most writers on intelligence issues. Instead what we read is how Baer and his fellow operatives used their own initiative to exploit opportunities as they presented themselves and applied such qualities as common sense and target knowledge to decide what to exploit and what to leave alone. Unfortunately many of the opportunities Baer and his fellow operatives wished to pursue were vetoed by his managers at CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) who were becoming increasingly risk adverse especially after 1990. As a former field operative, Baer provides the reader with what I think is an accurate, but depressing account of the decline of initiative and competence within the DO in the years prior to the 9/11 tragedy. Would be intelligence reformers should take note.

PRESCIENT
If you have any interest in why Iraq has turned into a quagmire, you MUST read this book. I proudly voted for GWB in 2000....but find it both interesting and sad that Mr Baer knew right away that Ahmad Chalabi was a fraud and fake, while someone in the the Bush administration or Pentagon fed Chalabi sensitive info that made it back to Iran.

Baer's book is two sides of the same coin: on the one hand, it makes one sad that the CIA is so fouled up (or at least was while he worked there and likely has not markedly improved). On the other hand, knowing that there are patriots like Baer bright enough to recognize this and patriotic enough to want to make a difference, better days could yet be ahead for the CIA. ... Read more

Book Description

Unabridged Audiobook. 2 CDs - 2 hours, 8 minutes. Narrated by Scott Brick & Shelly Frasier

"All warfare is based on deception. Thus, when able to attack, we must seem unable. Hold out bait to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is quick to anger, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant."

Written before Alexander the Great was born, this Chinese treatise on war has become one of the most influential works on the subject. Read widely in the east since its appearance 2500 years ago, The Art of War first came to the west with a French Jesuit in1782. It has been studied by generals from Napoleon to Rommel and it is still required reading in most military academies of the world.

Although it was meant to be a practical guide to warfare in the age of chariots, many corporate and government leaders have successfully applied its lessons to battles in the modern dog-eat-dog world. Sun Tzu covers all aspects of war in his time, from strategy and tactics to the proper use of terrain and spies. In this version, Sun Tzu's lessons are brought to life with commentaries from ancient Chinese history, which illustrate both the philosophy and the principles of his teachings. ... Read more

Reviews (230)

How to run a war or Business
Sun Tzu "The Art of War" was excellent. This book is a great book on strategy. Whether you command a nations army, war games or a moderen business. If the reader uses some of these war tactics and strategies in the modern world, they may find it easy to relate. Thus it is easy to relate to this book. Even rivals in sports and entertainment can be outwitted by the wisdom in this book. It also adds examples of some actions, which show how these sayings and writings apply to the real world.

So no matter what you were looking for in this book, whether it be business, sports, war games, or actual wars, you can be sure to learn more on how to best deal with the situation through the strategies in this book.

The book is timeless....and should be required reading for all persons.

Truths worth understanding
The Art of War is considered a classic of military strategy, and is frequently rapplied in the business arena. Is it about the military, or achieving victory with the mind? Was Sun Tzu really a general? Did he really behead 50 maidens for not taking his military drills seriously? (The next 50 were more serious students - motivation!)

Independent of the truth of the legend, the truths in this book are worth pondering.

Take one piece of advice, roughly paraphrased as,
"Know thy self, win some of the time.
Know thy enemy, win some of the time.
Know both thy self and thy enemy, and win all of the time"

At the surface, this is so obvious as to not be profound.
But look at it's applicability...

How many companies worry so much about their competitors that they don't understand what they're good at? To defeat a corporate competitor, you must know your competitive advantage.

How many people think, "This purchase is in my best interest, so I'll buy it" without considering the price.

How many politicians are willing to say, "It doesn't matter what the Al Quada was thinking, it was wrong, so we must bomb them" How can we truly beat them if we don't understand them?

There are literally hundreds of these truths to ponder - so obvious until you look at how infrequently they're done.

This ancient wisdom is worth more than reading, it's worth understanding.

The ultimate point in strategy !
Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' is the best book ever written on earth. If I had a chance to read only one book in life, it would be The Art of War.

Sun Tzu tels you how to crush your enemy but the book has deep meanings far beyond the violent side of the war. It teaches strategy, preparation, patience, timing, and basically the mind and the spirit of a real strategist.

The best thing in this book is that it is completely transferable to many things in life: You can apply it to stock investments, to management and to interpersonal relationships and so on.

One last thing as an example : Sun Tzu in some part of the book states the things common in winning armies. In this list one of the items is "[the winning army is] whose ranks are all animated by the same spirit". Here is what they tell you in MBA programs, in organizational behaviour courses : the importance of organizational culture. There are many others to discover in this book.

I recommend you read it and see how a book can be so popular after 2500 years passed since it is written!

I will mention the president
This book has nothing to do with George Bush or terrorism, but I feel the need to bring up both issues. George W. Bush is the greatest president in the history of the United States. He might like this book. Terrorism is bad. It must be stopped.

Thank you for your support.

The Best of the Best
This book is absolutely brilliant, and reading it is a tremendous experience. Sun Tzu is the master, and the Art of War, though aimed specifically on military warfare, is a masterpiece on general strategy and tactics that can be used in many sitautions. In fact, I will bet you that many of the most succesful sports coaches, boxers, businessmen, ploiticians, etc use tactics similar to those found in this book.

The Art of War is not a long book, but despite its size, it is totally packed with content. Some themes of the book include

- always ensuring you are prepared

- adapting and responding to circumstances

- knowing yourself, the enemy, and the environment

- being unpredictable, secretive, and deceptive

- making calculations

- exploiting opportunities

- avoiding your enemy's strengths, and attacking his weak spots

- causing disorder among your enemy

- using baits to manipulate others

- ensuring good teamwork through picking the right people to do the right job, good communication, and synergy

- knowing when to fight and when not to fight

The book is an absolute gem. It is invaluable and a must read. Sun Tzu has a beatiful style, and I really love the Lionel Giles translation, which although old, is still hihgly readable and among the best there is. I also recommend Rodney Ohebsion's tranlsation and selection and arrangement of passages, which is an adaptation of the Giles translation, and is in the book A Collection of Wisdom.

In summary, I would just like to say that The Art of War is definitely one of the greatest texts ever written, and is a must for the student of life. ... Read more

Amazon.com

People love secrets. Ever since the first word was written, humans have sent coded messages to each other. In The Code Book, Simon Singh, author of the bestselling Fermat's Enigma, offers a peek into the world of cryptography and codes, from ancient texts through computer encryption. Singh's compelling history is woven through with stories of how codes and ciphers have played a vital role in warfare, politics, and royal intrigue. The major theme of The Code Book is what Singh calls "the ongoing evolutionary battle between codemakers and codebreakers," never more clear than in the chapters devoted to World War II. Cryptography came of age during that conflict, as secret communications became critical to both sides' success.

Confronted with the prospect of defeat, the Allied cryptanalysts had worked night and day to penetrate German ciphers. It would appear that fear was the main driving force, and that adversity is one of the foundations of successful codebreaking.

In the information age, the fear that drives cryptographic improvements is both capitalistic and libertarian--corporations need encryption to ensure that their secrets don't fall into the hands of competitors and regulators, and ordinary people need encryption to keep their everyday communications private in a free society. Similarly, the battles for greater decryption power come from said competitors and governments wary of insurrection.

The Code Book is an excellent primer for those wishing to understand how the human need for privacy has manifested itself through cryptography.Singh's accessible style and clear explanations of complex algorithms cut through the arcane mathematical details without oversimplifying.--Therese Littleton ... Read more

Reviews (201)

Sound, Entertaining, and Informative Introduction
The fine popular science writer Simon Singh (author of _Fermat's Enigma_, about the proving of Fermat's Last "Theorem") has just put out _The Code Book_, a quick survey of the basics of cryptography from a historical perspective.

Singh's book is an enjoyable and well-done overview of the basics of cryptography. He begins with a story about how Mary Queen of Scots was doomed because her crypto was bad, and continues up to the present day. He describes the 16th Century French Vigenere cipher, World War I cryptography, including the Zimmerman telegram, and lots of detail about Enigma. There is a fascinating side branch into the related issue of deciphering ancient languages. He does a good job describing the Rosetta Stone and the work in deciphering that, and a good job discussing Linear B. The concluding chapters discuss computer based cryptography, particularly the Data Encryption Standard, Public-key Cryptography, the RSA algorithm, and Pretty Good Privacy. I was a bit disappointed in the final chapter, on Quantum Cryptography, which didn't explain things as clearly as I would have liked. Their is also a set of ciphers in the back, and a contest for readers to try to decode them.

Singh does a good job describing the characters involved, in the best tradition of popular science. And though I've known a bit about this subject for some time, he still taught me lots of new stuff. I was particularly surprised to learn that British researchers had invented both Public-key Cryptography and an equivalent to RSA several years before the more famous inventor, but that the British government had classified their work, denying the researchers credit for their discoveries.

This is a sound, entertaining, and informative introduction to the basics of cryptography.

Historical and Mathematical intrigue
Simon Singh can describe tails of drama, history, and common mathematical sense into a great book. While most people take cryptography for granted, Singh provides historical and simple examples to illustrate it's importance to mathematics and history. He details it's use in wars, especially World War 2, and commerce. He even delves into the political ramifications of strong versus weak encryption when discussing PGP.

Singh also provides easy to understand ways on how encryption works and even more intriguing, how to break it. He shows how all various encryption algorithms are done, and then how code breakers can decipher them, both in practical and historical consequences.

In the end, he even provides a challenge for would be decipherers out there. Granted, it's already been solved, it's still education and exciting that he offered a considerable amount of money for this challenge ($15000).

All in all, it's a fascinating book that will capture anyone's imagination, even if they hate history or math.

Masterpiece!
This book is truly an achievement! SimonSingh takes up a seemingly esoteric, difficult, mysterious, exhaustive subject of Cryptography (or in simple terms Coding and decoding) and backed up by exhaustive research , he has written an engrossing book; The 400page read is a fascinating journey for the reader. The journey spans a broad range and time period. The hallmark of this book apart from the wealth of information it has, is the facile style of writing of SimonSingh which doesn't smother the lay reader with verbiage or technicalities; The structure of chapters is period wise, starting with the basic codes used during the middle ages, with the advancement of monoalphabetic ciphers and then polyalphabetic ciphers (including the vignere ciphers); then the automation of ciphers which happened during WWII with the famous Enigma machine; Then comes the intresting phase of cat and mouse game between the cryptographers and cryptoanalysts, which has always happened, but took a intense phase during the WWII, primarily between the camp at BletchleyPark,London (which housed a motley crowd ranging from Mathematicians to Linguists, all in a hectic pursuit to break the German code) and the Germans. The simple explanation behind the logic of Enigma is a demonstration of SimonS's ability to express the technical in the simplest of terms.

I found the description and concept of DES , the breakthrough of asymmetric ciphers , the concept of public key and Private keys, digital signatures especially illuminating.

The background leading to the development of PGP by Zimmerman and its features is an highlight and very topical. Next time I buy anything from the Web, i will appreciate the technology of security which happens in the backend;

The politics of encryption between the camps for free speech vs Government control is fascinating and becomes all the more urgent in the light of 9/11 and Govt attempts to curtail and control.

Even if you have a passing intrest in science, you will find this book worthwhile to spend time on . Don't get intimidated by the term Cryptography. This is a not-to-be-missed books. There is history, politics(Zimmerman telegram; Navajova talkers;Hans-Schmidt; )I was mesmerised enough to read it twice in a month's span.

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Fascinating subject!
This author did a fantastic job of taking what could be a very dry subject and making it quite interesting. As the subtitle indicates, he traces the history of cryptography and cryptanalysis from the late 1500's to the modern time.

Singh gives examples throughout, and does a great job of explaining them as well. You don't have to be a math major to follow what he's talking about.

The end of the book contains a "Cryptography Challenge" in which he offers $15,000 to the first person to correctly crack ten encrypted messages. Don't set your heart on the prize; it's already been won. Most of the messages can be decrypted by the average (but tenacious) reader; several of the latter require significant computer skills, however.

Very interesting book
I'd like to put this out there first. If you dont like math and science, get a clue you wont like this book. I however do enjoy math and science, especially computers. This book captivated me from the beginning I very much enjoyed how the material was presented in the codemaking, codebreaking chronology. There was however a section on language as code that I did not care for, but in all honesty Simon Singh writes at the beginning of the chapter that it is a bit of a detour and you do not have to read it. It's a very good book if you would like get a general understanding about cryptography. Or you just love interesting scientific fact and advances. ... Read more

Book Description

Includes a new afterword describing submariners' responses and reactions and a new appendix of all award-winning subs honored for service in Cold War espionage operations.

With 16 pages of black-and-white photos

Reviews (271)

Happiest of the Lot
If, as Carl Builder wrote in "The Masks of War" (Rand/John Hopkins University Press, 1989), the Navy is happiest when left alone, then submariners must be the happiest sailors in the Navy.

"Blind Man's Bluff" was brought to my attention by a three-star Army general, stationed at the time in the Pacific. Pointing to the book on his desk, he muttered about sacrificing our security for the sake of profit. I picked up my copy at the very next bookstore. I wasn't disappointed.

Sherry Sontag and her colleagues did a lot of spade work to uncover the stories about Cold War submarine espionage that they did. Not all submariners and former submariners were forthcoming, but enough were to provide ample detail for the many exciting and dramatic stories in the book. I particularly enjoyed accounts of Adm. Hyman G. Rickover's nuclear kingdom within the secret recesses of the Navy. It's fascinating that a man could hold such power and longevity simultaneously.

When Sontag and company take the reader deep underwater, as they often do, the suspense is palpable and the pressure of the deep becomes real. Tapping into underwater communications cables in enemy waters while Soviet warships circle above is no mean feat.

Those former members of "the silent service" who did grant interviews for the book may have had an occasional axe to grind, but overall I found "Blind Man's Bluff" more history than compromise of national security. It may be as close as we come to transparency when it comes to the world's second oldest profession coupled with the most modern technology. Enjoy.

Follow the real life Hunt For Red October
This book was an intense page-turner, every chapter detailed the dangerous and often surprising measures the US Navy took to spy on the Soviet Union. The early attempts with diesel subs soon exposed their limitations but with Admiral Rickover's wonder sub Nautilus would emerge the perfect espionage platform. Follow the true-life adventures of the USS Halibut as it searches for Soviet sub wreckage, the deadly cat and mouse game that occurred between US and Soviet subs that often led to dangerous collisions and the deadly secret that may have killed the crew of the USS Scorpion. Packed with numerous interviews and testimonies from both US and former Soviet naval crewman, the novel truly opens up the world of submarine warfare and the measures taken win the undersea Cold War. A great novel for anyone who is a fan of Tom Clancy style adventures; this is the real life Hunt For Red October. Be sure you watch the excellent History Channel program based on the book.

The story of the subs that helped us win the Cold War
It is hard to overstate the singularity and importance of this book. Blind Man's Bluff, as the subtitle says, truly is The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage. Before the research of writers Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew (with Annette Lawrence Drew) culminated in the publishing of this book, the stories of hundreds of submariners, true heroes one and all, had been shrouded in the secrecy borne of the Cold War. Many men aged and died without ever telling their wives and children what they did during their tours of duty; many family members never knew exactly how and why their loved ones never came home; many survivors have only now learned, thanks to this book, the exact nature of the missions they took part in, having never been privy to that information during their service. According to the authors, many of these men and their families have thanked them in quite emotional terms for finally telling their stories. The submariners of the United States Navy helped win the Cold War, and they deserve the heroic recognition they dutifully earned in service to their country.

This book basically takes the reader through the secret history of submarine intelligence missions over the course of the Cold War years and beyond. Many of these tales prove once again that truth is oftentimes stranger than fiction. Triumph and tragedy abound. The book also serves as a primer of sorts for the history of the Cold War; the interplay between different American administrations, naval chiefs and admirals, larger-than-life sub captains, and brilliant civilian naval administrators immerses you in the full scope of military planning, action, reaction, and sometimes overreaction. The biggest mistakes that were made all seem to fall in the lap of admirals and high-ranking naval officers and administrators, and these mistakes put many lives in danger and caused a number of unnecessary deaths. The dangerous obstinacy of government bureaucracy is a problem we continue to deal with today.

Submarines fulfilled innumerable intelligence-gathering missions during the decades after World War II. Subs infiltrated Russian waters to glean data about Soviet hardware, missile technology, and military behavior patterns; they secretly tailed all manner of Soviet subs across the oceans in order to identify each type of craft by the slightest of sounds and to learn the practices and tendencies of Soviet sub commanders (helping to ensure that the Soviets would be hard pressed to ever launch a massive nuclear first- or second-strike via the sea); they searched for valuable military hardware (both American and Soviet) along the ocean floor; and they brought home some of the most critical intelligence findings imaginable.

Among the more remarkable stories detailed here are the Navy's successful attempts to locate a lost Soviet nuclear sub (which the CIA later attempted - embarrassingly unsuccessfully - to salvage from the bottom of the ocean), the mysterious loss of the US sub Scorpion (along with new information that would seem to finally explain the cause of the tragedy), and the collision of an American sub with one of its Soviet counterparts (just one of a surprising number of such collisions). Perhaps the most fascinating account to be found in Blind Man's Bluff is America's secret tapping of Soviet military cables underneath the sea off Okhotsk and in the Barents Strait. Submarines made a number of undetected trips to the discovered cables, hiding in relatively shallow waters literally just beneath the Soviet navy's very nose for days at a time, to collect and replace recorded tapes that gave Naval Intelligence an unprecedented look at Soviet plans and capabilities as well as crucial insight into the Soviet military psyche itself.

You will meet some incredible heroes and brilliant intellectuals in this book: men such as John Craven, Commander Whitey Mack, Admiral Bobby Inman, and Tommy Cox, a would-be country singer who immortalized the deeds of his fellow submariners (and memorialized those who didn't make it back home) in song. Then there are John A. Walker, Jr. and Ronald W. Pelton, two of the worst traitors in American history. Walker spent eighteen years building a spy ring that turned over an immense number of secrets to the Soviets for less than one million dollars, while Pelton informed the Soviets of the Okhotsk cable tap for a mere $35,000. These men put the lives of hundreds of brave submariners at risk, greatly compromising their nation's security in the process, and will stand forever among the most infamous of American traitors.

If you want to know what peril under the sea can really mean, read the amazing accounts chronicled in Blind Man's Bluff. America's submariners played a crucial role in our nation's defense for decades, but only now are their stories being told. It is a secret history more thrilling than that borne of the imaginations of the best military science fiction writers.

Knowing where we've been makes me wonder where we are now
Having spent time in the 'other' Submarine force (FBM's), I never knew this much detail of the 'Fast & Black, never comes back' side...although I knew men from that side, they were never able to talk freely about this. Knowing that the Cold War is effectively over, it does make me wonder how much of our capabilities to current and future foes have been compromised as a result of this book. That being said, this book is a great read, and takes a brief glimpse into the silent, yet marvelous world of the Submarine Service. I would recommend that anyone not a member of this elite force read this book.

Surprising
This book is the story of American submarine espionage during the Cold War, a very classified subject in government archives. Starting in the 1940s, the book carries on into the development of submarine technology for the purpose of Cold War espionage programs, all the way into the end of the Cold War. I myself found that one of my own family members took part in the cable tapping of a Soviet Naval base and I never even knew it until I read the book! Read it, and maybe you'll find one of your own relatives was involved in the ultra secret and somteimes tragic story of American submarine espionage. ... Read more

Book Description

This revised edition of the classic guide Silent Warfare accounts for recent earth-shaking world events -- the breakup of the Soviet empire, for example -- and for the most recent laws and thinking on the new dimensions of intelligence. It remains the only intelligence primer.

Shulsky and Schmitt, leading intelligence scholars and government experts, write clearly and for the nonexpert in this first comprehensive overview of the elements of intelligence designed for both the students and the general reader. A guide to the principles of collection, analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action and to their interrelationship with policymakers and democratic values, Silent Warfare provides a useful framework for understanding today's altered intelligence world as well as the future. It is an informative book for anyone intrigued by the shadowy world of the spy or concerned with security threats, terrorism, or economic espionage. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence
This book is amazeing!!!! I love it I have read in three times!!!!

A useful introduction to a much misunderstood subject
Silent Warfare is probably the best introductory text available covering the subject of intelligence. It reads like a text book, but that's because it basically IS a textbook. It's a serious academic text rather than a cloak and dagger story. This is one to read for understanding rather than necessarily for pleasure.

The book is fairly short but covers all the bases in terms of types of intelligence, types of intelligence organisation, the various debates surrounding the subject etc. It is, perhaps inevitably, somewhat America-centric. British intelligence and the KGB stick their heads into the picture from time to time, largely to provide illustrative comparisons rather than as studies in themselves.

When making a point, the authors generally try to provide historical examples and comparison, which is helpful, especially for the beginner. It also helps to enliven the text a bit.

The book is extremely well sourced and many of the end notes contain further explanations and are extremely interesting in themselves.

The only thing I feel the book lacks, and this is a fairly minor quibble, is a bibliography. This would have been very useful, especially in what is intended to be an introductory textbook. A bibliographical essay with suggestions for recommended further reading would have been even better.

Quibbles aside, this is a very good primer and to the best of my knowledge there are no books on the market that can compete with it in terms of providing a solid academic introduction to the subject. People with a serious interest in intelligence would be well advised to follow this book up by taking a look at the works of Michael Herman, which provide more in-depth coverage (especially "Intelligence Power in Peace and War") and a non-American (in this case British) angle - though they may be a little heavy for the absolute novice.

To sum up, if you have never read an academic book on intelligence before this is the one to go for.

Highly Recommended Introductory Text
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in gaining a basic understanding of the world of intelligence, counterintelligence and covert action. The text formed the basis for my course on American intelligence at a local college. The feedback I received from the students about Silent Warfare was 100% positive. A review of intelligence related syllabi from colleges and universities around the country indicates it is a very popular introductory text.

The popularity of this book is due in large part to Shulsky and Schmitt's ability to explain difficult concepts, and navigate the reader through the Intelligence Community bureaucracy as well as related legal/constitutional issues. The students were particularly grateful for the captivating historical examples sprinkled liberally throughout the text. Best of all it is a relatively short read with extensive and insightful endnotes.

My only (and small) criticism of Silent Warfare is its description of open source collection. The authors use a generally accepted definition: "... newspapers, books, radio and television broadcasts, the Internet, and any other public source of information." However, they stray off the mark a bit when they classify "diplomatic and attaché reporting" as open source. I would contend such reporting clearly belongs to human intelligence (HUMINT), as neither diplomatic nor attaché reports are "public source[s] of information." Again this is a small criticism, but as an open source practitioner I could not let it slide.

Overall, Silent Warfare is an excellent text which should be the first read for anyone interested in the world of espionage.

Excellent Introduction to Intelligence
As a whole, the American public is often unaware of the important role which intelligence collection and analysis plays within the development of national security policy; Silent Warfare provides an excellent introduction to this role. While not patronizing the reader, Shulsky and Schmitt have managed to break intelligence down into its basic components, explaining the theories and experiences through easy-to-understand historical contexts. They explain the differences between technical intelligence, human intelligence, and open source intelligence; they also explain the often overlooked role of covert operations within the confines of intelligence and national security policy.

While dealing with such a touchy subject, Shulsky and Schmitt are also careful not to gloss over the short comings of the intelligence community. Within Silent Warfare, they touch on issues such as the "not built here" syndrome, as well as the American tendency to project American values on other populations which may -- or may not -- see things the way we do. They take these criticisms one step further by also presenting possible solutions, as well as the solutions currently in testing phases.

Overall, I felt this book was a great introduction to intelligence, breaking the essential elements down into east-to-understand phrasing and terminology without talking down to the reader and without overindulging in the use of the infamous "alphabet soup."

Core reading
I rather like this book, and believe it continues to have value as a primer on intelligence for both students and entry-level employees. Most interesting is the distinction that Shulsky, himself a former defense analyst, professional staffer on the Hill, and sometime Pentagon policy wonk, makes between the "Traditional" view of intelligence as "silent warfare", and the "American" view of intelligence as "strategic analysis." ... Read more

Book Description

Billy Waugh is a Special Forces and CIA legend, and in Hunting the Jackal he allows unprecedented access to the shadowy but vital world he has inhabited for more than fifty years.

From deep inside the suffocating jungles of Southeast Asia to the fetid streets of Khartoum to the freezing high desert of Afghanistan, Waugh chronicles U.S. Special Operations through the extraordinary experiences of his singular life. He has worked in more than sixty countries, hiding in the darkest shadows and most desolate corners to fight those who plot America's demise. Waugh made his mark in places few want to consider and fewer still would choose to inhabit. In remarkable detail he recounts his participation in some of the most important events in American Special Operations history, including his own pivotal role in the previously untold story of the CIA's involvement in the capture of the infamous Carlos the Jackal.

Waugh's work in helping the CIA bring down Carlos the Jackal provides a riveting and suspenseful account of the loneliness and adrenaline common to real-life espionage. He provides a point-by-point breakdown of the indefatigable work necessary to detain the world's first celebrity terrorist.

No synopsis can adequately describe Waugh's experiences. He spent seven and a half years in Vietnam, many of them behind enemy lines as part of SOG, a top secret group of elite commandos. He was tailed by Usama bin Laden's unfriendly bodyguards while jogging through the streets of Khartoum, Sudan, at 3 A.M. And, at the age of seventy-two, he marched through the frozen high plains of Afghanistan as one of a select number of CIA operatives who hit the ground as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Waugh came face-to-face with bin Laden in Khartoum in 1991 and again in 1992 as one of the first CIA operatives assigned to watch the al Qaeda leader. Waugh describes his daily surveillance routine with clear-eyed precision. Without fanfare, fear, or chance of detection, he could have killed the 9/11 mastermind on the dirty streets of Khartoum had he been given the authority to do so.

No man is more qualified to chronicle America's fight against its enemies -- from communism to terrorism -- over the past half-century. In Hunting the Jackal, Billy Waugh has emerged from the shadows and folds of history to write a memoir of an extraordinary life for extraordinary times.

Reviews (2)

Disregard Publisher's Weekly Review
I used to subscribe to Publisher's Weekly, willing to put up with some of that publication's obvious left-leaning sympathies in order to get the most recent publishing news. But no more. I have just cancelled my subscription based on the incredibly biased and belittling review of American patriot Billy Waugh's book. I can only assume that the review was written by the same editor that reviews (negatively, of course) anything that is positive about America, our current President, conservatives, or the military. The author of this poison pill of a review chooses his adjectives as carefully as if he was attempting to craft fine literature. It is obvious that even a well-told tale of a life lived making sure that rags like PW can be published will never receive a fair review from the commissars at Reed Elsevier, Inc. Billy Waugh is not "a one dimensional, blustering character" and anyone who knows him will attest to that. What he is represents what the left so hates: a man who has devoted his entire life to the defense of this Nation, our Nation, his Nation . . . and you ought to be damn proud that he has.

Required reading for all who enjoy freedom
Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz last April complained to Publishers Weekly about its negative review of his new book. Amazingly, the editor-in-chief agreed and had the book re-reviewed. Billy Waugh should have them do the same. HUNTING THE JACKAL is an incredible look into the world of secret warriors working around the clock to safeguard our freedom. He has hunted--and found--terrorists who top the Most Wanted lists. And here he writes about Carlos the Jackal and Osama bin Laden and others. He's done the dirty work in the world's hellholes (just the descriptions of which seem to upset book reviewers). It is not pretty work, and what they do and how they do it is not particularly appropriate for some polite conversations. But that is the point. This is a well-written book--better than most--that lays out the real underworld in a clean, engaging fashion. You're quickly taken along on an amazing life, and before you know it, you're at the last page, overwhelmed at what you've "witnessed" ... and wanting more. The best-selling author W.E.B. Griffin said it best: "Waugh is the warrior's warrior. From Special Forces missions in Vietnam to black ops work around the world, he has fought our worst enemies hellbent on harming America in ways unimagined. We sleep soundly, our freedoms defended, thanks to men like Waugh. This is his remarkable story -- read it and understand what too few do." ... Read more

Book Description

This is the story of Hanns Scharff the master interrogator of the Luftwaffe who questioned captured American fighter pilots of the USAAF Eighth and Ninth Air Forces in World War II. This Intelligence Officer gained the reputation as the man who could magically get all the answers he needed from the prisoners of war. In most cases the POWs being interrogated never realized that their words, small talk or otherwise, were important pieces of the mosaic Hanns Scharff was constructingfor the benefit ofGermany's war effort. In the words of one erstwhile POW; "What did Scharff get from me? Nothing, yet there is no doubt he got something. If you talked about the weather or anything else he no doubt got some information or confirmation from it. His technique was psychic, not physical." Another POW commented, "Hanns Scharff could probably get a confession of infidelity from a Nun!" They are right. To this day ex-POWs fret and worry over what they said or even might have implied during their interrogations, and over what use Scharff may have made of their slip-ups. This book delves into the question: What was this magic spell or formula used by Scharff which made prisoners drop their guard and converse with him even though they are conditioned to remain silent? The tortures and savagery of the North Koreans and North Vietnamese caused prisoners to resist to the death. Hanns Scharff's methods broke down barriers so effectively that the USAF invited him to speak about his methods to military audiences in the United States after World War II. Raymond Toliver is also the author (with Trevor Constable) of Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe (available from Schiffer Publishing Ltd.)., over 150 b/w photographs, 6" x 9" ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Did you guys even read this book?
Sure, this book has some facts in it, but so does the encyclopedia. I'm not urging anyone to go out and buy a set of those either. This book was very dry reading. I think reading can labels is far more interesting than this book. I'm sure the other readers of this book enjoyed it for the fascination with the facts -- as I am. But to give this book good stars just because he threw in some facts would be an outrage.

Interrogation Techniques Used on American Airmen During WWII
Having researched the history of the post that was formerly Dulag Luft as it is known. "Auswerstelle West" as it should have been referred to after 1941. I found this book to be extremely helpful. As children we always think of torture when it came to interrogations- the common tv perception. It was refreshing to find that the techniques used were not that much different than those employed by today's law enforcement- no not the TV cops with the physical abuse. I grew up on the post, later a US Army post, and the rumors were rampant.I also find it refreshing to see that the Author, Raymond Toliver, a true historian, who has a passion for the subject, addressed the issues of how prisoners were treated by the allies after the war. This book is a must read for anyone who is serious about researching how allied pilots were treated. It would also serve those who are serving today to see the trickery- craft- used by the interrogors.It was also amazing to learn the types of intelligence collected and how it was collated. 5 stars a must read.

A "must-read" book for interrogation techniques!
This book is a fast reader and proves that one doesn't need to beat, hit, scream at, or torture people (as is portrayed in the movies) to get information from them. If you're interested in interrogation techniques and some mind games employed by the Nazi's and the extensive database that they maintained on Allied pilots, this book is definitely for you.

A Great Book about Great Tactics
This book focuses on the interrogation tactics used by Hans J. Scharff on allied airmen that had been captured. Although the airmen were highly trained in resistance, he still managed to complete his task of obtaining information. The Author did an excellent job of telling the story. Also, on a personal note, I found it interesting to see what happened on a post where I grew up so many years before I lived there.

Intriguing and factual, a career worth reading about.
Scharff's career as an interrogator was phenomonial, and this book exposes some of his tricks of the trade in working information out of the cream of the crop: Allied airmen. As someone who knew and interviewed dozens of airmen and pilots who fell into his hands, as well as having worked with Ray Toliver on other endeavors, this book is perhaps the only factual, unabridged expose on German intelligence gathering that destroys the wartime and post-war propaganda. Scharff was, of course, one of a kind. However, his method set the standard for Cold War interrogation policy. An important book for all students of intelligence history and operations. I am proud to have an autographed copy in my collection. ... Read more

Reviews (29)

Don't Worry This Book Won't self-destruct after you read it
Ever since it's formation in the 1950's the CIA. has been one of the most intriguing and at times most controversial organizations of all time. Ronlad Kessler's investigative novel: Inside The CIA offers to shed some much-needed light on the agency's purpose. Using information gathered from interviews with retired CIA and KGB officers, Kessler reveals more about the CIA's structure, policies, and personnel than any James Bond movie ever could.

Kessler explains that the CIA is divided into four chief directorates: operations, intelligence, administration, and science and technology. He goes on to say that these four departments work in unison to keep the CIA runnning smoothly. The CIA could not withstand the loss of any one of these divisons; if the directorate of administration was taken away no one would get employed, paid, or terminated. Likewise if the directorate of intelligence was eliminated the CIA's main role (gaining information about other countries and using that information to protect national security) would not be fulfilled. At the head of all these directorates and sub-directorates is the office of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Movies like James Bond and Misson: Impossible may give people the wron idead about the CIA. Kessler states that "When the public or the media cannot know something they immediately assume that the agency has make a mistake." Many people think that classified information is something the CIA doesn't want to acknowlege; in reality the CIA classifies information to protect the US and its citizens.

I picked up this book looking foward to pages full of clever gadgets and shadowly double agents. What i found was long drawn out procedures and policies that often confused me. However the book was occasionally spiced up with an intresting fact or two. For instance did you know that former president George Bush was once director of the CIA? Or that in the past the CIA hired US citizens vacationing over seas to spy on foreign emmbassies? These seldom facts combined with the agency's interesting history kept me reading. This book might appeal to someone who wants to clear up some of the speculation of the CIA.

Pretty good, but not exactly revealing
evidently, this guy's book about the FBI created quite the stir. when i got this book for x-mas, i expected a lot of information on the operations aspect of the CIA, but was somewhat disappointed. i was pleased with some of the operational history and how the agency evolved through the years to become one of the most skilled, and respected intelligence agencies in the world. but, this book didn't reveal much that couldn't already be found online. aside from his detailed operations accounts and interviews of CIA personnel, just about everything this guy discusses is somewhere online -- most of it on the CIA website. furthermore, i expected at least something on the collection management aspect of the clandestine service, but kessler didn't mention that job at all, preferring to spend a whole chapter on the CIA's games in cuba and with castro.
don't expect to find anything too exciting in here. there's some good operations history, and he does a good job detailing different areas of the CIA, their responsibilities, and how they all work together. but it read like a series of somewhat nonsensical stories told by someone more interested in the garnishes than the entree. if you want to know more about the CIA, you would be better off going to their website first and then reading this guy's book for some 1st person accounts and operations.

Quick overview, lacks substance and gets repetetive
This book gives a good overview of the CIA structure, depicting each department individually. In doing so, the author jumps chronologically and repeats himself. This book had very few accounts of what CIA actually does, apart from a lot of references to the Inran-Contra affair (not exactly explained in the book). Apart from explaining how CIA is structured and giving a couple of semi-bios CIA directors this book leaves you wanting to read something else on the subject.

interesting and entertaining, starting to become dated
This 1992 book by Kessler is quite similar to his more recent book on the FBI, but without the quantity or quality of interesting inside stories. Not surprisingly, despite having excellent access to the CIA, there are fewer details. Again, however, he comes across as remarkably fair-minded--quite critical of failings of the agency, and not afraid to point out flaws and foibles of its leadership--but also sympathetic, refuting some inaccurate charges that have been made. The book has a very amusing and horrible typo in the title of Chapter 24: it is given as "X-Rated Chowder" in the table of contents, at the beginning of the chapter, and at the top of every page in the chapter. In fact, it was supposed to be (as you learn when you read the chapter) "X-Rayed Chowder." A good introduction to the CIA, but it's now over a decade out-of-date.

A large puzzle pieced a bit a time.
It is obvious from reading this book that Kessler did his homework along with the work assigned to other classes. The book is filled with anecdotes and details that help complete the extensive history and organization of the CIA. At times, he gets a little too specific such as when unnecessarily stating the room and floor of the building for a particular meeting. At other times, these minute details gives credibility and invokes a tour-guide-feel to the author. In addition, the author exhibits an overall positive view of the modern CIA though he does not hesistant to mention the CIA's failures.
As for my personal experience, due to the large number of persons discussed, I found myself flipping back and forth to find out trying to recall a name I passed over before. By the last chapter, the final pieces of the puzzle are put together and what I'm left with is a clear picture of the organization of the CIA along with a slightly blurry image of its history. (I just can't remember all those names.) ... Read more

Book Description

he modern means of communication have turned the world into an information fishbowl and, in terms of foreign policy and national security in post-Cold War power politics, helped transform international power politics. Information operations (IO), in which time zones are as important as national boundaries, is the use of modern technology to deliver critical information and influential content in an effort to shape perceptions, manage opinions, and control behavior. Contemporary IO differs from traditional psychological operations practiced by nation-states, because the availability of low-cost high technology permits nongovernmental organizations and rogue elements, such as terrorist groups, to deliver influential content of their own as well as facilitates damaging cyber-attacks ("hactivism") on computer networks and infrastructure. As current vice president Dick Cheney once said, such technology has turned third-class powers into first-class threats.

Conceived as a textbook by instructors at the Joint Command, Control, and Information Warfare School of the U.S. Joint Forces Staff College and involving IO experts from several countries, this book fills an important gap in the literature by analyzing under one cover the military, technological, and psychological aspects of information operations. The general reader will appreciate the examples taken from recent history that reflect the impact of IO on U.S. foreign policy, military operations, and government organization. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The premier book on military Information Operations
This is the most up-to-date book on Information Operations I've read. There are over a dozen contributors from the US, UK and Australia, all of whom have hands-on Information Operations experience. It is must reading for anyone serious about this important field of military operations. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Fast-paced and balanced account of American foreign policy
I had wanted to read this book ever since reading Mr. Kinzer's account of the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran, entitled "All the Shah's Men," which I would also heartily endorse. Like that book, "Bitter Fruit" is an intricately detailed yet fast-paced account of an American-sponsored overthrow of a popularly-elected foreign leader. Perhaps the most unique aspect of the book is the attention that the authors give to providing biographical sketches of all the participants. These portraits serve to contextualize the situation and render the actors' motives more understandable.

As a graduate student in political science, I have been trained to explain political phenomena as functions of identifiable and measurable independent factors. While the parsimony afforded by the academic approach has its advantages, Schlesinger and Kinzer's account reminds us that political reality is shaped by fallibe individuals often guided by imperfect information and their own ideological commitments. Indeed, the most vexing question that came to my mind was how men like the American Ambassador to Guatemaula in '54 and the dogmatic Dulles brothers ever attained positions of such prominence. Their belief that the social reforms being enacted in Guatemala represented the initial stage of a Communist revolution that would spread through all of Latin America seems ludicrous in hindsight, and Schlesinger and Kinzer's account makes clear that the evidence upon which this domino theory rested was shaky to begin with. The role that the "liberal" media played in reproducing the American accusations against Arbenz's government is one of the most interesting aspects of this book.

In conclusion, the authors are clearly antagonistic to the neoconservative ideology that justified American intervention around the world in the name of "anti-communism." Advocates of this view will naturally find weaknesses in their account. That said, Schlesinger and Kinzer are not apologists of the Guatemalan revolution of 1944. They devote ample space to detailing the weaknesses of the economic and social reforms enacted in the name of the revolution. All in all, their tone and their evidence permit the reader to form his or her own conclusions regarding the sagacity of America's interference in Guatemala's political and social evolution.

Destroying democracy under the charade of anti-Communism
Schlesinger's and Kinzer's classic study examines one of the more disgraceful chapters in the history of American foreign policy: the CIA-sponsored overthrow in 1954 of the democratically elected government of Guatemala. The long-term repercussions of this unprovoked excursion are still felt today; many Latin American countries still do not trust United States intentions because of our actions in both Guatemala and, two decades later, Chile.

"Bitter Fruit" explodes some cherished myths that apologists for the coup have proffered over the years. First, it's clear that Roosevelt rather than Stalin provided the inspiration to the presidencies of Juan Jose Arevalo (1945-1951) and Jacobo Arbenz Guzman (1951-1954). Both Arevalo and Arbenz were motivated by the policies and practices of the New Deal; their support for labor and their actions towards American businesses must be viewed in this light and were never any worse than the laws passed during the Depression in the United States. Regardless of whatever tolerance Guatemalan Communists may have enjoyed, or influence they may have had--and it's clear that they didn't have much--the Eisenhower administration was motivated as much by scorn of the Roosevelt and Truman years as by anti-Communism. (Tellingly, those who cite Che Guevera's presence in Guatemala often fail to note that his arrival, at the age of 25 in early 1954, postdated the planning of American intervention and predated by many years Guevera's notoriety.)

Second, the succession of American puppets who succeeded Arbenz were certainly not supported by the people of Guatemala: the ragtag opposition "army" never exceeded 400 troops in number, and none of the dictators during the next four decades could have survived a freely held election. Between 1954 and the early 1990s, tens of thousands of civilians were imprisoned, executed, or "disappeared" at the fleeting whims of a series of brutal tyrants--and this, to most Central Americans, is the "bottom line" legacy of American interference. Third, some defend American intervention because the Guatemalan land reforms in the early 1950s "stole" property from the United Fruit Company. What the supporters of the company's property rights rarely acknowledge is that one of the company's early founders, Samuel Zemurray, acquired its land, as well as a railroad monopoly, by organizing from New Orleans a coup in 1905 that overthrew the existing government and installing UFC's own puppet--all in violation of American law. In addition, when the Arbenz government attempted to compensate UFC for the land (all of it fallow), the company admitted that it had fraudulently undervalued their holdings for tax purposes at $627,000; the land was worth closer to $16 million.

And, finally, what is clear from Schlesinger's and Kinzer's account is that the Americans behind the 1954 coup, from Ambassador John Peurifoy to the Dulles brothers to Eisenhower himself, knew that what they were doing was indefensible. In order to "sell" the coup at all they had to invent a propagandistic war against a democratically elected government to a gullible American media. Not surprisingly, they covered up and denied American involvement not only at the time but during the ensuing years. Furthermore, many of the participants who survived into the late 1970s either confessed their regret to the authors of this book or admitted that the horrific long-term consequences of the coup in no way justified its short-term "success."

The American adventure in Guatemala was fostered by bad intelligence, furthered by greedy intentions, and executed with no coherent strategy, and it dealt a serious blow both to democracy and to the immediate and long-term interests of the United States government. Meticulously documented, this blood-boiling yet even-handed study should be read by all who are concerned by the consequences of ill-conceived, unilaterally executed, and short-sighted foreign policy planning.

another 'forgotten intervention'
Along with the 'Sandino Affiar' this book is a classic detailing american 'imperialism' in the areas covered by the Monroe Doctrin. This book details the 1954 coup in Guatemala in which a lefitst was overthrown. THis is reminiscent of the 1973 coup in Chili where Allende was overthrown. America has been implicated in both coups, yet their is much more evidence for this one. Guatemla was a hot bed of communists in the 50s, Che Guevara himself was their! The Americans sent down some dirty tricks people, many of whom would alter be employed as 'plumbers' under Nixon(people like Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy).

THis is a quick and interesting read. 'Intervention' the story of Americas search for Poncho Villa in Mexico is also an interesting account in this genre.

Every U.S. citizen should be made to read this book
A brilliantly written account of just one of the CIA/US govt crimes in the world (this one was called Operation Success), this book was so compelling that I couldn't put it down. The US paranoia against the communist threat led to some not very intelligent people, including Eisenhower, to assist in ridding the Western Hemisphere of anything that vaguely resembled a left wing movement, and installing the usual Latin American style, U.S. sponsored despotic dictatorship (also, see Nicaragua, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, etc). When Arbenz reasoned about the Comunists in his goverment by saying "it's better to have them visible then to have them underground", no one, of course took notice. According to one set of research figures published in the book, the years which followed Arbenz's downfall have seen the death or dissapearance of up to 200,000 people. The authors of this book have done a fantastic job of revealing this part of American history in a very clear and concise manner, and all I can say is that it's a shame that Allen Dulles, the CIA director at the time, and his stoolies never got to be tried in court for the atrocities they were responsible for committing.

How the U.S. overthrew a legitimate government in Guatemala.
First off, the authors are from the liberal establishment, so there view is the U.S.A. was wrong to bring down the government
of Guatemala in 1953-1954. Even though I believe most of the story, they did not write an objective analysis.

The U.S. Government viewed the Arbenz government as tolerating
Communists in the McCarthy era, along with nationalizing certain
land held by the United Fruit company based in Boston. These two conflicts resulted in the U.S. government authorizing the overthrow of the Arbenz government and the installation of the
Castillo Armas government. Bitter fruit is a play on words due to the involvement of the United Fruit government.

As stated, I think what the U.S. government did was wrong, but I
view this book as not being completely objective. Communists were involved in the government, and Guatemala was like a magnet
to Communists in the 1950s. See Anderson's book on Che Guevarra to note that there were not just a few here. I think the authors overlook this, and view Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers as too concerned for United Fruit.

The book was well written and short enough to read in one or two
days. The book did a good job portraying the actors in this drama, along with the environment in which they operated in. ... Read more

Book Description

Praise for All the Shahs Men

"Stephen Kinzers brilliant reconstruction of the Iranian coup is made even more fascinating by the fact that it is true. It is as gripping as a thriller, and also tells much about why the United States is involved today in places like Afghanistan and Iraq."
–Gore Vidal, author of Lincoln, Burr, and 1876.

"Remarkable, readable, and relevant . . . All the Shahs Men not only reads like an exciting, page-turning spy novel, it deals with the hard issues of today."
–Senator Richard Lugar, Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

"A well-researched object lesson in the dismal folly of so-called nation-building. British and American readers of today should blush with shame."
–John le Carré, author of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
and The Tailor of Panama ... Read more

Reviews (56)

All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle
This comprehensive--and most current--account of the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company under the leadership of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1951 details the reaction of the company, the British government, and US political leadership to that historic event. Mossadegh had become "a defining figure whose ideas, for better or worse, were reshaping history," a fact that the British were simply not willing, or able, to accept. The ensuing crisis pushed Iran into economic bankruptcy and political chaos, vulnerable to Soviet designs. In 1952, Churchill and Eisenhower agreed to get rid of the Iranian prime minister using covert activities of the CIA. The consequences proved monumental for both Iran and the whole region. Seasoned New York Times reporter Kinzer offers a well-researched and attractive book that is more journalism than scholarship. Sources for the numerous quotations appear in endnotes rather than footnotes, and some quotations are from secondary sources whose reliability many scholars have questioned. However, on the whole, this is a valuable and informative work for students of international affairs, with a moving account in the epilogue of the author's visit to Mossadegh's estate, where the leader was forced to spend the last years of his life and where he is buried.

Interesting History, but Some Specious Conclusions
This is a mostly intriguing account of a specific episode in history with some far-reaching lessons. In the early 1950's Iran was a developing democracy but was being oppressed by British oil interests. The newly-formed American CIA engineered a scheme to overthrow Iran's popularly elected Prime Minister Mossadegh and prop up the much less popular monarchy of the Shah. Here Kinzer describes the intrigue and international political shenanigans that led to the coup, which was fueled by anti-Communist paranoia based on Mossadegh's nationalist (but only tangentially socialist) ambitions. This was the CIA's first dirty tricks campaign to destabilize a foreign government, and Kinzer ably points out the irony in how the US overthrew a democracy and installed a totalitarian regime, in order to basically protect Western corporate profits. Kinzer also outlines the very real ramifications this all had decades down the road in the form of radical Islamic fundamentalism in Iran and fractured international relations to this day.

However, some of Kinzer's conclusions are reaching way too far. The book's subtitle confirming "the Roots of Middle East Terror" appears like a ploy to sell books in the aftermath of 9/11, as his attempt to directly connect the 1953 coup in Iran to specific modern acts of terrorism and hatred toward America is not completely logical. For one, he has completely disregarded the continuous Israeli/Palestinian saga. Kinzer's hero worship of Mossadegh and neglect of all other Iranian interests of the period (the Shah barely registers as a character, for example) is also problematic in its one-sidedness. But if you disregard some of the specious conclusions, Kinzer's story is an interesting example of the far-reaching effects of political dirty tricks and unintended consequences on America's relations with the developing world. [~doomsdayer520~]

Kinzer tells us all we need to know about mucking in Iraq
Kinzer not only tells the story of the 1953 coup against Mossadegh itself, but gives a very good historical review of the events in Iran leading up to the coup, and gives us all pause for thought as to how we should ... and should _not_ ... go mucking with other countries and trying to set them up in _our_ interests.

The short term benefits to U.S. and British "national interests" (read: "oil companies") in installing the Shah as the ruler in Iran may have been beneficial (although it's not clear that Mossadegh would have been a whole lot worse), but the long term outcome was pretty much a foregone conclusion: The revolution, and a generation or two with deep distrust if not outright hatred for the Western powers. And we're reaping the whirlwind right now for it.

Must reading. I'd say start at the White House. Rewrite it in small words with lots of pictures, and force Bush to put down the "Very Hungry Caterpillar" and take on something substantial for once in his life.

Presents one angle only, still a decent read
Stephen Kinzer presents one angle very well in his thought provoking book. This book shows how the CIA coup removed Mossadegh from power and brought back the Shah. There are deep implications to this. Any Iranian would be hurt by another country coming and interfering in the internal affairs of their country. Mossadegh was a nationalist, not a communist as a number of reviewers feel. It shows how simplistic a number of Americans are about their knowledge of another country. All this was done for the oil. In the end, we ended up making a lot more enemies than before. The Shah was not elected and was a dictator. He may have done some good and a lot of Iranians were OK for him, but he was bad for a lot of people with his deadly SAVAK. The number of political prisoners tortured were enormous. America would always support any dictator as long as it serves their purpose, but this is a short term perspective. In the long term, it comes back to hurt us. The same was proven in 9/11, as Osama Bin Laden was a protege of the Americans in the Cold War. An enemy's enemy should not become a friend. The true mark of a great leader is to understand the long term implications of any decision one takes. The present day Iran is not in a good state, hopefully it will change for the better soon. But the change must come from within. No one must try to bully them, that would only make things worse for the common person there. It is one of the few countries in the middle east that has potential for real democracy and free thinking, unlike what most people think. They should find their path. The same is true for Iraq, I personally feel that it is simple minded thinking to believe that we can change that country by going in and forcing a regime change. History shows that such things happen otherwise.

Another arrogant westerner thinks he can comment on Iran...
I read Mr. Kinzer's book and frankly I'm not surprised that YET ANOTHER arrogant Westerner, especially one from the New York Times coterie of fabricators exaggerates facts based on HIS ideological stance. Characters like Kinzer think that they can neatly juxtapose their views and ideologies on a culture, a people, a mentality that is entirely different from the one they themselves hail from! This book is nothing more than fashionable posturing! ... Read more

Book Description

From the earliest days of his dictatorship, Saddam Hussein had vowed to destroy Israel. So, when France sold Iraq a top-of-the-line nuclear reactor in 1975, the Israelis were justifiably concerned—especially when they discovered that Iraqi scientists had already formulated a secret program to extract weapon-grade plutonium from the reactor, a first critical step in creating an atomic bomb. The reactor formed the heart of a huge nuclear plant situated twelve miles from Baghdad, 1,100 kilometers from Tel Aviv.By 1981, the reactor was on the verge of becoming “hot,” and Israeli Prime Minister Begin knew he would have to confront its deadly potential. He turned to Israeli Air Force commander General David Ivry to secretly plan a daring surgical air strike on the reactor—a never-before contemplated mission that would prove to be one of the most remarkable military operations of all time.

Written with the full and exclusive cooperation of the Israeli Air Force high command,General Ivry (ret.), and all of the eight mission pilots (including Ilan Ramon,who became Israel’s first astronaut and tragically perished in the shuttle Columbia disaster), Raid On the Sun tells the extraordinary story of how Israel plotted the unthinkable: defying its U.S. and European allies to eliminate Iraq’s nuclear threat.In the tradition of Black Hawk Down,journalist Rodger Claire re-creates a gripping tale of personal sacrifice and survival, of young pilotswho trained in America on the then-new, radically sophisticated F-16 fighter-bombers, then faced a nearly insurmountable challenge: how to fly the 1,000-plus-kilometer mission to Baghdad and back on one tank of fuel; he recounts Israeli intelligence’s incredible“black ops” to sabotage construction on the French reactor and eliminate Iraqi nuclear scientists; and he gives reader a pilot's-eye view of the action on June 7, 1981, when the planes roared off a runway on the Sinai Peninsula for the first successful destruction of a nuclear reactor in history.

Reviews (25)

Exciting, true thriller
When the United States invaded Iraq last year, one of the main objectives was to deny Saddam Hussein the use of weapons of mass destruction. More than two decades earlier, Israeli intelligence sources had already confirmed that Hussein was conducting a secret atomic weapons program and gearing up to produce weapons grant plutonium.

When Israeli Air Force pilots staged a daring military operation and bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, world reaction was harsh and the United States joined in the universal condemnation of Israel. The world would not be as safe today if these brave men had failed in their mission.

Now, for the first time, it is possible to read an inside account of one of the most daring military operations in recent history.

"Raid on the Sun" by Rodger W. Claire tells the story of Hussein's relentless attempts to achieve nuclear weapons as part of his plan to obliterate Israel, and of the small group of Israeli pilots whose complicated, and nearly impossible mission would be to cripple that plan in efforts to safeguard their country.

For more than two decades, details of the attack, as well as the identities of the pilots, remained classified. But Claire, an investigative reporter, gained access to the Israeli commander who planned the raid and subsequently was the first journalist to speak to the pilots.

"Raid on the Sun" reads like an exciting thriller; in the tradition of "Black Hawk Down" it captures all the details of the behind-the-scenes political intrigue, the state-of-the-art fighter bombers and the personal stories of the pilots whose mission faced seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Claire spoke with David Ivry, the former Israeli Air Force commander who later became Israel's Ambassador to the United States. Claire interviewed the IAF pilots who participated in the raid. One of the pilots with whom Claire spoke by phone was Ilan Ramon. Ramon agreed to get together with Claire for an extensive follow-up interview after he returned from participating in the Columbia space shuttle mission in 2003 as Israel's first astronaut. Tragically, that meeting never took place.

"You must be successful, or we as a people are doomed," then-IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Rafael Eitan told the mission pilots before they left on Operation Babylon.

Flying to the east, with the setting sun behind them, the IAF pilots beat the odds and leveled the Osirak reactor in just one minute and twenty seconds.

"Raid on the Sun," an extraordinary true story of Israel's successful air raid that destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor, is fast-paced, suspenseful, and an exciting read.

Lucky it was Iraq and not North Vietnam
Raid on the Sun is more than an explanation of the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force (IAF) attack on Iraq's al-Tuwaitha atomic bomb factory near Baghdad. The book is also a historical and contemporary explanation of Middle East politics and Israeli and United States politics in particular. The book is easy to read - good flow, a good war story, and creates admiration for those flying a high risk air attack.

Too many books about Israel are propaganda overwhelming context. By contrast, author Rodger Claire is exceptionally objective and though some sources may be questionable, he definitively explains his sources in endnotes.

The main story is an operationally detailed description of the attack from inception, political decision making, planning, intelligence, deception of the United States, the bombing run, right to the political aftermath. It's a good story well told and often from the pilot's point of view - the reader is often in the cockpit. The author also sets the context for the attack by explaining the duplicity, profit, and conspiracy of the French government to provide a bomb making nuclear capability to both Israel and Iraq [and now Iran]. Jacques Chirac is front and center. There are the usual Israeli jabs at the structured United States military and equipment. Demonstrably, the United States Air Force F-16 aircraft, the versatile fueling modifications, and training though not intended for this attack made the attack possible. You'll read about the IAF pilot unable to correctly use his navigation equipment, attacking the target off course, flying a 360 degree loop with full bomb load to successfully realign on the target. The F-16 is a great aircraft. A Mirage would have come apart at the rivets.

There's a bonus in this book. The author offers the usual apologia about the deliberate attack on the U.S. Navy electronic spy ship Liberty [much earlier in the 1967 Mid East War] and the profuse regrets by the Israeli government (yea, right). But, here's the surprise. The Israeli Air Force pilot, Iftach Spector, who led the Liberty attack that killed and wounded about fifty American sailors, strafing life rafts as well, was also the squadron commander of the unit attacking the Iraqi nuclear facility. Spector presumably has a vision problem. He couldn't see the United States flag on the Liberty and was the only pilot to completely miss the Iraqi nuclear target.

Credit the author, Claire, for his candidness. Most books by Israelis about the Israeli military paint a too self-flattering picture - best this, best that, best everything. Claire shows all the flaws. There's the puerile squadron commander, the one who can't bomb the target, successfully demanding he replace a junior pilot scheduled and trained for the mission. There's the ego centrism about who will lead the mission, abysmal operations and communications and KH-11 security, navigation errors, and the arrogance shown to US Air Force Air Police when the pilots were training in the States. There's a sense of arrogance about anything American - they violated the treaty with their best ally -- seemingly always manipulating the United States commitment to Israel. The excuse is sovereignty as to opposed to fidelity. Israel claims the best military intelligence in the world but they flew right over the King of Jordan's yacht on the way to Baghdad as the King alerted his own Air Defense. Of course the IAF avoided the formidable Iraqi Air Defense. But give us a break, the Iraqi Air Defense units shut down all their SAM and ZSU AAA systems to go to dinner right before the attack. Scrambling to get the last flight of Israeli F-16's, the Iraqi ZSU 23 crews stupidly fired their cannon rounds into other ZSU 23 crews. Lucky the IAF wasn't flying against the North Vietnamese. Confounded by world wide condemnation, Prime minister Begin responding publicly, confused, thinking he's describing the Iraqi nuclear facility instead mistakenly reveals the location of Israel's storage sight for Israel's 100 plus nuclear weapons 120 feet below the Israeli reactor at Dimona. Those are the weapons Israel denied. If you get the sense this wasn't a model operation, you're right.

The author draws a final conclusion that the 1981 attack on al-Tuwaitha was the inspiration and legacy of the aggressive and preemptive Bush administration's strategic doctrine of preemption or "preventive war" against Iraq. A strategy advocated by Vice President Chaney, and his neoconservatives in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans , (specifically Dep. Sec. of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and Pentagon and Likud (Israel's leading right wing party] policy advisor Richard Richard Perle.) Maybe so.

This book will get you thinking. Despite all the world criticism endured by Israel for the attack, it just may have saved Allied troops from nuclear weapons in the Wars with Iraq.

Black Hawk Down meets Charlie Wilson's War, squished.
Raid on the Sun is fascinating, enthralling, and a quick read. I received it in the mail on a Saturday afternoon and finished it by Sunday night.

Some reasons I liked it:

The book is objective. While the book clearly celebrates the destruction of Saddam's nuclear facility, the Israelis are shown in the book to be ruthless and almost paranoid at times. The Mossad, Irael's version of the CIA, kills almost without conscience, all over the world. The book doesn't shy away from the "innocent" Frenchman who was killed in the attack on the Osirak reactor. Rodger Claire details the duplicity Israel used in fooling its most trusted and closest ally, the United States, in order to gain better information and equipment. In other words, it is not simply a white-washed pro-Israeli book. It gives both sides, which is nice.

However, it does portray the Israelis as misunderstood heroes who were perhaps ahead of their time in understanding the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. At the time, the United States officially condemned Israel for the strike, but clearly it was a gutsy move that the U.S. increasingly appreciates to this day.

The book has a good pace. It's not merely about a bombing mission. It goes into how the mission was meticulously planned, how the pilots trained and prepared, how intelligence was gathered all over the world, and how internal political changes in France, Iran, Israel, and the United States factored into the crafting of the plan.

I almost wish the book were longer and more in-depth; its brevity is one of its strengths and weaknesses all at once. The abbreviations are profuse, but there is a guide to them at the beginning of the book. After a a few dozen pages, the abbreviations (AAA, GCI, KH-11, MH-84, SAM, etc.) become easier to immediately identify and understand.

I would definitely recommend this book to just about anyone, because it sheds some light on the way things are in the world today, and because it is a real thriller of a book. Weapons of mass destruction were not some mythical and fabricated justification for war in Iraq, based on the history in the region. Intelligence experts in 2002-2003 had good reason to believe the worst of Saddam Hussein and his progress at "going nuclear," given his past. The book details Saddam Hussein's quest for nuclear weapons, as well as his motives for seeking them, dating back to the early 1970s.

I wish it had expanded on some of the Mossad activities, more of the political machinations, more of the policy ramifications, and more of the individual lives of the key players. In general, there could be much more amplification. But it is still an amazing book, and one you can probably finish on a plane ride or at the beach one afternoon.

This great technothriller is a true story!
Wow! This exciting little book reads like a Tom Clancy technothriller, but it's the true story of the 1981 Israeli raid that is all that stopped Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons. Surrounded by enemies, tiny Israel has always had to be tough and resourceful to survive. When the Begin government learned that Saddam was building a reactor to enrich uranium to build atomic bombs, they tried diplomacy to convince France to stop providing the needed components. But when that failed, they fell back on their own resourcefulness, ingenuity, resolve and courage, and sent eight F-16 fighters on an astounding mission to destroy the reactor.

Rodger Claire interviewed all of the surviving planners and pilots, including Ilan Ramon, the youngest of the pilots, who became Israel's first astronaut and who died in the Columbia tragedy. In 250 pages, we get the exciting action story, and the thoughts and emotions of the participants as they meticulously planned and executed this extraordinarily dangerous mission. We also get some background on France's 30-year partnership with Saddam, and a photo of Jacques Chirac and Saddam grinning at each other in Baghdad in 1974, that speaks volumes to today's world.

Claire has a fine facility with language, making the book delightfully readable, and he weaves a gripping story that I stayed up until 2 AM to finish. There are occasional minor technical inaccuracies, that readers with detailed knowledge of military aircraft will notice, but they don't detract from this wonderful book.

Great story about amazing events
Reality is better than fiction, and this book proves it. Combining a detailed, analytic and often humerous decription of the raid and meticulous preparations for it, including inter-personal dynamics and ego wars within the Israeli defense establishment, with zesty morsels of Mossad operations in various countries, this book tops any 007 account. How grateful the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia and many other countries should be for the elegant and courageous work of the Israeli Air Force. ... Read more

Book Description

In this new edition of his classic 1970 memoir about the notorious U-2 Incident, pilot Francis Gary Powers reveals the full story of what actually happened in the most sensational espionage case in Cold War history. After surviving the shoot-down of his reconnaissance plane and his capture on May 1, 1960, Powers endured sixty-one days of rigorous interrogation by the KGB, a public trial, a conviction for espionage, and the start of a ten-year sentence. After nearly two years, the U.S. government obtained his release from prison in a dramatic exchange for convicted Soviet spy Rudolph Abel. The narrative is a tremendously exciting suspense story about a man who was labeled a traitor by many of his countrymen, but who emerged a Cold War hero. ... Read more

Book Description

This book provides a detailed overview of America's vast intelligence empire-its organizations, its operations (from spies on the ground to satellites thousands of miles in space), and its management structure. Relying on a multitude of sources, including hundreds of official documents, it provides an up-to-date picture of the U.S. intelligence community that will provide support to policymakers and military operations into the next century. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A Great Reference
I met Richelson years ago and was amazed at his comprehensive knowledge of the intelligence community. For anyone who needs a reference guide to the organizational structure as well as the operations of the intelligence community, this is the book.

Excellent reference of the US Intelligence community.
Richelson does an excellent job of providing a link and detail to all of the U.S. intelligence successes and failures over the last 35 years. This is a superb reference book for the young and old intelligence officer in a Joint or Interagency environment that needs to know how the intelligence system in the United States works. Richelson does not write in theory. All of this book is practical, useful and hard-hitting. It will give you excellent depth and insight into those often heard but little known intelligence successes and debacles. From the USS Pueblo to the origin and current status of satellite intelligence, this book covers it all. ... Read more

Reviews (12)

Plod through the Sink of Iniquity
This book is a minor contribution to the history of the Cold War. I found herein a multitude of questions answered that had been nagging me for years. Such as the Duncan Lee story. That said, this is not a definitive history. We will wait a long time for that maybe twenty years after all the Soviet Archives have been mined. The authors have taken all the names that were revealed in the Venona materials by the US government. They took advanage of a brief window of opportunity to get in the Soviet Archives before access was again restricted. Then they collated all of this, sorted out the names into topical chapters, researched as much as could be done to briefly discuss each person, and then put it all together. Because this is based only on individuals mentioned in the Venona intercepts, the story is spotty, incomplete, and sketchy in places. This is more a volume to consult for names seen elsewhere than to read straight through. It is far from a bedside thriller or a "good read." Workmanlike but not all inclusive. Did what they intended.

Requires us to rethink much of the 20th century
This book, jammed with information that's only come to light in recent years, tells a number of fascinating stories.

For starters, there's the story of an intellectual adventure. Venona was a small group of government employees who, with fearsome gobs of skull-sweat and toil, decrypted thousands of secret communications sent between Soviet embassies and Moscow during and immediately after World War II. The messages used an encryption scheme so complex that it would be a challenge to crack even with today's technologies. But teams of Americans and Brits--mostly female, as it happens, although there were plenty of brilliant men--were able to decode them with little more than pencil, paper, and brainpower.

Venona is also a story of terrible treachery. Independently corroborated by data from the Soviet and Comintern archives, the Venona decryptions confirm things that were once controversial. For example: the American Communist Party was a puppet of Moscow that eagerly engaged in criminal activities. Julius Rosenberg and Algier Hiss were guilty. Literally hundreds of Communist agents deeply infiltrated American government at the highest levels. And the Soviets also had a substantial subversive presence within the American labor movement and in many elite segments of American society.

Venona is also a story of Western bumbling. For years, naive American officials ignored or dismissed suggestions that there was any Communist threat. Several times this resulted in tragic losses now painfully visible in retrospect.

Perhaps most damning of all, Venona is a story of how obsession with secrecy can be costly. The Soviets became aware of Venona shortly after the war ended. They completely overhauled their systems, and the Venona project decrypted no valuable communications after the mid-to-late 1940s. This more than anything is what makes Venona fodder for discussion and debate.

From a conservative perspective we can understand why Venona was kept secret: Even after Venona's cover was blown, the Soviets could not know everything the US had managed to decrypt. For years after the Soviets found out about Venona, US counterintelligence was still able to make valuable use of Venona information.

But even when we knew the Soviets had discovered Venona, we refused to reveal so much as a single scrap of their decryptions to the public--even when such revelations would have helped convict traitors or eased public fears. Throughout several Democratic and Republican administrations, everything about Venona and what it had uncovered remained surrounded by a dense cloud of secrecy.

While the Venona secrets would seem to corroborate the worst and most paranoid fears of 1950s McCarthyism, the truth is arguably the reverse: because of information Venona uncovered, the US and most other Western governments did a thorough housecleaning in the years immediately after World War II. During those same years most of the leaders of the American labor movement also performed some housecleaning, and Communism lost its chic appeal in much of elite society. This was all BEFORE Joe McCarthy went off the deep end. Had at least some of the Venona messages been revealed to the public after we knew the Soviets had caught on, congressional anti-Communist investigations, had they happened at all, might well have been conducted in a more honest and responsible manner. In any case, years of pointless debate between conservative and left-wing intellectuals would have been avoided. And countless stereotypical Hollywood portrayals of anti-communists as paranoid and irrational probably wouldn't have happened.

Because ultimately, Venona confirms that people were right to suspect and fear the Communists. But it also demonstrates that by the 1950s, Soviet infiltration had become a manageable problem rather than a screaming crisis.

That excessive care with secrets can be just as destructive as carelessness with secrets has been argued rather passionately by former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was in large part responsible for the release of the Venona information, and who wrote this book's introduction. After reading it, it's hard not to see his point.

Harvey Klehr (Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History at Emory University) and John Earl Haynes (20th Century Historian for the Library of Congress) do a fine job of not only relaying the Venona information, but of showing how it is independently corroborated by information now available in the archives of the former Soviet Union and the Comintern. But if their workmanlike prose is easy enough to read, the sheer number of players, events, and their interactions that are covered are sufficiently dizzying that a "Dramatis Personae" section at the start of every chapter might have been helpful!

It's not light reading. On the whole, however, this book is a must-have reference to anyone interested in the history of the 20th Century.

"TO VOTE FOR BILL CLINTON."
In 1943, the U.S. Navy intercepted word that Josef Stalin was going to sue for a separate peace with Adolf Hitler. They also discovered that Alger Hiss, a leading New Deal Democrat and top advisor to President Roosevelt, was a Soviet spy. In addition, numerous high-level Democrats in FDR's Administration were Soviet spies and "fellow travelers." They approached FDR, whose response was "f--k off." The Navy, during this time of greatest national security threat, reached the conclusion that the Democrats could not be trusted! In response to this, they began the Venona Project, designed to read all the Soviet cable dispatches. Venona continued to confirm that the American government and society was rife with Soviet espionage from within the ranks of the anti-American Democrat Left.

When the war ended, the Republicans began to investigate these rumors. Richard Nixon asked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to assist. Hoover told him he could not let him view Venona because it was too important to the on-going Cold War vs. Soviet Communism, but that Nixon's instincts, particularly about Hiss, were right. Hiss was convicted. Numerous Leftists were convicted or exposed, as were many in Hollywood. When McCarthy went after them, the Left attempted to discredit him. Venona would have justified him, but Hoover refused to disclose Venona's secret. McCarthy was sacrificed and allowed to twist in the end, and for decades the Left proffered the lie that there were no Communists in Hollywood, the government, the Army or in America.

After Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, Soviet archives were opened. Venona was discovered and became the Venona Papers. It verified that Hiss and all the accused and convicted Communists in Hollywood, the government, the Army and in America were in fact Soviet spies or "fellow travelers." One of those fellow travelers had escaped to Russia, but returned when the Statute of Limitations ran out. He returned to the U.S. in 1996. He was asked why.

"To vote for Bill Clinton," he replied.

Is further commentary really necessary?(...)

Decoding Soviet Espionage
Venona is an outstanding history lesson. It clearly illustrates the pervasiveness of Soviet Espionage in the United States during (and after) World War II.

Unlike many such studies, this is well researched and utilizes not only US but also period Soviet sources.

Highly recommended.

Liberal
A great man once took up the cause of defending our nation against the most terrible enemy we had ever known. For this, we was hounded and slandered relentlessly by the Left, his associates gay-baited, his very name made a malediction for generations to come. But was he right?

Definitive evidence shows that Joseph McCarthy was right to an extent even he could not have imagined. Venona describes the ultra-secret code-breaking project begun by Carter Clarke of the US Army Military Intelligence division and later run by the National Security Agency. Through incredible persistence and ingenuity, we managed to intercept and decode secret communications between Moscow and its embassies in America. The work that went into this effort is astounding, and even though we managed to decrypt only a tiny fraction of that traffic, the information that we obtained showed that the United States government was infiltrated to the highest levels.

Roosevelt was not even made aware of the Venona project because his personal aide Lauchlin Currie was a Soviet spy. The director of the International Monetary Fund, Harry Dexter White, was a Soviet spy. Alger Hiss, assistant to the Secretary of State and advising Roosevelt at Yalta, was a Soviet spy.

If American liberals didn't think that Communist Party members were potential recruits, the KGB certainly did. Beginning in 1942, the Soviets abused our war-time alliance to stage an all-out espionage assault on our territory. Hundreds, literally hundreds of CPUSA members were active spies. Haynes and Klehr conclude that one-seventh to one-third of OSS employees were Soviet agents. Venona clearly shows that CPUSA operations were not directed by its nominal leader but by Moscow. After the end of World War II, the CPUSA tried to expand its base by allying itself with the Democratic Party but reversed under direction from Moscow.

But KGB operations on American soil were not limited to spying alone. Defectors from the USSR who jumped ship seeking refuge here were kidnapped from American soil and restored to the Soviet Union. The CPUSA also provided invaluable assistance to the assassins sent to kill Trotsky in Mexico.

Disinformation campaigns were mounted to affect public opinion of the USSR. The KGB used journalists to influence editorial policy as well as obtain inside information. Stephen Laird would report in The New Republic the Polish elections as being free and fair, a view not shared by many of his colleagues. Journalist I.F. Stone, hailed by the elite when he spread the lie that the United States started the war in Korea, was on the KGB payroll. In France, the Communist party ran a campaign of defeatism toward the German invasion.

The naivety and apologetics of some of the Soviets' supporters is beyond belief. Open Communist sympathisers and spies were fêted by the social elite. Academicians readily took up the cause of KGB spies, assassins, and traitors. Books written in the 70s about Senator McCarthy still exculpate people whom we know beyond the shadow of a doubt were Soviet spies. While Laurence Duggan is often described as an innocent victim driven to suicide after relentless FBI interrogation, he was in fact Soviet a spy who saw the jig was up. Ironically, Maurice Halperin, a spy who escaped arrest, became disillusioned first by Soviet and then Cuban Communism and eventually settled in Canada.

But also politicians on the Left showed bad judgment. The State Department convinced Roosevelt to return as a goodwill measure to the USSR, uncopied, code books that were found in Finland and that would have had fantastic intelligence value. Truman ignored the Venona evidence and dismantled the OSS after World War II, reversing himself in 1947 fearing Republican charges of laxity. Further interesting is learning how the persistence of Richard Nixon helped expose more spies, and that the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover actually protested the internment of Japanese during World War II.

Although the FBI at times was really on the ball in investigating espionage, they had great difficulty obtaining convictions because of the inability to use intelligence evidence in court, or even indictments because of the State Department's desire not to upset relations with the Soviet Union. Even after having actually witnessed Judith Coplon handing over state secrets to a KGB agent, that evidence was ruled inadmissible. Many spies were never punished at all for their crimes.

The Rosenbergs were not only spies themselves but actively recruited their own network which did horrifying damage to our national security. They handed over designs for advanced jet engines, radar systems, and the highly advanced 'proximity fuse'. When they were arrested, two members of their ring (Alfred Sarant and Joel Barr) immediately escaped to the USSR where they received fantastic benefits not accorded to ordinary Soviet citizens. They founded the Soviet microelectronics industry and created the first Soviet radar-guided anti-aircraft missle system which became highly successful against the United States during the Vietnam War. Of course, the Rosenberg ring allowed the Soviets to develop the atomic bomb and terrorize the free world for the next half a century. In his memoirs, Khrushchev thanked the Rosenbergs for their sacrifice to the Communist cause.

Haynes and Klehr proffer the suggestion that the penalties against convicted spies might have been less severe had the Venona evidence been made public at the time. Given the extent of damage that was done to our national security I find this difficult to believe, but in any case it is ludicrous to expect the United States to surrender its most valuable intelligence source to exonerate traitors.

Oh, and the KGB code name for Julius Rosenberg? 'Liberal'. ... Read more

Book Description

From sources inside the Pentagon and the CIA, Bill Gertz tracks the path of terrorists and terrorism in the United States. He uncovers information that could have prevented 9/11. ... Read more

Reviews (30)

Head Are Going to Roll!
Bill Gertz shows again why even his adversaries rate him as America's premier intelligence reporter today. Gertz's expose of the intelligence failures that led up to 9-11 is going to shock the nation and cause some much needed soul searching in our intelligence community.

The book is written in terse, fact-based prose that often reads like a suspense thriller. Yet it's based on Gertz's solid news reporting experience on the spy and defense beat with the Washington Times, earning him a reputation as the man with the best top-secret leaker's rolodex in Washington.

Gertz is also a patriot. He takes names, kicks ..., and points the finger squarely at our intelligence agencies' politically correct, risk-averse bureaucatic culture for failing to provide the "human intelligence" necessary to prevent terror attacks. This is a book that delivers. If Gertz's advice is taken, some heads are going to roll, notably that of Clinton holdover George Tenet at CIA. America and the world will probably be a safer place as a result, and our spy networks will get a long overdue new set of teeth.

Was America's Intelligence Community To Blame for Sept 11?
The principal premise of best selling author Bill Gertz's book Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11, is that there was a monumental screw up of the intelligence community in Washington.

There are certainly many revelations of the book that are nothing more than a rehashing of various news stories presented over the past year by the media. Nevertheless, the synthesizing of this information definitely helps the reader to better understand the root causes of the breakdown.

Gertz provides the reader with impressive evidence to support his contention that Sept 11th could have been prevented, if the intelligence community had worked together in harmony. In order to defend his case, the author relies heavily on information gleaned from congressional hearings, court documents, classified memos, foreign governmental reports and letters, speeches and personal interviews with some of the former employees of the intelligence services.

Each chapter examines a different branch of the US intelligence apparatus and how they were all guilty of incompetence. He further adds that even Congress was a partner and should likewise share the blame, and its oversight of intelligence-or lack of it, or wrong use of it- is a prime cause of the intelligence breakdown that led to September 11.

No doubt the reader will find some of Gertz's findings lethal. For example, he refers to the Phoenix Memo, where special agent Kenneth Williams from his Phoenix office wrote to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001 that they should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities/colleges around the world. More than a year before Williams was involved in investigating some of the students attending this civil aviation universities and colleges. The FBI never took his warning seriously, and as mentioned in the book, "it did not get analyzed, and it was not shared with other intelligence agencies or even other FBI field offices, except New York."

Although at times the wealth of information may be difficult to immediately digest, there is no doubt a bitter aftertaste left in one's mouth once you ponder over some of the author's findings. This information packed book is nevertheless a welcome and discussion-provoking addition to the growing body of literature on this important subject matter.

Norm Goldman Editor of Bookpleasures.com

The Cost of Bureaucracy
The author presents considerable evidence that the September 11 attacks might have been prevented. He also has recommendations for changes in our intelligence gathering and analysis that he believes might prevent future terrorist attacks. My main impression of the message of "Breakdown" was that the principal problem was the bureaucracy. I view such things as inability of lower level personnel being able to communicate concerns to levels higher than their immediate supervisor and the tendency of an agency to protect its own turf at the expense of not sharing information with other agencies to be to be bureaucratic failures. These are situations the author illustrated within the agencies such as CIA and FBI prior to the September 11 tragedy.

Although the Clinton administration comes in for particular blame in neglecting to give proper attention to matters of intelligence, the Congress and Bush Administration were not left free of blame.

Some problems presented by the author as causes of "Breakdown" were the failure of the agencies to adjust to changing circumstances. There was too much dependence on electronic intelligence gathering and not enough emphasis on the need for human involvement. There was also too much dependence on obtaining intelligence from foreign governments.

Many pages of appendices were provided. Some were of little use due to lack of information or being unreadable. One appendix of particular interest, however, was the detailed well-written letter from a Minneapolis FBI agent to the FBI Director in which she is very frank about the shortcomings of the agency in dealing with information about the so called twentieth hijacker of September 11.

I found the book to be both interesting and informative.

Needs to focus the blame
Since the blurb on this book has glowing endorsements from such people on the right as Jeane Kirkpatrick and Edwin Meese, and furthermore, since Washington Times (that's Times not Post) reporter Bill Gertz spends a lot of ink going after the Clinton administration and Janet Reno, one might be led to believe that the now universally acknowledged failure by the spook culture in the United States was caused by liberal restrictions on the FBI, the CIA, etc. However, a careful reading of Gertz's (frankly pedestrian, I am sorry to say) effort will reveal that he knows the failure lies exactly where the title of the book says it lies, that is, within the intelligence institutions themselves.

Consider just this little tidbit from page 28, "the FBI, as late as 1998, had only two Arabic speakers who could translate documents written in Arabic." Imagine that: billions of dollars spent for high tech equipment, "Chevy suburbans," international travel for all those Ivy League grads to talk to other button-down guys in other countries, and all those hours fighting turf wars and playing cops and robbers to keep the price of street drugs high, and guess what? there's virtually nobody who can read the reports from the Middle East! Gertz emphasizes the point in the next paragraph by quoting former director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey: "Obviously, both the FBI and the CIA would have been very well advised MUCH EARLIER to have trained, or retrained, or hired a much larger group of people who spoke Arabic, Farsi, and some of these languages of the Mideast." (My emphasis.)

That's a "duh, dude" and it goes back well before the Clinton administration. Indeed, Gertz likes to remind us of the intelligence failures pre-Pearl Harbor. (See, e.g., page 36.) I would like to remind everybody of two other points, one that the premier intelligence agency director of Spook Culture and part-time architect of how to spy and be spied upon is none other than the former director of the CIA, our past president and father of the present president, George H.W. Bush. His mentality and legacy is partly responsible for an intelligence community mentality that is insular, and intellectually and educationally incestuous to the point of something close to sterility. Thanks to a long over reliance on high tech and white male conservative operatives our intelligence institutions are without the means to penetrate cultures other than our own.

My second point is, the failures continue! Where is Osama bin Laden? Where is Saddam Hussein? Where are the perpetrator(s) of the anthrax mailings? Clinton's excuse for not getting Osama bin Laden, as reported by Gertz, was fear of civilian casualties. After 9/11 we gave up a lot of the niceties about collateral damage and let it fly. But again we missed him and we missed Saddam Hussein. And with the number of possible perps that could have had the knowledge, the opportunity and the motive for mailing weapons grade anthrax to select domestic targets countable by, say, the Easter Bunny, one would think, one would readily imagine that the FBI knows darn good and well who mailed the pathogens, leaving many of us to speculate (especially considering the deadening silence coming from the White House) that somebody, somewhere has already blown that case.

The sad and frustrating truth that almost everyone now knows about American intelligence, and something that Gertz should have emphasized, is that we will have no effective intelligence, no effective counterintelligence, and no effective way to prevent terror until the cultures in the FBI, the CIA and the other intelligence communities enjoy a fresh and massive infusion of more cosmopolitan, more sophisticated, more multi-ethnic and more diversified personnel. And that, my friends, will take decades. We are offering $25-million for the cold, dead body of Saddam Hussein, and we are getting no takers. You want to know why? Because there is not an American spook in the entire Middle East who can convey convincingly that kind of message to the people on the ground, the street and village people of the Middle East who might have some inkling. Our intelligence community has been so high and mighty and divorced from any effect of criticism for so long that it actually has no idea of what a lousy job it has been doing. It lets criticism run off his back like so much political dishwater not realizing for a moment that it has failed.

One hopes now, that with the right and the left in agreement on those failures, effective change is taking place and we will be spared the horror of another 9/11 in the form of a suitcase nuke blowing up in one of our harbors. One hopes.

Failure is not an option
Allow me to repeat that: failure is not an option - unless, presumably, you work in the CIA and your name is George Tenet. Bill Gertz effectively dissects and examines the failure of our government to prevent the horrific events of 9/11 in a well-written effort that exposes the many deficiencies that ultimately led to that ignominious failure. Paramount among them, Gertz says, are "a system hamstrung by bad politics, poor leadership, and bureaucratic ineptitude."

Gertz also points out the most glaring problem at hand: a flagrant lack of accountability - especially within the CIA. Gertz tells how Langley was notified of an impending Al Qaeda attack, and, of course, made no precautions whatsoever. Clinton holdover Tenet dropped the ball(as he has many times since), and he must pay the price. Consequences and repercussions must be meted out. Accountability must be respected. Tenet still arrogantly proclaims that his intelligence gathering ability, the same intelligence that has since proved faulty in Iraq, is sound and beyond reproach. Mr. Tenet, there's the door. Don't let it hit you on the way out. ... Read more