Agencies

Post cold-war and especially during the Clinton administration, the USIA became the mouthpiece of NAFTA and the evangelization of people in other countries of the benefits of accepting American-style economies. This very brief book outlines much of this history and the author Nancy Snow makes it clear that any positive aspects of the program like the Fullbright program have been long buried under the pro-business propaganda machine of the Clinton and Bush the Younger administrations. The Fullbright program in particular became a tool to influence thought on market economics in Mexico and Canada, whose citizens were ambivalent about the promises of economic development promised by NAFTA.

Today, much of the USIA's work has been rolled into the State Department, headed by former advertising executive Charlotte Beers, who is charged with "rebranding America to the world" like the Uncle Ben's Rice she used to work on. The USIA is one of the vehicles of US economic and cultural hegemony, especially in countries that we can't go to war with. Snow's history and analysis ends with an action plan that is wider reaching than simply what to do with the USIA. It is really a series of concrete ideas for reforming the very government of our country.

The author rightly stigmatizes harshly the democratic deficit in the US: a media monopoly, a political duopoly ruled by big business and big money, and a plutocracy which dominates without control public welfare, public lands, public airwaves and the pension trusts.
Prof. Snow proposes a seven point plan to restore true democracy, but the implementation will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

This book should be read as a classic example of how particular interest groups take control of a public institution and turn it into a pro-private interests mouthpiece.

Not to be missed.

Christopher Andrew is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cambridge University's Corpus Christi College. He has written many books on secret intelligence including The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev, Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community, and "Comrade Kryuchkov's Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975-1985. Andrew is a frequent host of British Broadcasting Corporation television and radio history productions. He holds the Chair of the History Faculty at Cambridge University, the Chair of the British Intelligence Study Group and is a former Visiting Professor of National Security at Harvard, Toronto and Canberra. Andrew has presented guest lectures at numerous American universities and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Andrew essentially dismisses the intelligence services available to presidents George Washington to William H. Taft as ineffectual or non-existent in the modern sense and gives a quick one-chapter overview of intelligence during their terms. Andrew then gets into the heart of the book with another chapter for presidents Woodrow Wilson to Herbert Hoover. Here he credits the First World War with creating the first modern intelligence service, but then says it was rapidly lost due to the actions of Woodrow Wilson after the war. He claims that the intelligence services were not really reconstituted until the Second World War. The most interesting story here was how British intelligence intercepted the Zimmerman telegram and manipulated the United States into entering the war earlier than it might have otherwise. Andrew then devotes a chapter each to presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt to George H. W. Bush. Each president is covered in-depth and the book gives the details behind every major crisis of the 20th century up through the first President Bush. The later presidents are not covered as the book was published in 1995.

Andrews writing style is very easy to read. The book reads almost like a novel. The only thing difficult is the Professor's use of the original acronyms and abbreviations when describing the various government agencies discussed in the book. The Professor provides a three and a half page table of acronym and abbreviation meaning at the front of the book. However, someone without a military or intelligence background will find the necessity to keep referring to the table a little distracting. The chronological organization of the book provides a logical progression through the material and allows for easy access if one is only interested in a particular President or crisis. It is very interesting to see the contrast between the information that was publicly available at the time of each crisis and what the intelligence was behind it. It is amazing to see what The Presidents kept hidden and why they did. For example, early in the Eisenhower administration there was a public flap over the Bomber Gap. President Eisenhower had the secret intelligence showing that there was no gap. If he had disclosed the information he could have quieted his critics quickly, but wisely refused to disclose the information publicly to keep the fact that we had the U2 spy plane secret. Nearly every president has had similar circumstances and situations. In other instances the book makes one wonder how the United States survived with the inept handling of intelligence and the intelligence services by some presidents. The behind the scene infighting between the different intelligence services led to some of The Presidents worst failures. The biggest case here was the bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought us into World War Two. A similar situation will probably turn up behind the September 11, 2001 bombings. In other cases Andrew describes outright corruption and misuse of the intelligence services that created some of the biggest scandals during United States history. One only need look at the Andrew's description of the "Bay of Pigs" scandal to see how the misuse of the intelligence services can lead to disaster. Andrew is not shy about expressing his opinion of The Presidents or their actions. In his conclusion Andrew claims that only four American Presidents had a flair for intelligence: Washington, Eisenhower, Kennedy and George H. W. Bush. The book is extensively documented with both primary and secondary sources of information and has a very good index. The notes and bibliography alone are over 100 pages. However, they are all in the form of endnotes and placed at the back of the book and so are not readily visible while one is reading.

Andrew succeeds in everything he set out to accomplish in "For the Presidents Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush." The book is well worth reading. It is very eye opening to anyone who has not read about the American Intelligence Services before. It makes one wonder what our Intelligence Services are up to now. One can certainly look forward to what Andrew will write about current events but if one is at all interested in American History one needs to pick up this book now.

Frankly I didn't think you could compile this much information and make it manageable. But the extraordinary research provided in the Reinventor's Fieldbook is presented in an easy to use format. Tools and methods are tied to issues of governing. The Reinventor's Fieldbook is one of a kind. It is the "how to" guide for delivering high performance government service.

The author does a good job in providing the reader with many of the interesting tradecraft bit about the KGB. Overall this is an interesting book that gives the espionage junky an another look into the KGB. The book is well written and does not drag or stumble. It keeps the readers interest through out. If you are an armchair expert on the topic then this is another of the titles you will undoubtedly already have or will need to pick up. If you are the general reader then this is a good broad description of the KGB that is interesting, but not the definitive one volume work.

My only caution is to take the review written by Mr. Steele with a grain of salt. Mr. Steele is the CEO of Open Source Solutions, the same company that Lowenthal is the COO for. Can you say conflict of interest?

I do have one caveat about this book. Lowenthal has spent his career fairly far up the intelligence food chain which has good and bad effects on his book. The good effect is that he understands and explains with wonderful clarity the complete intelligence process from requirements to finished intelligence for policy decisions. The bad effect is that he is not that well informed on the specifics of collection, processing and exploitation which are at the heart of the process. Indeed he is guilty of some mistatements on this aspect of the process. On the other hand he is fair and accurate in his overall treatment of collection and processing, which for this book, is probably more important.

In sum, this is an excellent book which which I think even old hands in the intelligence world would benefit from reading.

Mark Lowenthal, who today is the Associate Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production (ADCI/A&P), was briefly (for a year) the President of OSS USA (I created OSS Inc., the global version). So much for disclosure and "conflicts of interest". The previous review, after a year of being irritatingly present, needs to be corrected. Dr. Lowenthal was for many years the Senior Executive Service reviewer of intelligence affairs for the Congressional Research Service, then he went on to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence & Research (Analysis), and then he became the Staff Director for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he supervised one of the two really serious really excellent studies on all that is wrong with intelligence and what needs to be fixed. OSS was lucky to have him contribute to its development for a year before he moved on to another corporation and then to the #5 position in the US Intelligence Community. He needs no help from me in either articulating his ideas or doing good work.

What the previous reviewer fails to understand is that Dr. Lowenthal's book represents the *only* available "primer" on intelligence that can be understood by Presidents, Congressmen, the media, and the public. While my own book (The New Craft of Intelligence) strives to discuss the over-all threats around the world in terms meaningful to the local neighborhoods of America, Dr. Lowenthal's book focuses on the U.S. Intelligence Community itself--the good, the bad, and the ugly. He is strongest on analysis and the politics of intelligence, somewhat weaker on collection and counterintelligence covert action. There is no other book that meets the need for this particular primer, and so I recommend it with enthusiasm. It is on the OSS.NET list of the top 15 books on intelligence reform every written.

As a recent adoptive parent, I found the book to be by far the most useful resource in terms of understanding the process of international adoption, helping with the forms and documents I had to collect, understanding how to estimate expenses (and helping me to compare the confusing pricing terms of various adoption agencies), selecting a reputable agency, understanding how the immigration process worked, and choosing a country that was the best fit for me.

I would definitely recommend this book for anyone considering adopting internationally.

The author does a good job in providing the reader with many of the interesting tradecraft bit about the KGB. Overall this is an interesting book that gives the espionage junky an another look into the KGB. The book is well written and does not drag or stumble. It keeps the readers interest through out. If you are an armchair expert on the topic then this is another of the titles you will undoubtedly already have or will need to pick up. If you are the general reader then this is a good broad description of the KGB that is interesting, but not the definitive one volume work.

To America's Pantheon of Deathless Heroes: Nathan Hale, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Sgt. York, Audie Murphy, those named on the Viet Nam Memorial, Ex-FBI Agent Fredric Whitehurst; now must be added the name of Author Rodney Stich. His name is in our hearts now. If and when American is restored to justice his likeness and courageous deeds will become main components of our nation's lore.