Agencies

This is undoubtably the best book I've ever read concerning business planning/tactics. Highly motivational too. I got it new for four dollars on a bargain book rack. If I ever lost it I would pay 40 to replace it. I've read it twice through and am starting for the third time.

A great book. I learnt from every chapter and the advice given is easy to translate into everyday situations.
You must buy this

I found a used copy of this and was immediately entranced. It's a strange combo of a business/ self-help guide and spy thriller and it works as either. I thought the advice was interesting "Goal is everything. First you define it, then it defines you." "Impatient action leads to failure, but patient inaction is failure itself." The espionage stories are better than fiction. I laughed out loud at his exploits in Libya and Iraq. Where was I when this book came out? It should be in paperback and audio instead of out of print.

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina is an eye-opening journey into the deep politics of U.S. intervention in developing and third-world nations. Scott illuminates the connection between American business interests and American foreign policy with a factual depth that leaves little room for doubt. Scott also documents the CIA involvement--often via drug proxies--in furthering covert American interests. The details and references contained within the text add immeasurably to what is already an incredibly valuable and insightful history. This book is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the motivation behind American foreign policy and the military conflicts that have arisen out of American business interests on foreign soil.

Like veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, whom McCarthyites dubbed "prematurely anti-Fascist" for fighting against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, Peter Dale Scott has long been ahead of the pack on the parapolitical underpinnings of US foreign policy. Those desiring to catch up - and thereby plug the mega-gap between Bush II rhetoric and reality - will be wise to start by reading Scott's latest book, "Drugs, Oil and War." Though he focusses on Indochina, Colombia and Afghanistan, lessons Washington learned there - and forgot - are being retaught today in Iraq.

Drugs, Oil, and War:

In this brilliant book, Peter Dale Scott shows how since World War Two the CIA has recurrently used drug-trafficking allies against its enemies in oil-rich areas of the Third World, and how this has contributed to a staggering increase in the global drug traffic. He traces this practice back to the surprising connection in 1950 between the responsible CIA officer and Meyer Lansky's chief money-laundering bank. He warns that America's recent restoration of the drug traffic in Afghanistan will help fuel an increased wave of terrorism in the region and the world.

This is another book by an ex-CIA agent which is full of disgust with the incompetence, bureaucracy, infighting for career reasons and opportunism of the Agency.
It was partly censured by the CIA, but it is nevertheless very revealing.
It shows how CIA agents concealed the truth by dispatching false reports and how they created their own reality, for the sole reason of saving their jobs. The end (jobs) justified all means.

The author didn't have the same high level duties as e.g. Joseph B. Smith (Portrait of a Cold Warrior). He was more an executive field worker and that mostly in Vietnam and Thailand.
His report contains however very interesting information about, among other things, the hiring procedures of the Agency, the terrible fate of the Hmong tribe in Laos or the training of Tibetan guerrillas for an invasion of Mao's China.

His conclusion is deadly: If the Agency reported the truth about the Third World, it would say that the US installs foreign leaders, arms their armies and empowers their police, all to help those leaders repress, kill, torture and impoverish an angry, defiant people in order to maintain their position of privilege.'

McGehee gives us an incisive view of the dark and murky ploys of a governmental institution.

Not to be missed.

Interesting book. i was half expecting something like in the more subdued spy movies, but McGehee is a very average, unremarkable person who was a paper pusher in the CIA

This book is a pretty detailed biography of McGehee's work at the CIA. i'm guessing that he was like the majority of CIA operatives, which is to say, he was a guy in the trenches with no special knowledge of the big picture and not a guy with any authority to change anything. He worked both in the field (primarily Asia during that whole Vietnam thing) collecting information and in the home office sorting paper. He devotes a lot of time to one of his biggest accomplishments, which was sorting index cards in a file cabinet

After reading the book, what i walked away with was that a)the CIA is really just a big, uninteresting, political, short-sighted, every-day bueracracy and b)that the managers at the top of this bueracracy just make up stuff and don't care about what their experts in the field say. Basically, the CIA is run like any large, terrible company

i thought this book would have a list of major crimes - assasinations, drug running, torture, political intrigue, coups and all that sort of stuff. In the non-crime category, i thought there'd be a lot of spying and covert activities. But there was practically none of that. Instead, he and his CIA buddies toured the country side, conducted surveys, established relations with remote hill tribes, paid informants for information, read reports and wrote reports. It's just so, what's the word, realistic

OK, so this book would make a lousy action movie. There's nothing exciting here. Even so, the book makes several very good criticisms of the CIA. Nothing criminal and whistle blowing. It's more like an in-the-trenches or middle manager corporate employee complaining about all the little things a bueracratic company and buerecratic managers do that, added together, make the company ineffective. i think McGehee's main point is that the CIA just plain doesn't work. Not necessarily that it does evil things, although he admits that the covert ops arm (which he wasn't part of) does horrible criminal things, but that it completely fails in its stated mission of collecting and understanding information

i don't think i'd recommend this book to fans of conspiracies and spy novels, but i'd definitely recommend it to people interested in management theory, organizational psychology and US intellectual capabilities

Ralph W. McGehee spent 25 years in the CIA; he joined as an idealist, and left as a cynic. The crisis happened in Dec 1968. RWM wondered why we had to bomb the people we were trying to save? Why did the CIA report lies instead of the truth? He thought of his earlier work in Thailand, where his reports were first accepted, then denied in spite of his accuracy. The Agency preferred the old methods that resulted in more killings. RWM decided then to tell what he found out and warn the American people. The CIA is the covert action arm of the Presidency. It is not an intelligence agency because it only seeks the information that supports existing policies. Its propaganda uses disinformation to fool the US public, and justify policies by distorting reality.

RWM was class president and in the honor society, and All State as a football tackler. An ardent Baptist, he went to Notre Dame and played on an undefeated football team that won national championships; he graduated cum laude. A telegram recruited him to fight communism and save our way of life. RWM went to Washington and passed the tests. The chapters in the book tell about his career in the agency. Chapter 5 tells of his "Life at Langley" when he returned to Headquarters. His knowledge of the Bay of Pigs came from television news. It seemed they relied too much on an assumed uprising of the Cuban people. Could such a mistake ever happen again? Pages 57-8 tells how the CIA promoted a bloody extermination campaign in Indonesia. (Read L Fletcher Prouty's book on this.) Page 59 tells of agency coups in South America. American training of the military and police created traitors who overthrew their governments; was this the definition of subversion?

Page 61 quotes Howard Hunt on gathering "any and all information" on Presidential candidate Goldwater for delivery to the White House. Page 63 tells of the CIA's insertion of individuals into dissident circles in order to establish their credential for foreign operations. (Could this explain W J Clinton's success?) Page 64 tells how RWM was transferred to Thailand, and page 80 tells of the sad results. Pages 111-6 tells of his successful survey of Thailand. This "good news" resulted in his quick removal! Years later the truth dawned on him: the CIA didn't want the truth! This tells of the management trick of offering a transfer to a better job, then eliminating the job after the employee transfers. RWM became another paper pusher. Page 120 shows the bureaucratic faults of the CIA. Page 128 tells of the fatal flaws of our presence in Vietnam. Pages 129-135 gives Vietnamese history in a nutshell. Page 146 summarizes the problem: how was it that one junior officer was better informed and had a clearer picture of the reality out there than all the rest of the Agency? Is this unique to a government agency? The bottom of page 159 tells of the results of his experiences. Chapter 14 concludes and summarizes this book.

The Appendix is the last part, but you should read it first to understand the writing of this book. His secrecy agreement let the CIA review and censor any information that they did not want revealed. When his writing was censored, he was allowed to substitute information from open sources. (See page 35 in Chapter 3 on the use of agents.) When RWM found a published book with the same opinions he was then allowed his critical comments. The CIA's secrecy agreement stops critics from explaining their actions to the American people.

One man's story sandwiched into a lot of facts/astute observation. Since I was only 11 at the time, it filled in a good number of gaps. Yes, cooks cover their mistakes with spices, doctors with earth, and the CIA with lots of duct tape tape, boundings, and gag orders. And, worse, they never learn fully, blundering again and again (just a guess). Such is life and the public's general willingness, in my life opinion, and this book fills a very important niche in that.

This book can be a little hard to grind through, and that give it 'only' 4 stars, as the reading public demands to be favorably entertained -- so a more difficult book by a small margin will be mostly preaching to the choir (the already converted or few read-a-holics as well I guess in this case).

When this book was originally published in the late 1970s, it caused a firestorm of controversy due to its savage critique of the conduct of both the CIA and military advisory units within Vietnam. Written by a career CIA officer who resigned in disgust over the ways in which American policy both undermined and betrayed the very purposes we were supposed to be in Vietnam to promote, the book quickly became an international best-seller. Frank Snepp was the chief strategy analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency in Saigon, and from his unique vantage point was able to discern most of policy discussions regarding the American approach to the ongoing conduct of the war assistance being provided to the South Vietnamese. What he discovered alarmed and surprised him, for the authorities were making plans to allow the fall of the Saigon regime even while reassuring their Vietnamese clients they would support them to the very end.

As the title of the book indicates, the most salient characteristic of the American policy was to withdraw our forces in such a way as to allow a sufficient amount of time to go by before the North Vietnamese forces made a final fatal thrust into the south to take over, so that America would save face by not directly involved in the action resulting in the losing of the decade-long war. Instead, according to this strategy, there was to be a so-called "decent interval" of time separating the associated events of American withdrawal on the one hand, and the final campaign by the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) forces, on the other. Snepp was outraged by the treachery involved in such a strategy, and argued strenuously against thus, which would leave hundreds if not thousand of ardent and loyal South Vietnamese operatives at extreme risk, for they would be caught unaware when the final critical days came that the American forces would not come to their rescue.

Snepp was even more surprised when he discovered that this strategy was not either the result of a local CIA operative such as the station chief, nor that of the CIA itself at the Langley, Virginia headquarters, but rather that it appeared to emanate from the highest levels of the executive branch of the government, from the office of Henry Kissinger and the office of the National Security Advisor to the President. This meant, of course, that it was a deliberate betrayal of the South Vietnamese by the American Government with full knowledge of the savage consequences this action would have for most of those who had worked so closely with the Americans for so long. For Snepp, this was treachery of the lowest and most unforgivable sort, a policy that served to punish our friends and reward our enemies, all done in the name of political expediency.

Of course, in order to be effective, this strategy must remain secret, for having such information made public would expose both the Executive branch and the CIA for the craven treachery they were conspiring to commit. Thus, the press releases associated with the rapidly accomplished American withdrawal of troop, material and advisors were spun to give the public the impression that all of this was part of the so-called successful "Vietnamization" of the war, under which the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) was increasingly shouldering the exclusive burden for conduct of the war against the NVA. What both the CIA and the U.S. Army command authority hoped for was a campaign in which the ARVN performed well enough to make the eventual NVA victory appear to be more gradual than it was feared it might be.

Of course, after the hasty American withdrawal, the NVA rapidly pressed their advantage and the ARVN collapsed so rapidly that no such "decent interval" was realized. Instead, the campaign took a disastrous turn, and the final result was a panic for the American loyalists now trapped in Saigon with little hope of rescue. The rest, as they say, is the stuff of history. Yet the facts laid out by Snepp in this book show just how treacherous, cynical, and self-concerned the actions of the American authorities were toward their South Vietnamese clients. In the end, we failed the loyal citizens of South Vietnam by largely abandoning them in the time of their greatest need. Left to choose between doing the honorable thing and doing what was expedient, we chose to beat feet. This is a wonderful book and a mind-boggling reading experience

The author captured the dismay and controversy of the age i.e. the overwhelming desire to help everybody but not being able to. As an Air Force Security Policeman I was a guard on a C-130 as we loaded refugees up at Da Nang and Ton Sun Knut. On another assignment I had sniper duty on off loading refugees due to intelligence fears that refugees might be used as cover for an assualt.

The strong points of this book become easily evident if even one only looks at the several-page-long bibliography. Mr. Gross has done a commendable job of research and has presented a voluminous material, including multiple interviews, pictures, etc. From a historical standpoint, there is probably no better book written on the modeling business (particularly in the US).( There is actually and afterward to the paperback edition, which brins some current news as of 2002.)

The weak points of the book are rooted in its failure to discuss what its title promises -- "business". Yes, there are salary numbers, but that is about where Mr. Gross stops. In describing the business he talks at length about modelling agencies, magazines and the like, only it happens in a somewhat gossipy style (describing personalities, political battles, etc.), while failing to provide any financial (or any other business) information so as to give the reader an idea of, for example, of how big this business is. As a result, after reading the book, one is short of truly understanding how the business really works, including the interaction of its multiple participants, such as publihhers, designers, etc.

This is very good book on the history of the Supermodels (Linda, Naomi, Christy, Cindy, etc). Also very informative on the modeling industry and the men that run it. If your daughter or son in pursuing modeling, read this book first.

This book does exactly what the title says, it reveals the ugly side of the modeling business. However, it is an older book so you won't hear any recent names. There is another book out there, "Shut up and Smile" that covers more recent models. But the writing from that book is no comparison to this one. This book is by someone that knows how to write and the stories are very in-depth which can only make the book better. The pictures are also better in this book.

Many of the stories in the book are very light accounts of annoying conversations: personality conflicts. The author is apparently a real straight arrow and he has endless accounts of turns of phrase and trivial happenstances that annoyed him. Like the guy who switched his cracked desk glass for John's good one. Who cares, I mean literally? There is very little insight given to the interrogation process proper, which I was expecting because that is, after all, the author's specialty. In the end you have a sense that Vietnam was fill of corrupt, drunk spooks, and one lone shiny penny -- the author.

The book starts out one story at a time and some times the thought is "why tell me about a broken desk cover" but at the end you know more about what it was really like in Laos and Vietnam. John was known as the man who would tell the truth to those in power. Now he shares it with the rest of us.

As we see the formulation of a new "homeland security agency" it is a reminder to us that the best way to get good results is pay attention to every step of the process. Our Vietnam operation had great support and many poor operations with the information results (even the good information) seeming to get lost on the way to those who needed it. The lesson I see is that all of the details are important. Bottle necks can kill.

John Sullivan's "Of Spies and Lies" is a fascinating account of wartime CIA intelligence operations in Vietnam that should be required reading not only for students of the Vietnam War, but also for anyone interested in the current war on terror. John's discussions of the difficulties an intelligence agency faces in recruiting penetrations of a difficult and dangerous enemy organization and his descriptions of problems caused by the shortage of officers with the requisite language and area knowledge bear disturbing similarities to headlines we see in the press every day. It is another illustration of the old saw that "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
John's book provides a unique window into life in the CIA's Saigon Station. His description of Agency operations in Vietnam ranges from the controversy surrounding our best penetration of the Viet Cong leadership to the polygraphing of local employees over the disappearance of a few slices of ham at a party (an incident I remember quite well). John also gives unprecedented insights into the important role the Agency's requirement for polygraph vetting plays in keeping case officers, who work daily in the murky waters of spies, fabricators, and con-men, on the straight and narrow road of the pursuit of the truth. CIA polygraphers like John helped lead the way in the development of a systematic vetting process for use in the conduct of clandestine intelligence collection operations. The book illustrates how that process works and how, when the process is ignored or distorted, the entire system can quickly break down.
I served with John in Saigon Station and know his reputation as one of the Agency's best. As a former Saigon Station officer, some of his criticisms of personnel and procedures in Southeast Asia are painful, but their accuracy is incontrovertible. I highly recommend this book.

Glinsky has done a great job of compiling the factual story of Leon Theremin and electronic music, particularly the Theremin instrument through the years.
I have several reservations. First, the writing style is pedestrian and not terribly stylish or interesting. Second, it would have been nice to have a bit more detail on how the instrument actually works. And last but most serious, Glinsky is obsessed with the evils of communism and spends far too much time sneering at Americans fooled by Stalin and on wallowing in the grotesque history of communism in the USSR than is justified given that the book is about Leon Theremin, not Stalin, Lenin, Beria, Kruschev, etc. etc. He gives us several pages on Beria and his fate, for example, when Beria actually had only an indirect link to Theremin. The point seems to be to portray Beria as an evil man. Fine, but this book is about Leon Theremin, right?
My last reservation is that in the end, I still did not feel we ever got to know Theremin. Why he did what he did, what he thought of events in his life, remains a mystery. It may well be that Theremin, a committed communist, was too alien to Glinsky's own imagination for him to be able to write about him with any insight or sympathy. We get, generally, a pretty clinical detachment.
This is a fine book for the facts. I cherish it as a solid resource. But Leon Theremin himself remains unknown to us on a personal level, and so as a biography this book falls short.

Dr. Glinsky managed to write a complete factual book and yet have all the action and suspense that you would commonly find in an espionage novel!

After seeing "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey" for the second time last year I was motivated to seek a more thorough biography of this fascinating life. Luckily Glinsky's book was hot off the press. This book is amazing.

Theremin's life is so interesting, and the narrative is so engrossing, that it reads like a thriller. Only one that covers a nearly hundred year life. The setting covers revolutionary Russia, roaring twenties NY, depression era NY, Stalinist Russia, the Gulag, the cold war, the sixties, and on and on.

The research Glinsky put in is astounding. You get the feeling that there exists no document of this life that he didn't catalog. Yet he writes beautifully and does a wonderful job of bringing the subject to brilliant life. There are so many details I'd love to mention but I wouldn't want to spoil a thing. Anyone who was intrigued by the documentary (which barely scratches the surface) should buy this book and read it. For me, the book has awakened an entire fascination with twentieth century Russia and I'm already reading other non-fiction on the topic.

Mr. Glinsky is to be congratulated on a stunning piece of work.

Rustman, an ex-CIA veteran, has written an entertaining, although not practical book, on espionage and business intelligence. My first problem with this book is the title. The topics of Espionage and Business Intelligence shouldn't be used together. Espionage is what a hostile government or a business rival does to another country or company. Business Intelligence is an all-encompassing term that includes the practices of competitive intelligence and counterintelligence. Espionage is both unethical and illegal; competitive intelligence is both ethical and legal.

This is one of many books written by an author who believes his exploits in the CIA somehow translate into practical lessons for the business world. Trouble is, they don't. If you're interest is in spies and spying, then you'll enjoy this book. If however, you have an interest in learning how to stay one step ahead of your competition, there are far better books to read than this one.

The author discusses such topics as bugs, wiretaps, and audio ops and countermeasures. These topics are better covered by persons that have a private investigative background or a technical countermeasures background rather than an intelligence background. When these topics are described in the book, the author does not tell us how to foil these attacks. A better approach would have been to describe the attack method and offer a solution.

The glossary is pretty good but the list of computer databases and information services is lacking in content.

Not a bad book, but one that is recommended only for those with an interest in spies and spying.

I profited from studying the book. The book presented easy to follow intelligence principles and methods with unique complementary stories. The discussion of business intelligence, recruitment of spies, legal issues, source protection, CIA case officer, targeting, employee vulnerabilities, importance of in-depth background investigations and terrorism was informative, enlightening and helpful. The book showed the dangers, failures, successes and trade craft problems that exist in the intelligence and business community. It give examples from Vietnam era to present day situations. An innocent, who knew no better, would gain insightful information for survival in the world of intelligence.

The book came across as sincere and truthful.

A retired CIA couter terror operative informed me this is the real deal. The author is not using his real name. He did not know who wrote it, but that it right on.

This book was not written recently and many parts of it reflect that fact. It's pretty dated. It speaks mostly of the big agency world. If your already in that world, you might find the attention to accounting details helpful, as the author is clearly experienced and pays attention to dollar details. If your planning to start a small agency, (bootstrapping) you could do better than this book. If you're ready to seek funding then hire a big staff and go after Johnson and Johnson, this might have some info you could use.

I read this and thought: what a reality check! Tons of people filter through agencies on their way to some other gig. But some people are staying in the agency world for good, in some capacity or another. They should all read this book.

There's not always one right answer as to how to run your agency, but there are, thankfully, some standard business practices and parameters, which are plainly described in this book.

I think it makes for a more balanced and effective agency.

The price is right. There's a lot of truly useful information you can share. It helps to demystify and guide. Even if you're not in a position to control the business side of your company, having this book sitting on your desk is kind of empowering. I'm glad I bought it.

"The Advertising Agency Business" was an extremly insightful and logical read. The author focus on the basics of the industry but elaborates very well with examples. This book is a must read if you own, managage or operate an ad agency. I wish I had read this book before I started my agency!

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.

This book is amazeing!!!! I love it I have read in three times!!!!

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.