Agencies

AN EXCELLENT BOOK!!!
W. THOMAS SMITH JR. EXPLAINS THE CIA IN EASY TO UNDERSTAND TERMS.
I GIVE IT FIVE STARS BECAUSE AFTER SPENDING SOME TIME WITH THIS ENCYCLOPEDIA I NOW HAVE A VERY GOOD UNDERSTANDING OF OUR CIA AND HOW IT FITS IN THE OVERALL DEFENSE AND SECURITY OF OUR COUNTRY.
THOUGH IT SEEMS BRIEF IN CERTAIN SECTIONS, IT IS WELL WRITTEN AND MUCH NEW LIGHT IS SHED ON THE SUBJECT OF THE CIA. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THIS FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE AGENCY AND OTHER INTELLIGENCE GROUPS!!!

Smith's book is the ultimate resource for those fascinated with history and our countries most conroversial governmental agency - the Central Intelligence Agency .....fascinating and long forgotten tales of intrique - finally there is a source, beautifully organized, with the answers to any questions you may have about the CIA....thanks W. Thomas Smith, Jr. your book is well done.

The ultimate resource for history buffs who want a quick and ready reference book that details the history of the CIA and allows for a quick look up for forgotten names and facts.....a random trip through this fascinating book brings up incredible historic information you may have forgotten.

Great resource book to have on hand. W.Thomas Smith, Jr. brings his experience and talent as a jounalist to this much needed reference book.

"How To" is most appropriate for this useful guide. I discovered this book at the very beginning of our international adoption process and it has been a wonderful guidebook. It is extremely well organized and explains the process and the paperwork required. It provides a lot of information but is not a thick, wordy volume that is intimidating to read. It is a source of information complementary to what my agency provides, and has increased my confidence that things are proceeding as they should. Tips like what kind to expect in a home study and what questions to ask when that important referral call comes makes this book compare to a knowledgeable friend who has been through the process.

As the Adoptive Parents of Vietnam listowner, I recieve questions about the complex process of international adoption on a daily basis. The Erichsen's guide will be a great resource to anyone interested in international adoption. I reviewed this book in detail on our website, but here is a quick synopsis. "How to Adopt Internationally is the best guide now available to the complex and sometimes frustrating experience of the paper chase required for adopting internationally from any country. The Erichson's include a step by step guide to every requirement and procedure, starting with the U.S. required home study and INS's I-600 all the way through post placement and final adoption requirements. For every major step, they include the actual or example forms, along with suggestions for completion. For anyone involved in international adoption (or even contemplating an international adoption), this book will get you started and be a welcome resource through the process. It provides an overview of the reasons and requirements of the international adoption process that is duplicated nowhere else. If your agency is less than helpful with the paperwork requirements, this book will be worth its price many times over."

We just recently purchased this book from Amazon.com and it's a wonderful guide for those just beginning the adoption process or those currently involved in adopting internationally. This guide is now currently (October 98) aiding us to expedite our adoption via the comprehensive information and step by step guide to fulfilling all international requirements. A great find!

Journey into Madness is one of THE ABSOLUTE BEST books I have ever read in my entire life. If I was the principal of a High School, Journey Into Madness would be a required reading for all of the students. The young people need to learn that they have the right to living a pain-free life. And they need to understand that they will NOT get into trouble for reporting distressful or torturous experiences to authorities like they're librarians, nurses, and teachers. Thank you, Gordon Thomas, for being so kind as to offer the peace and mercy needed in the hearts of so many children and adults around the world. The American children are forever in debt to you for your merciful kindness.

Love,
Joematters.com

Mr. Gordon's research and objectivity is laudable, his book an eye-opener. It lends credance to movies such as Blind Sight. Mr. Gordon's description of Dr. al-Abub, his training and mission and that his current endeavors continue makes one wonder what humans can be about that they could do to others what they do. Can there still be Dr. Camerons/al Abubs working the torture circuit in the name of nationalism and belief?

The second review merely seeks to lessen the impact of the book "Journey into Madness" by Gordon Thomas by pointing out that other governments do similar things. No. Not on the scale and with the hypocrisy that the CIA does.

For those interested, who would like to know more about such practices and how the CIA and the medical community continue their terror and human rights abuses here and in other countries, there is some mention of this in "The Serpent and the Rainbow" by Wade Davis. He writes of the work of the American psychiatrist Nathan Kline (sp?) with the CIA in Haiti. This details their search for a drug they (doctors & the CIA) could use to control people - turn them into zombies. It mentions, coincidentially, the secret and not-so-secret primate and human experiments occurring at the New York State Psychiatric Institute by a Dr. Leo Rozen (sp). These practices still occur. The NIMH, in fact, are admittedly are giving people with mental illness Angel Dust (aka ketamine) to induce psychosis. This causes more irreversible damage than LSD.

Recently there were series of articles in the Harford Courant (1998) and the Boston Globe on drug abuses and torture used in private and publicly funded psychiatric hospitals.

What a great book. If you find the CIA fascinating, then this is a must read. In fact, if you find your country fascinating, you must read this book.

This isn't your typical James Bond, Tom Clancy sort of thing. Get the real stories in just about the perfect amount of detail. The characters are easy to follow and the scenarios do not require a history refresher course to delve into.

The "Four" who did dare are all geniuses and each has played a part in making sure you sleep well at night. Each person is handled deftly and the book follows in a natural chronological order.

The most fascinating part of the book definitely revolves around the Kennedy administration and Bay of Pigs fiasco. Once again, the politics of politics can turn something so clear into a mess.

The best part of the book is that it handles bigger and smaller points equally well. There are many, oh by the way type quick tales, but the larger campaigns are also handled extremely well. You will find yourself paraphrasing stories and anecdotes from this book to your friends. Great after dinner discussion stuff.

Top of my list for recommendation.

They will never return it. It is that good of a book. Starts with introduction on how these men started it from WWII and walks the reader through the history of how it all got started.

This book was a required read for a college course that I took on the CIA & Congress. I found this to be an excellent book - full of substance, loaded with information, and a very easy read. Thomas's book was one of the very few required reads that I've actually completed of my own accord. I highly recommend this book to those who are looking for an in-depth study on the inner workings of the CIA's beginnings.

This book is another in the long line of books to come out of the former USSR after the clod war came to an "end". The author is relating his experiences in the arm of the KGB that was responsible for information gathering, primarily against the U.S. and NATO. If you have read a number of these books in the past there is not a great deal of new information in the book. There are some interesting bits and you get a good look that this authors insight to "the game". 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 broad description of the subject, but not the definitive one volume work.

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In my profession I attended a number of C.I.A. classified briefings during the cold war years and became a close friend of at least one high profile Soviet defector. Kalugin's book rings absolutely true to what I and many others already knew with respect to the bumbling and decay of the entire Soviet socialist system. We could have given them all of our classified secrets and they would have found a way to screw it up.

Kalugin's book fleshed out the KGB skeleton as we understood it. He filled in the details. Written in an easy to read style, layman and professional alike will find it fascinating. It is not filled with the statistics, tables, graphs, and charts that many technical researchers are so fond of. Instead, The First Directorate reads like both a fascinating novel and a biography. It takes the reader through the gradual disillusionment of an avid believer in the Communist system to one who gradually began seeing it for what it really was.

Oleg Kalugin is a genuine hero of both the Soviet Union and its succeeding Russian Republic. He never defected and served both governments with distinction because he was a patriot first and a KGB officer and politician second. He wanted what was best for his country and his people and was for reform, not revolution.

This book shows the KGB for what it once was and how it degenerated into a bumbling state sponsored Mafia that in the end attempted to devour the state itself. At their worst the CIA and FBI could never have been as incompetent as the KGB. Kalugin shows how the KGB had a mixture of competent men with a sense of justice and others who were stupid cold hearted psychopaths. He relates how attempts at reform by the good agents were squashed by others in the system who were both corrupt and incompetent, and how they protected each other from prosecution.

"The First Directorate" presents specific cold war events as they were seen from the other side of the looking glass. Kalugin handled spies and defectors like Burgess and Walker. He noted that he had more respect for someone who turned against their country for idealistic reasons than one who betrayed their country for money.

Much, much, more could be said in praise of "The First Directorate." It isn't about Kalugin as much as it is an expose of the inherent weaknesses of Socialism and especially the KGB whose job it was to protect the Socialist form of government from internal corruption and external infiltration.

Kalugin clarifies many events that changed the world during the 70 years of the USSR's experiment with Communism. He could speak with authority because he was on a first name basis with the top players in both the KGB and the Soviet government.

This book should send chills up the spine of any American wanting to socialize the government and put big government in control of all aspects of our lives, from taxes that redistribute wealth, to control of our schools and businesses.

Buy "The First Directorate" and read it, and you won't be so hard on our guys.

Oleg, now a green-card resident of the U.S. is our most personable and enjoyable former opponent on the intelligence speaking circuit, and both Bill Colby and I supported him in his efforts to move permanently to America. His book is a marvelous account on the general details of his formidable career that culminated in his being elected to the Russian Parliament. Page 222, "Kill the dog!", has a special meaning for professionals the world over.

A fascinating piece of history. It's not that we read important secrets, or even that the topics of these journal articles are current and relevant, but from a historical perspective, the insights and conclusions are a fun window into the CIA's world over the years.

This Yale University Press publication is an insiders scorecard on how to collect information. Techniques for clandestine human intelligence gathering are reviewed in detail. The text even explores how internal CIA squabbling hurts U.S. intelligence gathering. The declassified articles from the agency's internal journal from 1955-1992 is mostly insider shop talk. My favorite chapter is VII, Counterespionage. Section eight of chapter three, psychology of treason is an ice-cold analysis.

This series of essays shows CIA's thinking on a range of subjects that are eclectic and really interesting. Assessments of various forms of intelligence collection are included, trends in the agency's history, and many others. I especially found the chapter on the psychology of defectors and spies interesting and especially relevant. It's an older piece, but still current given the capture of Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames.

This is a very inlighting book about some of the unseen avents that happen in our society today. Real live storys that chill you to the bone about some of the people that have been wrongly accused of crimes directed to our most precious children. How not only has it hurt the parents and friend of these children but, the trumendous pain that the children themselves indure; due to the mistakes made by our child protection agencies, the very agency put in place to help keep pain from our children

This book is a great source of information to all involved, in one way or another, with Child Protective Services. This book illustrates the problems within the agency, the families that are being victimized and the bureaucrats who take advantage of the system. The section "Best Defense" should be read by all parents.

After a horrendous child custody case where my wife and I were both accused of abusing my step-children, this book was a God send! We both learned so much that is helping us finally win this war. Brenda Scott's book should be read by every single parent in this country, especially by those who homeschool.

I rank this book with "Dark Alliance" and "C.I.A.: Cocaine In America" as the most telling indictment of America's pseudo-war on drugs. Unlike most suthors who pontificate solutions from ivory towers and exhort stratagem with quill pens, Mr. Levine, not unlike Mr. VesBucci, for that matter, advises from hard-fought experience.

Mike Levine is a good writer. Add that to the fact that he was one of the best undercover agents in American history and you've got the equation for a great book. I had to stop myself a number of times to remember that this is NON-Fiction. The bumbling and deception that goes on at the higher levels of our Criminal Justice system would be laughable had this been a work of fiction. There is just too much detail here for it NOT to be true. This book, coupled with Levine's other book "Deep Cover" show you how the people in power manipulate the media to show the public the reality they want them to see. In light of the Iraq war "intelligence" misinformation, we can see that nothing has changed. In fact, the stakes have gotten higher.

Note that this review is 4 years after publication... four years of silence.

A book that tears the mask off the fraudulent "War on Drugs". It exposes the growth of the war from two (highly mutually destructive) agencies in 1971 (Customs and DEA) to 55 and counting. It describes very extensive, high-volume CIA involvement in smuggling itself to obtain unaccountable funding.

It documents the cost of the fraudulent war. In dollars misspent, in innocent lives lost through raids gone amok and witnesses silenced, in the credibility of government agencies and the news media, and in the harm resulting from the 5-fold increase (his figures) in drug usage during the time $1 trillion has been wasted in the fight.

Recommend finding this book used or in a library, or reading Levine's chapter in "Into the Buzzsaw" by Kristina Borjesson.

If you believe that the authors were actually permitted to reveal the secrets contained in this book, it is monumental.

But knowing "The Company", it is more likely that this work is some sort of 'controlled' leak, softening the blow for the revelations of the inevitable congressional investigations that followed in the aftermath of the Watergate fiasco, the death of J. Edgar Hoover, and the continuing insinuations implicating the CIA of complicity in everything from the murder of JFK, to secret, malevolent control over the war in SE Asia.

Irrespective of ones' take on the voracity of the means of disclosure (whether legitimate whistle-blowing, or CIA damage control) this heavily-censored/redacted book ostensibly blew the lid off at CIA, with at least superficial examination of the structure, operations, methods, and mind-set of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. In the main, time has tended to validate this contents of this expose'.

Out of print and hard to find, this book nonetheless remains must-reading for anyone interested in intelligence, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the defense of the Free World up to the early 1970s. Buy it.

This is one of perhaps ten books from prior to 1985 that I decided to include because of their continuing value. I believe that both history and historians will credit these two individuals with having made a difference by articulating so ably both the clandestine mentality and the problems extant in the lack of oversight regarding proprietary organizations, propaganda and disinformation, and intrusive not-so-clandestine operations.

Professionals at work. This reviels it all. Don't read encyclopedias read crediable books by credible authors in the know. It teaches you the truth. Highly recommendeed by me and everybody else. Thanks for reading my review.

This is one amazing book. While we heard about the UN-sponsored Cambodian election, maybe getting a sound byte every once in a while, who knew what was really going on there? Well, Tom Riddle knew, as he was in the thick of it. This book is an amazing look at the election from the inside, the directors, the workers, the problems, the people. The author of course, is in the middle of his life also, of which falling in love with a Cambodian woman is only one of the noteworthy events. And it's through these trials and tribulations that we get our clearest look at the Cambodia we never knew, beyond the tourist traps, the Hollywood movies and the evening news footage. The diplomats can give you the sanitized version, but if you want the real story, here's what REALLY happened.

Riddle offers an inside perspective into the chaos of Cambodia at this critical juncture in history. As far as I know, all that he wrote was true. As a minor character in the story, slightly disguised, I was able to see some of the same world that Tom Riddle saw while I was working at another humanitarian relief agency in Cambodia. Riddle examines the very nature of reality as he probes this isolated peasant society, plagued by war induced poverty and destruction, and overlaid with the sudden arrival of a weakly organized UN military and technical support force of around 20,000 people from many different countries.

Riddle taps into many different realities as he looks at the worlds of a myriad of different characters trying to make sense out of the chaos they are experiencing. It is offset with his own ironic humor, personal life crises, and the participant-observer perspective.

The idealism of the United Nations is a paradox of its inefficiency, political agendas, and bureaucracy. You get an international version of "Catch 22" in this book. The career bureaucrat is offset by the author as the naive idealist. The brave young Cambodian woman recovering from war and life in a refugee camp is struggling to help her family survive and save her country. She is offset by the romantic notions of the author, hopelessly in love with her. Peaceful interludes of Cambodian life are interspersed with violence and disarray. The oppressed Cambodian society seeking to find itself is continuously falling back on the international community and even the traditionally adversarial Vietnamese population for energy and direction.

This nonfiction account of social chaos reads like a lighthearted Franz Kafka. It transcends the war journalist's perspective that is our usual source of information about social crises such as these. As a participant-observer in life's international fast lane, the author is able to bring unusual insight into unusual life experience. Whether you seek information about Cambodia, the United Nations, the impact of war, a good adventure story, or a cross cultural perspective on human relationships, you will find this fascinating reading.

I really liked this book, and I'm not just saying this cuz Tom is my friend (and he ain't paying me to say this either.) He has a good wit that makes this a very enjoyable book to read. Perhaps one day an independent film-maker will make this into a movie - it could and should happen. Aloha.