Agencies

I cannot recommend this book. Berkowitz and Goodman are to be commended for advocating a major reshaping of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). Unfortunately their proposals for how to effect that reshaping are superficial and ill-conceived. This is a shame because they actually have some good ideas such as making the IC more flexible by using virtual teaming, bringing analysts closer to policy makers, and making better use of non-IC resources. In the end however the book fails to convince. Apparently neither Berkowitz nor Goodman has a clue as to how the intelligence process actually works.

To take one example, the collection, processing and exploitation of information in the intellgence cycle are much more complex than authors would have the readers beleive. A customer requirement is not satisfied by opening a tap called 'collection' and pouring the resulting information into bucket to be passed to the analytic phase of the cycle.As they ought to know, but apparently do not, the collection of both technical and human intelligence(information) in response to customer requriements can often take weeks, months or even years of focused activity. Further as information is collected, it often will lead to changes in collection methods, the perceptions of the analysts who are trying to transform that information into intelligence, and even change the requirement that initiated the effort. This phase of the cycle is a dynamic process that involves constant interaction between collectors, technicians,analysts, and ,yes, customers.

Berkowitz and Goodman have a smilarly simple minded understanding of the intellegence production phase of the cycle. It is difficult to take seriously proposals for reform of the intelligence process from authors who appear not to understand that process. As in everything else, in buying books you have to seperate the nuts from the bolts.

I enjoyed the broad overview of the generation and use of intelligence information. I found the suggestions of how to change the intelligence system too vague, driven by the management technique of the hour and unworkable. The authors suggestion that agencies drop specialized groups and pulls special teams together when needed. This may be workable in the short run, but in the long run there will be no deep experts as there are today. It takes time and money to develop these experts and only the government can plan to develop these experts, that may or may not ever be fully utilized. The authors site NASA's faster, better, cheaper management, a style that in my opinion is none of these, as something the intelligence community should adopt. It would be alright for someone to site this, but you must also site the numerous failures of the method. I got the feeling that if the book had been written ten years ago, Japanese management methods would have been sited as useful, they have of course fallen from favor. Cold fusion and the work that was done by innumerable physics to at the time of the first announcement as the way the intelligence community should attach important new questions that are time sensitive. Have hundreds of experts across the intelligence community bear upon a question as a way to get a quick, high quality answer. What the authors don't understand is all those physicists were working for free or on someone else's dime. All those hundreds of people will need to charge against this new effort, enough to break any budget, not to mention the poor chance of getting a high quality answer. So, the book is a good airing of the issues, but not much at solving the problems.

This book dedicates itself entirely to fixing the underlying process of intelligence. The authors place intelligence in the larger context of information, and draw a plethora of useful comparisons with emerging private sector capabilities and standards. They place strong emphasis on the emerging issues (not necessarily threats) related to ethnic, religious, and geopolitical confrontation, and are acutely sensitive to the new power of non-governmental organizations and non-state actors. The heart of their book is captured in three guidelines for the new process: focus on understanding the consumer's priorities; minimize the investment in fixed hardware and personnel; and create a system that can draw freely on commercial capabilities where applicable (as they often will be). Their chapter on the failure of the bureaucratic model for intelligence, and the need to adopt the virtual model-one that permits analysts to draw at will on diverse open sources-is well presented and compelling. Their concluding three chapters on analysis, covert action, and secrecy are solid professional-level discussions of where we must go in the future.

This is a highly nuanced work- a decouverture and denouement of the scams and schemes of one particular compartment of cultural intelligence work orchestrated by one organisation- by the compilers of a new generation. Its oft stilted prose and loaded language are quite similar to that employed by Nicholas Davidow in his character assassination portrayal of major league baseball player and OSS operator Moe Berg.

Anyone who has read Simone de Beauvoir's roman-a-clef "The New Mandarins", published nearly half a century ago can match the players who hang out in her novel's fictive "Bar Rouge" (The Ritz Hotel Bar in Paris) with the names Frances Stonor Saunders chooses to name in her work. Nothing really new here.

Stonor's process of contacting and interviewing family members of those who played some role in the "Congress for Cultural Freedom" deserves praise and projects the sense of an open society that, today, is far more open than those whose machinations created the CCF could have ever imagined, or, wanted, for that matter.

Although the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, the "two Germanys" and the Vatican all conducted their own cultural operations, based on their own interests and requirements, Stonor focuses on the United States, where freedom of information laws are light years ahead of the other major players.

There's a much bigger picture to be painted here. Questions that could have been raised, that were not. For example, why did Conor Cruise O'Brien, someone with known links to the CCF argue that Albert Camus was a "grade B" writer and that he received the 1960 Nobel Prize for Literature only to counterpoise the "Communist" existentialist and acadamician Jean-Paul Sartre?

Then too, Stonor's focus on the CCF leaves out another key element of the U.S. "kulturkampf" strategy, namely, the issue of "journalistic cover." This is an area where an individual with Stonor's keen investigative talents could unearth a goldmine of information that would have relevance and demand accountability today.

With the velocity of information moving today exponentially faster than it did during the period being examined by Stonor, one wonders whether it is best to expend such outstanding investigative energy turning the old stones of the past, or to examine the new stones that are gathering no moss. As our global economy migrates toward the civic religion of democratic corporativism, this is the issue that Stonor and others should be examining.

As a reading experience, the narrative is oddly fascinating; as a source of obscure information, the material is richly rewarding; but as a history of the culture wars of the early cold war period, the book is mediocre at best. The narrative succeeds because the author keeps it moving nicely, providing biographical information when needed, but never as a drag. (Turns out that key shapers of early CIA were pedigeed establishment figures, lending weight to view of the Agency as an establishment - and not a populist - response to post-war world.) The intrigues lack the usual blood and guts of CIA operations, but are fascinating nonetheless, as intellectuals battle one another on both sides of the iron curtain. Saunders has done a service by providing information from research on this little known corner of the cold war. (Who among the general readership would otherwise know of the political intrigues that surrounded the promotion of non-representational art!) As a history of the culture war, the book doesn't work nearly as well, mainly because the events unfold without much historical context to illuminate them. For example, we learn very little of why various conferences were scheduled by the CIA's front organization, The Congress fo Cultural Freedom. Were they part of a larger propaganda offensive, perhaps in response to an aggressive Soviet move, or maybe to provide a paid holiday for penniless academics. etc. By and large, the adversarial Soviet Union, a key player in the drama, remains a very shadowy and unanalyzed presense throughout.

It's always tricky in a book about the Cold War to adopt a correct distance from the material. In this case, I believe Saunders succeeds admirably given the politically charged subject matter. She's largely non-judgemental toward the leading players, most of whom are none to sympathetic. Just as importantly, she is alert to the ironies of a Congress that preaches artistic freedom, yet whose publications refuse to include material critical of U.S. policy or objectives. In the final analysis, as she indicates on the last page, this was not a contest between virtue and evil, but between competing empires, one of which still stands with all its powers of deception still intact. The author has done a nice job of documenting one of those deceptive operations in action.

From faraway London, Frances Stonor Saunders took on a thorny topic-- CIA's secret underwriting of editors and authors in the US and Europe .In effect, says Saunders,the CIA thought it prudent to bribe name brand writers when the Cold War got under way . Bribery makes great writers; Saunders' list of those who took bribes includes the best poets, novelists and pop writers of the era . But are we to believe that an Englishwoman has the right slant on the CIA? Maybe. On the other hand a secret agency , with secret budgets in the billions ( when a buck was a buck) could create any sort of media, without a single politician or president or magazine, raising a voice against the notion. Did the CIA create publishing firms ? Did it commissions books and articles ? Did it inject itself into the managements and boards of directors of media firms ? We can't tell from Saunders book. But its at least a beginning . Maybe some American will now take on the big job of telling us what the CIA is up to today in the infotainment field . After all, this is all the CIA has to do--management the media . With the cold war over, the CIA can even bribe Russians in the print and broadcasting industries .

If you are a right-wing, ultra conservative member of the Christian Coalition then you will love this book.

According to DeLoach the FBI has never done anything wrong, Hoover never kept any secret files, and the sexual innuendos surrounding Hoover were unfounded. This may all be true as I am sure that the tales we hear of Hoover are exaggerated in order to generate interest in the man but it is other comments throughout the book that strike me as proof that the FBI can't and shouldn't police itself.

DeLoach discredits anyone who suggests that Hoover was gay but yet uses the same type of proof when detailing Martin Luther King's sexual escapades (why was the FBI investigating and wire-tapping is the better question?), that students in the 60's were wrong in their protest of the US Gov't because it could lead to communism or that homosexualtiy is thrust upon us by the media. He believes in the American way so long as its his American way.

Cartha DeLoach isn't an iconoclast or a sycophant; he simply writes through a spirit of determination to give credit when credit's due. As Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson has admitted, no-one alive today has DeLoach's knowledge of the FBI's workings during the Hoover era. After reading DeLoach it becomes increasingly hard to believe (a) that Hoover was a practising homosexual, (b) that he indulged in transvestitism (that allegation derives from the unsupported testimony of a convicted perjuror), (c) that Martin Luther King was the spotless saint in which America has increasingly come to believe, (d) that the CPUSA consisted of fey intellectuals concerned primarily with the Bill of Rights.

In a way, the very unpretentiousness of DeLoach's account is its strength. You come away from it, not liking Hoover, but respecting him.

"Deke" DeLoach was the number three man in the F.B.I. after J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, and the most authoritative source for the history of the Bureau in its most turbulent era.
The F.B.I.'s mystique and secrecy have encouraged a number of myths to grow around it, ranging from Hoover's putative sexuality (he seems to have had none), to wild rumors around the assassination of John F. Kennedy. DeLoach sets the record straight on these and other matters, such as the dispute between Hoover and Martin Luther King, "Mississippi Burning", Russian spies, and Hoover's slow recognition of the existence of the Mafia: "...no such complex national criminal organization could exist without him knowing about it. He didn't know about it; ergo, it did not exist".
DeLoach admirable narrative skills are most unusual and make the book a pleasure to read as well as informative. Photos, index.
(The numerical rating above is a default setting within Amazon's format. This reviewer does not employ numerical ratimngs.)

... agency.

Well,I love his other books, you know. hhgttg (hithchikers guide to the galaxy) trilogy, In fact it's my favorite book. But this one SUUUCKS!! I can't remember how many times I fell asleep while tring to read this monstrosity. I still haven't figured out why the horse was upstairs to begin with, and now,I really don't care.

After reading the five (!) books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, I turned to his two books featuring Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective. Although it took me a bit of time to warm to these stories, I wound up liking them even better than the HhGttG trilogy, much to my surprise. This audiobook version of these two excellent books is everything you would want in such a thing - unabridged and read by the author. On the downside, it is slightly pricey, and on the way far downside, it is out of print, and therefore a little hard to find. (Here's hoping that is remedied soon.) The late and much lamented (by me in any case) Douglas Adams was a writer of rare talent. He could write books about great subjects such as the origin of life and the meaning of existence, and make them riotously funny and entertaining. I believe that the only thing that will keep him from being recognized as a major writer is that he wrote science fiction. Too bad, because science fiction or not, his stuff was superb.

Being a long-time fan of Douglas Adams and his "Hitchhiker Series" doesn't automatically mean you will fall in love with Dirk Gently, but...

If you have any love of Norse Mythology, and enjoy a great Detective story...you will love these stories immensely.

Lurking refrigerators, redheaded housekeepers, Odin, Thor, jets, the birth of new Gods, Valhalla, cripsy linen sheets, exploding desks at airports, missing passports, pregnant cats, Coke machines, time warps, hot potatoes, rock groups, soothsayers, strange horoscopes, greed, history, mythology, and of course at the center of it all is the humor of Douglas Adams.

These are two of the most thoroughly enjoyable stories to be found on tape, and I give it 5 stars, it never flags, it holds your attention to the last paragraph of the last page. And it is especially nice to hear them read in the author's own voice, unabridged. Every little jewel is included, nothing is lost in the transition from print to spoken story.

Immerman's "CIA in Guatemala" is a very-well researched book, evidencing a great breadth of scholarship and study, but is at times very turgid reading indeed. My greatest problem concerns the author's endless hammering at the idea that the Guatemalan intervention was much more than a protection of US economic interests; that, rather, the intervention was more importantly a result of the "cold war ethos" of the time that dominated US political thought. Immerman's chief illustrations of this concern a wealth of evidence displaying hysterical US officials' ranting about the "international communist conspiracy" in Guatemala. While these men would certainly have liked everyone to believe that this was more than just a protection of their country's economic hegemony in Latin America, I don't see how Immerman can take this idea seriously. He shows through his own research that the Soviet Union- which was the fundamental opposing partner of the "ethos"- had nothing to do with Guatemala's revolutionary government at any time outside of sympathy, and that the Soviet Union's foreign policy was always a very conservative one, and always very fearful of the United States. The book would have been shortened of at least a few needless pages and clarified extensively if Immerman would have (1) dropped the idea that men like Dulles and Eisenhower were stupid enough to believe the "anti-Communist" propoganda they spouted at this time, and (2) recognized that perhaps the cold war ethos he discusses was all about preserving US economic dominance and concerned the Soviet Union only as a propoganda element, at least in Guatemala. Besides what I saw as a somewhat unclear argument to bolster the main idea that the intervention was an essential event in Cold War history, the book is undeniably well-researched and presents the Guatemalan intervention in excellent detail. The author's final chapter is especially interesting in linking the broad problems of Latin American reformist leaders demonstrated by Guatemala to the Cuban revolution and its aspirations. Overall, for its subject the book is certainly a must.

This is a useful book. It is very well researched, extraordinarily documented and tells you essentially anything you need to know about the CIA's plot to overthrow the Arbenz government in Guatemala. Unfortunately, the writing is so turgid and dull it's difficult not to nod off in the middle of a particularly gritty section of history. I applaud Immerman's effort and the completeness of his overall work, but he really should have taken on a jounrnalist to help him get through the rough spots and make the book actually readable.

The CIA in Guatemala offers the reader a compeling and shocking truth regarding the involevement of the American government in third-world country. Immerman relates in detail how the CIA and United Fruit magnates paint the guatemalan flag red and declare the country communist because they misinterpreted Agrarian Reform as a direct threat to "National Security." Boldly told, the reader finds himself amist a sea of revelations and a little confusion as the story unfolds, but it is only natural for a book of this nature. Immeran has done a wonderful job explaining foreign and political intervention about the american titan otherwise know as the "Gobierno Gringo." A marvelous account of past events are exposed after years of being witheld by the CIA as classified documents. I invoke anybody with an interest in politics, governmet intervention or just to inderstand how foreign interests dictate a small nation by placing puppet presidents to do their bidding to read this book.

I just feel sorry for this lawyer who needs to attract attention by betraying his own people!

We tend to forget that charging anyone with a crime is only the beginning of the justice process: then there must be a trial to decide whether the accused is innocent or guilty. Show trials, staged for political purposes, are not concerned with guilt or innocence but with turning on a performance that will satisfy crowd emotions. Yoram Sheftel's book describes, with graphic inside detail, how a show trial nearly succeeded in hanging an innocent man accused of being a vicious concentration camp guard. Perhaps because Shoftel is a lawyer and not a political scientist, "Defending 'Ivan the Terrible'" dosn't explain the socio-political background equally well. It can be read as an exciting (although wordy) courtroom drama in which both the US and Israeli establishments are caught abusing power and the wrong man almost hangs. However, the book will make more sense if it is read against the background of the antagonism between secular Zionism and religious Judaism, for example, as illustrated by the Kastner scandal.

The author of this book is a very courageous Israeli lawyer who labored for more than eight years to prove that a naturalized American citizen of Ukrainian descent, John Demjanjuk, was "railroaded" by the American and Israeli governments, with help from Germany and Poland. It is a story of government deceit and coverup which rivals and in some ways surpasses both Waco and Ruby Ridge. The OSI in our justice department and the Israeli government needed a conviction, and they didn't care that their "vi

The story is totally insane. Private mercenary groups operating inside the US. A "family" with information about each and every country. And as usual, only one man to stop them. It is simply boring. While it might be acceptable for conspiracy freaks who believe that it was really the CIA who killed Kennedy and think that "Area 51" is a top secret military base with live aliens, the normal person would think it wild, to be classed as sci-fi or fantasy. A person who has read Dale Brown, Tom Clancy, or Larry Bond would know this is absolutly impossible. If you want something worth your time, get "Nimitz Class" or "Day of the Cheetah" (while "Day of the Cheetah" is more of a flyer's story, its beginning is extremely interesting).

Great book, it is not often that an author can come up with such a comprehensive book as this on his first try. This had it all, a great story, good characters, wonderful action and a quick pace. This is an exciting book that at its heart is a conspiracy theory. Ok the story is almost not believable, but if you close one eye and get into it you will have fun. The taking of the whole East vs. West story line and throwing in cult like clan was very interesting. Each time I was ready for a plot twist, action or drama it was there. The characters just explode in your memory - you do not get them out of your head. The ending was also a good one - you are expecting something close but the author has come up with something better. I was a little disappointed in the love story, it seemed forced, almost like the publisher said the book would sell better with the love story. Overall, this was a great effort.

This is a great thriller. I just wonder when the movie is coming out.

If you are a person wanting to have ALL books about Gestapo buy it. Otherwise do no spend your money. The author does not hide what he thinks: "although a Nazi, Helldorf retained to the end a certain feeling of decency" in page 106 is part of a very long list of personal disqualifications. This kind of book is not history but rubbish.
Nevertheless, I was suprised to find that the members of the Gestapo were only 40,000. This is a rather small number for all Europe (1944). It is widely known that the USA-backed military regimes in Latin America (in the 60's and 70's) have more people in their security services for minor populations.
All the other facts mentioned in the book can be found in more serious texts about the same topic.

This book has very good information about the founding of the Gestapo and what it did. It also features in-depth descriptions of how people like Goering, Himmler, and Heydrich, among others, played a role in the Gestapo. The book is well researched, easy to read, fairly fast paced, and is broken down into small, easy to read chapters. My one quarrel with the book was that Crankshaw often described what the SS as a whole was doing rather than what just the Gestapo was up to. Still, a very good book and one of the few on the Gestapo.

This is the first history of the Gestapo -- the Nazi instrument of terror used within Germany and beyond -- that I have seen. The Gestapo is traced back to the start of the reign of National Socialism in 1933 through the Final Solution until its collapse in 1945. Special attention is paid to the individuals of this instrument of tyranny, namely Hermann Goering, the one who first controlled the Gestapo right through to Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler and Heinrich "Gestapo" Mueller, who became its rightful chief. The Crimes of the Reich Security Main Office, the branch of the SS that controlled the SD and the Gestapo, are revealed with the greatest of force, leaving individuals like Adolf Eichmann, Otto Ohlendorf, Christian Wirth, Rudolf Hoess and others with no chance to plea, seeming that they were some of the main perpetrators of this terrible crime against humanity. Edward Crankshaw's book, first published in 1956, has not yet shown signs of old age, seeming that he was one of the few historians that attempted to report on an elusive organization that all came to recognize as another word for mayhem.

This book is a very entertaining read. I have done extensive research on the CIA, particularly regarding the Bay of Pigs, and this was one of the first books I read on the subject. HOWEVER, even though I assumed that what I had read in the book was highly accurate, as I read two and three other books on the same subjects I was looking for [The CIA's Secrete Operations, Spying For America, and others] I realized that the other books seemed to agree with each other, as well as with the official, recently declassified reports on the Bay of Pigs by Colonel Hawkins-who ran the Bay of Pigs operation- yet THIS BOOK CONSISTENTLY MISLEAD ITS READER, which confused the hell out of me, since this book had been the first one I had read on the subject. There remarks such as the following: "Some two thousand Cuban rebels land at the Bay of Pigs. They are hit immediatly by Castro's armed forces. A debacle is in the making." (pg.307, opening of chapter 22) this is just one example of misleading information. What actually happened was that the 1187 cuban-exiles that landed were actually split up into three separate groups miles away from each other, none of which where "hit" by Castro's forces for hours. They did encounter a roving militia of about 40 people who promply surrendured, and a CIA scuba team that was leaving beacons for the invasion boats to navigate to were forced to open fire on a small contingent of Cuban forces (the CIA forces eliminated them). This does not, however, suggest what is reported in the above quoted statement. Other examples proliferate across the book. just a warning that this book seems to want to tell a good story more than give an accurate account of what actually happened. If all you want is an entertaining read, then the book will probably still be fine, since the fact bending tended to be restricted to small, inconsequential details. I must say, however, that Ambrose sure does know how to write an entertaining book.

This book is very helpful in understanding the challenges of today's world. Intelligence is a vital requirement for three objectives: Knowing what your opponents are doing; deceiving your opponents about what you are doing; and using covert means to change or replace your opponents.

As Ambrose makes clear, Eisenhower was introduced to the world of intelligence by Winston Churchill and rapidly became fascinated with it. His chief intelligence officer Kenneth Strong, a British General, kept him remarkably informed throughout the Second World War. Ambrose argues, and he is almost certainly right, that only the combination of great intelligence about the Germans and the most successful deception plan in history made the invasion of France possible in 1944. He also notes that deception had also been brilliantly used in 1943 to convince the Germans that the allies were going to invade Sardinia or Greece rather than Sicily. The result was a reallocation of German forces to the wrong places, which weakened their forces in Sicily.

There are a lot of lessons in this book for our generation. Eisenhower valued technology and took risks to develop it. He knew how to undertake successful covert operations. For anyone who would understand the uses of intelligence in the modern world, this is a useful book.

Ike has always been underestimated as an American President. Occurring as he did, during an era that to history has been seen as boring, and between essential administrations like Truman and JFK, Eisenhower has seemed to disappear to America. Here is a book that finally tells the whole story about Eisenhowers defense team and its use of espionage and covert ops to stop and roll back communism the world over. Ike was a confrontationalist, not a détente' man. This book, by the very esteemed popular Historian Mr. Ambrose, helps to convey the wide range of activities. From the planning of the Bay of Pigs to the overthrow of the Iranian and Guatemala governments Ike brought America to pinnacle of Cold War politics, daring to confront the communists in the same manner they confronted the third world, namely armed intervention. This is a wonderful account and the only one that can be found detailing Ike's covert career from WWII to 1960.
Seth J. Frantzman

This book relies on innuendo and loose causality to "prove" itself. Most of the sordid material relates to Ben Bradlee and Phil Graham, not to Katharine herself. One of the worst conspiracy theories ever constructed. Not edifying in any way. Read Katharine Graham's autobiography "Personal History," instead of this [garbage].

I have read this book and find it to be both entertaiining and informative.It works on the both the level of biography and media criitique. What Davis has done is to record the history of the Graham family fortune along with the liberal ideological adornments that almost makes the familiy and Katharine Graham somewhat sympathic personages. Almost is good choice with respect to this bunch. Because, as the author does so well in outlining the byzsantine grap for political influence of the Post and its owner, we become aware that the Graham liberalism follows the same path as described by J.S. Mill and smowhat more. Classic liberalism seeks power just as the conservative money class does but with a singular difference that ,it is the message not the methods that makes the difference between the two. The classic liberal, and Graham was cetainly cut from that cloth, wants to promote the cut of fairness, individual rights and the rule of law. In other words the liberal wants everyone to feel equal and that the game of capitalism is a fair game. Thus we have the Washington Post , guardian of fairness, publishing the Pentagon Papers, exposing America's shameful war. Or so goes the myth. But Davis puts the lie to this myth and exposes the CIA links and other covert operative connections in the Post. She exposes the CIA connection with Ben Bradlee, editor of the Post. As we now know, the media in America is far from free( and this applies so much so to the money class who own the media) but as Davis shows the media is infiltrated by government operatives ( especially at the national level) . So as anyone who reads this book will see the media and press must be taken with a grain of doubt.

A pretty good title, when you think of it. The Two Kates. Both German (or in Katharine's case, half- German), both with husbands who couldn't cut it and who died leaving power in their hands. Both loving secrecy and both believing that the full story wasn't necessary for the masses to hear. Is it outrageous that the first edition of this book was killed? Yes. After all, Ms. Davis wasn't one of Graham's reporters, to be brought to heel by an editor like Bradlee. Independent thought - how threatening to major media? Of course it is embarrassing to have someone question your motives in Watergate, the Post's most astounding triumph. Of course it is embarrassing to have your husband's suicide and prior mental illness discussed openly, along with his grandiose gaffs during the course of it. All very painful. And then to have your crusading editor, Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee described as an Old Boy with CIA/USAID ties, who helped ease the Rosenberg's into their electric chairs by conducting counter-intelligence in France in the 50's. The French were suspicious of our motives in executing these spies. The campaign of rhetoric which our secret government agencies conducted was to show that these were not political murders, but the normal workings of a democracy, not a totalitarian state. This is an appendix to the main work, but its purpose is to show Bradlee's access to something perhaps more powerful than the Nixon White House in its darkest, most paranoid hours. The thesis presented is that Nixon did not go because of the Watergate cover-up, but possibly because he (like the late Mr. Graham) was nuts and thus a security threat. Deep Throat is advanced as being known not just by Woodward (former Office of Naval Intelligence), but by Bradlee. In other words, the People still don't know the deeper story. Graham's family background is done deftly and intelligently. Her family had been able to connect with wealth and power from its first days in America, but also (through her mother, Agnes)with cutting-edge stylists and image-makers. Agnes seems to have fallen in love in late middle age with the emigre writer Thomas Mann, and to have exercised great psychological power over him. Agnes seems to have given the blessing to her daughter, and to have encouraged her to take over the Washington Post. The underlying mother-daughter story is of deep interest. In fact, Agnes almost seems to reach for power through her daughter, after resigning in alcoholic frustration from important affairs herself. This book is worth a few re-readings. It works on so many levels.It will have you questioning the Hollywood version of crusading reporters who work for well-entrenched media giants.