Agency-securities Reviews

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina

Published in Paperback by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (2003-05)

Author: Peter Dale Scott

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naked truth

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-11-16

Delivered as promised. Completely satisfied with the distributor. The book delivers the naked truth about our foreign policy. There are pages of footnotes backing up the content. I would recommend the author finding an editor to create an easier read for the material. But the truth is where and how you find it. Compared to the standard fare of feel good news it is a refreshing wind on a hot day.

The dark side of foreign policy.

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-08-26

Peter Dale Scott starts out with some definitions in the book.
Parapolitics-"describes the intentional controlling behavior, mostly executive and bureaucratic."
"Deep politics can refer to any form of sinister, unacknowledged influence."

Every chapter is loaded with notes at the end.

Scott emphasizes the monumental influence that oil interests have had on American foreign policy actions. This is often hidden from public view.

He mentions Nugan Hand bank which was a suspected CIA proprietary that combined drug financing with arms deals. Jonathan Kwitney also wrote an excellent book on Nugan Hand.

The CIA connection to opium and other drugs predates Air America and there are fascinating ties to the Corsican and Sicilian Mafias and even some famous American mafioso.

The material on BCCI bank was an eye-opener!

The author updated his material about the Indochina operations and war from the 1960's and 1970's. He examines the oil companies and their lobbyist's interests in former war areas like Cambodia.

One of the quotes that accurately reflects the point of this book is found on page 199. "The apparent involvement of CIA proprietaries with foreign narcotics operations is paralleled by their apparent interlock with domestic institutions serving organized crime."

"Drugs Oil and War" is a thoroughly documented book about foreign policy and the history of war, the part that oil and drugs often play in the matter.

Shocking material in a chewy read

Helpful Votes: 17 out of 17 total.
Review Date: 2006-10-15

A hard-to-follow structure and a dry, academic writing style make this powerful and much-needed book less accessible than it should be.

Spurred in part by the near-unanimous 5-star acclaim among the Amazon reviewers, I bought this book. I was a bit disappointed. Not because of the content: Scott's authority comes through strongly as a concerned, longtime, and deep observer of the deliberately hidden dimension of U.S. foreign policy operating in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina. Writing since the time of the Vietnam War, he has dug and dug into these things, and we are the beneficiaries of his spadework.

My issue is more with the structure and presentation of the book. As other reviewers have noted, the book is in fact mostly a reprinting of some of Scott's earlier writings, with some new, brief introductions. This means the book is not really unified, but more a collection of essays with some overlap and repetition which I found sometimes confusing. Counterintuitively, it moves backward in time, starting with a discussion of Afghanistan in 2002 and progressing to Colombia in 2001 and Indochina from 1950 to 1970. The book is not a single narrative or a single argument, and its unity suffers for this.

Scott delivers what should be the most sensational pieces of information--such as that presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all had strikingly intimate ties to organized-crime figures--in a dry, unemphatic way that makes for a strangely subdued, scholarly tone (with copious end-notes), and thus a less engaging read than it should be.

Also: if you are not thoroughly familiar with things like the progression of political and military events in Indochina leading up to the Vietnam War, you will find the book heavy going, since Scott assumes this knowledge on the part of the reader.

All of that being said, this book is very important, and Scott has done a huge service to us all in writing it. In the nature of things, he can't create a seamless narrative of American skulduggery in its wars since World War Two, since this has been kept secret. But he presents a host of suggestive and damning evidence of systematic, covert wrongdoing by American intelligence and military operatives working opportunistically with drug traffickers and organized-crime figures, often without the knowledge of the administration they are ostensibly serving. These people have taken the adage "the ends justify the means" to the extreme--although what the desired "ends" actually might be is often far from clear.

So: five stars for content and its importance; three stars for presentation. We need more Peter Dale Scotts--a lot more of them. His ideas need to be popularized, but it seems that Scott himself is not the guy to do that.

Parapolitics metastasize into deep politics

Helpful Votes: 17 out of 18 total.
Review Date: 2005-03-01

Peter Dale Scott illustrates clearly that one of the main aims of the US foreign policy is control of oil, because the US is heavily dependent on foreign oil and oil markets.

The Vietnam war was based on the Southeast Asia domino theory, which raised concerns about the Indonesian oil assets. The war was all about preventing communist regimes from taking control of oil reserves.
Other examples are Iraq, Afghanistan and Unocal's oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea, Colombia and Occidental Petroleum's oil fields or Kossovo and the Balkan oil pipeline.

In order to control oil resources the US backes armies and governments that are heavily involved in drug trafficking. The end justifies all means.
This kind of powerplay is exercised by covert means (parapolitics). Unfortunately, those policies tend to metastasize into deep politics. As the author states: 'they become an interplay of unacknowledged forces on which the original parapolitical agent no longer has control'.
The result is that the US and the world are inundated with drugs. One cannot find one dollar note without drug traces.

This book is partly a rewriting of an older book of the author 'The War Conspiracy'.
Although it is more confusing and lesser deep digging than his Magnum Opus 'Deep Politics', it is a disturbing and impressive report.
Not to be missed.

Superb study of US state's use of mercenary drug-runners

Helpful Votes: 33 out of 36 total.
Review Date: 2005-03-21

This is an outstanding and revelatory book, a brilliant account of a drug-trafficking empire. He shows how US protection for their drug-runner allies has led to the huge increase in drug trafficking in the last 50 years.

The US strategy of opposing national self-determination involves alliances with drug-traffickers like the Sicilian Mafia, the Triads in South-East Asia, the Contras in Nicaragua, the Kosovo Liberation Army in Europe, the death squads in Colombia and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. As President Johnson's Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, the USA "should employ whatever means ... arms here, opium there."

From the 1870s to the 1960s, the British rulers of Malaya farmed the opium franchise to the Triads. The US state first copied this strategy in 1949, when it armed the defeated Kuomintang's drug networks in Burma and Laos, after the victorious Chinese revolution began to eliminate Chinese opium, then the source of 85% of the world's heroin.

The US state encouraged its allies to enrich themselves through drugs, while it blamed the communist enemy for the evils that its allies were committing. From 1949 until at least 1964, the US told the UN Narcotics Commission that China was responsible for drug imports into the USA. In fact, the drugs were trafficked from Burma and Thailand, under the protection of the Kuomintang troops backed by the CIA. The Hong Kong authorities stated that they "were not aware of a traffic in narcotics from the mainland of China through Hong Kong" but "quantities of narcotics reached Hong Kong via Thailand."

The US state assaulted the whole region of South East Asia between 1950 and 1975, just as it is attacking the Middle East today. An earlier effort at regime change in Laos in 1959-60 was a disaster, putting drug traffickers in power. Opium production soared during the years of US intervention, the 1950s and 1960s, and plummeted in 1975 after the Vietnamese people kicked US forces out of the region.

US military interventions lead to bigger drug flows into the USA. After the US intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, the Afghani-produced proportion of heroin consumed in the USA went from zero in 1979 to 52% in 1984.

Later, the Taliban government cut opium production from 3,656 tons in 2000 (90% of Europe's heroin supply) to 74 tons in 2001 (US State Department figures), wiping out 70% of the world's illicit opium production. US forces, in alliance with a drug trafficking network, the Northern Alliance, defeated Al Qa'ida, another drug trafficking network. The US funded the Northern Alliance warlord and terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, making him the world's biggest heroin trafficker.

Under US occupation, Afghan opium production has risen from 3,700 tons in 2002, to 3,400 tons in 2003, to 4,200 tons last year. The Financial Times wrote, "The U.S. and UN have ignored repeated calls by the international antidrugs community to address the increasing menace of Afghanistan's opium cultivation." It is now the world's leading producer of illicit drugs, producing 90% of the heroin sold in Britain and Europe. President Karzai of Afghanistan has made Rashid Dostum, a warlord, drug runner and terrorist, his military chief of staff.

According to the Colombian government, the antigovernment guerrillas of FARC (the supposed target of the `war on drugs') had 2.5% of Colombia's cocaine trade; the government's allies, the paramilitary death squads, had 40%. Drug production in Colombia and its drug imports to the USA have now doubled to a new record.

A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat,' And the Struggle for Honor in Washington

Published in Hardcover by PublicAffairs (2006-04-24)

Authors: Mark Felt and John O'connor

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Questions abound.

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-01-29

I have given a three as it seems that the book we all clamour for is like "Deep Throat" himself was.
A secret hidden away brilliantly.
The same will apply to the book as Felt ages and unfortunately already is a man who is quite sick,with poor memory etc.
I believe that the family should come first and that the realisation that Mark Felt cannot tell the story as many would like it should also be respected,
As for one comment about this being the "last of the Watergate books then".
Nothing could be further from the truth,the American public and their unquenchable thirst for scandal and hearing scandal at such a level is something that will always grow no matter how strange and wild the premise of future books where there is literary gold you have to mine it until it collapses in on itself and then pick through the rubble again.
Ian.

William Mark Felt, retired associate director of the FBI, revealed his true identity as Deep Throat

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-12-04

In 2005 after nearly 33 years of secrecy, William Mark Felt, retired associate director of the FBI, revealed his true identity as Deep Throat, the secret source behind the Watergate case's public exposure - and in A G-Man's Life, Felt tells his own story of how the Watergate case grew to create personal challenges, isolation, and the dilemma of whether his duty as an FBI official superseded his duty to expose the truth. Both college-level collections strong in social and political American history and general-interest libraries strong in true crime and autobiography will find this an absorbing discussion.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Glad Book was Written before Felt's Death - However, Wish it Could have Been Written While His Memory Was More Intact

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2006-07-04

This book gave me a much better understanding of Watergate and what went on behind the scenes. Gave me a greater respect for the FBI - but I doubt that it is now what it was then.

This book did not sugar coat Felt. He devoted his life to the FBI at the expense of neglecting his wife and children. However, he had such a drive and tenacity to fulfill his dream that his wife would most likely not have been happy with a husband who doted on her and gave up his dream. His life was full and meaningful - he truly got to live his dream.

The book gives the facts and leaves one wondering if some of the things Felt done were truly out of concern and his desire for justice to prevail; or if he was acting out of disappointment because he didn't get the position he so wanted. It was always passed on to someone else who was certainly not deserving or capable - a political choice to promote the promoter. Of course, this would be a debatable subject. I come to the conclusion though that Felt was hurt and disappointed, but that he was a man of honor and did what he felt must be done to stop the corruption and protect the people.

This book portrays an excellent picture of the great FBI leader, J Edgar Hoover. In fact, I received as much insight and knowledge about Hoover as I ddi about Felt and that was sort of an extra. We see that Hoover was like Felt, totally dedicated to his career and demanded the same from his agents.

I feel the information in this book is something that can be relied on coming from someone like Felt. I don't believe he would lie about anything that was in this book.

The things revealed about Martin Luther King, Jr. were important to me. We have heard many rumours, but considering the great opposition Dr. King went though, one always wonders if there is any truth. However, I feel now that Dr. King certainly did have sexual weaknesses that we have heard about and he did associate with the communist leaders. However, the book portrays it in an open way. Just because he was friends with them does not mean he was for the communist movement. Through reading this book, I feel he was searching for a better way of life for his people; the socialistic way is so appealing because it claims to make the common people equal. It lures and gives a false hope. This makes me even more appreciate America, though not perfect, we still have hope. But oh how we need good leadership to make it possible.

This book really makes you stop and think about some impportant issues of that time and of our time now. An eye opener if you read between the lines.

I think this book portrays Mr. Felt as unbiased, he was concerned about all people, justice for all. He tried to be fair and compassionate as portrayed early on in the book where he let the guilty wife stay with her small children as he took the husband in for robbery. This is really an insight to his inner character and I think this stayed with him through his career and life.

I think the book could have flowed a little better, at times it was hard to follow. But perhaps covering so much diversity, this was the only way. I still give it a 5, a good read.

WATERGATE'S REAL HERO

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2008-08-08

Stuck in the middle of possibly the greatest scandal in the history of the government's Executive Branch, Mark Felt was more responsible for the destruction of the Watergate/White House cover-up than any other person in Washington. This book gives a great account of Felt's illustrious FBI career and clarify's his motives behind the secret meetings with Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. This is a "must-read" for everyone who was sruck by the Watergate mystique!!!

The Last Watergate Book?

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 2006-07-05

I've been a student of Watergate for years. Maybe in part because I was born in October 1973, and I enjoy asking people who was Vice President the day I was born (answer: no-one). Maybe also in part because ten years ago I picked up "The Haldeman Diaries" off the remainder rack at Barnes & Noble, and then started collecting all the Watergate autobiographies still in print (yes, that includes your own, Jeb Stuart Magruder).

I never really had an intelligent guess as to who Deep Throat actually was. When Mark Felt's name was released by his family last year, I finally understood why -- he's only a tangential part of the books I read, not mentioned by name in the Woodward/Bernstein books, not mentioned even in "The Haldeman Diaries" or the Oliver Stone "Nixon" movie, both of which fixated on J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, Felt's immediate FBI superiors.

When I purchased "A G-Man's Life", I thought I'd bought my last Watergate book. I was wrong. This book necessarily leaves lots of questions unanswered, primarily because Felt is now essentially senile and then, according to my reading of co-author John O'Connor's portions of the back, he took no active role in the writing. "G-Man" is drawn mostly from Felt's long-forgotten FBI memoir, and supplemented by unpublished writings and interviews with family members (who learned Felt's secret only at the same time as did family friend O'Connor).

Oddly, even the unpublished writings do not acknowledge that Felt was Deep Throat (hence the odd parsing of his phrase last year, "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat"). O'Connor does explain this gap in two different ways: first, he points out where Felt didn't identify with the Deep Throat character portrayed in the movie; and second, he prints his speculation that Woodward's Deep Throat was a composite of which Felt was only a part. That speculation, however, is not echoed in Woodward's own "Secret Man", a book about Felt written before the public announcement.

Felt's own writing, about his rise through the FBI ranks, well reflects the fatigue of hard work with the rewards of a job well done. This is a more than adequate crime memoir, with lots of decent anecdotes along the way. The FBI is not publicly regarded the way it used to be, so "A G-Man's Life" is not only an effective period piece, but a reminder of what good a governmental organization can achieve when motivated solely by the public interest.

The toll that Felt's career took on his own family is mentioned not at all in the memoir chapters-- that is left to O'Connor to describe in the epilogue. O'Connor, whose daughter went to college with Felt's grandson, has become a family friend and is thus in the best position to write objectively about these struggles. Where Felt's own writing also seems naive in retrospect is his celebration of Hoover the man -- there are tens of thousands of pages of well-documented books offering contrary evidence -- and also in his take on the New Left, the obsession that ultimately brought down his FBI career. Whether the New Left was a Communist-infiltrated organization that actively conspired with foreign governments to overthrow the United States is not a question answered by Felt, although he does try.

The aftermath of Felt's authorization of "black bag jobs" against the Weather Underground resulted in his conviction in federal court -- after a trial in which Richard Nixon testified in his favor. Felt's principled refusal to come forward as Deep Throat in the midst of his trial postponed his receiving the accolades he so richly deserved. The question remains... was Felt's three decades of secrecy worth the wait?

SELinux: NSA's Open Source Security Enhanced Linux

Published in Paperback by O'Reilly Media, Inc. (2004-10-11)

Author: Bill McCarty

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Great Overview to a Potentially Complex Topic

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-06-21

This book is a great introduction to the topic of SELinux because of the information on its developmental background and lucid description of the objectives, advantages and maintenance of a SELinux system. I would recommend this book to someone who has a firm grasp of basic security concepts and programming principles and is interested in getting exposure to the security enhanced model of Linux.

Quite short

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-07-17

Really only skimming over the problem, could be more in depth, since most online documentation about SELinux is really skimming over the subject too, or just overly dated.

Good Introduction but lacks advanced, how-to information.

Helpful Votes: 16 out of 16 total.
Review Date: 2005-04-07

Personally, I prefer books to focus either concepts or detailed implementation instructions not both. For complex topics like SELinux, you typically cannot fit the conceptual and pragmatic within one book. McCarty's SELINUX is no exception. SELINUX provides an excellent overview of concepts but struggles with policy implementation methods and procedures. I suspect the topic is simply too large for one volume. What implementation advice presented is clear and concise but you will have to search elsewhere for more detailed deployment advice.

Despite these issues, this book is recommended reading for anyone considering implementing SELinux. The conceptual overview is some of the best I've seen since SELinux got its start. Using charts, diagrams and examples, McCarty presents an excellent overview of the nuts and bolts of SELinux. Understanding the principles of Role-Based Access Control, Type Enforcement, and Security Objects is critical to both using SELinux and justifying its use. The latter may be a bigger hurdle than many anticipate. The chapters on these areas will arm you with sufficient understanding to make a clear case of why SELinux can and should be implemented in many Linux-based computing environments.

While there are brief examples throughout, the book's third chapter on SELinux installation presents a well-documented, step-by-step guide to installing SELinux. If you've never installed SELinux, these sections will prove very valuable. With clearly numbered steps and command line examples, you can have SELinux installed and configured with a default policy within an hour.

As a mix between the pragmatic and conceptual, SELINUX is a good start on this topic. Entry level SELinux users will probably not learn too much from this book, but if your are looking for a introduction to SELinux concepts along with some pragmatic advice for getting started, then this book may be for you.

One of the best on creating a secure Linux system

Helpful Votes: 7 out of 9 total.
Review Date: 2005-02-06

So what makes Selinux more secure than standard Linux? Primarily it is the implementation of role-based access control, sandboxing, and an audit facility that allows the system to log any attempts to exceed specified permissions. It does all this without conflicting with the normal permissions of Linux. If you are able to access a file through normal discretionary access control then the role-based mandatory access control provides additional security to determine if you can run the file or not. The only way to open a file is if both systems agree that you should be able to open it.

The author covers installation, configuration, administering, and setting up a security policy. The presentation of SeLinux is straightforward and the security model is presented in a writing style that makes it clear and understandable to the reader.

SeLinux: NSA's Open Source Security Enhanced Linux is highly recommended as both a Linux security solution and an excellent book on how to utilize all the resources of SeLinux.

vastly improved implementation

Helpful Votes: 8 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 2005-03-12

Selinux is a conscious attempt to fundamentally rework and improve linux security. Previously, or more to the point, in most current linux machines, the security was somewhat of an ad hoc approach. This is mitigated by a formidable array of open source IDS tools like Ethereal and Snort that let a sysadmin often successfully depend her network and machines.

But as the frequency and virulence of malware attacks has increased, the Selinux of this book may be a timely reinforcing of the operating system. As McCarty explains, this book is geared towards a sysadmin, as opposed to a programmer. It discusses the new things you should know. Especially the concepts of role based access model and of domains. The former has shades of DEC's VMS, which had a very mature implementation. Or those of you with mainframe experience may also recognise familiar ideas.

Programmers may find the book a little sparse, as mentioned above. But possibly McCarty is devising a sequel for them.

Very Best Men

Published in Hardcover by Simon & Schuster (1995-10-20)

Author: Evan Thomas

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Pure Romance and Fiction

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2007-12-21

This book is, at best, cr@p. Try not to read it. The protagonist, Wisner, and his cronies portray a "high society" crowd throwing dinner parties in which detailed policy was discussed among the elite, leading to actual policy and / or government action in later years, once they acquire requisite power to act. This is pure B.S., reflecting on past accomplishments through rose colored glasses. I admire the author for trying to take on the subject but please try to come at it from a slightly more objective perspective next time. Keegan's work on the world wars, Halberstam on Vietnam, among others are good examples of authors who spent years researching all possible angles and contributions to historical events. I could have "made up" a more credible story about the formation of the CIA.

the history of the company, "good shepherds" and all

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-05-28

this is a well written, insightful gem of a book covers the four major figures who defined the early years of CIA. their strengths, their bravado, their naivate, their luck - it's all here. more than just a history, there's a bit of understanding, as well, and some analysis. this book cuts through the cruft and to the meat of the story.

the company's changed a lot since then, but it's important to know where it came from. read this and you'll learn the foundations of that history, and america's second half of the 20th century, as well.

Just don't let friends borrow it

Helpful Votes: 4 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2002-01-30

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.

tragedy and triumph on a dark stage

Helpful Votes: 8 out of 9 total.
Review Date: 2005-01-17

Evans crafted a book that doesn't fall into non-fiction traps. Many non-fiction works miss the mark when it comes to drawing a reader in to a book about the Cold War. They show that the OUTRIGGER program was funded at $XX millions and opposed by X liberals in Congress but it collected Y amount of information from the Stassi.
Those are trivial and boring works.
This one doesn't miss at all -- it's a bullseye.
Evan Thomas' The Very Best Men reads like a thriller. You become wrapped up in the lives of Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes and Desmond Fitzgerald and their early work in America's CIA.
Evans' book isn't just a flag waiver. There are low points, and political failures. Notably the Bay of Pigs and the tragic life of Frank Wisner.
One note: I read Robert Littell's The Company before I read this book, and I see where his characters are drawn from. What order is up to you, but if you are a fan of CIA/spy plots, then I'd read both books together for enjoyment.

Surprised Not to See More Reviews

Helpful Votes: 9 out of 10 total.
Review Date: 2003-12-05

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.

Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary

Published in Paperback by CreateSpace (2008-01-31)

Author: T.H.E. Hill

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Average review score:

Greatest Spy Novel I Have Ever Read!

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2008-11-30

Wow! I am honestly not into spy novels as a general rule, but this story mixes humor with traditional spy novel undertones, along with placing the story in a real life event in history (which made it very easy to picture as you were reading).

I loved every minute, and I can easily see how this book has won awards in the past. You will love it!

Intrigue and suspense at its best

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2008-11-30

A wonderful read; the author places the reader squarely in the middle of the Cold War, a period that clearly separated the good guys from the evil ones. The East German Stasi and Vopos did horrendous things while trying to keep the East Germans as slaves. From the first page and on, the author made me a participant in this well-written thriller.

Like Prego - "it's all in there"

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2008-08-08

When I got this book, I opened it up to just scan through it, but I was hooked from the opening glossary of military jargon, because, as an eight-year army veteran and a Monterey Mary myself, it all started coming back. I was chuckling to myself and reading terms and definitions aloud to my wife, who for the most part didn't get it. But that was okay; she wasn't supposed to. Because the world of military intelligence and particularly of the Army Security Agency was a world unto itself for as long as it lasted. Author Hill was himself, of course, an ASA linguist and served at Field Station Berlin, although somewhat later than the time frame of VOICES UNDER BERLIN. I served at other field stations in Germany in the 60s, 70s and 80s; and, while I never got to Berlin, there was much here that I could relate to, even though the book is a novel. Shift work, burn bags, treads, ditty-boppers, transcripts, QC-ers, day weenies, and that strange special language of DLI-trained Marys - half Russian, half English. Hill's book is like a jar of Prego - "it's all in there." And it's told with a stylistic blend reminiscent of Heller and Hooker and perhaps just a few tantalizing tidbits of Hamlet thrown in for good measure. Hill's protagonist Kevin has a kind of innocence and idealism that seems almost out of place, even in the fifties. If there was anything in this book that didn't quite ring true it was probably in the language of its dialogue. The crudities and casual obscenities that usually characterize and fill GI speech and conversation are oddly missing. Perhaps the author was simply censoring all of this out to appeal to a wider audience. If so, it's an admirable gesture, but one which tends to somewhat weaken the book's authenticity, at least from my point of view. But, with its mix of traditional narrative and replicated transcripts of translated Russian intercept and how they are analyzed and interpreted, the story works well, particularly if you are someone who has "been there, done that," so to speak. Hill has done a great job of revisiting and recreating a small piece of a long and cold war, and in demonstrating the important role that the men of the ASA played in winning it. - Tim Bazzett, author of Soldier Boy: At Play in the ASA

To honor our Silent Warriors of the Cold War., ASA Lives

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2008-07-18

I would like to thank T.H.E. Hill for a job well done with this book an the items on CafePress he has made so we can all honor them all. I myself was a supporting son ( familiy member ) when my father was apart of the Army Security Agency Support Group. 10 years of my life with that and Him working for Office Of Naval Research., Growing up with this does have an impact on you. I became a ham radio operator and was apart of the NY Guard and on State Active Duty after 9/11. My call sign WA8UNS., I still remember in 1986 having the familiy car pulled over in East Germany I was only 15 at the time. Seeing you father asked to get out of the car and to be question inside there van. So again I would like to thank and honor our men and women that served our country durring the Cold War and all Vets.,

Voices under Berlin

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2008-07-15

A quick, fun read of a novel with a historical background. Captures some of the more amusing aspects of trick work in a field station during the Cold War, as well as life in Germany for ASA personnel. This work would be of particular interest to ASA and DLIWC alums.

The CIA World Factbook 2008

Published in Paperback by Skyhorse Publishing (2007-12)

Author: Central Intelligence Agency

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Average review score:

A Good Reference Book

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-03-29

Certainly not the most comprehensive handbook, but definitely a serious and solid reference book. The book was less biased than what I expected. It does offer a clear insight on countries we just get no information via common media.

This fact book delivers lots of information, spanning from a short history and the political situation, to the lots of interesting facts and figures on people and geography.

A very interesting book overall.

facts galore

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-03-20

This is by far the finest comprehensive and simple to read gathering of world facts that we could fine - it is updated yearly. I have some questions about validity but have to leave it to the CIA to collect the data. Bought for 12 year old's social studies class. Even he thinks its interesting - especially the paved and unpaved airports data. Will buy next years edition. In the back of my brain all I can see is my tax dollars being spent on sending CIA Agents all over the world to determine if the climate is humid or dry. Somebody's got to do it. All in all we use the book regularly and highly recommend it for someone who needs it for school work, crossword puzzles or just to annoy their family with facts.

For the reader that likes to read almost anything

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-03-18

This fact filled book is complete and continually updated on the CIA's website, and I often consult it there. But, I really enjoy having a copy on a shelf in my garage -- I take it with me to browse through on hiking and driving trips.

The introduction to the paper and ink version is always interesting reading for macro developments. For example, new this year according to the CIA:

"In the Geography category, two new fields focus on the increasingly vital resource of water: 'Total renewable water resources' and 'Freshwater withdrawal.'

"In the Economy category, three fields have been added that focus on capital stocks and investment. They are "Stock of direct foreign investment - at home," "Stock of direct foreign investment - abroad," and "Market value of publicly traded shares." Addition 279 ally, the data for GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) has been rebased using new PPP conversion rates.... The 2005 benchmark revises downward the size of the world economy in PPP terms from the previous estimates, and changes the relative sizes of many of the world's economies."

"In the Notes and Definitions, concise descriptions have been added of the major religions mentioned in the Factbook.

"Several notable geographic changes have occurred. The US Board on Geographic Names (BGN) now recognizes Timor-Leste as the short form name for East Timor; its description may be found under this new designa 8e7 tion. France's overseas possessions have been reorganized. The five former entities of Bassas da India, Europa Island, Glorioso Islands, Juan de Nova Island, and Tromelin Island, previously grouped as Iles Eparses (Scattered Islands), now constitute a district of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands. Additionally, the islands of St. Barthelemy and St. Martin, formerly a part of the French overseas region of Guadeloupe, now make up separate overseas collectivities and have their own Factbook entries. Finally, a new Kosovo entry has been added."

The online version is one of my hotlinks on my computer; the paper and ink version is a source of wonder on the trail or on the road. Our library is always happy to get the previous version when the new version arrives in the fall -- see The CIA World Factbook 2009.

Robert C. Ross

Kindle Edition review & workaround

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2008-05-13

The Kindle edition has two problems:

1) The text justification is Centered and can't be altered to full or left justification. This makes for rather annoying reading regardless of what type size you choose.

2) In the Table of Countries, the quickest way to get to the right entry should be to click on the appropriate letter of the alphabet in the alphabet letter list at the top of the Table of Contents.

On the Kindle, you get the alphabet in two lines, A-W and
X-Z.

However, the Kindle handles this kind of links with a pop up "menu" and that only will display links for the letters A through M when you click on the link A-W. So unless you either use the Search on Kindle or page down through the table of contents, you can't get to a N-W country rapidly.

A work around: Go through the text for the N-W countries and use the Kindle Highlight to highlight each letter of the alphabet (at the head of that letter's list of countries. I actually did the whole alphabet this way). Then instead of using the table of contents, use the Menu feature for your Marks.

Also note that Taiwan is listed at the very end of the regular alphabet list.

CIA World Factbook

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2008-05-12

The information is what is on the Internet. I was disappointed that the book did not have the country flags in color.

CIA, Inc: Espionage & the Craft of Business Intelligence

Published in Hardcover by Brassey's Inc. (2002-02-25)

Author: F. W. Rustmann

List price: $27.50

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Average review score:

CIA INC, Business Intelligence Primer

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2003-11-12

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.

Bad day or bad book?

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2003-02-21

While I could not more agree with the previous reviewers as to the entertaining style of the book, I must say that after finishing it I could not shake the feeling I'd been duped by an ex-CIA agent who was looking to make a little money on the side by writing folksy recollections of his service time. If you're interested in reading about TLAs and other acronyms, this book is for you. If you want a spy novel, this might be for you, too, but don't expect any gunfire or semi-automatic weapons discharge, casinos with mixed drinks, double agent Halle Berry's, or anything remotely related. This book tells gut-level stories in a manner befitting Mark Twain, almost, and remembers once in a while to try and tie CIA-type spying into corporate intelligence by dropping short chapter sections on things like the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 and to make sure the reader is fully aware that Europe, China, and Japan have no qualms about stealing our corporate secrets. Oh, and for those of you who would like to take some tips on having a book qualify as "competitive intelligence", be sure to confuse the term business intelligence with competitive intelligence. And make sure that you watch carefully for the nepotism angle since the author's daughter gets a shot at outlining some web sites for gathering intelligence (and not many at that), though it's impossible to tell where her writing begins and his ends due to the consistency of voice in the narrative.

Finally, I'm still smirking at the jacket cover photo. Man, how serious can it get? Especially for a book that sheds such little light into competitive intelligence except to put a bug in your ear (pun intended) to watch out for bugs, how to determine if you're paranoid or really being bugged, or how to give your agents code names like the CIA does.

The real thing.

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2003-07-20

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.

An Intelligence Pro's Rapid Primer on Modern Espionage

Helpful Votes: 11 out of 11 total.
Review Date: 2002-04-11

If anyone wants to get a rapid primer on how modern espionage relates to the national and international business world, this is an excellent book to read. It is surprising what this veteran CIA officer, a highly respected core member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), has been permitted to say by the Agency about various operations. To this jaded reader/reviewer, in the profession for fifty-odd years, I particularly liked that the author told his stories in an entertaining, straight-from-the-shoulder fashion, warts and all, telling what worked, what did not work. There are no maudlin reminiscences or ego-stroking, occasionally present in personal memoirs. Rustmann makes the connection between his experiences, for example in bugging a foreign embassy, to the needed preventive and protective actions by US business. The book is recommended reading for corporate officers, but even quite apart from its message to business, it is also a public primer on the crafts of human intelligence and counterintelligence, from the recruitment of spies to collection operations and analysis, from the threat posed by foreign (or competitive) economic intelligence collection in the US (particularly from minorities with "dual" loyalties) to the protection of information and the detection of espionage operations. In the end one realizes that in business, just as with terrorism (also discussed), we are still living in an jungle, in which the uninformed and unwary may pay a heavy price. Rustmann's book is recommended reading for corporate professionals, but also for students and members of the public who want to know more about US and foreign espionage operations from a highly reputable professional.

Entertaining, but not what I expected

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2003-08-28

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.

Enemies: How America's Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets--and How We Let It Happen

Published in Kindle Edition by Crown Forum (2006-09-19)

Author: Bill Gertz

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Average review score:

Really Not One Of His Better Efforts

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-01-18

Gertz took a critical issue and turns it into a litany of anecdotal stories about people who betray the trust their government put in them. Yes, there are spies in our government and something needs to be done with them. But Gertz is short on answers other than blaming the political correctness crowd and liberal democrats. Although they are deserving of much of the blame they are not the only ones guilty of the gaps in our counter-espionage efforts.

One thing that really jumped out at me is his choice of sources. One individual -- whose name escapes me as I do not have the book in front of me -- is a counter-espionage expert at the FBI who is described in several chapters as part of the problem in terms of covering for people who probably do not deserve cover and is then cited as an expert in other chapters. Which is it Bill? Either this source is part of the problem or part of the solution?

All in all, the book was big on rehashing stories of spies within the government but short on solutions.

Bill Gertz deserves a truckload of Pulitzers

Helpful Votes: 10 out of 12 total.
Review Date: 2007-03-08

It will never happen, of course. Real investigative reporters who don't disguise their love and concern for the United States, folks like Bill Gertz and Bill Sammon will never gain the respect and votes of the Pulitzer Prize committee. They preserve their votes for people like Walter Duranty, who denied there was famine in the Ukraine and won a Lenin Prize in addition to his Pulitzer.

Gertz is concerned for America's safety. As he puts it "[u]ntil we fix the gaping holes in our defenses, America will remain highly vulnerable to our enemies." And after reading this book, if you weren't already worried, you will be.

Anyone who has visited a government office, whether to renew their driver's license, pay their property taxes, mail a package or whatever, knows that governments do not hire the cream of the crop. What happens when second, third and fourth rate people are hired by the CIA, the FBI and other security agencies?

Uh, you get second, third or fourth rate performance in situations where the stakes are very, very high: like the preservation of the nation's secrets.

Gertz details scandals resulting from the incompetence of the CIA and FBI. A Chinese woman has two lovers, both FBI agents. She's one of their prized informants - and a spy for the Chinese government. The investigation of her is muddled and she walks.

The FBI spends years persecuting a CIA agent suspected of being a spy. They have no real evidence, but the harassment is non-stop. Their big clue is the CIA employee's proximity to a partiular park. After three years, after a KGB defector is paid $7 million for information, the FBI learns that the spy indeed lives near the park in question: his name is Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who has spied for the Soviets for years.

Gertz points out that literally every nation is spying on the United States - and that our agencies are horribly grossly incompetent to detect the spies and catch them.

This is a frightening book, but one that every concerned American should read.

Jerry

Sobering look

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2007-01-03

The title should be "The Enemy Within" as we seem to be our own worse enemy.

The priority always seemed to be telling the powers to be what they wanted to hear in order to preserve job security and personal career growth.

If we continue to keep the "head in the sand" attitude we will be in real trouble.

I urge anyone who works for a defense contractor or a government agency to read this book.

Dave C
Nashua , NH

Enemies

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2007-05-16

I think this book is excellent for one who likes to write essays or research paper about national security. There are a lot of information I haven't even known before from other information sources. the content of the book is well organized, so easy to collect information what I need for my writing. The stories were real happened, so it made me be interested. I'm sure this book is good for you to achieve your goals to write essays or researchpaper as well as you enjoy reading many interesting real stories.

Eye Opening Book

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2007-01-03

This book brings to light the extent our enemies will go to get information they want. It also tells how often international agreements on arms and nuclear material are violated for money. While the United States has to try to work with many nations to broker some form of peace, the book shows there is no Nation we can fully trust. A good read for anyone interested in espionage and counterintelligence.

Wedge: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11--How the Secret War between the FBI and CIA Has Endangered National Security

Published in Paperback by Touchstone (2002-10-29)

Author: Mark Riebling

List price: $16.00

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Average review score:

Interesting Material; Sloppy Update

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2006-10-23

Mark Riebling's The Wedge is a very comprehensive review of the historic animosity between what we now call the CIA and the FBI, though the split precedes even the creation of the current CIA. As could have been predicted in this book, an intelligence "czar" - the Director of National Intelligence - has finally been appointed to try to make these two organizations put aside their organizational cultures and work together for the national good. In a nutshell, the "wedge" between the CIA and FBI has always been the "law"; the FBI's need to enforce it (often in a partisan fashion), and the CIA's charter to break it (usually in other countries, but often in our own.) And when an irresistable force meets an immovable object ...

Riebling throws light (new or old light, I'm not sure) on subjects as diverse as the disaster at Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, and Iran/Contra, even though his somewhat pro-FBI spin detracts from some of the impact of his claims. Worse, though, is the poor updating of the book, first published in 1994, with an afterword added in 2002. The index is atrocious; for example, mentioning NSA traitor Pelton in the book's text, but not including his name in the index. Likewise, Riebling's claims that the Glomar Explorer totally failed in its effort to pull up a Russian submarine from the depths of the Pacific Ocean are undone by the CIA itself admiting that it not only pulled up part of the submarine but filmed the burial at sea of the bodies of Russian sailors who died in that sub's sinking. (They even turned film of the event over to the Russians and you can watch the film on Goodge video.)

What this book is, then, is a pretty slap-dash updating of a volume that was excellent for its time, but is now just a rehashing old news for new profit.

A Clash of Cultures

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2007-02-27

Within the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) it is scarcely a secret that there has always been a strong undercurrent of rivalry between the FBI and CIA (and its predecessor the Office of Strategic Services, OSS). This book throws a good deal of light on that rivalry and the institutional cultures that foster it. Mark Riebling appears to provide a fair and accurate assessment of origins and history of this rivalry.

As the book makes clear, the FBI is a premier law enforcement agency whose culture emphasizes development of legal evidence through systematic investigations to be used in obtaining court convections of malefactors. The Bureau has never considered research and analysis as essential to this mission. Because of this, the FBI has always been very much square peg in the round hole of the IC.

CIA by contrast has a culture based on the collection of information (which not at all the same as legal evidence) and its transformation by research and analysis into knowledge which can guide and inform decision makers. This is indeed the principal function of all members of the IC, saving the FBI. In the absence of a strong national intelligence authority, which has been vainly sought after since the Pearl Harbor, these cultural differences have been allowed to fester and as the book claims weaken the U.S. national security establishment. (The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is only the latest in a long history of fruitlessly trying to build a functioning national intelligence authority).

The book concentrates on the CIA-FBI rivalries that come to the fore in the complex areas of counter-intelligence (CI) and counter-terrorism (CT) where foreign and domestic boundaries tend to converge and law enforcement and intelligence priorities cross repeatedly. It is discouraging to read over and over how efforts to create central and coordinated CI and CT programs have been thwarted by this institutional rivalry between CIA and the FBI. The book also makes clear that the FBI is NOT the villain of this rivalry and that the cultures of the principal members of the IC predisposes them not only to withhold cooperation from that odd man out ,the FBI, but from each other as well.

Secret History with a Definite Point of View

Helpful Votes: 11 out of 14 total.
Review Date: 2002-11-09

This is an audacious, exhaustive, highly original book. I think it's fair to say that Riebling is somewhat biased toward the CIA and against the FBI, although perhaps not without some very good reasons (for instance, FBI diretcor J. Edgar Hoover clearly didn't understand counterintelligence; also, the FBI refused to do intelligence analysis).

Riebling also takes a somewhat revisionist approach to the Cold War, implying in many places that the secret measures taken againt communist sympathizers by our government weren't that extreme, and noting that they were in fact more modest than those taken by Jefferson, Madison, et. al. against suspected British sympathizers in the early decades of the Republic.

There's a besetting contrarian current or draft in this work, which sometimes Riebling rides to great heights of interpretation (e.g., on KGB deception ops), but which sometimes blows him into dead-ends where the key data is still classified.

The book is rich in detail. There is tradecraft detail here one finds nowhere else -- e.g., Nazi spies' use of butterfly trays to smuggle microdots; the story of Project WALNUT, CIA's first foray into the computerization of its records; a fistfight between FBI agents and CIA officers over custody of a Soviet defector in a Washington, DC restaurant.

There are long stretches where one feels riveted as in the best spy novels. The material on Ian Fleming and the influence of the "James Bond" ethos is especially well done.

Expertly handled too is the vast amount of original mateiral on the colorful and controversial CIA spycatcher James Jesus Angleton, whose approach is explained with patience and precision. Riebling clearly had access to many who worked closely with Angleton, including FBI liaison officer Sam Papich, and as a result there is a sureness of touch where other writers have played false notes.

Overall, despite some disagreements with Riebling's interpretations, I found this book educating and entertaining. It's the only history of our intelligence community I know of which traces our current problems to our past ones. And unlike most other books in the field, it does NOT devolve into nonsenical claims that the U.S. is in imminent danger of becoming a police state simply because it must sometimes use secret weapons against ruthless foes.

One of those books you know no one will read

Helpful Votes: 8 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 2006-01-13

This is one of those books you know people in high places should read, but of course they never will. If they actually do, they of course will be thwarted in their efforts to implement any corrections that are pointed out by the book, because the institutional forces that are involved are way too powerful, and way to attached to their perks and spheres of power to shift any, even for reasons of National Security.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was essentially the creature, or creation anyway, of J. Edgar Hoover, who was the director of the Bureau for a record 46 years (a record not likely to ever be broken). Hoover built up the organization from an obscure office in the Department of Justice into a behemoth that ran down the "moto-bandits" of the 20's and early 30's (Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machinegun Kelly) and then helped put the East Coast mob into retreat, at least temporarily, in the mid-30's. By then he'd become powerful enough that he felt his power and authority should be expanded.

One of the directions in which he wished to extend his power was toward political dissent and disloyalty in the U.S. Hoover himself was apparently pretty apolitical, at least as far as partisan Republican vs. Democrat issues were concerned, but he was very disturbed by Communist influence, and possible Nazi influence, in the U.S., and he apparently felt that he should be in charge of rooting out the elements of these philosophies that were in the U.S.

Tied up with this was the issue of espionage. For a while, Hoover had a clear field, but when the U.S. entered World War II, his FBI, clearly a law enforcement agency trained to catch criminals, wasn't very good at catching spies. Worse, their focus was on *catching* them, as opposed to feeding them bad information, for instance, or following them to see who they led authorities to. Hoover's own mindset, stubbornly provincial and conservative, ruled out the Bureau learning how to do these things: instead, he doggedly persisted in attempts to control how enemy agents were dealt with, who actually dealt with them, and most importantly, who got the credit.

By the time the Office of Strategic Services was formed in 1942, the lines were already pretty clearly drawn. Hoover would oppose any expansion of intelligence capability outside of the Bureau itself, and doggedly continue to try and expand his power vis a vis intelligence matters. When he died 30 years later, he was still trying.

The first half of this book lays out the problems this created when the U.S. first tried to deal with the threat of the Nazis, and later with the Communists. Hoover's death didn't end the bureaucratic rivalry that had sprung up: by then the institutional memory of the CIA and FBI was too strong to be killed off by the absence of one individual. The rest of the book deals with the post-Hoover era, with the last chapter and an epilogue added on later, which outline the current difficulties in the War on Terror.

The author lays all of this out in considerable detail, and frankly at times it makes for pretty horrifying reading. All the way back in the beginning, Hoover absent-mindedly filed away the message the Nazis sent double-agent Dusko Popov asking him for ship dispositions and locations, torpedo net positions, and other very suggestive things regarding Pearl Harbor. When the attack actually occurred, Popov was in South America. The first report of the attack that he heard only gave note of it, and he was elated, figuring that with the information he had given the U.S. we must have won a terrific victory. He was later outraged to discover we didn't use the information. Hoover, apparently, didn't trust or like traitors, even those who betrayed our enemies.

There is one proviso with a book like this. *All* intelligence books written about recent history are somewhat problematic, in that the author tends to discover information about the *failures* of intelligence. Successes, if properly conducted, remain out of sight of the public. This book is probably especially prone to that, given that the subject is implicitly a failure, or series of failures, in intelligence. That being said, the author certainly had a lot of material to report, and regardless of any successes, there's enough here to make your hair stand on end. The book is somewhat dated, too: the main narrative finishes just as the first President Bush leaves office to be replaced by Bill Clinton, and the epilogue/afterward are frankly inadequate to deal with the issues facing us today. I would have much preferred it if the author had added another hundred pages, instead of the 20 or so that are tacked onto the end of this edition. He does mention constraints of space, so perhaps the publisher is to blame.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in current affairs or the current intelligence failures in the U.S.

Pogo Lives at FBI--We Are Our Own Worst Enemies

Helpful Votes: 9 out of 11 total.
Review Date: 2003-06-19

Although I know the CIA better than I do the FBI, I have spent time in the past ten years with law enforcement officers from over 40 countries including the US, and the bottom line is that the FBI bureaucracy (Supervisory Special Agents and the politically-motivated upper tiers of FBI management) are a worse threat to US security than individual terrorist groups, for the simple reason that as long as the FBI leadership remains in denial, in secret, and ineffective, the entirety of our homeland defense is incapacitated.

The earlier version of this book focused on the decades of historical enmity between CIA and FBI--in the early years, Edgar J. Hoover was clearly to blame for a culture of hostility between the two agencies and between the FBI and military intelligence--in one instance he actually suppressed early knowledge of Japanese intentions on Pearl Harbor obtained from a German agent tasked to fulfill their targeting requirements.

In later years the CIA took on more responsibility for shutting out the FBI, consistently refusing to brief them in to either internal counterintelligence failures, or foreign operations with a strong domestic counterintelligence matter.

What the author has done in the aftermath of 9-11 is update the book and make it even more relevant to every citizen and every elected official and every bureaucrat. The earlier edition made me very angry about how the senior FBI bureaucracy can sacrifice the national interest at the altar of its own selfish agenda of self-preservation and aggrandizement--from Special Agent Rowley to Special Agent Robert Wright, the FBI leadership consistently spends more time censoring and punishing its own people for honesty, than it does chasing terrorists. This new improved edition should make every citizen, every voter angry, and they should instruct their elected representatives that the time has come for a National Security Act that finally reforms national foreign intelligence, military intelligence, and law enforcement intelligence, and in passing, creates the homeland security intelligence act to create a federated system of state and local intelligence and counterintelligence cadres that operate under the jurisdiction of governors and mayors rather than the federal government.

Pogo had it right: we have met the enemy and he is us.

Facing Down Evil

Published in Hardcover by Putnam Adult (2006-09-07)

Author: Clint Van Zandt

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Average review score:

A good light read

Helpful Votes: 12 out of 15 total.
Review Date: 2006-10-07

I was actually disapointed in this book. Given the authors background I was hoping for a book that went into some detail into his methods, beliefs and techniques of crisis negotiation. What I got was a very light but enjoyable read that covered his career in the FBI (including his battles with the beaucracy which I felt did not add to the story) and four incidents of crisis negotiating, which had some good basic tips. Waco got a mention - but only to say he will leave it to the next book - rather frustrating.

My recommendation is, if you want a book on techniques, buy one of the others on the market (for example Van Zandt's fellow ex-agent Fred Lanceley's "On Scene Guide for Crisis Negotiators", or even Frank Bolz 'Hostage Cop"), but if you want a good read and an interesting story then this would be a good book to get.

Facing Down Evil

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2007-01-04

I recommend this book to any one who enjoys a true-to-life FBI drama.
Each chapter told a different edge-of-your seat story about this author's fascinating life as a negotiator/profiler for the FBI.
Exceptional book and a great read!

Interesting view of the FBI Agent

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2007-01-16

I really enjoyed this book and it had many interesting thoughts and details for someone looking to get into the FBI, like myself. However, I felt it layed a little too heavily on his family issues and Christian background. Not that I'm opposed to either, but I had assumed, by the synopsis of the book that the author would go into more detail about high profile cases he had worked on but did the exact opposite. He talked about cases that were probably least known to anyone reading the book. Still, it was a good read but don't pick it up if you expect to read about cases like the Oklahoma City bombing or the Unabomber.

A Primer for Hostage Negotiations

Helpful Votes: 4 out of 4 total.

Agency-securities Books