Agency-securities Books

Prison privatization has become a major public policy issue over the last few years, in America and around the world. Advocates say that private corporations can run prisons better and cheaper than the state. According to the contributors to this book, the promise is much greater than the reality.

Prison corporations cut costs as much as possible, affecting things like education and rehabilitation programs for prisoners, staff salaries and training, which leads to a high yearly turnover of guards. An obstacle to greater privatization of prisons has been the power of prison guard unions. The cost savings don't go to the local government, but to the corporate office, where executives draw huge salaries. On more than one occasion, the state has had to take back control of a prison from a corporation, because of deaths in custody, or violations of prisoners' human rights, including those of juveniles.

Blacks and Native Americans are in prison in numbers far higher than their proportion of the general population, because prison is a method of social control more than a way to make the streets safer. Private prisons make little or no attempt to incorporate native traditions, like sweat lodges, into the rehabilitation process. Putting prisons far away from cities, or shipping prisoners to other states, disrupts the family structure back home, leading to more children growing up without one or both parents. Women, and people with diagnosed medical conditions, also do not get their needs taken into account by private prisons.

This is an excellent book. The writing gets rather dry and academic, so it will take some work on the part of the general reader; by all means, stay with it. It is well worth reading, for those involved with prisons and for the general public.

"Capitalist Punishment" is a scholarly but accessible study of the relatively recent phenomenon of prison privatization. Two dozen writers representing academia, human rights organizations, investigative journalism, criminal justice policy, labor and other relevant fields have contributed thoughtful articles to the book. The author's diverse perspectives gives the reader a well-rounded understanding of the subject and no doubt will inspire many to take action and work against the expansion of the industry.

The book is a project by Human Rights Internet (HRI) of Ottawa, Canada. HRI is an organization dedicated to education on human rights issues and the role of civil society. Concise and well-written introductory and concluding chapters provide context for a number of sharply-focused articles that drill into specific subjects, such as the effects of prison privatization on women, minorities and prison workers. The book succeeds in informing concerned citizens and policy makers about the myriad obscure issues associated with prison privatization and its strong connection with human rights abuses.

The first chapter by Phillip Wood is noteworthy for its excellent theoretical analysis. Mr. Wood examines the rise of the prison industrial complex in the U.S. and concludes that it is a policy response to postmodern economic restructuring. The author finds that the criminalization of race and poverty serves the dual purpose of preserving elitist privileges while preparing the working classes for an accumulation strategy based on capital's intensified exploitation of non-union labor.

Another exceptional chapter was contributed by Monique Morris on the topic of the arrested development of African-Americans. Ms. Morris begins by discussing the historical legacy of legally sanctioned punishment against blacks in the U.S. She then finds that current punitive practices are merely an extension of policies that have disenfranchised and disempowered the African-American community for centuries. Private prisons serve to exacerbate these problems by offering a false solution to the media-induced spectacle of African-American criminality.

On the whole, the articles in the book strongly suggest that the failures of prison privatization are attributable to the incompatibilty of the private pursuit of profit with the public good of rehabilitation. In order to produce income for shareholders, private prisons routinely skimp on employee training and inmate health care, education, and other vital services. The overcrowding and stress that results often creates conditions where physical and sexual abuse increase, and recidivism predominates as opportunities to properly prepare inmates for reentry into society are lost.

The book also adopts somewhat of a social research methodology to compare the experiences in the U.S. -- which has been leading the charge in prison privatization -- with other countries including Canada, the U.K. and Australia. As human rights abuses, poor financial performance and mismanagement of private prisons have become better known, most of these countries have begun to scale back on privatization and return responsibility once more to the public sector. However, many of the authors in the book are concerned that the profit motive will push some corporations to relocate to more easily exploitable countries like South Africa, where the relative absence of regulations and public accountability might well lead to disaster for unprotected inmate populations, families and communities.

I recommend this important book to everyone.

William Blum has without doubt makes a significant contribution to the history of the Cold War. Furthermore, his account
shows that the guiding logic of the CIA is as applicable today as it was in the days of the USSR. Foreign policy, as Kissenger
said, is most definitely not about "missionary work", rather being formulated in the interests of the ruling elite in the USA.

The main point arising from this book is that what a country does, and what it says it does, rarely coincide (in this way states are very similar to normal people). Lifting the veil of successive US governments' benign rhetoric, Blum reveals undercurrents or pure greed and savagery. International Relations can only be truly understood by following the interests of interested players, rather than politicians' vacuous pontifications.

The maxim of "follow the money" can be applied to Blum's methodology - charting the rise of murderous and fascist regimes
against the profitability of US investors.

Although much of what Blum claims to have happened is unverifiable, being based on secret concordats, gentlemen's
agreements and sometimes hearsay, his collection, corroboration and systematisation of sources does much to counter this.
Blum can lay no claim to the absolute truth (though who can?), but his account of the CIA is closer to the mark than any other
official history.

In effect, Blum is asking his readers to pose a simple question: what motivates organisations such as the CIA? Is it the
wishy-washy benign do-gooder rhetoric of career politicians? Or the cool calculations of material self-interest. Blum's
convincing analysis would have us accept the latter.

Highly recommended.

I bought my copy in 1987 and consider it one of the most important books written. Mainly it shows that the United States is not concerned with the welfare of the world as a whole but only concerned as to how it can control the world so it can theive the world's riches.

Recently, S11, some "Americans" (i.e., United States citizens) asked why the world hated them so. This book will largely explain why -- The citizens of the United States greed and arrogance knows no bounds; in fact it is not a matter for reflection or analysis.

"Americans" are just the most important people on earth and everyone else is there to be their slaves and sychophants. OR ELSE! Or else the ones who don't act like catamites to the "Americans" deserve to be bombed back to the stone age, including former allies like Osema bin Laden, who was an "ally" when it suited the spooks of the CIA. Wounded 8 times in fighting the Russians on behalf of the US, he is not a little "terrorist" nobody, "wanted dead or alive", as that sickening coward George W Bush puts it.

I fought in Korea for 2 and a 1/2 years and never have I witnessed such inept and cowardly troops when it came to hand to hand infantry fighting as the "Americans" (not the Canadians) including the US Marines.

They are cowards. White-collar killers dropping bombs from 40 thousand feet is about all they're capable of when it comes to "war", which of course isn't war but a turky shoot. It is time William Blum's book published by ZED Books so long ago was republished in toto without revision for all this emerges in fairly plain language -- why everyone hates the United States.

This book argues that for a period of twenty years James Jesus Angleton was considered by CIA to be the principal authority on counter-intelligence (CI). As such Angleton set the priorities for the agency's CI program and the tradecraft that was used to execute it. On a different level the book shows how the old boy network of former WWII Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operatives came to dominate CIA's leadership and its approach to its missions.

Angleton was an Ivy League (Yale) intellectual trained in the then prevalent techniques of literary analysis. He was a highly cosmopolitan figure in that he was a Mexican-American and had spent his much of his formative years abroad. This background made him an ideal candidate for the OSS and in 1943 he became an OSS officer.

Angleton's first OSS posting was London where he immediately became involved in CI working closely with the UK CI staff of MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service). This, more than anything, was a learning experience for Angleton and he took to CI analysis so readily that he at the end of the war when he had been reposted to Italy, he was a recognized OSS expert in CI. Ironically his principal tutor in CI tradecraft was Kim Philby, who in the end turned out to be a Soviet agent.

After the war Angleton along with many of his OSS colleagues was recruited into the rapidly developing Cold War intelligence establishment. He became part of that group of OSS officers who shaped the culture and tone of the newly created CIA. In 1954 he became chief of the CI office of CIA, a position which he held until he was sacked in 1974. Because he was part of the `inner circle' of CIA he was also given the important and sensitive Israeli account. During his tenure Angleton prosecuted CI tradecraft as he understood it and trained others to do the same. Whether he did a good or bad job of CI will have to be sorted out by future intelligence historians.

This extraordinary new analysis of the life of James Jesus Angleton makes a fascinating connection between his training and early life as a poet and literary critic and his career in counterintelligence. Chillingly relevant to the current debate on the CIA and intelligence-gathering techniques it is a 'must read' for anyone interested in the current state of American democracy.

Great insights on the KGB structure with interviews of 3 defectors, Major Stanislav Aleksandrovich Levchenko who escaped in a MiG, Colonel Rudolf Herrmann, and Canadian Professor Hugh George Hambleton. It was amazing to learn that there are 400,000 KGB agents and that the KGB spends so much money stealing information instead of developing it themselves. I plan on reading 4 of his other books that all got 5 stars.

When I first read this book, the Soviet Union was still a major threat. Today, the KGB no longer exists in the same form, with the same threat as described in this well written book. Tyranny, however, is still a serious threat and the methods used by the KGB: deception, "useful idiots", embedded agents who hid as normal citizens until needed - all of these are used by Islamic Fascists. Americans would be well served to read this book with an eye on the terrorists from Iran, Syria, and tribes waging war from myriad other Muslim countries.

Investigators who studied 9/11 faulted U.S. intelligence for not uncovering the terrorists' plans, but such absolute security, says historian Athan Theoharis, is an illusion certain to lead to disappointment and disaster. THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE SECURITY: THE FAILED RELATIONS AMONG U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES analyzes some of the sources of problems in American intelligence agencies and considers how such problems evolved. Any military or American history collections at the college level needs this astute analysis of disasters in the making.

The unremarkable conclusion of this book is that the U.S. can never achieve a state of absolute security regardless of how much legal (and illegal) power is granted to the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) and its associate the FBI. According to the author, the perceived failure of the IC-FBI to identify the threat and prevent the tragedy of 9/11 has as much to do with systemic problems common to both as a lack of cooperation between agencies or a lack of information. As noted towards the end of the book, "Administrative reforms and centralization offer no solution to this intractable problem of intelligence analysis: the secrecy inherent in intelligence operations virtually ensure such errors in judgment and accountability."

This book also provides a pretty good overview of the development of the U.S. national security apparatus, especially in response to the repeated crises of the 20th Century. It also provides an excellent discussion of how the FBI since WWI has engaged in ill-legal activities such as break-ins and wire taps in the name of national security and often at the personal requests of U.S. Presidents. In the post WWII period the quest for greater national security against the Soviet threat led to the creation of a much more formal national security apparatus of which CIA was given primacy.

The original intention was to create CIA as a center for the analysis of all source intelligence to provide forewarning of threats to national security. But, as shown in this book, President Truman who sponsored its creation, almost immediately began to use CIA to carry out covert operations in support of the "Truman Doctrine", the predecessor of the "Containment Doctrine" which informed U.S. geopolitical thinking throughout the Cold War. Truman also continued the policy of his predecessor President Roosevelt of using the FBI not only as a law enforcement arm, but also as an intelligence arm. As the latter the FBI collected intelligence and conducted covert actions much like CIA except it concentrated primarily on domestic operations. This policy actually began during WWI under President Wilson and was continued because it was thought to be too useful to discontinue.

It is made abundantly clear that in spite of the extra constitutional not to say extra legal activities of the IC and FBI that continue to this day, the U.S. is not that much safer from either terrorist attack or any other threat. Indeed according to Theoharis, all the extra-constitutional acts involving egregious invasions of privacy in the name of counter terrorism have produced very little in the way either warning or preventive intelligence. Rather wistfully he recommends that the U.S. Congress might do well to take a proactive rather than their usual reactive oversight of the IC and FBI.

Book was in better condition than I had expected. Shipping was fast and I was kept abreast of shipping etc. VERY satisfied.

This is without a doubt the best non-fiction book I have ever read. The plot, the characters and the writing were all brilliant. A truly exhilirating thrill ride. I couldn't put the book down - in fact, I missed my bus stop reading the book.

When I finished, I felt that I had lost my close friends, and that my life had just gotten a little less exciting.

If you want a thrilling, titilating, over-the top book that never lets up in terms of entertainment, than this is the book for you.

If there were six, seven or even eight stars, I would award those to this book too.

In a word - Awesome!

"Charlie Wilson's War" is a Cold War thriller with the extra attraction that it really happened. It tells the behind-the-scenes story of Texan congressman Charlie Wilson, a hard-drinking, hard-loving, Commie-hating bad boy who nearly singlehandedly (as far as the book tells us) dragged the CIA and the US government into supporting the Afghan mujahidin against invading Soviet forces. Charlie gets top billing, but shares much of the limelight with two other men. Gust Avrakatos is a CIA man whose rough upbringing and wild ways, while effective, rub many of his Ivy League colleagues the wrong way. There's also Mike Vickers, the young Green Beret whose battlefield savvy and weapons mastery help him to design a winning strategy for the previously forlorn Afghan rebels. These three use bullying, money and rule breaking to cut a swath through the bureaucratic inertia that allowed the Soviets the upper hand. There are also fascinating details about the contributions of Pakistan's General Zia and Israeli arms designers to the complex negotiations to fund and supply the rebels. The story of the development of the Stinger anti-aircraft weapon was also told in loving detail. And let's not forget Charlie's Angels (the Texas beauties staffing his office) or his jumpsuit-wearing paramours, including one belly dancing Texas girl.

There's plenty to cheer about in the adventures of these rather bloodthirsty heroes. They saw in the Afghans a means to "kill Russians" and weaken the Soviet Empire. Their "think outside the box" mentality is hard to resist, especially when it succeeds, as it often does. Author Crile seems to be on the side of the angels of history as he dismisses the ill-informed and slapdash efforts of the White House and Ollie North to supply the Nicaraguan Contras with weapons bought with cash obtained from trading weapons to the Iranians. But there's a bit that is disquieting about the book as well as it alludes to other efforts to kill Commies that didn't turn out so well. For every rogue effort like Wilson's that worked, there seemed to be many that either didn't or that put America on the side of quite ugly "freedom fighters". The book may persuade you that America needs it covert forces, free enough to be innovative, but restrained enough to work for the national interest.

But for an engaging story, with larger-than-life characters and real-life global stakes, it's hard to beat "Charlie Wilson's War."

Charlie Wilson's War may be one-sided, but it's still a very interesting read, especially in these post-9/11 days. Years before the words Taliban and al Qaeda were in everyday use, or for that matter, even familiar to most Americans, the CIA was waging a secret war in Afghanistan.
Having grown up in the tail end of the Cold War, the threat of the USSR never really gripped me the way it did the generations prior to me. We laughed at the comical "Duck and Cover" commercials when we watched them in history class, but my parents spoke of the real terror they felt at the time. In reading Charlie Wilson's War, I had a glimpse into the mindset of that time period, when we were willing to be friends with anyone who was willing to oppose the Communist Threat. Hindsight being what it is, we of course recognize that Charlie Wilson helped arm the same group that would later assist in horrendous attacks on the United States and kill American men and women in armed conflict with weapons purchased by their tax payer dollars. The implications in the book are astounding and make you wonder about the actions that government takes on our behalf. Second and third order effects were clearly not considered.
I don't chastise Charlie Wilson for not recognizing the future of the Taliban - no one else did, and we woke up when a clear day in NYC was blotted out. This book provides at least a part of the background necessary to begin to ask ourselves why and how we live in the world as it is today.
Forget the politics of it, and focus on how seemingly small decisions have huge impact, and you'll probably begin to look at the decisions made by Congress and the Government with a slightly more critical eye to what they mean for the future.
The movie is highly entertaining, and the book reads very quickly, so even if you don't read more into it, it's an entertaining endeavor.

I ordered this book upon the strong recommendation of two of my best - and brightest - friends. They said that it is a "must" read. Due to illness, I have not actually read it, but I can tell everyone that if my two friends think so highly of it, it must be a 6-Star read! I can't wait to dig into it and, because of those who recommended it to me, I assure you that the book should be on your list.

Bob K.
Litchfield, CT

An illuminating look behind the curtain at an agency that was unknown for so long. Bamford's history of the NSA reveals so many AMAZING secrets that were classified until shortly before his book was published:

- Eisenhower frequently sent fighter/bomber formations into Soviet airspace to see how far they could get before being detected, and how quickly the Soviet air defenses could react. This provocative action led to aircraft being shot down on several occasions before they could get out of Soviet airspace, and lives were lost. This finally ended when Gary Powers' U-2 was shot down.

-The reason we wanted the UN in New York? To make spying on everyone easier!

-The USS Liberty saw Israelis massacre 150 Egyptian POWs... so the Israelis tried to sink it, fully knowing it was a U.S. gov't ship.

All in all, a very readable, very informative book. While every page doesn't have jaw-dropping secrets from US history, there are enough to ensure you'll have fun while learning a bit of history.

One excellent point of education was the many disasters in our history resulting from agencies not sharing information. One thing Bush did right was making sure that something like 9/11 will never happen again because of this inter-service rivalry.

A very enjoyable book. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that it's not as cutting edge as when I first read it. (Body of Secrets was published within one-two years of many classified documents being made public.)

As intriguing as a lot of the subject matter is, this was a terribly written book in my opinion and i think two stars is really stretching it. Some of the historical incidents were interesting, but i really don't find descriptions of the offices, parking lots, sewage systems, etc. of the NSA. This is a great example of how a good idea translated into a boring, hard to digest book.

Horribly exaggerated by a journalist that tries to present personal insight as historical fact. He makes outrageous allegations that are wildly misguided and unproven. He is persuasive in his arguments, which make his assertions even more dangerous and outright foolishness.

It is a compelling read. Just be careful what you perceive as storytelling, what is attempted journalism, and what is fact.

Jeffrey W. Bennett, author of ISP Certification-The Industrial Security Professional Exam Manualand Under the Lontar Palm

This book is well written and an easy read of one of the most fascinating agencies of all time. Mr. Bamford has performed exhaustive research into the workings of the super-secret NSA. Personally, I have a long history as a intelligence analyst during the Cold War and reading this book brings back a lot of memories of the history and working of the world at the time. Thanks for putting this work together.

This was a worthwhile read. It covers several of the key intelligence operations that were spearheaded by the NSA during the close of the cold war and during the beginning of the middle-eastern anti-terrorism campaign. While this book is informative and entertaining, it is not about just the NSA. Many of the intelligence missions detailed in this work can be accredited to other agencies. But that isn't a major issue. Overall it is a very interesting read that should be required for anyone interested in the basic foundations of the field of modern SIGINT or the broad impacts of signals intelligence analysis.

This is really the first book I have read about the US intellingence
community, and it was a very enjoyable read. Tim Weiner has
very few good things to say about the CIA. It is difficult to judge
whether he is too critical - I am certain he stuck to the facts, but there
are many different ways of presenting them, and many different
things to pick on in the nearly 60 year history of the agency.

However, I've learned quite a bit about some of the most important
moments in the nation's history from a very special viewpoint.
It is frightening if an agency that has for so long eluded oversight and
accountability was involved in these events to the extent portrayed.

Ultimately, all intelligence services are antithetical to democracy - particularly
those whose activities go beyond collecting information. Even if the
present book does not tell the complete story, it does make clear that the US has
not solved the problem of how such an agency can be part of a democratic
society without undermining its very tenets.

My recent order for a book was processed quickly and efficiently delivered in short order. This was important since I was under a deadline for reading the book in time for our monthly book discussion group meeting.

This is a fairly comprehensive study of the CIA and its history. The author has added very extensive endnotes. It evenly covers the sixty year history of the agency and the various manifestations. The most interesting past is the beginning sections, where the author relies on recent declassified documents. The book is not without its faults the author has it's bias of the concept of "original sin" - the agency was designed poorly from the beginning and the founding fathers of the CIA laid the basis for future disaster. This is an arguable premise, but the author attacks with a little too much zeal. He is also sometimes a bit sympathetic for the more modern CIA staff and directors - remember that he has spent 20 years covering the CIA as a journalist, and he starts relying more on interviews of Tenet, etc. Despite this, it deserves a five star rating and should be on the list of recent required reading.

Well, I did not know much about the CIA and this book did not provide me any thing beyond what I already knew. I knew CIA was dysfunctional and inefficient. I knew CIA was full of liberal driven morons who take themselves seriously and probably don't care much about the interests of the country they serve (Check the recent Iran's NIE report for example). I also knew CIA's ability and power was exaggerated in the media and hollywood. What got me interested in this book was Tim Weiner's interview with Hugh Hewitt on KRLA radio show. I was mistaken and now am disappointed at this book. First, this book started very boring and when the author got to Iran, he lost me. For several reasons including the factual errors with respect to the 1953 incident. His interpretation of the Mossadegh related events is of a liberal/leftist (Stephen Kinzer like) analogy and agenda. He lost me right there and I abandoned the book for a while. The 1953 coup is a liberal made myth and this author is promoting it right there. I didn't want to read a book that is biased and not factual. But I got back to it solely because I didnt want to leave a book unfinished. It got better once it was past the Cuban and Vietnam era 50s and 60s but still it is a disappointment. Once, Tim Weiner claims that Iranian coup of 1953 was the single biggest success of CIA yet he keeps mentioning the countries where CIA had successful endeavors too like Italy, Haiti, Dominican rep... . The author is basically confused on every thing. He portrays liberal democrat presidents as more competent and portrays Republican presidents as criminals or liars. I am going to sell my book for a buck, really. For CIA's official reviews of this book you should check CIA's website. It's devastating and that review also helped me get some info right.

Well having an interest history and how we held the soviets back I bought the book and audio cd of Legacy OF Ashes.
I though listened and read carefully and after taking in the entire book I am left with a bad taste.....the book really gives very little positive's to the fellows who really had little or no idea how to be spys etc. other than the fact that they were brave enough to give it go!

The book really attacks them all as being fools who couldn't shoot straight and so on and frankly that is not correct.

My suggestion would be to read some of the other books out there on the CIA and really see how hard it was to foil the soviets as they were brutal and vilolent and we as Americans really didnt know how to deal with what we know now and they new then as EVIL!!!!

The agents for Russia stopped at nothing to steal secrets from the US as well as convience hundreds of Americans that the soviet union was a pleasant carefree workers paradise , when in fact it was Stalin's sandbox that he ruled with an iron fist! The terror of 1938 read about it as it will open your eyes to the mesery of the soviet union ; punishing those who disagreed with him or he imagined disagreed etc. The truth as we know it is Socialism is Evil in all its forms ...the powerfull use it to control the many !Think about it horror was living under communist rule in the 1920's to the 1980's the fench in Berlin wasnt put up to keep everybody out but to keep everyone in!

Thank God we had brave men such as Frank Wisner,Tracy Barnes,Richard Bissel and Desmond FitzGerald all of them served and worked hard toward the goal of protecting all us from the soviets.Richard Bissel who in the nineteen fifties developed the U2 spyplane with Kelly Johnson ( Lockheed )absolutely saved many lives with our ability to capture pictures inside russia as the soviets lied about everything from number of warheads to the number of tanks ,Bissel and Johnson then went on to create the SR-71 Blackbird which still holds the speed record for a jet propelled aircraft; both were designed and built prior to computers being used in design and creation of aircraft etc. ...these folks are hero's they did it quickly and correctly and under budget with a slide rule!I also wish to mention the work of Dr.Edwin Land who developed the camera used in the U2 and the Blackbird with out his genius the planes could never have taken any pictures at heights in excess of 60,000 feet up!

Each man listed did there job to the best of thier abilities.... they as well as thier families suffered , wondering if the men ever would return from the lastest mission. The years spent in the company of thieves and murderer's took its toll on everyone not just the CIA men themselves.

Did everything that the CIA do become a success? no it did not but I will tell you ...read all the books about the history of the CIA and then judge for yourself...I did and I am better off for it. I wish to say thank you to all of them for keeping myself and my family safe during there lifetime.

James

I'm speachless about the evidence of misjudgements in the Bush administration and that even in our century the historical failures will be continued. Is war and terror really immanent by the human nature ? This book gives a lot of answers about political issues in our time.

This book covers the period from 9/11 to the 2004 election, ground that is by now pretty well-trodden. But reading it now, after the 2008 election passed the country's judgment on the flaws of the Bush administration, one is still struck by the gap between the government professionals in the CIA, FBI and State Dept, and the ideologues in the White House with their sweeping certainties. By the desire of the professionals to present a balanced view, and by the demand of the administration only for data that supported their theses. The president's lack of interest in written analysis, and his reliance on his gut reaction to personalities, is particularly well described. Most pernicious, according to Suskind, was Dick Cheney's "one percent doctrine" - the notion that the US should act as if a 1% chance of a terrorist attack with WMD were tantamount to a certainty. This justified the 'Bush doctrine' of preemptive attack on possible enemies with only the scantiest of evidence.

The book reads like a thriller, with reconstructed dialog, shady characters, international locales, and grisly details like the delivery of a terrorist's head in a box to an agent in Dulles airport. But underlying it is solid reportage, and a thoughtful analysis on the nature of the checks and balances provided by the US constitution, and of the meaning of the 'informed consent' of an electorate in the waging of a war that is necessarily secret, but that relies for its legitimacy on that consent, and on the moral acceptability of how it is pursued. The closing biblical quote on justice in means and ends is entirely apposite. This is essential reading.

I bought this book for a read on a long flight and found it very engaging. If you've ever been curious to get a better sense of what was happening behind the veil of government secrecy during the time after 9/11, this will go pretty far in satisfying that curiousity.

I know this book has been out there for a couple of years, but I just read it a week or so ago.

I especially was intrigued by the author's argument the decision to invade Iraq was made in late 2001, if not before.

I suspect the invasion of Iraq would have occurred even if 9/11 had not happened.

The administration seized upon 9/11, disingenuously conflating it with Iraq.

Such was the obsession within this administration, especially its neocons, on having the United States in a unipolar world assume a far more aggressive role in remaking Muslim societies to more nearly comport with our notions of what is proper.

Iraq was to be merely the first installment on this process.

Arrogance?

I'll say.

This is a disappointing book on many levels. I read the book during research for my Ph.D. dissertation but concluded it lacks the academic rigor to be a credible source. The author's documentation of sources consisted of a short paragraph in the back, stating his book was based on substantial interviews and documents, but fails to reveal them. Hence, readers cannot scrutinize his evidence or the basis for his conclusions. One might conclude that the book is based on one percent research.

I was surprised to learn from the book that the United States supplies Israel with tanks, tanks which kill women and children. Had the author bothered to check, he would have discovered that the Merkava tank is Israeli-manufactured. The emotive reference to inadvertent deaths of noncombatants is callow at best. The error may be minor, but if the author is wrong on basic knowledge, how dependable is the rest of the book? One might conclude that the book is based on one percent facts.

The book purports one assertion after another using weak evidence and weaker logic. The author claims that the failure of al Qaeda to launch subsequent attacks on the United States is not due to American vigilance or counter-actions, but because al Qaeda chose not to. The author suggests that Vice President Cheney is running the war effort, not President Bush, and that all national security decisions are based on the slight possibility of a threat materializing, hence the One Percent Doctrine. One might conclude the book is based on one percent logic.

Many of the author's accounts regarding the run up to the Iraq War are simply a regurgitation of Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command, but not as detailed. Perhaps Mr. Hersh was one of the author's sources. One might conclude the book is one percent personal effort.

The reader must endure numerous platitudes of the President not being a reader or the Director of the CIA being a back-slapper, and other attempts by the author to appear clever. Rather than attempt to analyze why certain national security decisions were made or the constraints placed on the Administration regarding the prosecution of the War on Terror, the author chose to sensationalize events using one percent hindsight.

In short, this book was one hundred percent a waste of my valuable research time.

Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Millen (Ret).

This book is best described as a cheesy cowboy comic book of a brief euphoric period when crazed operatives were running around (like chickens with their heads cut off), looking for blood, spending millions upon millions of our hard earned tax dollars on an unlimited supply and almost invisible foe with no end game in sight. Honestly, not even worth reading, even if your a fan boy of this superficial gung-ho gibberish, Try reading: Ed Gein--Psycho! instead, that will make more sense [sic]. But seriously try:America's Splendid Little Wars: A Short History of U.S. Engagements from the Fall of Saigon to Baghdad.

The story of course is factual and good, but it is hard to keep track of the story with all of the blacked out areas. I think the author could have inserted alias. Still glad I got it!

This book is great story telling from a central figure in America's response to 9/11. I shared the author's frustration over the lack of balls higher up the chain of command. Reminded me of the saying "lead, follow or get out of the way." Thank you Gary for your service to the United States!

I don't want to take anything away from the heroic actions of the Gary Berntsen, but as I read this fascinating book, I couldn't help but notice some relatively minor/trivial blatant errors that should have been detected by any competent fact-checker hired by the publisher.

Whenever a non-fiction book is written, one of the processes done by the publisher prior to printing is to have all specific details confirmed. Even most authors will let a peer or two review the book to check for errors, and someone in Mr. Berntsen's profession should be accustomed to going overboard to make sure details are accurate.


The first thing I noticed that bothered me a little is that the STU-III ("STU THREE") secure telephone devices were written as STU-111 numerous times in the book. OK, I know & agree -- very trivial! But what was really surprising was the frequent use of "ordinance" when based on context, clearly the word Berntsen meant to use was "ordnance," and it boggles me how someone with his training & experience wouldn't know the difference, as explosives training staff at Peary & Harvey Point were known to make an example of trainees who said "ordinance" by mistake.

Two more examples:

The "Yazoo" radio taken from dead Taliban & used to monitor Taliban/Al quaeda radio communications would have been a Yaesu ("Yay-sue") radio.

"B-52s from Berkstram Airbase in Missouri..." (page 282). Wow... That woulda been Air Force Base, and the only one in MO is Whiteman AFB (no B-52s based there). There was a Bergstrom AFB in Texas, but it closed back in 1993. I can only assume Mr. Berntsen meant Barksdale AFB in Louisiana -- home to a B-52 Wing.

The above examples just take a little luster out of what is still a great book, but finding numerous, albeit minor errors always leads me to wonder how many major & other minor errors there could be in the book.


Otherwise, JAWBREAKER gives fantastic insight into the early stages of the war in Afghanistan. I was especially troubled to read how the US gov't, through the CIA, basically had to bribe Afghanis with probably hundreds of millions of dollars in order to get them to be our allies and fight against the Taliban. Is the battle really to bring democracy to Afghanistan (did they ever have it? Are they as a nation, intelligent and mature enough to deal with democracy?), or is our battle really to just exterminate Usama bin Laden & his al Quaeda & Taliban supporters?

I'm still wondering.

I was quite enthused to get this book. I'm very interested in the CIA and covert ops as well as the history of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, this book was a dissapointment in several ways. First of all, what I was most interested in learning more about was the abysmal decision to let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora. Who made the decision and why? Unfortunately the author spends only a few pages on that question. (To be fair a significant part of the discussion is blacked out). Also, I found the tone of the book to be very self serving. Mr. Bernsten presents himself as some kind of CIA superhero. He never makes a mistake, gets scared, and can go for days without sleep. At the same time he is constantly being let down by mindless cowardly bureacrats back home. However, even with those critiques I have to admit the book was a page turner, interesting and exciting.