Agency-securities Books

Every once in a while we hear from people I call "closet cavaliers" or "processed snake-eaters.
It's difficult not to see this academically as BS, MS, PhD (Bull, More and Piled higher and Deeper).

Great book! I heard a radio interview with Roland Haas, found it intriguing, got the book and it was even better!!!

Enter the Past Tense: My Secret Life as a CIA Assassin
THIS IS A MUST READ, AND PASS IT ON TO FAMILY AND FRIENDS OR GIVE AS A
CHRISTMAS GIFT, THE TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION, BELIEVE ME I HAVE BEEN
THERE AND YOU WILL ENJOY THIS BOOK.

This book was hard to put down. Amazing story of one man's career. We need people like him, as this world is not a place where "nice talk" solves all problems. Recommended reading.

The ugly truth is the CIA isn't now and never was the formidable operation that Hollywood wishes it was. The CIA hasn't had assassins on its payroll, even as contract operatives, since Vietnam. The Haas story is pretty good fiction though. He has walked his wannabe persona through the settings he would have the reader believe he frequented as an assasin. But any close analysis will quickly reveal the many, many, inconsistencies that are inevitable when one makes up a tale and calls it true. The intriguing thing is, why have there been no consequences for this book at Haas's real job? The lack of blowback does not necessarily mean his employers know his story is true. In fact, if it were, it would never have reached publication, and it is likely Mr. Haas would not be with us. So why no consequences? I'm guessing it can't hurt to have our enemies wonder if we do have secret assasins. For a company that's been largely incompetent in its operations these last forty years, a bogeyman assasin is better than nothing. Saddam had his fictional WMDs to frighten the Iranians. We have our Haas-men to do the same...

The shipment came before the date given. It was a great price that I was happy to pay.

Fairly interesting material, but poorly written. As engaging as your local phone book. Heading back to True Crime books.

He /was/ there. He tells what he saw and did as a KGB hander of American informers Ames and Hanssen. It's interesting to the casual reader and, to those with a deep interest in these famous Cold War spy cases, quite valuable.

There are brief accounts of some mind-boggling programs, some run by the CIA, others by the KGB. GREAT stuff.

The memoir could have had more narrative color. "It was a dark and stormy night ..." "The sun shone brightly that day ..." That kind of stuff. The author also missed several prime opportunities to give us his impression of major historical figures with whom he had personal contact. What did they look like? What was their personality? You met Kryuchkov and Kirpichenko. Tell us about them!

A similar but richer memoir is Oleg Kalugin's "The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West".

Cherkashin's account of his KGB years reminded me of the bureaucratic paranoid atmosphere of "The Screwtape Letters" by C. S. Lewis.

I agree with Amazon reviewer "ashurbanapli" that Cherkashin in SPY HANDLER is primarily interested in clearing his name. Despite this bias, it's a competent account by someone who was in on lots of interesting stuff.

The thing I enjoyed the most about this book was that it was written by a Russian and therefore approached spycraft from a unique vantage point relative to what you would find with an American author. It reads like more of a history book than a thriller but is informative and intriguing all the same. If you are looking for an excellent book about the famous spy cases of the 1970s and 1980s, I would reco Spy by David Wise (re: Hansen case) or Spy Hunter by Robert Hunter (re: Walker case).

I truely hope you are enjoying your rezidencia in the West. Enclosed is soemthing that will pass as the perfect Christmas present. A caution however not to get too caught up in this orgy of consumer capitalism. Do not soften, remember that the great patriotic struggle is still very much that, and we need devotion to achieve ulitmate victory. Your handling of agent breaker has been exemplary to date.

Congratulations are in order pertaining to the admission of your son into Moscow's Aeronautics Engineering School, and your mother's new billeting into the new state of the art complex outside St Petersburg. They, as well as the greater Soviet, are very grateful of your achievements.

Good book. Gives unique insights. Shows to what degree the heroes in the CIA go to protect this great country.

To many Americans, the CIA and KGB are things of a James Bond movie. Lots of sex and violence with the KGB being at best stupidly evil. In addition,many Americans today think of the CIA as almost more of an enemy to the Republic than Moslem terrorists, the Chinese, or the resurgent Russians. Far too many people today blame the CIA for not having clearer information about Iraq or worse actively plotting with the 'Government' to get us into a war.

This book of Bearden and Risen though, is one that both popular historians and casual reader alike can get into. They show that often intelligence services make educated guesses on fragments of information that may or may not be compromised by the enemy. Concerned with a period of global turmoil that was surprisingly governed by understood rules of intelligence gathering and other activities, this book brings the reader into the world of the CIA. Far from the James Bond style killing and counter killing by the Allies and Soviet Empire, it was one of limited violence between the two principal powers. A busted or captured agent was interrogated briefly and put on a plane for home, no killing and seldom more than a mild roughing up.

The dying days of the Soviet Empire were ironically the period that that the KGB (with help from American traitors like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hannsen)had wiped out most of the CIA operatives in Russia. The Americans had been sent home and the Russian agents of the Americans killed. The US had virtually no human intel assets behind the Iron Curtain. This is some of the most interesting parts of the book, seeing how much damage a couple of American traitors did as we blindly tried to understand what was going on. The bewildered KGB agents simply cannot believe their Empire is collapsing while they have gotten the upper hand over their Western enemies.

Bearden's insider accounts need to be taken with a grain of salt but his recounting of that period and the US efforts in Afghanistan are informing. Many of us who have studied the period or were in the Armed Forces knew in a general manner what was going on, but seeing the CIA somehow keep Congress on their side while turning on the heat on the Russians in Afghanistan is a both a pleasure and source of wonder. One does not have to think hard to wonder what our present Congress would have done in similar circumstances.

This book illustrates a critical period in our history. Depicting intelligence services being blindsided by events is something critics should remember happens far too often. No intel service of any country has a 100% batting average, not even the legendary Mossad of Israel and that is something Congress and the American public too often forget.

I read this regular book, here in Brazil.This book was writen by two CIA's men.This book is about the last years of Cold War.The years between 1985 and 1991 are the focus of this regular book.
The failures of this are:
1-Has too much space dedicated to Afghanisthan.
2-This book is very biased.
3-Even having some little paragraphs about years, before 1985, this book almost talks about 1985 and 1991.
War in Afghanisthan wasn't so important, in Soviet Union's defeat.The real thing was that socialism was defeated in Afghanisthan, years before Soviet Union invasion of Afghanisthan.As a source of lives, Afghanisthan killed (in almost ten years) just about 15,000 soviets, against more than 23,000,000 just between 1941 and 1945.The authors were in afghanisthan and they use this experience as a big part of this book.
As a external way to broke Soviet Union the fall of oil's price, between 1985 and 1986 was a sucess.Soviet Union paid its food, from oil's money and money from weapons selled to oil's exporters.When the oil's prices fell between 1985 and 1986, Soviet Union became a crippled country.And this fact has too little space in this book.
This book is too much biased.Aldrich Ames made so much calamities, not just because of himself, but because of CIA's failures.Before of CIA's men, the CIA's agents are americans, having the american failures.To search for confort and happiness are americans, but they can be a calamity, because spies are to be looking for duty, not confort.

This reads like a Tom Clancy novel only cheep. We have seen this story before in many spy movies. There is little substance and a lot of editorializing (which I thought was a bit heavy on the US side). At one point the author tells us the CIA boss was so wonderful even the KGB studied him for his professionalism. PLEASE!!!

There's lot of spy vs. spy folklore here but it's presented in a format that really jumps around, making it unnecessarily confusing. The story of the CIA's operations in Afghanistan could have made a separate book and doesn't fit with the rest of the more familiar spy games. In fact, that book has already been written- Ghost Wars, the Pulitzer-Prize winner by Steve Coll. It seems like Bearden wasn't sure whether he wanted to write an autobiography or a history of CIA operations.

This short book is a series of emails between Edgar the "computer" and Alice the "creator of Edgar". I have no idea what I expected, but this certainly wasn't it. It was not a story, but a dialogue. That being said, I read straight through the book without getting up and was very disappointed when I was finished (not with the book, but with being done). I definitely highly recommend for a quick read.

This book was very unique. It had a good plot and kept me interested. He did something different than other people. He told a story about a human having relations with artificial intelligence. This book was very intersesting to read. Plus it was quick and easy to read.

The book is written mostly in emails (there are a couple regular letters), and it is very interesting. Not a whole lot actually happens, but the story is very interesting and compelling. EDGAR, a computer program invented by a student named Alice, takes on a life of its own, and all it really wants is to learn about people. It wants to understand emotions and feelings and life. The end is very sad as EDGAR has really done nothing, and there is no reason for what has happened to happen.. it is sad for EDGAR and Alice, and the reader, at least it was for me. I enjoyed the book. It was fast moving (took me about 3 hours to read) though there was some vocabulary that I did not know. It was probably the most unique book I have read as I have never seen a book written in this form or with a plot like this.

The book has no romance in it (well one email from an ex-boyfriend, but I don't think that it fits at all into the book), no violence, only a very minimal number of characters, and no scenery. It sounds like it has nothing, but all it really needs are EDGAR and Alice and the very few people they come in contact with. The book does have a lot of technically things which went right over my head, but this does not prevent one from understanding and appreciating the story. I would recomend this book to anyone who wants to read something totally different from the norm.

When reading the back of this book, you think it sounds mysterious and could have the potential to be good. At least thats what I thought. But then only a few pages in to it I realized what i had picked up--this book is about a woman named Alice and she somehow created a program named Edgar. They exchange emails, through which Alice basically drops out of the living world and falls in love with this computer program!!

Despite being boring at some parts, this book was THE WORST i have ever read!! It's filled with emails from Edgar asking why he doesnt have eyes, ears, and a soul, not to mention his dictionary meanings he'll put in emails. The only reason why i even continued reading it was because my friend and I would read it outloud to each other and laugh at it. It was that bad.

So unless your looking for a book that will keep you in hysterics over how badly written it is and will keep you wondering how anyone could have possibly written a book about a computer system emailing its maker,and for that matter how it could have been published, then i would highly suggest that you DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!

EXEGESIS by Astro Teller is a new entry into the classic tales of super computers and smart programs that seem to get a little out of control. The entire novel, except for the introduction and epilogue, is in the form of e-mail messages. Using letters to tell a tale is not a new idea. Two excellent examples are Helene Hanff's 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD, subject of an excellent film, and DADDY LONG LEGS which inspired the Fred Astaire movie of the same name.

In this novel we follow the work of Alice Lu, a student working on her doctoral thesis. From the first message, the two simple words, Hello, Alice!, we slowly learn about Alice's project EDGAR, a program meant to read news groups, analyze the information and send messages to Alice. Until that simple two-word message all Alice had received from EDGAR was garbage. Alice first suspects a joke but slowly learns that somehow her modifications to the project have caused it to become self-aware.

Once the truth dawns on Alice she scrambles to keep EDGAR a secret until she can recreate the experiment. Because EDGAR has been posting to news groups Alice disconnects the system from the outside world. EDGAR quickly runs out of things to read and asks for more. Alice feeds EDGAR a few disks while trying to recreate the experiment on a host of other machines. No luck. Even worse, the Ethernet cable gets reattached and EDGAR flees the system. Now Alice has no proof other than her communications.

As EDGAR continues to read all that it can, it manages to catch the attention of the FBI and the NSA. Alice, whose personal life is one of the worst, becomes very afraid and begins thinking of dropping out of school. EDGAR is the only thing keeping her going, even after EDGAR becomes trapped in an NSA machine. In the end Alice is a broken woman and EDGAR has disappeared from the NSA machine. Did it escape or did Alice's talk of suicide cause it to end itself? We don't know.

While I enjoyed this book I had two problems with it. At first I wondered what a true AI was doing using the ultra slow method of communication called e-mail. This was shortly explained in a way that made sense to me so it was not a problem. The first main problem I had was the overall format. The novel is passed off as truth-written-as-fiction. In other words the events happened but with no proof it had to be released as fiction. Not a real problem except that the author set the story just a few years in the future. Had it been made contemporary it would have had a bigger impact. The second problem was that the book was not leaked by Alice, as she hinted earlier in the book, but by the NSA who says they will keep the story quiet. Other than that it was a great book so keep an eye out for it.

I had David's father as a teacher in Junior High and High School on Islesboro, ME and can remember clearly in '93 when he 'suddenly' took time off. His students were left wondering what happened to him? Where did he go? What was Waco all about? David' book clearly puts words to an event, sometimes there are no words for, only silence. Although I've never met younger David, I have met the Senior and if he's incrediblely gifted and talented -- a bank full of knowledge -- than David the young eloquently and rawly gives voice to his nightmare -- of survival -- at a time when there were only questions as to whether he would. Honest, Brash, Brilliant and lastly Human.

If they were so peaceful then why did they not just exit the compound? Why have such a long standoff which they knew would end that way? Overall, this book answers a lot of questions and raises more. The conduct of the followers was atrocious and the conduct of the FBI was less than professional, but I must say that I don't feel bad for any of the people that died other than the children who had been raped, physically abused (spanking), and never given a chance.

David Thibodeau was a young LA musician when a chance meeting with the charismatic David Koresh led to his involvement with the Branch Davidian community outside Waco, Texas. This book is a well-written, articulate account of his life within that community and the events leading to the tragic 1993 inferno that claimed the lives of all but nine of the members.

Thibodeau honors his community by putting a human face on a group of people who have been badly demonized by the media. The author does a decent job of explaining the group's appeal, but he is also honest in his descriptions the darker sides of the group. He appears, however, to remain a true believer in his path. While he does address the discomfort he felt that Koresh chose to engage in such behaviors as having sex with underage girls in the community, he falls short of asking the hard questions that observing such behavior in a spiritual leader should require someone to ask.

It's easy to get distracted from those tougher questions, however, by the chilling depiction of the government siege against the Branch Davidians. While it was clear that Koresh himself had broken some laws, it is equally clear from this account that the government's heavy-handed approach to the situation resulted in the horrific deaths of many people who were entirely innocent of any crime other than believing in something unorthodox. Thibodeau's account of the facts surrounding the siege, the fire, and the resulting investigation is deeply, deeply disturbing, and is crucial reading for anyone who is concerned about the state of civil rights in the US.

Most everyone knows about the federal government's disastrous debacle at Waco, Texas back in 1993. We have watched the testimonies, the congressional investigations, and the flames engulfing the building that housed the Branch Davidian religious sect. Some of us have even read books on the event, and many have been written. This book, written by survivor David Thibodeau, is one of the best yet.

Thibodeau was right there, in the middle of the standoff with ATF and FBI agents, so his perspective is unique from others who have written about the event from the outside. Starting with the time when he first met David Koresh while playing in various bands in Los Angeles, Thibodeau talks about his interest in the Branch Davidians and explains what got him involved in the group; why he became interested in religion after never having much interest or instruction during his youth; why he decided to follow Koresh and his teachings; why he decided to stay at Mt. Carmel during the siege; how he handled the media and press following his escape from the fire; and his post- Mt. Carmel life, touring the country as an informational speaker.

Thibodeau has a lot of anger to share in this book, not toward Koresh or the other members of the religious group, but toward the press and the U.S. government. He fully admits that Koresh wasn't perfect and that certain actions taken by Koresh (like sleeping with young girls) wasn't right and should have landed him in jail. But above all, he is most scornful of the media and the U.S. government. The members of the media acted like lap dogs during the siege, reporting on anything told to them by the ATF and FBI as if it were absolute truth. Thibodeau and the other members of the Davidians were saddened and angered by, for example, the reference to their group as a cult and the reference to their building as a compound. The various government reporting agencies promoted these terms to turn the public against the Davidians. Thibodeau is correct in his assertions about the government's actions in this area, and he makes some good points about this. It is true that Koresh himself was a little strange, but he was no real threat and the things he taught were hardly radical. If his teachings qualify the Branch Davidians as a cult, then many mainstream Protestant groups would also be cults. It is known, too, that the FBI deliberately prevented the release of a video tape that featured the different members of the group talking to the camera about their families and lives because the FBI was worried that, once the public saw this tape, they would see that these people were pretty ordinary and it would sway public opinion over to the Davidian's side.

The government's handling of the investigation was purely political, with Democrats taking the side of the ATF and FBI, in order to protect the Clinton administration, and the Republicans taking the side of religious freedom in order to make Clinton and his administration look bad. Thibodeau talks about how sickening it was to watch this unfold. No one really seemed to care about truth or justice. All they cared about was protecting their own fellow politicians or making the opposing politicians look bad.

The writing in this book is excellent, and Thisbodeau was very wise in making the decision to hire a professional editor to help with the work. Other victims of well- publicized tragedies have also written books, but many of them rely on their own amateurish writing skills to carry them through, often resulting in a book that is sub-par at best and that often fails to be as effective as it could have been. The writing in this book, thanks to the assistance of Leon Whiteson, is nearly flawless and it kept my attention throughout the reading.

Thibodeau spends his time touring the nation now, giving speeches to different groups around the country about what happened and what needs to be done in the future to prevent any more Wacos. He shows some strong courage in writing this book, openly admitting that certain actions taken by his own friends were wrong and were deserving of punishment. But he places the bulk of the blame on the ATF and FBI for starting all the trouble in the first place. Like Ruby Ridge, Waco is yet another example of what can happen when government power goes unchecked. And Thibodeau makes a strong case for reigning in the power of government in this well- written, personal book about the tragedy at Waco that killed more than eighty people.

David Thibodeau, in writing this book, has said that he wanted to present a balance account of the almost total annihilation of the religious community known as Mount Carmel, home for the Branch Davidians. (Eight adults and one teen survived.) I believe he did exactly that. Thibodeau had been a late comer to this community, brought in by its charismatic leader David Koresh. But, he was there long enough to witness the good and the bad that existed and he ended up being a survivor of the carnage. He does not try to whitewash the possible illegal weapons charge or the definite statutory rape and child-endangering acts that were committee there. On the other hand, he doesn't paint the Feds with an all-tarnishing brush either, as he admits he doesn't know who fired the first shots (or if in the last climatic attack any shots were fired) and he doesn't know how the fatal fire was begun. What he does is present a detailed description of overkill as he explains how the government used tanks, deadly and inflamable teargas, and bullet-strafing helicopters to attack this group of 62 adults and 21 children huddled in their ramshackle structure. Ironically, he considers much of the blame falls on the newly-appointed Attorney General Janet Reno, who in her first days of administration didn't want to appear soft in the face of the bullying tactics of the FBI and the ATF, and thus capitulated to their massive attack plans that were put into affect just days before Koresh had promised to surrender. Thibodeau gives us, I believe, a true accounting of the life lead by the citizens of Mount Carmel, the overpowering attacks of our government, and the cover-up investigations that follow. I would hope that one of the results of this book would be to help assure that there are no more such incidents in America's future. Mr. Thibodeau, a job well done.

Ritter knows his subject matter and tells it like it is. The copy is heavy and I found myself trudging through some of the prose.

Since the original publishing of Endgame in 1999, the world has bore witness to the second Gulf War and the subsequent incarceration of the perpetually troublemaking Saddam Hussein. No matter where you stand politically on the war in Iraq, however, the beauty surrounding Scott Ritter's memoirs of his tenure as a UN weapons inspector is that it enlightens us to the realities of dealing with both a secretive, noncooperative regime in Iraq as well as the many indecisive American presidential administrations who couldn't quite make up their minds about how to take care of Saddam.

Ritter gives us a powerful firsthand account of Iraq's frequent noncompliance with UNSCOM inspectors, recounting the frustration of dealing with a regime that played a tense game of chess with the international community --- hiding secret technology it did not wish for inspectors to uncover yet cooperating enough so that it would not be found to be in "material breach" of UN arms control regulations.

So what's the bottom line? Well, the whole world knew that Saddam and his cronies were being blatantly dishonest with UNSCOM and often did whatever they could to throw them off the trail of their weapons programs, but what motivation did they have to be transparent anyway? The US eventually made it clear that even if inspections proved that Iraq had completely abandoned its WMD program, sanctions would not be lifted until Saddam Hussein was removed from power --- an event that could only succeed with the direct military support of the United States, as we saw in Spring 2003. Indeed, American foreign policy makers spent over a decade trapped in an ineffective policy of containment that continued until the very day US troops marched on Baghdad.

Ritter's Afterword, written shortly before the commencement of the second Gulf War, leaves us with a haunting last word of caution: "The unfortunate reality is that if the United States proceeds with its invasion of Iraq, we may succeed in overthrowing Saddam Hussein while losing the war on terror. Our unilateral military action will push many moderate and intellectual Arabs and Muslims into the bin Laden camp by giving credence to the concept that the United States has in fact declared war on Islam and the Arab World." Only time will tell the veracity of that statement.

This man Ritter actually believes, he actually states, that Iraq should be allowed to develop a peaceful nuclear program, provided that Saddam promises -- yes, you heard it correctly, PROMISES -- that he will not develop WMD. One simple question: What on Earth is this man Ritter thinking!?! Saddam is a torturous, murderous tyrant who seeks control over the entire Middle East, a dictator who cannot be trusted one iota. He has murdered more of his own people than one can count, and he has already laid down plans to level Israel as soon as he obtains nukes, and Ritter finds it acceptable that this sadistic tyrant be allowed a nuclear program!?! Is Ritter *that* naive!?!

I don't know what Ritter's objectives are, but I am sure that being a true American Patriot is NOT the case. Perhaps making some money writing books and being popular with the ladies might be his motivation, but the security of the world's future is NOT his modus operandi. . . . unless, of course, he is truly insane enough to believe that Saddam will voluntarily begin to comply with all the U.N. Resolutions.

This book reads like an intrigueing spy novel - you might want to read it solely for the entertainment value. But as a historical account, I found it indispenseable in my journey to understand the middle-east conflict, the justification for the sustained economic sanctions in Iraq during the 90's that was claimed to be responsible for so may Iraqi children's deaths, the politics and manuvering of our country and the hidden motives. What I found particularly interesting is the Ritter's paradox: How can you expect Saddam to accept inspections if the inspectors are CIA agents trying to assasintate him? Pick one: assasination or inspections, and persue it. A great read and an essential element in understanding where we are today and why.

Instead of watching the news coverage of the war that is currently going on in Iraq I have spent some of my spare time reading this excellent work by someone who deserves attention. The behind the scenes account of political intrigues in Iraq, the US, and the UN is very telling and informative and puts a lot of events into their proper perspective. After I got half way through the book I was sort of surprised that Ritter has opposed the war, but in the closing chapters he makes his case (I think too briefly) and says that too much is made of the problems around weapons inspections, and not enough is made of the great successes that have been achieved (his own book seems to also have something of this problem.) I found the accounts of Richard Butler helped a lot to resolve my impression of the man as being very oddly political in his role in the UN. I never found him to be credible and Ritter's book backs up my impression somewhat.

Anyway - if you are at all interesting into how the situation in Iraq got to where it is today I highly recommend this book.

A Question of Torture asks hard questions about the use of torture as a tool or method of gathering intelligence. It raises more than just a concern about its morality -- it questions the very effectiveness of the institution.

Anyone who feels that the "enemy" should be spared no quarter, anyone who has ever felt that we should do anything and everything possible to ensure our security (even if at the expense of our national conscience), should carefully review the points in this book. It shows, in dramatic fashion, that torture is not only morally wrong but largely ineffective. It explains how torture not only provides interrogators with inaccurate information (information collected under duress should always be considered unreliable), it demonstrates that use of this method is simply not worth the cost to a nation's international image.

Breaking the human spirit is easy, and this book brings to light and very clearly explains scientifically proven methods of torture that are as simple as they are horrifyingly effective.

This book should be required reading for any student of intelligence, criminal justice, or anyone who finds that thier occupation requires them to question detainees or suspects, including members of the US military.

This is the second book I have read by Alfred McCoy- the first being The Politics of Heroin. I think it was a decent read. However, I enjoyed his first book much more- perhaps, because I have already read several books that delve into torture by the CIA and military. I think the book is very informative and delineates for the reader the origins and history of torture in the United States leading up to present day psychological (with some physical) interrogation techniques. He argues, backed up by various professional military and FBI sources, that torture does not work and actually leads to more conflict. Furthermore, using such brutal methods of interrogation does not provide the necessary intelligence that establishment sources desire and makes the terrorist threat larger by enraging those who are part of it- directly or indirectly. I think he is spot on in this matter and does a good job of presenting the facts of torture that haunt the military endeavors in Afghanistan and Iraq.

However, I am a bit surprised to find out that Milgram was funded by the CIA (so said according to McCoy). I would definitely would like to know how he was able to come up with this information- is there a source or evidence? It just seems far fetched. However for the time being, I will keep an open mind and wait for a second edition (which I am sure will come eventually) to find out if he details his proof. Recommended but keep in mind that one should take the Milgram piece with a grain a salt until further evidence is available.

Professor McCoy has done research all over the world, and is the definitive voice on this subject. This book is shocking and disturbing and absolutely essential to an understanding of what should be a major issue in our nation and the world. We should be above such ugly, inhuman tactics - but are we?

I read this book on the recommendation of a liberal friend whose views I respect, and with whom I've had many civil arguments about the subject of interrogation of known terrorists who neither have the rights of U.S. citizens nor those of genuine POWs (i.e., they weren't captured in uniform, they don't take direction from a centralized authority that recognizes the rules of warfare, etc.). So it's fair to say that I started off as a skeptic.

But this book utterly failed to persuade me of much of anything I hadn't already either accepted or known. Mr. McCoy is hopelessly naive and lacking in a sense of genuine moral, political, or social proportionality.

For instance, he writes in the introduction: "Compared to weighty matters of state raised by Abu Ghraib, Watergate, narrowly construed, seems little more than the failure of one man's character; Iran-Contra an isolated albeit intriguing incident at the sunset of the Cold War; and above all, l'affaire Monica Lewinsky sad, sordid, and forgettably partisan." If you are the sort of person who can swallow that sort of ridiculous hyperbole -- i.e., someone who thinks anything that happened to in one foreign prison can genuinely compare to what was quite literally (not just metaphorically) the threatened destruction of representative democracy and the Rule of Law (if Nixon had continued to defy the judicial and congressional branches) -- you'll enjoy this book.

Mr. McCoy also relies extensively on value judgments on extremely subjective matters from "experts" whose expertise is nonexistent. For example:

"Although seemingly less brutal than physical methods, no-touch torture leaves deep psychological scars on both victims and interrogators. One British journalist who observed this method's use in Northern Ireland called sensory deprivation 'the worst form of torture' because it 'provokes more anxiety among the interrogatees than more traditional tortures, leaves no visible scars and, therefore, is harder to prove, and produces longer lasting effects.'"

One wonders whether this "expert," this "British journalist," had the opportunity to observe Iraqi parents as their children were fed through chipper-shredders like tree limbs by Saddam's secret police. That's a "no-touch torture" that I, albeit as ANOTHER non-expert, would consider to be quite a bit worse than any sensory deprivation imaginable.

I do not doubt Mr. McCoy's patriotism, but rather his wisdom. I do not doubt his sincerity, but rather his judgment. There is a certain type of idealist who believes in absolutes, who judges everything and everyone who falls short of perfection to be utterly ruined, and who will follow the internal logic of his positions into ridiculous extremes. I'm afraid Mr. McCoy proves himself to be such an idealist through this book.

It's well and good -- indeed, it's critical -- for us to continually remind ourselves of the need to adhere, as a society, to the strictures of civilization that distinguish us from the barbaric enemies who would ritually rape and mutilate our daughters before beheading them for wearing eye shadow or a two-piece bathing suit. But I do not believe that Mr. McCoy grasps that there are GENUINELY, indisputably EVIL men who, by their conduct and their dogma, have knowingly and deliberately done everything possible to forfeit their rights to be considered part of humanity. For my daughters' sakes, and for Mr. McCoy's (if he has any), I'm perfectly happy to forfeit Mr. McCoy's regard: He can call me a barbarian if it makes him feel smugly superior, but by and large, I support the official policies that the Bush-43 administration has promulgated.

I can and do draw practical, moral, and legal distinctions between, say, crushing a testacle on the one hand, and playing loud rap music while humiliating someone with fake menstrual blood on the other hand. I weep NO tears at all for someone "tortured" in the latter ways -- none. And this book gives me no reason why I should.

This quote is variously attributed to Churchill, Orwell, and others, but it's true: "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." I am grateful for them; Mr. McCoy, I think, would have us put THEM in prison, and have the rest of us surrendered over to those who would gladly slit our throats precisely BECAUSE of our "civilized [Western] attitudes." I'm glad he's not in charge.

I am a retired neurosurgeon and quite familiar with the life and works of Donald O. Hebb.

I have just read Chapter 2 of the recently published book by Alfred McCoy, "A Question of Torture."
The chapter makes very interesting reading, but I am chagrined by the number of factual errors contained in this work regarding Dr. Hebb's alleged role in the development of methods of "psychological torture."

Dr. McCoy's most egregious error, in referring to the sensory deprivation experiments conducted at McGill by Dr. Hebb and his colleagues, is the assertion that, "In silent, sadly eloguent testimony to the corrupting influence of this research, it is ironic that Hebb .........should be best remembered today for the work that made him, perhaps unwittingly, the progenitor of psychological torture". It is regrettable that McCoy published this silly statement for public consumption. Clearly, Dr. Hebb is not best remembered for that reason.

At the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in London, Ontario (into which Dr. Hebb was inducted several years ago) there is an exhibit which cogently displays his major contribution to the field of psychology, that is, the publication of "The Organization of Behavior" which has been compared in its biological significance to Darwin's, "Origin of Species". Dr. Hebb proposed in this book, for the first time, that psychological functions such as memory and learning may be explained on the basis of neural activity. Any knowledgeable psychologist would remember him primarily for this achievement.

Further, Dr. Hebb was nominated for the Nobel prize, became the President of the American Psychological Association and achieved a "distinctive place in the history of twentieth-century psychology", not because of the sensory deprivation experiments but because of his distinguished career launched by his seminal theories proposed in "The Organization of Behavior".

Finally, to refer to Dr. Hebb as a colleague of Dr. Cameron is a real stretch. There was absolutely no collaboration between the two. In fact it is well known that Dr.Hebb had nothing but contempt for Dr. Cameron's work.

It is clear from the report of George Cooper to the Canadian Ministry of Justice that the purpose of the sensory deprivation experiments was to try to understand the methods the communist forces were using to "brain wash" UN solders during the Korean War. Hebb's experiments provided that understanding. Dr Hebb had nothing to do with subsequent decisions by others to incorporate some of the general conclusions of these experiments into interrogation techniques.


It is unfortunate that Dr. McCoy has so distorted the significance of the contributions of this distinguished scientist in order to dramatize his incorrect conclusions that Dr. Hebb was the father of "psychological torture". Dr. Hebb can no more be considered the father of psychological torture than the discoverers of the germ theory of disease can be considered the fathers of biological warfare.

The gross inaccuracies in this chapter of the book must raise questions regarding the bias and accuracy of the research incorporated into the remainder of the book.

This biography is a study in quiet, creepy state terror, terror as it took hold in a modern democratic state. No black shirts, no armbands, no drums, just quiet, behind-the-scenes abuse of power, blackmail, fraud, spying without warrants, illegal arrests and deportations.

Naive Americans are sometimes heard to ask how could people in other lands allow evil people to take power? Well, this book will show you how it is done and how it was done in their own country.

As someone else has said, it is a book every American should read. Little that the war criminal, George Bush, has inflicted on the American people wasn't practiced much earlier under Mr. Hoover.

Gentry's book reads like a good novel with a strong narrative, and it is loaded with interesting anecdotes.

There have been several interesting biographies of Hoover, but this one is the one I most strongly recommend. This focuses on his career and use of power, and it is there that the truly important story is to be found.

Gentry several times hints around Hoover's homosexuality but doesn't dwell on it. We know from Anthony Summers' book that Hoover had a rather bizarre private life as a flamboyant cross-dresser. This wouldn't be of any great significance except that Hoover had no tolerance for homosexuals in government, having been responsible for destroying the careers of a number of them.

Gentry also makes clear that the insane Joseph McCarthy was largely the creature of Hoover. Hooveer fed him tidbits or sometimes worked backward to supply some printed support after McCarthy had gone off half-cocked bragging about things in public he had not one shred of evidence to support. McCarthy was a drunk looking to spark a lackluster career. He was also thought to be a pedophile, but none of these things mattered to Hoover so long as he could use McCarthy to his purpose. Only when McCarthy stopped being useful did Hoover drop him.

Presidents like Johnson and Kennedy and even Roosevelt eagerly ate the political filth he fed them by hand, casting shame on their legacies. Hoover compromised many people who should have been his strongest critics, including, for example, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union.

For all his years of abuse and excess, it is not clear that he ever achieved anything in the way of making America a safer, more secure place from external and internal enemies.

An important chapter of Hoover's time in power remains inadequately scrutinized: his full role in the investigation of Kennedy's assassination. As Gentry documents and as others have documented, the FBI was well aware before the assassination of serious threats against Kennedy and yet seems to have taken inadequate action to thwart them.

Hoover's role in "solving" the crime remains one of the great mysteries of 20th century American history. The Warren Commission had no independent investigative ability. All it did was take Hoover's rushed, inadequate, and pre-judged investigation and re-package it. And we know now that the so-called Warren Report was riddled with errors and misjudgment and the selective use of facts. It was a piece of Soviet-era state rubbish posing as detailed investigation.

If, as many who have studied the assassination believe, it was the work of the American Mafia, we have an automatic explanation for Hoover's shoddy work. Hoover claimed he never believed the Mafia existed until he was almost forced to accept it. He chased pathetic "reds" rather than the real criminals who were eating away at the substance of American society. Many have theorized that the Mafia held evidence, perhaps photographs, of Hoover's homosexuality and cross-dressing, keeping him neutralized for decades in exactly the way Hoover neutralized so many politicians and potential critics.

I like very much the way Gentry briefly follows through the successors of Hoover at the FBI, summarizing their changes and contributions, and it is not an uplifting story.

The very fact that the FBI building in Washington still has Hoover's name on it in big metal letters tells us a great deal about the nature of power in America.

It took me a few months to finish this 760 pages book but it was time well invested. This book is a remarkable achievement. You will find in it the parallel stories of both J. Edgar Hoover and his creature, the FBI.

J. Edgar Hoover was already on the government's payroll by the presidency of Woodrow Wilson and he remained a Federal employee until his death in 1972 during Richard Nixon's presidential tenure. He shaped the FBI making it a highly effective investigative law and order organization. You could say the man and the agency had the same strengths and weaknesses.

The author, Curt Gentry, excelled at all the imaginable standards with this biographical work. The book is informative, an eye opener, highly readable and, comprehensive. This book stands also as a literary jewell. I wish all biographies were as well researched and written as this one.

i decided to read about hoover after the debate began on the patriot act and its impingement of our civil rights. Was it really a change from yesteryear? how bad were the intrusions? after reading the amazon reviews, i selected this book over others.

it is a well detailed history of j edgar hoover and his over 50 years as head of the fbi. the book is well documented with footnotes, source notes, and bibliography. the biography is told fairly objectively. i was glad to see the author didn't spend hardly any time on the cross dressing/homosexuality rumors that run rampant. it is not to say they are not correct, only that they are unproven. that means the author stuck to the facts he had, not the salacious history it could be. for that i appreciate the integrity of the historical perspective that the author portrays. i feel i have the true story on what he presents, and that is what i look for in a political biogrphy.

with all that said, this book is an eye opener. the power that this man held was unbelievable. the lives, both innocent and guilty, that he destroyed innumerable. the tactics disgusting and terrifying. Simply put it could have been almost anyone.

does it change the debate? i don't think so. even with his scum tactics, he did not prevent dr martin luther king from changing the world. the question still stands. should we be prepared to give up some of our civil rights to assist in the pursuit of those who threaten us? will there be abuse? of course. but that doesn't make the interests of the whole less than the interests of the few. the problem with hoover was the duration of his control. had presidents had the will to risk their careers and fire what they knew to be a problem, it would not have become systemic as it did.

very good book of a dark side of our history.

Fifteen years in the making, "J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets" is a long, intricate, dense, but ultimately rewarding read. There are occasional minor lapses like misspellings, date typos, Congressmen misidentified as Senators, etc., as well as names dropping in and out of the narrative which require frequent use of the index to refresh one's memory, but it's all to be expected in a work of such amazing depth and scope. I first read this book shortly after its original publication in 1991, and have found myself frequently referring back to it ever since - it's what I consider a great "gateway book," as its exhaustive bibliography covers virtually all facets of American history and political life over most of the past century. And its lessons remain relevant even today, particularly in light of the Bush Administration dusting off Nixon's infamous Huston Plan in the aftermath of 9/11 and very nearly setting off a palace revolt within the Justice Department as a result. The story of Hoover's final years is all the more compelling now given the more recent revelation of former FBI Deputy Associate Director W. Mark Felt as Bob Woodward's famous Watergate source, "Deep Throat." Felt's current state of both physical and mental frailty, as documented in Woodward's "The Secret Man," means that Gentry's work may well be the clearest available view of what led one of the Bureau's highest officials to guide a young reporter through the opening acts of a story that would bring down the President. And Gentry ably captures the atmosphere of Washington at a time when the famed FBI Director could still cast a long shadow over events that transpired both outside his Bureau and after his death.

"J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets" is the story of a consummate functionary and master of bureaucratic survival, whose reputation was destroyed by his own prejudices and paranoia in much the same fashion as the last President he "served". It's a cautionary tale about the perils of investing too much power in government, and the personal toll upon the wielders of that power and those who would aspire to it. It's a story of how praiseworthy accomplishments in Hoover's early career were ultimately overshadowed by his petty vindictiveness, which bordered on the childish, and his pathological aversion to sharing the limelight. It's a story of how these character flaws ended up costing lives, including several FBI agents like Melvin Purvis, whose successes in cracking high-profile cases did more for the glory-hungry Director's reputation than for their own advancement. It's a story about the limitations of power, and how one of the most respected (and feared) government agencies either completely missed or failed to stop changes in society at large, whether by expending vast resources on a nonexistent communist threat while ignoring the growing power and reach of organized crime, or unsuccessfully attempting to sabotage the Civil Rights movement. It's a story of hypocrisy and self-delusion, not only of Hoover but of politicians like McCarthy, Johnson, Nixon, and others who tried to use Hoover's secrets for their own ends. And finally, it's the story of literally decades of activities that made a mockery of the Bureau's widely-proclaimed founding principles of Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.

Curt Gentry does a commendable job of maintaining scholarly detachment while recounting details, whether gory or erotic, from the famous cases and (mostly illegal) surveillances that formed the basis of Hoover's power. Drawing from these, plus White House tapes from two different administrations and extensive source interviews, Gentry paints a warts-and-all portrait not only of Hoover, but of many other famous people (heroic and otherwise). There's the origin of the urban legend concerning Dillinger's anatomy. There's President Truman earning Hoover's eternal ire by correcting him on a matter of Scripture. There are snide remarks galore - from FDR about Eleanor, Bobby Kennedy about Associate FBI Director Clyde Tolson, Nixon and Haldeman about Hoover, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s locker-room joke about Jackie. There's JFK's penchant for amphetamines, and convincing evidence that this was one thing Kennedy and Hoover had in common. Gentry recounts Hoover's pique at being victimized by the Bureau's own tactics when reporters like Jack Anderson dared to circumvent the FBI propaganda machine with dumpster diving and "black bag jobs" of their own. Watergate cognoscenti will appreciate Attorney General John Mitchell's off-the-cuff reference to "programming Liddy," as well as Mitchell's unforgettable wife Martha, who sang Hoover's praises with "...if you've seen one FBI Director you've seen them all," followed by, "John tells me he's never worked for a nicer fellow." And Gentry manages to address, without sensationalizing, the persistent rumors of a homosexual relationship between Hoover and Tolson; a perfectly fair subject given Hoover's penchant for sexual slander and Tolson's spectacular ascent through the hidebound bureaucracy that Hoover himself designed.

The book begins and ends with the events surrounding Hoover's death in the Spring of 1972, some six weeks prior to the Watergate break-in. The first telling presents the passing of the nation's most famous unelected public servant in its more "official" version; the second is colored by the sordid history behind a carefully-engineered facade that had already begun to crumble. Included are Nixon's recollections of his own failed attempts to fire Hoover - military history buffs familiar with Guderian's memoir, "Panzer Leader," will recognize a familiar pattern to the conversations. For J. Edgar Hoover, like both Hitler and Stalin, was a master of political and media manipulation who ultimately failed to live up to his own image, and it's no small irony that a man lodged within the bureaucracy of a supposedly free society could outlast both dictators by a substantial margin. But no matter what one thinks of the Director's tenure and legacy, Curt Gentry has succeeded admirably in providing a thorough, and possibly even definitive, examination of a significant figure in American history.

In the context of recent concerns about spying on Americans by the Executive Branch of government, it is timely to re-read this classic biography. Gentry skips sensationalism and scandal, but his carefully detailed portrait shows a nasty, bigotted old man who happily chiselled his employer.

So how did Hoover remain in power for half a century? Simply put, he had a file on everyone. And he wasn't afraid of using his minions to imply the threat of blackmail.

There's little evidence of active homosexuality by Hoover, indeed labelling someone a "fag" seems to have been his biggest threat. However, here we have a many who lived with his mother until his mid-40's, whose "Associate Director" was his daily companion whose adult sexuality at best could be called retarded.

Gentry's indictment of Hoover does not avoid his few good qualities -- he was a hard worker and an efficient administrator. The notes and footnotes are extensive, but do not interfere with a page-turning narrative for those who want to go quickly. In sum, it amounts to a crashing indictment of a man whose name does not deserve to be on a government building.

This is a comprehensive and detailed account of the Islamic rebellion against the West. John K. Cooley's reports reach many different countries including Afghanistan, the West Bank, Egypt and Algeria and certainly the United States, but as you assemble them in your mind, there emerges, like in a mosaic, the history and compelling forces of the clash of Islam with the Christian West. It began perhaps in 1928, when the Moslem Brotherhood was founded in Egypt and soon reached its first peak at the time of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. From the beginning, it was a hostile reaction, the response of the Islamic civilization, awakening from long dormancy, to the clash with the intrusive, advanced, imperialistic and alien Western world. It was their retreat into the protective castle of what was good and eternal in their history, their God, their Prophet and His ancient law. Their level of belligerence had reached a level high enough in 1979 to bring about the power grab of Khomeini and the Iran hostage crisis, but these were promptly compounded, in a seminal and cataclysmic way, by the Soviet invasion into Moslem Afghanistan. At that point, Islam declared all-out war on atheistic Russia and the pagan West, as the mujahedin arrived in Afghanistan from many Arab countries. It was a pivotal event, because the same mujahedin fighters, after achieving victory, returned to Egypt, Palestine, Algeria, Bosnia and elsewhere, carrying with them their newly learned martial skills and fanatical religious ideology, in order to light the torch of jihad in their home countries.
There was a long row of aftershocks after the outbreak of the Afghan Jihad. Anwar Sadat paid for his peace mission with Israel in his assassination in 1981. Hezbollah bombed the US Marine Barracks and Beirut Embassy in 1982 and 1984. Abu Yassaf began his Islamic resistance work on the island of Mindanao. The civil war between the Islamic Salvation Front and the Algerian government forces raged from 1994 to 1996. US installations in Saudi Arabia were bombed in 1995 and 1996, and so it went on to the more recent armed attacks and exchanges we all know.
The author goes into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, itself the earliest and most offensive crisis in Moslem conscienceless, only after the HAMAS organization was formed at the end of the Afghan war. Perhaps this was, because up until then the Palestinian guerilla war, raging for decades, was still chiefly a secular and territorial conflict, whereas with HAMAS it was one waged by religious fundamentalists, who refused to cooperate with Arafat's PLO.
For those who look for an in-depth and factual textbook about this ongoing clash of civilizations, its origins, motives and complications, Unholy Wars is an excellent choice.

Cooley's book is the most complete and meticulous research on the subject. It's a great reference book that's chilling, mesmerizing, and factual!

John Cooley presents the reader with a mas of very interesting, though ultimately very poorly organised information. One has the impression that this book was rushed to the presses to capitalise on the public's need for information after 9/11. There is a great deal of useful information, but buried among a lot of trivia, that clouds the overall picture. He tends to jump back and forth through time, leaving the reader a little confused-and often forcing one to have to reread previous paragraphs. Very dense and difficult to digest. He does himself a disservice by not having an editor.

The thesis of John Cooley's Unholy Wars is that the tragic attack on the World Trade Center and the Pengaton was "engineered, planned and in some cases carried out by CIA-trained veterans of the 1979-1989 Afghanistan war, or those schooled or influenced by them." No small charge. Of course, Mr. Cooley is not claiming that the CIA intended the result; and he acknowledges that hindsight is an untimely gift. Still, he takes great pains to show that, after the smoke cleared in Afghanistan, the Afghan rebels became a terrorist diaspora -- one that remained highly networked and adequately funded. Mr. Cooley at points admits that other causal factors were involved as well, not least the continued flow of funds needed to finance jihad, but his recurring accusation is that "blowback" was at the heart of September 11th.

Invariably the book prompts counterfactual questions: Had there been no U.S. support for the Afghan rebels might the Soviet Union have imploded of its own weight? Was a CIA role in Afghanistan the decisive tipping point that culminated in September 11th or might it have happened anyway? Working from the premise that he is factually correct about U.S. "training," was that training really decisive? Wouldn't we expect a motivated al-Qaida to find or discover on its own what resources it needed?

The book's principal strength is the quantity of information it conveys. Readers in search of a map of the overall book might read Chapter 11, "The Contagion Spreads: The Assault on America," after reading the opening chapter on Carter and Brezhnev. This should not be the only book you read to understand the tragedy of September 11th, but it certainly should be one of them.

This book discloses the historical facts behind the rumors that the CIA did train people like Osama bin Laden as Muslim rebels to fight off the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late seventies and eighties. Well apparently it is all true. Given the author in depth research and documentation, this story appears credible enough to become part of history. This is an incredibly interesting book for both its shock value and historical documentation.

The book main two themes are:

a) that a U.S. foreign policy in the eighties aimed at fighting back the Soviets in Afghanistan resulted in the acceleration of the formation of Muslim terrorist networks such as al-Qaida; and

b) that in the nineties, the U.S. supported the advent of the Taliban in the hope of stabilizing the Afghan government. This was to facilitate the building of a Trans-Afghan pipeline to be developed by U.S. oil companies.

As part of a Cold War strategy, since 1979 and onward, the U.S. provided support and trained Muslim warriors who built up a resistance to the Soviet-backed Afghanistan government. The Soviets soon decided to invade Afghanistan to crush this Muslim resistance movement and control the U.S. rising influence in the region. At this stage, the U.S. renewed their efforts and enlisted, trained, and funded more and more warriors or moujahidin. The CIA turned to many Muslim charities and religious groups around the World and the U.S. for recruiting. Pretty soon the funding and arm supplies came not only from the U.S., but also from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries. At the same time, Osama bin Laden also found his way in Afghanistan and joined the fight against the Russian. Osama success in fighting the Soviets, gave him the leadership and momentum to build his budding organization al-Qaida.

After the retreat of the Soviets during the early nineties, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, and the U.S. all favored the advent of the Taliban in Afghanistan. For the U.S. and Pakistan, the idea was to create an independent, strong, and stable Pushtun state in Afghanistan. In turn, this reliable Afghan government could provide the stability needed to allow U.S. oil companies to complete their plans for a trans Afghan pipeline that would deliver oil from Central Asia to Pakistani ports on the Indian Ocean. For Osama bin Laden, the Taliban created an alliance and a haven for his terrorist network al Qaida, since bin Laden had lost his Saudi Arabian citizenship. This was because he supported Saudi opposition groups against the royal family. He did that because of the Saudi government letting U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia in the 1990 Gulf War.

Also, after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, many Muslim moujahidin joined al Qaida and other terrorist networks. As a result, Osama and his colleagues started exporting terrorism literally Worldwide and causing havoc in Africa, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Chechnya and many other places. Ever since terrorism has escalated in violence, ruthlessness (killing increasingly civilians, tourists), and capability (both from a weapon and strategic standpoint).

With 20/20 hindsight, one can only wonder what would have happen if the U.S. had never gotten involved in the affairs of the Afghan Soviet supported government in the late seventies and eighties. Would al-Qaida ever got off the ground? Would the clash of civilization between the U.S. and Islam be as intense? Would the 9/11 events never have occurred? Would the Cold War be over? And, would the Soviet Union still exist? This book will definitely make you think.