Agency-securities Books

The book arrived in the estimated time and in the condition advertised by this seller.

A fine political sciene academic book. A number of strengths:
- A well organized book. One looking to just understand the argument or theory of the book can read the first two chapters and the conclusion.
- A strong case is made on behalf of new institutionalism, as opposed to realism, in explaining the creation and development of the National Security Council, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Central Intelligence Agency. Bottom line is that foreign policy agencies are created amidst the politics of the day and are never created so as to achieve true national security objectives. Among the interesting findings is that Congress and the interest group community was not seriously involved in the creation or development of the three national security structures. New institutional theory regarding domestic areas does involve Congress and IGs. Worse for anyone hoping to fix initial design flaws is the fact that, as hard as it is to make agencies function from the get-go, it's even harder to fix them later on.
- The case studies are well written and interesting narratives.
Some weaknesses:
- Congress's involvement does not necessarily mean formal votes and hearings. Hence, influential folks can play a role in behind the scenes manners.
- Congress pushed through the Goldwater-Nichols Act in the 1980s with a SecDef who was opposed, a president who was not engaged. That's a heck of a piece of contrary evidence that Zegart does not dedicate enough time to.
- A tad bit too much repetition.
- Politics in the late 1940s is not the same as politics in the early 21st century. Globalization and the interlocking nature of domestic and foreign policies may weaken Zegart's findings.

More can be said. Overall, a fine book and well worth the time.

With Flawed by Design, Zegart makes a spectacular splash into the world of professional political academic analysis. Trained at Stanford University, Zegart employs an approach that is both refreshingly "old school" in its historical approach and new school in its analytical rigor. In short, Zegart has offered up a piece of academic literature that is certain to become a classic. Look out for this rising star over the next 10 years. Let's only hope that the "rational choice" dogma of the field doesn't precluding Zegart from continuing her Tiger Woods-like path through the political science circuit.

This is a very worthy and thoughtful book. It breaks new ground in understanding the bureaucratic and political realities that surrounded the emergence of the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA was weak by design, strongly opposed by the military services from the beginning. Its covert activities emerged as a Presidential prerogative, unopposed by others in part because it kept CIA from being effective at coordinated analysis, for which it had neither the power nor the talent. Most usefully, the book presents a new institutionalist theory of bureaucracy that gives full weight to the original design, the political players including the bureaucrats themselves, and external events. Unlike domestic agencies that have strong interest groups, open information, legislative domain, and unconnected bureaucracies, the author finds that national security agencies, being characterized by weak interest groups, secrecy, executive domain, and connected bureaucracies, evolve differently from other bureaucracies, and are much harder to reform. On balance, the author finds that intelligence per se, in contrast to defense or domestic issues, is simply not worth the time and Presidential political capital needed to fix but that if reform is in the air, the President should either pound on the table and put the full weight of their office behind a substantive reform proposal, or walk away from any reform at all-the middle road will not successful.

El libro me lo bebí en unos cuantos días. Es muy ágil para leer y te llena de intriga, mas al suponer que todas las "revelaciones" tienen algo de cierto o fueron reales. Algunas cosas son comprobables por las mismas noticias, otras creo que caen en lo novelesco. Aún así no lo compré como documento histórico, sino para entender un poco mas de la organización Mossad y no me decepcionó. Excelente si buscas este mismo objetivo

Pues el libro esta muy bien redactado y los traductores hicieron un buen trabajo.
En lo que toca a la veracidad de lo escrito, solo un ignorante o alguien sin la menor idea de la realidad creeria que los hechos expuestos son completamente ciertos. Mas bien se podria decir que lo que se escribio fueron especulaciones, bien fundadas, si, pero especulaciones al fin. Es sobreentendido que no somos espias buscando claves para infiltrar el Mossad y vamos a usar este libro para lograrlo. Al contrario, lo leemos por placer. Viendolo de esta forma, la lectura es informativa y divertida. Aveces se reira, y aveces se rascara la cabeza, pero al final disfrutara el libro. Lo recomiendo.

Este libro de investigación nos da a conocer con ejemplos sabidos por todos a través de la historia el papel crucial que este servicio secreto ha jugado en la defensa del estado de Israel, las tácticas que ha usado para neutralizar o eliminar a sus enemigos, convencer a sus aliados del peligro que corren para justificar sus acciones y los hilos que ha movido y sigue moviendo para proseguir con su política desestabilizadora en el Medio Oriente como forma de dividir la unidad árabe como medio de subsistencia en una región hostil. Aunque está de más decir que por razones obvias lo más secreto sobre el Mossad está por escribirce.

Este libro hace muchas "revelaciones". A decir no creo que todas sean ciertas pero si al menos un 40% de lo que dice es cierto entonces vale la pena. Hay especulaciones sobre los actos del Mossad: Que el mossad estab intentando reclutar al chofer de la princesa Diana y Dodi Al Fayed el día del accidente en que murieron, que mataron a Robert Maxwell, que tenian grabadas conversaciones comprometedoras de Bill Clinton para evitar que investigara a un topo del Mossad. Además nos cuenta hechos conocidos como el rescate en Entebbe, el robo del MIG iraní y el asesinato de Gerald Bull.
En general, es un libro ameno de leer y haber un alinea especulativa, que de cualquier modo es imposible de comprobar pues ningun gobierno confirmaría lo dicho aquí, asi que no es posible saber hasta que punto es cierto lo aqui dicho.

The 2006 D.B. Hardeman Prize for the best book on Congress published in
2005 has been awarded to "The CIA and Congress". Don Bacon, a member of
the award committee, says: "David Barrett has given us an engrossing
account of the highly secret, often contentious relationship between
Congress and its post-World War II creation, the Central Intelligence
Agency. Thoroughly researched, rich in fascinating detail, 'The CIA and
Congress' focuses on the spy agency's early years, when the Cold War was
at its peak. The author relies heavily on previously hidden official
records and his own insightful interviews to show that our lawmakers
worried more about the new agency's potential for mischief and kept it
on a shorter leash than has been previously known."

This book is a necessary read if you are into the history and political analysis of the American government from the 1940s through the 60s. It's a fascinating read. Dr. Barrett has gone to incredible lengths of archival research to write a book that is a truly original voice on the period. As someone who came across the book looking for material on Joe McCarthy, I was amazed at how enjoyable the book was to read just in general. Dr. Barrett has found material to support stories that were merely rumors before. For example, letters from a military officer who was "propositioned" by Senator McCarthy and memos supporting the fact that meetings occurred between the CIA Director and a Congressional subcommittee prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion. This is truly a groundbreaking book that should be required reading for anyone interested in the CIA or Congress.

Barrett's /The CIA and Congress/ is a triumph of research. Writing any history of the CIA is problematic because the documentation will never be close to complete; some official and private papers have been destroyed or "misplaced," others remain classified 50 years or more after being written, and many important discussions and decisions were never committed to paper. Faced with such endemic incompleteness, Barrett, a political scientist at Villanova University, persevered, found widely dispersed research materials and displayed sound analytic sense and balance in their use. Having done so much fine detective work, Barrett can present not only a gripping review of leadership dynamics among the CIA, the White House and Congress but also a coherent view of the development and oversight of the CIA's budgets (a notoriously hard target) from 1947 to 1961. His research is made more impressive by his frankness in admitting on several occasions that he cannot tell the whole story because the documents are not available.

Barrett's analysis of the relationship between the long-established Congress and the infant CIA (founded only in 1947) turns not only on documents but also on his superb portraits and assessments of the key players: The thoughts, actions and characters of senators, congressmen, presidents and CIA officials are front and center in the book. The human pageant Barrett presents is not all that different from that which exists today.

True life exploits of Charles Roy Siringo in the old west bringing many fugitives to justive while enduring hard ships!

This is a great book if you're into the American West, The Wild Bunch, or just a detective fan.
Charlie Siringo must have been one of the toughest men who ever lived...15 years in the saddle as a cowboy, followed by 22 years as a Pinkerton detective!
Charlie writes as a detective would...mostly, it's just the facts. He writes in an easy to read style that seems to flow from him in a natural manner. His stories are amazing, and he was surely a 'walking national treasure'in terms of his first hand knowledge of the American West 1865-1900.
I can't believe he is so 'forgotten' as one of the west's real and true heroes. A terrific insight into the times and the man.

Charles Siringo was the real deal, the rare 1870's cowboy who experienced the trail rides of the Wild West, but also felt the need and had the desire to put his experiences in writing. The stories in his books seem to be honest and legit, not inflated or self-indulgent. He was a man of great courage and resoursefulness, and the stories in this book are full of real-life examples. I have read several of Siringo's writings, and have found this book to be the most enjoyable and fascinating of them all.

'Chesterman has written a tour de force that exposes the weaknesses of the arguments supporting a doctrine of unilateral humanitarian intervention in international society ... Chesterman rejects the claim that states have a legal right to act as vigilantes in support of Council resolutions, even if they believe that this is the only means to stop a genocide. The powerfully argued thesis of this scholarly work is that accepting this proposition in law is "a recipe for bad policy, bad law, and a bad international order".' -International Affairs

From the author: This book critically examines the right of humanitarian intervention, asserted most spectacularly by NATO during its 1999 air strikes over Kosovo. The UN Charter prohibits the unilateral use of force, but there have long been arguments that such a right might exist as an exception to this rule, or linked to the changing role of the Security Council. Through an analysis of these questions, the book puts NATO's action in Kosovo in its proper legal and historical perspective.

'a tightly argued and complex presentation, with numbered, easily referenced topics in the style of a doctoral thesis (which it is). A more textured work [than Christine Gray's International Law and the Use of Force], it is arguably a more interesting read for an audience that does not already have at ready access the historical background or international law perspective to this difficult subject. It is also a more accessible work for students, and decidedly less dry and fragmented than many standard international law texts ... Dr Chesterman gives us a fairly riveting review of the history behind the modern rise of humanitarian intervention.' -Books-on-Law

Simply put, a fantastic piece of analysis. Given this book by a friend, I expected a relatively vague and basic description of the KGB's operations, but was pleasantly surprised. Amazingly thorough, covering all aspects of the KGB's domestic and foreign activities. Includes a well-balanced mix of straight analysis and explanatory anecdotes. Might be a bit too heavy reading for those not seriously interested in the topic. The extent of the KGB's reach willdispel any illusions that the USSR was simply the typical authoritarian state.

Should be noted that the book was actually co-authored by Bagley alongside a former Soviet intelligence officer, a general, who defected in the 1950s.

This book provides a detailed insight into how Soviet leaders used their internal intelligence agency as an instrument of ultimate oppression. Lots of well-documented detail. The present tense only gets in the way for a bit (remember it was published while this was still going on -- before the fall of the USSR) and does not alter the facts as they were under the Soviet system. There is no other book which gives one quite the depth and insight this one does. Definitely a MUST for anyone interested in how things really worked in the USSR. Its a lesson to all of us. You want this book.

The book reveals the unique qualifications and inside knowledge of the two authors. There is no better description of the systematic repression of a modern population. Its appearance just before the fall of the Soviet Union invalidated its present tense, nevertheless, for anyone interested in how Soviet power survived for 70 years, this is the definitive work. A must for students of this subject.

Dr. Danesh Sarooshi has extensively explored the options for the use of force, as detailed in Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.

Chapter VII powers are delegated by the UN Security Council a fifteen member body with five permanent and ten rotating members. These powers permit the use of force in certain circumstances; for example, by peacekeeping troops in a UN mission. With the difficulties recently experienced in parts of the world, Chapter VII powers need to be sometimes conferred on the UN mission when undertaking peacekeeping or peace-building operations, in order to protect members of the mission and innocent victims.

Dr. Sarooshi writes with extensive knowledge on this subject; his work in this book is derived from a thesis. Written from a legal perspective and using case study examples in classical legal writing style, he looks at delegation of powers from the UN Security Council to the UN Secretary-General, other UN bodies, member states and in the context of regional situations.

The book is well writeen however, could be heavy going for some readers; very useful for students of international law,security studies and international relations. The book uses real examples and looks at various past examples such as Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Kuwait and Korea.

In summary, a well written and researched book, rich in examples and reference material for the serious student. The book may be a bit heavy going for some readers; it gives a broad view of the UN Security Council's powers and when Chapter VII powers can be invoked and delegated. Well done, Dr. Sarooshi!

Dr. Sarooshi's book is a well-written, authoritative, and scholarly discussion of the use of force by the United Nations--a topic of increasing relevance in today's world. Sarooshi, professor of international law at University College London, discusses how the UN Security Council's powers to use force can be delegated to other entities or organs of the UN. He describes and analyzes the general legal framework governing the process of a delegation by the UN Security Council of its Chapter VII Powers. The book covers all relevant aspects of the delegation of force by the UN, including the competence of the Security Council to delegate its Chapter VII Powers to various entities, and limitations on this competence. The book discusses (ch. 4) responsibility for UN-authorized military action, as well as various justifications (ch. 5) for delegating force, such as: to counter a use of force by a state or entities within a state; to carry out a naval interdiction; to achieve humanitarian objectives; or to ensure implementation by parties of an agreement which the Council has deemed is necessary for the maintainance or restoration of peace. Various useful real-world cases are discussed, such as the Iraqi "No-Fly Zone".

Sarooshi examines various types of delegation, including delegation to the Secretary-General, to other subsidiary UN organs, and to UN member states. Of particular interest, in view of today's headlines, is the discussion (in Chapter 6) of the Security Council's delegation of enforcement powers to "Regional Arrangements", including NATO.

Sarooshi's comprehensive and authoritative monograph is an important contribution to the on-going development of international law pertaining to the use of force by the UN. This book will play an important role in the future develoment of the legal framework governing collective action by the United Nations.

Dr. Sarooshi's book is a well-written, authoritative, and scholarly discussion of the use of force by the United Nations--a topic of increasing relevance in today's world.

Sarooshi, professor of international law at University College London, discusses how the UN Security Council's powers to use force can be delegated to other entities or organs of the UN. He describes and analyzes the general legal framework governing the process of a delegation by the UN Security Council of its Chapter VII Powers. The book covers all relevant aspects of the delegation of force by the UN, including the competence of the Security Council to delegate its Chapter VII Powers to various entities, and limitations on this competence. The book discusses (ch. 4) responsibility for UN-authorized military action, as well as various justifications (ch. 5) for delegating force, such as: to counter a use of force by a state or entities within a state; to carry out a naval interdiction; to achieve humanitarian objectives; or to ensure implementation by parties of an agreement which the Council has deemed is necessary for the maintainance or restoration of peace. Various useful real-world cases are discussed, such as the Iraqi "No-Fly Zone".

Sarooshi examines various types of delegation, including delegation to the Secretary-General, to other subsidiary UN organs, and to UN member states. Of particular interest, in view of today's headlines, is the discussion (in Chapter 6) of the Security Council's delegation of enforcement powers to "Regional Arrangements", including NATO.

Sarooshi's comprehensive and authoritative monograph is an important contribution to the on-going development of international law pertaining to the use of force by the UN. This book will play an important role in the future develoment of the legal framework governing collective action by the United Nations.

"A brilliant book. Outstanding research and superlative presentation of the dramatis personae. An anecdotal and extremely well written account -- as informative as any treatise and as entertaining as the best espionage novels." -- Kirkus Reviews.

"There are few books that adequately cover this subject. Much of what passes for 'the literature' is overblown, conspiracy-addled and fragmented. But Mark Riebling, a historian, has made a valiant effort to piece it all together in WEDGE.... The fact that he has taken great pains to avoid using anonymous sources is just one of a number of reasons why serious students of this nation's haywire-rigged counterintelligence effort should read WEDGE.... Refreshingly unlike most spy literature.... the cumulative effect of his tales is staggering." -- John Fialka, The Wall Street Journal.

"Any illusions that the two organizations simply mirror each other are thoroughly shattered. Riebling meticulously traces the continuing conflict and its consequences, which sometimes took the form of Keystone Cop episodes but more often were deadly serious." -- Houston Chronicle.

"A surprisingly fresh, coherent, well-written and persuasive analysis. Striking conclusions, a succession of colorful adventurers, and highly provocative speculations which have the unsettling ring of plausibility." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"A lively and engaging narrative of interagency bungling, infighting, malfeasance and nonfeasance, providing fresh and well-rounded portraits of well-known (and ought-to-be-well-known) agents -- drawing on scores of original and rewarding interviews." -- Richard Gid Powers, front page, Washington Post Book World.

"Riebling successfully re-creates the life-or-death atmosphere of the half-century of American confrontation with the Soviet Union. Mr. Riebling succeeds as well in persuading the reader that the FBI-CIA conflict was a more important piece of the cold war mosaic than heretofore noted by historians." -- Michael R. Beschloss, New York Times Book Review.

"Incisive.... Riebling shows how personalities shaped the struggle between the agencies, and how the struggle hampered intelligence. There's much here to stimulate discussion." -- Tampa Tribune.

"Riebling brings forth many new angles, thanks to his entree to a web of retired agents. A well organized, engaging account." -- Booklist.

"Serves up some juicy insights. The book is full of colorful and strong characters as well as entertaining description and lucid writing." -- Toledo Blade.

"Meticulously researched yet entertaining... Persuasively identifies Woodward and Bernstein's mysterious informant Deep Throat." -- San Francisco Chronicle.

"An exceptionally readable and coherent account, exhaustively sourced. Riebling meticulously but engagingly takes his readers through CIA's operations [and] presents a most intriguing hypothesis as to the identity of the long-silent Deep Throat. True Watergate buffs will be titillated. I'd put my money on the one the author suspects most." -- John Robbins, former CIA officer, The Palm Beach Post.

"Riebling's impressive documentation is chilling, sobering, and thought provoking." -- Virginia Quarterly Review.
"Riebling's writing is articulate and reflective. He explains the Angleton view so competently that it finally makes sense on its own terms." -- BookBase Online.

"In WEDGE, Mark Riebling's compelling and exhaustively researched history of the two intelligence giants, the depth of [the] inter-agency animus -- and its pernicious effects -- becomes distressingly clear. ... Riebling has avoided tarring the late FBI boss [J. Edgar Hoover] with the kind of sensationalist touches common to recent biographies. ... He is respectful of those he believes played the both wisely and well. If a heroic figure emerges from WEDGE it is the late James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's controversial director of counterintelligence for more than 20 years. Riebling partially rehabilitates Angleton from the drubbing he's taken in recent books such as David Wise's "Molehunt," in which he is depicted as disrupting his own agency in a futile, paranoid search for a nonexistent mole.... Riebling has crafted a thorough history of the fatally flawed CIA-FBI marriage through interviews with many of the key players and reams of internal documents, many of them recently declassified. WEDGE also is the beneficiary of extraordinary timing. Its releases coincides with a renewed furor in Washington over the CIA and its mandate.... WEDGE accords the current crisis an appropriate historical context." -- Scott Ladd, Newsday.

"Well researched, wittily written, full of good judgments. In a large and growing field, WEDGE will join the shelf of those few books which meet both standards of scholarship and expectations for insight and entertainment at a high level." -- Robin Winks, Professor of History, Yale University.

Well-written, thoroughly researched account, from Pearl Harbor to the present. Highlights: World War II, Kennedy Assassination, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Aldrich Ames. What made Cold War counterintelligence officers "tick"? Myths about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and CIA spycatcher James Jesus Angleton are corrected. Special focus: 94% accuracy of predictions by ex-KGB officer Anatoily Golitsyn, who in 1984 foresaw the rise of Gorbachev, fall of the Berlin Wall, etc. Author Riebling is former editor at Random House, Inc

I cannot do this book justice, other than to say that I had never understood the depth and stupidity of the bureaucratic hostility between the FBI and the CIA-mostly the fault of the CIA these days but certainly inspired in part by Hoover in the early days-until I read this book; and that it should be required reading for every senior CIA manager. From the FBI's failure to communicate its very early knowledge of Japanese collection requirement on Pearl Harbor via the Germans, to the assassination of President Kennedy, the World Trade Center bombing and the Aldrich Ames case, this book makes me ashamed and angry about how bureaucracy and secrecy subvert loyalty, integrity, and common professional sense on both sides of this "wedgie" contest.

This is an admirable and unusual work, of doctoral-level quality in its sources and methods, while also reflecting the professional intelligence career status of the author. It complements Amy Zegart's broader book, Flawed By Design, in an excellent manner. This book, focusing as it does on the CIA alone, and on internal sources not readily available to Zegart, fills a major gap in our understanding of the CIA's origins. The author excels at demonstrating both the actual as opposed to the mythical origins of the agency, and pays particular heed to the role of the Bureau of the Budget and that Bureau's biases and intentions. At the end of it all, the author notes that the agency was moving in controversial directions within four years of its birth, quickly disturbing Harry Truman, who is quoted as saying, twenty-years after the fact (in 1963), "For some time I have been distributed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making arm of Government....I never had any thought when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations." The author himself goes on to conclude that "the nature of the new threats and the revolution in information acquisition and dissemination have thrown traditional ways of intelligence organization, collection, evaluation, and distribution into question. ... CIA has entered the second half-century of its existence striving to avoid the fate of its OSS parent. In the process, it is groping for new missions and purposes while blighted by the legacy of its past derelictions, and while operating amid a rapidly changing global environment and technological revolution that are rendering its sources, methods, organizations, and mystique obsolete." I would hasten to add, as my own book documents, that we will always have hidden evil in the world and will always needs spies and secret methods to some extent, but this book, combining academic rigor with insider access, must surely give the most intelligent of our policy, legislative, and intelligence managers pause, for it very carefully documents the possibility that 75% of what we are doing today with secret sources and methods need not and should not be done. This book has much to offer those who would learn from history.

This is a well balanced, well documented, and definitive book on the beginnings of the current U.S. intelligence system. It also provides an interesting smaller window on the development of the entire post WWII U.S. National Security Establishment. For all its merits, this book is not for the general reader because it deals with a very small and specialized slice of modern American history. A more general and equally important book, "Flawed by Design" by Amy Zugert (Amazon.com) would be a better choice for individuals who don't wish to deal with the impressive amount of detail that this book provides. Nonetheless this book is indispensable to any anyone wishing to understand the process by which the current U.S. Intelligence System and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created.

As the author makes clear, the intelligence system that was established was very much the product of the disinterest that senior policy makers and the U.S. Congress had in intelligence matters in the wake of WWII. Excepting for intelligence professionals and some far seeing bureaucrats there were no strong constituencies or lobbying groups who cared about a national intelligence system. The author demonstrates that the CIA in particular was very much a creature of good and bad compromises that were imposed by the legitimate concerns of the military intelligence establishments, the FBI and State Department. Reading this book one is impressed with intelligence and dedication of the military and civilians who ultimately still ended up creating the dysfunctional intelligence system that we have today.

In the course of recounting this story, the author quotes an all but forgotten bureaucrat of the immediate post war era, named John Ohly, who, after reviewing the proposals for a CIA, pointed out that there was a lack, "of an intelligence concept which has been carefully thought out and which serves as a clear guide to the various collection and sources and which permits and requires the establishment of priorities as to areas and subjects." This reviewer knows of no more succinct statement on what is presently wrong with the U.S. Intelligence System.

Ethics Of Spying: A Reader For The Intelligence Professional, deftly edited by Jan Goldman (ethics and intelligence teacher at the Joint Military Intelligence College in Washington, D.C.) is a knowledgeably written collection of literature and military espionage that creates what may be understood as the ultimate guideline to ethical spying. Ethics Of Spying may act as an informative reference for identifying the proper tactics necessary to go about assessing a particular situation, aside from being an incredibly elaborate and intriguing read. Ethics Of Spying is very strongly recommended to all policy makers, managers, supervisors, and employees involved in intelligence operations as well as the non-specialist general reader with an interest in espionage and spy history, ethics and tactics.

Jan Goldman has assembled a compendium of short articles which explore all aspects of the intelligence trade. The book is a definitely useful tool to anyone who wishes to understand the dilemmas which confront the intelligence professional as he plies his trade.

Especially useful are the case studies which allow the reader to put himself in the place of an intelligence professional at a time of crisis and ponder how he or she might act in a similar situation.