Agency-securities Books

By his own admission, the author is not an expert in the intelligence community (IC). Rather he seems to be writing a book geared for people who have little understanding of the IC, defense contracting or national security issues. Given the type of magazines he writes for, his political leanings are very obvious and this comes out in the book.

He uses the term outsourcing of intelligence in a very broad sense. For example he considers buying computer hardware & software services as a form of outsourcing of intelligence. He seems to imply the fact that the CIA does not build its own computers or write all its own software is a threat to people's liberties and security.

He also seems to dwell extensively on the relationships between companies and the IC with no real evidence that something nefarious is going on. The fact that people move between the IC & contractors is strength rather than a weakness. Highly insulated intelligence organizations are rarely very effective in the long term.

Overall, this book does little more then reinforce the conspiracy theories that people may have about the IC without really adding much to the discussion.

"Spies for Hire" is one reason I avoid books written by journalists with a political agenda and no real experience working with the organizations they are writing about.

Tim Shorrock has dared to go where no journalist has gone before and explores new paradigms and issues that will be here for years to come: the explosive new world of privatized intelligence gathering and analysis. No doubt, this important work will become a landmark reference.

Edit of 4 Jun 08 to strongly recommend Retired Reader's review as a companion to my own observations.

I sat down with this book today and found it absorbing. It is perhaps the best overview for anyone of names and numbers associated with the $60 billion (or more, perhaps as much as $75 billion) a year we waste on the 4% we can steal, and next to nothing on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). The book loses one star for failing to integrate over 300 relevant books (see the annotated bibliographies to my first two books), and for failing to apply any visualization at all. This book is a mass of facts and figures, names and places. With or without visualization, it is a seminal reference point and recommended for all university and public libraries.

The book focuses mostly on technical waste--the inputs--and does not cover outputs nor constituencies. The reality is as General Zinni has put it so well: the IC produces 4% of what is needed, at a cost so horrendously wasteful as to warrant severe outrage among all taxpayers.

Having read the book, I can state that the author's agenda, if he has one, is to expose the risk to our civil liberties of creating a national surveillance state in which the bulk of the expertise is outside the government and subject to corruption and cronyism as well as lack of oversight.

Here are three tid-bits that strongly support the author's general intent, and some links.

1) Secret intelligence scam #1 is that there is no penalty for failure. Lockheed can build a satellite system that does not work (for NASA as well as the secret world--two different failures--or get the metrics wrong so priceless outer space research does not deploy a parachute--}and get another contract. Similarly SAIC with Trailblazer, CACI in Iraq, Blackwater murdering civilians and ramming old men in old cars out of the way, this is all a total disgrace to America.

2) "Butts in seats" means that most of our money goes to US citizens with clearances who know nothing of the real world, *and* the contractor gets 150% of their salary as "overhead." That is scam #2.

3) Scam #3 is that the so-called policy world, when it exists, does not really care what the secret world has to say, unless it justifies elective wars, secret prisons in the US (Halliburton) and so on. Dick Cheney ended the policy process in this administration. But even without Cheney and his gang of proven liars, the dirty little secret of the secret world is that a) there is no one place where all information comes together to be made sense of; and b) less than 1% of what we collect gets looked at by a human; and c) most of the policy world could care less what Top Secret Codeword information is placed before them--as Colin Powell says so memorably in his autobiography, he preferred the Early Bird compilation of news clippings.

I have been saying since 1988 that the secret emperor is not just naked, but institutionalized lunacy. Books like this are helpful, eventually the public will hear our voice.

Here are specific tid-bits that caught my attention as I went through the book.

+ Two errors in reference to me: I was neither a committee chair nor a program director. The author does quote me accurately.

+ Early on I am impressed to note documented facts:

- 50% of the clandestine case officers at CIA are contractors

- 35% of the Defense Intelligence Agency workforce is contracted

- Virtually 100% of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is contracted

- 70% of all US Intelligence Community funds are spent on external contracts rather than internal capabilities.

- Booz Allen Hamilton has 10,000 employees with Top Secret Codeword clearances

- Revolving door is gutting the agencies (and most retirements will take place between 2007 to 2012--we have no middle management, no bench).

- Total Information Awareness (TIA) program never died, it went underground

- Pentagon under Cheney, then Cheney-Rumsfeld, now Cheney-Gates appears committed to outsourcing everything except the shooting--this is very very bad for all of us

- SIGINT data stream is wagging the dog--three V's of unstructured data are volume, velocity, and variety (183 languages we don't speak) but the author cited General Tony Zinni, USMC (Ret) telling a conference that all the high-tech in the world cannot give him plans and intentions on the battlefield.

- History of outsourcing goes back to the Odeen (CEO BDM) report sponsored by the Defense Science Board, this was the beginning of trying to privatize everything possible. Combined with the Pentagon's inherent disrespect for the CIA, it made privatizing intelligence even more attractive.

- McConnell comes out of this book looking respectable, Woolsey and Tenet less so. Dempsey was not a Navy officer by career--they sent her to knife and fork school when she managed the Navy intelligence budget within GDIP, much as the USMC took care of Arnold Punaro who ultimately made one-star while being Staff Director of the SASC. Although the author excels at naming names, and he discusses failures where they are known, there is very little substantive understanding of how the US IC has collapsed on all fronts--personnel, budget, finance, facilities, global presence, global coverage, relevance to the customer, etcetera.

- CACI and SAIC come out of this book looking truly terrible, while ManTech and Booz Allen Hamilton come out as moderately competent. I have to remind myself that contractors are not evil--they do what we incentivize them to do, and right now it is OUT OF CONTROL.

- He names LtGen Ken Minihan, USAF, as the de facto ideologist for the intelligence-industrial complex, and provides a good review of how venture capital funds were created to focus specifically on secret contracts.

- John Brennan emerges from this book as the man behind the curtain, levering the International and National Security Alliance (INSA) to further the complex. I disagree with the author's characterization of the DNI and INSA alliance as unethical. I do however agree that it is unprofessional in that INSA is executing myopic orders and not contributing at all to the needed cross-fertilization and understanding of where the real innovation is happening, in Collective, Peace, and Commercial Intelligence (the latter the complete opposite of Contractor Intelligence, or butts in seats).

See also:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Blond Ghost
The Very Best Men Four Who Dared:The Early Years of the CIA
Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam

There are success stories. Here are two books on one such case, where the White House and the Pentagon chose not to act over four days:
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander

Bottom line books:
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

I put this book down wishing that the field of cognitive science would evolve more quickly. Our profession is in disarray, in confusion, seeking to substitute butts in seats and dollars for cultural, linguistic, historical, and other forms of context. We need several multinational life boats of change catalysts--such as a Multinational Decision Support Center in Tampa, taking over the rapidly vacating Coalition Coordinating Center, in order to create the world's first unclassified intelligence center dedicated to providing open decision support to all parties active in stabilization & reconstruction, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief (both at home and abroad). The IC is, as I said in Forbes ASAP, Inside Out and Upside Down. This is not the contractor's fault. It is our fault. We are a Dumb Nation instead of a Smart Nation. Bad. Very bad.

Author Shorrock does the nation a great service in providing a basis for discussion of the out-sourcing of intelligence and IT support functions to private industry by federal agencies. For this I would have given him five stars, but it is evident his theme is that such out-sourcing is generally a subversion of the proper function of government and its control by representatives of the people. To this end, he seems to select those incidents that favor his viewpoint, rather than presenting the situation in an impartial manner for the reader to draw his own conclusions. By this I do not mean that the author should not present his own analysis and conclusions -- only that the facts should not be presented with perjorative adjectives and snide comments concerning personal and corporate motives. As an ex-intelligence officer, I certainly would have moved into a private corporation where my skills could have been used to help fulfill the security mission of the Federal Government had personal circumstances not intervened, and I like to think my motives would have been more aligned with satisfaction in accomplishing the mission than for personal profit.

At any rate, this is an important work, and my views of Shorrock's book are almost isomorphic with those contained in the reviews by Steele and "Retired Reader."

With respect to the issue of private corporations being restricted to not breaking the law (either international, US, or any any other country's), one must realise that the gathering of covert HUMINT essentially ALWAYS involves breaking someone's laws. If a contractor is expressly forbidden to do this or is to be held accountable for such trangressions, then contractors cannot perform positive intelligence gathering functions. Unfortunately, at the present time the CIA and all other agencies involved in covert intelligence gathering are clearly incapable of fulfilling their missions in this regard without using private contractors. Regardless of the reasons for this lack of in-agency capability, to eliminate private contractors as the author seems to desire, would be to put America's security at grave risk.

There are solutions to this problem, but the author seems more intent on promoting his leftist agenda than in addressing the issues with the clear goal of improving America's intelligence. Yes, the use of private contractors has gone too far, but what level of private contracting and for what functions would be appropriate? And how do we get to that appropriate level? Alas, these questions were missing in this book, and unfortunately I have not found them yet in any other.

Lastly, allow me to register my disappointment with the reaction to this book. To date, there have been only six reviews and judging from the ratings pro and con on the reviews, I would estimate that the number of readers of the reviews are not more than forty. That's pretty insignificant when one considers the importance of the book's topic, and shows the lack of public interest in this subject. Something is terribly wrong with the US reading public when banal books like those by Friedman and Zakaria promoting the U.S.'s submission to international organizations and globalism receive thousands of reviews and ratings and books on the condition of the CIA and intelligence out-sourcing draw almost no interest.

This book appears to be a compilation of articles that together reveal the excessive use of private contractors by the major agencies of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). According to its author, the IC public officials in many cases have abdicated their duties to the public in favor of private contractors whose loyalties are divided between the public good and corporate profits. In any type of expose' it has to be asked how accurate are the charges and is the author really providing the whole story? Well the answer in this case is yes and no.

The close relationship between the mega U.S. intelligence agencies (CIA, DIA, NGA, NRO, and NSA) and private contractors is indisputable. What this book tries to do, but fails, is show this relationship is also corrupt and dangerous to national security. He does provide many examples of intelligence agency employees moving to the private sector and lavish use of contractors on key intelligence agency projects. Yet he clearly has not spent much time considering the real problems affecting contractor-intelligence client relations.

First there are really three types of contractors currently serving the IC. The first are that body of contractors who provide consulting, advisory, and training services. The second are those contractors that provide technical support services such as development of information systems, IT infrastructure construction or enhancement, and other services that the clients lack the in-house expertise to perform. Finally there are the contractors who supply staffing for the core functions of collection and analysis, because their clients don't have the in-house personnel to fill all of the billets that they are authorized.

This latter use of contractors for core mission assignments is the most often criticized by folks within and out of the IC. But as with all things there are two views of this. For example, John Brennan President of The Analysis Corporation (former CIA officer, mentioned in this book) is in point of fact an honest and patriotic IC contractor who strongly supports the use of contractors to fill core positions. Of course that is his business, but he appears sincere in this belief. (This reviewer had a polite dust-up with Brennan on this issue and ended up agreeing to disagree).

In the end, the use of any type of contractor by the IC is a neutral phenomenon. Contrary to the contentions in this book, contractors while wishing to make a profit also generally want what is best for their clients. Their clients really want to meet their mission requirements and look to contractors to help them accomplish this. The problem with the concept of out-sourcing lays with the execution not the concept itself. Far too often it turns out that the clients are not competent to draw up the technical requirements or do not understand the goals they are articulating. And too often contractors will take the money without pushing back and telling their requirements are worthless (politely of course) or sit down with the client to clarify goals and purposes.

This ex-CIA agent provides the most detailed account to date of the operations of the CIA inside South Vietnam. Giving a first hand account of high-level disagreements. Replete with important disclosures.

Frank Snepp portrays an ugly picture of the warped sense of loyalty which allows ordinarily honorable individuals to perform dishonorable deeds in the name of national security. Every reader will be left with a sense of dismay at the things the CIA has done to protect itself from detractors.

Regardless, I think it is important that readers not take everything Mr. Snepp says at face value, especially his interpretation of events. Often, he is either coloring events to appear more noble (as we are all wont to do) or is incredibly naive about the way the world works. How could one of the top CIA press briefers in Vietnam not know about the politics of national security? Whether over editorializing or naive, clearly there is more to the story than the reader sees.

One of the aspects of organizational whistle-blowing that makes it such a hazardous choice for the individual wanting to tell the explosive truth he has to share with us is the fact that too often he or she must pay a terrible personal price for the singular act of selflessness the whistleblowing represents. So here in the case of former CIA analyst Frank Snepp, who used his considerable writing skills to such advantage in the best-selling book "Decent Interval", which details the manifest ways in which the American government deliberately misled, betrayed, and deceived the government and people of South Vietnam by deciding to withdraw all American forces and then allow the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) to execute what would almost certainly be a fatal sweep southward to envelop and overwhelm the Army of the Republic Of Vietnam (ARVN).

In the present book Snepp describes the ways in which his former employers, the Central Intelligence Agency, used its considerable influence, powers, and resources to derail his effort to publish the book, and upon the failure of that effort ("Decent Interval" was published in 1977), to then punitively pursue confiscation of all of the monies earned by Snepp in association with the book's overwhelming sales success in order to punish Snepp for his trangression of the rules forbidding publication of any materials by former employees without express permission by the CIA. The law suit subsequently filed by the CIA went through all of the appropriate venues, finally landing in the Supreme Court and, according to Snepp, an audience that was quite sympathetic to the Agency's argument. Thus, although he was defended well by a then little-known Harvard lawyer by the name of Alan Dershowitz, Snepp lost the case to the CIA.

Of course, given his personal involvement and the loss of a substantial sum of money as a result, one suspects Snepp is less than objective in his analysis of the case. He admits as much by way of an extended critique of himself and his own actions, which he readily admits may have had the inadvertent and ironic effect of increasing the degree of governmental restrictions on information, acting to further bias the government's restrictions on free speech, open government, and secrecy itself. This is a very interesting read, although it hardly for the faint of heart. I recommend it for anyone interested in the ways in which the bureaucracy works and operates. Enjoy!

Frank Snepp was a CIA analyst in Vietnam who witnessed the abandonment of those who had helped us there during that war. Snepp, although part of the deception himself, tried to warn his superiors of the signs of the impending doom. This is his heartrending account of his attempts to clear his own conscience and make the truth known.

Irreparable Harm is written with quiet, beautiful understatement. I consider its publication a tremendous achievement. I think that few who haven't experienced first-hand in their own lives the sort of driven need to stand by one's own highest principles of truth and honor as Snepp, and who haven't been thus harrassed and persecuted for it, could grasp the monument Snepp has built. Snepp writes a meticulously detailed and researched, blow-by-blow account of the events that led the CIA to shun him, leading him to produce his first book, Decent Interval, and of the aftermath of its publication. He makes vividly clear his own moral dilemmas and suffering. Finally, he puts happened, events so mind-boggling and incomprehensible out of context.

The book is a template. It impresses on us the images of corruption and deceit and shows us the difficult way out of them. It is a road few will voluntarily travel

There's some Augie March here, a bit of Pnin, maybe some Bech, and one is always waiting for the author to fall in love with a cow a la Ike Snopes, but the analog which kept returning to me is The Sot-Weed Factor. You have to love these features: the author laments that women can't stop falling in love with him (and, incidentally, giving him money); he is bewildered as to what other people do when they don't have any money (hint: like those 130,000 VN refugees, maybe get a job, Frank?) He is offended by an opposing lawyer who 'hid out' in law school during the VN era (uh, Frank, you hid out in grad school yourself.) Over and over, he is betrayed by friends and lovers; hilariously, he seems to be the only one not to see why nobody likes him. Try this: he even reports suffering flashbacks of VC in the treeline! (Earth to Frank: try to remember, you never actually spent a night on the ground . . .) Despite his pretense of self-investigation, this fellow is markedly less introspective than Rabbit Angstrom himself. Conclusion: were it fiction, this would be a work of genius; as autobiography, it ranks with Zsa Zsa and her ilk.

How in the heck was it possible for anyone in the late 90s to grieve for the passing of detente? Patriots were glad to have won the Cold War, and progressives were crushed over the collapse of international socialism. But detente? That dishonorable hodgepodge of political expedience and moral equivalence?

The author seems to think that the Soviet Union's decline and fall was obvious and common knowledge, and the right-wingers agitating for the administration not to be snookered by the Soviets' peace offensive were out of line. So, therefore the military buildup in the late Carter and early Reagan years was unnecessary, because the money could have been spent on various liberal social programs. It's a case of "yes, he saved the patient, but the _way_ he did it was wrong". And she apparently doesn't care that all the liberal social programs got enacted anyway, at the cost of a balanced budget in the Eighties.

And she calls Solzhenitsyn's brave witness against the Gulag "inflammatory". Sheesh! What a weird book...

Sadat and the Syrians officially informed Moscow about their intention to strike at Israel and they take, this time, the initiative to attack.

The signatories of Détente saw this as a mere prelude to a political solution. The Russians and the Americans knew the Arabs did not want to destroy Israel, nor were they capable of doing so; they simply wanted to break the stalemate that was ending in a deadlock and lasted for a long time. The situation had become intolerable since the end of the Six Days war of 1967. Six years later, the Arabs, independently and without USSR's energetic guidance, realized that without some shock treatment neither the Israeli nor the Americans would be willing to move and find a settlement (instead of a solution) to this deadlock.

Sadat's presentation almost certainly met with Soviet approval. Day by day the local media assured the Arabs that Soviet leaders had often stressed the necessity of a just and fair political solution to the conflict. Nobody ever wrote about a just and fair settlement of the conflict that started from the beginning of the twentieth century.

Brezhnev gave a speech at Alma-Ata that can rightfully be regarded as a roadmap. He concluded the following among the most urgent tasks the USSR had to discuss with friends ""The achievement of a political settlement in the Middle East on the basis of the declaration of U.N. Security Council and General Assembly that provides for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from all occupied Arab lands"" . The Arab Left saw this was the Communist Party line and the statement was reiterated in many speeches and articles up to the outbreak of the 1973 war. Arab radios repeatedly voiced Soviet leaders that it was unacceptable to acquire territory by force - unless of course the country in question happened to be a superpower such as the Soviet Union.

In 1971, within the context of `détente', USA and USSR signed agreement to sell $ 136 million wheat and $ 125 million drilling equipment to Russia i.e. to export surplus American wheat to USSR. In return, Brezhnev agreed to help Nixon push North Vietnam to negotiate end of the war and Nixon began trade with Russia, sale of wheat, Siberian Gas investment. (Just a marginal observation in this context: Senator Henry Jackson led passage of Jackson-Vanik amendment to withhold most favored nation status until Russia allowed unlimited Jewish emigration and guaranteed human rights)

So,and still within the context of detente, when the Arab Oil Producers decided at their meeting in September 1973 to use the Oil weapon, Pravda encouraged them and expressed hope that oil warfare would escalate. The Arabs Right (then labeled ""Reactionaries"" by their `'brothers" of the Left, saw this as a venue for Moscow to benefit from any consequential increase in the price of Oil). In fact the Soviets were then suffering from severe shortage of wheat. The price of bread was much below the cost of the wheat used to produce it. Russia simply subsidized the cost of wheat that, in some cases, farmers fed their livestock bread rather than grain because bread cost them less. (Just another marginal observation of how detente, supported by Corporate America, is faring these days: Today, with the price of Oil soaring to $ 100+ Russia is able to benefit up to One billion American Dollars per day - yes per day. Russia has settled all her outstanding debts and is in positive cash flow)

Too much `blessings' from Détente.

Ms Cahn is a passionate believer in the Soviet Union's good intentions. She accuses a group of well-informed and respectable American experts -- myself among them -- of deliberately misinforming the US government about Soviet nuclear strategy. I regret having allowed myself to be interviewed by her because she is driven by emotions, not knowledge. The intention of Team B was not to "kill" detente but to alert the US that the USSR did not share its belief in nuclear parity or MAD. Information that has become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union confirms this judgment. I am glad that, judging by sales figures, hardly anyone buys this silly book.

Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA; Review; book reviews

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists January, 1999


No. 1, Vol. 55; Pg. 70

Warnke, Paul C.

Killing Detente is a highly readable account of an ill-considered and maladroit exercise in intelligence reassessment that delayed--but did not derail--detente, the process of accommodation that occurred between Washington and Moscow in the mid-1970s.

In presenting her analysis of what became known as the Team B exercise, Anne Cahn uses her extensive experience in international affairs, a careful review of many previously unavailable documents, and interviews with key individuals involved in the affair. (I should disclose that I worked with the author at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the Committee on National Security, and reviewed drafts of some chapters of her book.)

Shortly after Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) began to push for an alternative review of Soviet strategic capabilities, contending that the National Intelligence Estimates prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) might be understating Soviet strategic strength. Competent analysts, however, had criticized the CIA's reports as greatly overstating Soviet military expenditures.

In late 1975, then-CIA Director William Colby responded negatively to the PFIAB proposal and disagreed with its contention that the agency's intelligence estimates erred by "projecting a sense of complacency." But President Ford, engaged as he was with Ronald Reagan's challenge for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination, was sensitive to possible fight-wing criticism. He eventually authorized the Team B adventure.

The initial idea was to appoint three panels of outside experts that would assess, respectively, the threat to U.S. ICBM survival created by Soviet missile accuracy, the Soviet anti-submarine warfare capability against U.S. nuclear missile submarines, and the extent to which Soviet air defenses could prevent penetration by strategic bombers.

The navy, however, considered information about the operational aspects of submarine patrols and whether they might be trailed by Soviet assets as information that could not be shared, even with the CIA. The second panel, accordingly, was reoriented to deal with Soviet strategic objectives. It is the work of this panel that is generally referred to as the Team B Report.

Whatever might be said for evaluation of strategic capabilities by a group of outside experts, the impracticality of achieving useful results by "independent" analysis of strategic objectives should have been self-evident. Moreover, the futility of the Team B enterprise was assured by the selection of the panel's members. Rather than including a diversity of views, as was recently done in putting together the, so-called Rumsfeld Commission on the ballistic missile threat, the Strategic Objectives Panel was composed entirely of individuals who had made careers of viewing the Soviet menace with alarm.

As the author notes, the panel's chairman, Richard Pipes, has been called the "intellectual godfather" of the thesis that the Soviets had rejected nuclear parity and were bent on fighting a nuclear war. In an interview, Pipes told Cahn that he wrote most of the first section of the report, which criticized the CIA for underestimating the "intensity, scope, and implicit threat" posed by the Soviet Union, by using evidence relating to capabilities rather than intentions. This section argued that the really important evidence demonstrated that "Soviet leaders are first and foremost offensively rather than defensively minded."

It is now entirely clear, however, that by the early 1970s Soviet leaders had concluded that the Soviet Union could not win, and might not even survive, a nuclear war. Anyone thereafter dealing with Soviet officials could readily recognize that they held no illusions about having military superiority over the United States and its allies. They were completely aware that NATO was a security alliance with a solidarity and common purpose that could not be ascribed to the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact. Even the dullest of Soviet leaders must have known that a limited nuclear war would almost certainly have meant the destruction of the Kremlin--and thus of the Soviet empire.

Detente was not doing too well when Team B met in 1975. It had been badly damaged by the U.S.-Soviet confrontation precipitated in 1973 by the Israeli-Egyptian war. In October of that year, the encirclement of Egypt's Third Army by Israeli defense forces prompted Leonid Brezhnev to call for joint U.S.-Soviet intervention to stop the fighting. Otherwise, suggested the Soviet premier, the Soviet Union might consider acting alone. In response to this muted threat, the United States called a worldwide alert of both its conventional and nuclear forces.

Although the crisis soon passed, it cast a continuing chill on the dialogue between Washington and Moscow. The Team B Report was a further blow to detente and, as the author observes, it provided "intellectual fodder" for the Committee on the Present Danger, which was spearheaded by former Undersecretary of State Eugene Rostow. In its first policy statement, released two days after the 1976 presidential election, the committee stated that "the principal threat to our nation, to world peace, and to the cause of human freedom is the Soviet drive for dominance based upon an unparalleled military buildup." The Soviet Union, the committee concluded, "has not altered its long-held goal of a world dominated fromz a single center--Moscow."

Not surprisingly, the founding board members of the Committee on the Present Danger included Team B members Richard Pipes, Foy Kohler, Paul Nitze, and William Van Cleave. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, Pipes was named the president's special adviser on the Soviet Union and, in a masterpiece of miscasting, Eugene Rostow, the motivating force behind the Committee on the Present Danger, became director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Fortunately, Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power and the rapport he developed with Ronald Reagan, beginning with their first meeting in Geneva in 1985, put an end to superpower confrontation politics and, in a few years, to the Soviet Union itself. In the interest of fairness, I must note that Team B member Paul Nitze played a constructive role in that process as arms control adviser to Secretary of State George Shultz.

Although detente in the long run survived the right-wing attack, the painful consequences of the Team B affair can still be felt in the diversion of massive funds from genuine human needs to a grossly excessive U.S. military buildup.

Cahn voices warm appreciation for the legal work that gave her access to previously undisclosed documents through the Freedom of Information Act. But it

is the author's thoughtful analysis of these documents and her searching interviews with key players that give Killing Detente its scope and depth.

Previously we knew little about the Team B Strategic Objectives Panel apart from its report. We now know that the way its members were selected and the manner in which it operated virtually preordained its conclusions. Not only is Anne Cahn's book of historical interest and useful as a teaching tool, but it is also a valuable study of how not to set defense policy.

Paul C. Warnke, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., was director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and chief arms negotiator in the Carter administration, and assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Johnson administration.

Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA; Review; book review Perspectives on Political Science June 22, 1999

Perspectives on Political Science

June 22, 1999

No. 3, Vol. 28; Pg. 164

THOMAS, STAFFORD T.


Cahn, Anne Hessing Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA University Park, PA: Penn State University Press 232 pp., $ 35.00 cloth, $ 17.95 paper ISBN 0-271-01790-2 cloth ISBN 0-271-01791-0 paper Publication Date: October 1998

The basic thesis of Killing Detente is that a group of conservative ideologues worked deliberately throughout the 1970s to undermine the U.S. policy of detente with the Soviet Union. The main focus of their efforts was the National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) of Soviet military, nuclear, and strategic capabilities and intentions, which are produced by the U.S. intelligence community, especially the Central Intelligence Agency. The group sought to diminish the credibility of the NIEs and to substitute their views of the Soviet threat to influence U.S. foreign and national security policy. Author Anne Hessing Cahn, a scholar in residence at American University, has worked at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Department of Defense, and the Committee for National Security.

The book is divided into nine chapters and also includes an appendix, a glossary, an index, and an extensive bibliography. The bibliography lists fourteen interviews with key figures and numerous documents secured under the Freedom of Information Act.

In chapter 1 Cahn explains the importance of Albert Wohlstetter to the detente opponents. In chapter 2 she reviews the domestic and international factors that contributed to their "loose coalition," including a wide array of individuals and groups, some of whom were not politically conservative but had other reasons to oppose detente. In chapter 3 Cahn describes aspects of the international setting in the early 1970s that favored the coalition: confusion about the meaning of detente, Soviet opportunism (especially in the Third World), perceptions of U.S. diplomatic failures in the Helsinki and Vladivostok negotiations, and concerns about Soviet compliance with arms control agreements. In chapters 4 and 5 Cahn discusses the NIE process, the substance of NIEs in the early 1970s, and how the NIEs became the conduit for "conservative" attempts to sabotage detente. Chapter 6 describes the role of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which ostensibly reviewed intelligence policy and performance but became the tool of the detente opponents in their effort to undermine the CIA and the NIEs.

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 are devoted to "Team B," a group of nonintelligence Soviet experts who used the same data as the NIE analysts but reached different conclusions. Cahn discusses three reasons for the creation of Team B and the membership and formation of the three Team B groups. She contrasts the alarming Team B results with the more reassuring NIEs on the Soviet threat. An epilogue summarizes her arguments.

The book will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in a detailed history of national estimates. Its view of the Team B episode is based on material not available elsewhere. The book is polemical at times but persuasive. It is perhaps best read together with John Prados's The Soviet Estimate and Roy Godson's Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s: Analysis and Estimates.

The United States Foreign Affairs
May, 1999 / June, 1999

Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA. BY ANNE HESSING CAHN. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998, 232 pp. $ 35.00.

In 1976, another group of outside experts sounded an alarm about the Soviet threat. (Once again Paul Nitze was there, although historian Richard Pipes was more influential.) Known as Team B, its goal was to critique the official intelligence estimates (those of "Team A"). Cahn is angry, since she views detente as "a time of great hope for the majority of Americans and of great fear for Cold Warriors." But she bites her lip through enough of the book to provide a straightforward narrative of the controversy and the maneuvers that produced Team B. The real and gnawing uncertainties at the time about Soviet capabilities and intentions do not, however, evoke her sympathy, or comprehension. Team B did not kill detente, which was already dead by the time the report appeared at the end of 1976. In another echo of the Gaither Committee, however, Team B had its greatest effect by coalescing the worldview of like-minded neoconservatives who later so strongly influenced the early Reagan administration.

Unfortunately for readers who were not alive at the height of detente, this book offers little explanation of the KGB's primary motive for engaging detente; the hope of exploiting intelligence collection opportunities against the U.S. and its allies. Numerous former KGB agents have revealed the Soviets true intent at the very beginning of detente. Subsequent efforts by U.S. agencies to end detente were born of a very serious threat to U.S. national security. Place the blame squarely where it belongs - in the lap of the KGB.

The first few chapters are good. Shackley, via Finley, does provide a nice outline for understanding the various traditional missions CIA is tasked with. Ted provides a much better view of Bill Harvey than I had ever read before.

The book falls short when Ted writes about the Vietnam War. First, Ted claims to have known nothing about CIA involvement in world heroin distribution. Mr. Shackley claims that it was those awful USAID guys who were the cowboys running drugs in concert with some rogue Laotian's. Anyone who has investigated this mess knows that Edgar "Pop" Buell was in charge of this "assistance" program along with his sidekick alleged CIA Sky operative George Cosgrove. They reported to CIA because they handled the military logistics for the entire Laotian area of operation.

A second area of the book, which I found ingenuous was Ted's alleged hatred for the Phong Hoa or "Pheonix Project." Clean Ted claims that he and all of the good CIA staff found Phoenix "repugnant." Shackley looses sight of the fact that Phoenix was the most successful CIA operation of that war. In contrast, Ted's own Sky operations failed miserably by settling for the establishment of listening posts along the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. If Ted had demanded that NVA convoys be interdicted by ground forces from the Mu Gia Pass to Tchepone, the South Vietnamese might have won that sorry war. If you think I am wrong, ask yourself did Shackley fail to become the director because he wasn't one of the skull and bones or was it because Colby outperformed him during the Vietnam era?

The CIA Laotian operations ended up getting generations of Hmong males killed. By the end of the war, CIA was employing boys so young that they could not operate in the field. CIA called them "Hill Sitters" because they were restricted to defensive positions at base camps. There were so few men that Thai mercenaries were utilized to defend these camps from being overrun. How is that for being repugnant?

Anyway, Only real historians need read this book because only someone with prior knowledge will be able to sift fact from congressional testimony. Read "The Blood Road" by John Prados and "The Politics of Heroin" by Alfred McCoy before you read this book.

Shackley could have chosen to enlighten us about what he learned as head of CIA's Miami office in the months before and after the JFK assassination. He chose not to do so. There is no mention of many issues raised in other books that he could have discussed to make a major contribution to history. He never mentions Operation 40, or operations against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (which Oswald made famous by his association with it), or the efforts of anti-Castro operatives to blame Castro for JFK's murder (which he would have known a lot about), or his testimony to the House Assassinations Committee, or his knowledge of operatives, or alleged operatives, accused over the years of complicity in the events preceding JFK's murder. On the other hand, there is ample coverage, with many pictures, of the award ceremonies in his honor, if you are interested in that sort of thing. I wonder why this self-named "Spymaster" bothered to write this book.

Ted Shackley was an important player for many years in CIA Operations, and there is much to be learned with respect to how one formerly could succeed in the CIA. The flip side is that Shackley carefully cherry-picked events and operations that made him seem omniscient, prescient, and squeaky-clean while burying his failures, mistakes, and political machinations. This is a book where the author uses a self-serving memoir to wash his hands in public while requesting adulation.

Nonetheless, Shackley was at or close to important events in our intelligence history, and his recounting of those events is important to the historian. One would not totally discount Layton's book concerning Pearl Harbor because of its inaccuracies and distortions. One simply takes such works for what they are.

One should note the extemely important impact of social graces and political adeptness required for success in the CIA. This, of course, had been established by its forerunner, the OSS (Oh, So Social), which provided vast numbers of invisible windbreakers to the Eastern Elite during World War II (One couldn't see them, but they protected you from the draft.) Membership in the OSS was even better than enlisting under the ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program) where elite whiz kids of the "Greatest Generation" were sent to college with the Army providing room, board, tuition and pay for two years, hopefully remaining there until the war was over. Robert F. Kennedy availed himself of this program as did many others of his social status.

A second nugget was that anyone who could speak a foreign language immediately came in with a leg up. Shackley spoke Polish, and although I could not find where he had do so, apparently learned German over the years. That gave him his start as a case officer, but he rapidly progressed to supervisory positions that widened his horizons. Shackley mentions the importance of paper work and his talent in writing cables and keeping headquarters well-informed. For a case officer, paper work consumes more than 50% of his time, but at managerial levels, paper work, meetings and social obligations can reach 90% of the individual's activities. As always, literary ability is crucial to career success, not action on the ground or successful operations. Remember, the "Cold" (courtesy of LeCarre's "The Spy That Came In From The Cold") is not East Germany -- it is the field as compared to the warmth of headquarters.

Shackley would have us believe that the CIA was the primary US intelligence agency in Germany from World War II until he left for Miami in 1962. This is hardly accurate, as the vast majority of intelligence such as that which Shackley contributed was being supplied by the CIC and Army Intelligence during that period. Until 1959, Army Intelligence's influence in the DDR was so great that it could control all movements on the East German railways. More often than not, the Agency acted as an umbrella organization although it did select certain high profile operations and take them away from other agencies. The Army's focus on Vietnam ended much of AI's positive intelligence gathering in Europe by 1965, and one result was the gross intelligence failure by any agency to detect the Soviet moves on Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Shackley's activity to provide early warning by radio of Soviet aggression in Europe was actually antedated by several years by an US Army intelligence operation penetrating East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union. Possibly Shackley was unaware of that operation, but that operation also provided ground photos of Soviet SAM sites and supporting installations that were later used to good effect to analyze the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. It is difficult to believe that Shackley never learned of its existence, and more likely, he chose to ignore it to receive credit when none was due.

A third important disclosure by Shackley is the extremely debilitating effect of "turf wars" on intelligence activity and overall operations success. Ambassador Sullivan almost single-handedly insured that the US would not be able to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and has to go down in history as one of the US's most inept State Department officials (and there have been many, including wacky Madeleine Albright who ignored terrorism almost religiously.) Sullivan's canard of maintaining Laos's "neutrality" which the North Vietnamese freely ignored by making use of Laos's territory to make war on Laos and South Vietnam was silly and stupid in the extreme.

There is much to criticize Shackley about, but he glosses over or omits those situations in this book. He used the Hmongs to fight the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese almost to the last Hmong (like the British have done throughout history (they fought the French to the last German or Spaniard, and then the Germans to the last Frenchman (now they'll fight anyone to the last American). One can say that they were all the resources he possessed, but there were other options like fighting for the removal of Sullivan. And, of course, the whole discussion of the CIA and opium is absent.

Shackley's criticism of Angleton was much too muted and he tended to save his criticisms for those in lower ranks than himself or in other organizations like the Special Forces. Apparently his life-long political skills were simply too ingrained to overcome in producing good analysis. His recounting of operations against Castro and Cuba leaves the reader feeling that he told only a very small percentage of the story, but one must give the author some slack here since much of this may still be classified.

I enjoyed his proof that the CIA was not involved in the killing of a Vietnamese agent by the Special Forces by dwelling on the term "termination with extreme prejudice." Then he himself uses the term "mole" discussing operations in the 1950s although that term would not be coined by John LeCarre until the late 1960s. Who's reading too many spy novels now? "Termination with extreme prejudice" was used by most intelligence agencies by the early 1960s.

And lastly, Shackley makes a good case not to trust American politicians as the example of Senator Symington shows most clearly. As the Congressional hearings in 1945 over why the US had produced such an inferior battle tank (the Sherman) proved, Congress does little more than shoot the wounded. All intelligence agent handlers (CIA case officers) must continually bear that in mind. Unfortunately, this has now been taken to an extreme, with the CIA becoming increasingly inept through risk-aversion and it's reliance on self-important Eastern Liberals (epitomized by Valerie Plame) to fill out its ranks. It is possible that today the CIA has more case officers in the US itself serving in some capacity, sometimes in training (& playing at training), than on station in foreign countries. In addition, almost all CIA case officers today are operating under diplomatic cover which greatly limits the scope of their activities but provides them with safety and security. Human intelligence gathering suffers greatly as a result.

In short, this is a valuable book that must be read carefully by the historian and compared to a number of other works, some still coming out. In no respect is it the last word or even fully accurate in what it covers.

I would normally have given this book only three stars for its incompleteness and deception (outlined below), but Ted Shackley was arguably a giant in the clandestine world, and whatever his crimes of omission or commission might have been, I consider this a "must read" for anyone who wishes to move beyond the entry level in the clandestine service. I note with respect that B. Hugh Tovar, himself an accomplished officer, writes the Foreword.

Shackley's career covered all the hotspots, from attempting regime change in Cuba to Berlin Cold War operations to Laos where he excelled while killing tens of thousands, to Viet-Nam where he helped cook the books and ramp up the "report count" (the CIA equivalent of the body count), to Chile to Iran Contra in his afterlife. I pay particular deference to the author's discovery that the combination of US air power for surveillance, mobility, and fire support, with indigenous irregulars, constituted a new form of warfare, one CIA executed well in Afghanistan.

This personal account is grotesquely incomplete. The author has essentially provided a "CIA Lite" account that is not as much fun as Mile Copeland's "Without Cloak or Dagger," not nearly as revelatory as "Blond Ghost" by David Corn, which clearly rankled the author and perhaps drove him to devise this account; and not nearly as detailed as any of the books on Viet-Nam including those by Snepp, De Forest, and of course Allen, whose "None So Blind" is the definitive work. There is no mention of Sam Adams or the author's acquiescence in false force reports demanded by General Westmoreland and the politically-motivated Ambassador. There is also no mention of his role as a recruiter and funder of Zbigniew Brzezinski when the latter was a student here in the USA and Shackley was a Polish-speaking case officer trolling for influentials. The book is yet to be written on the triangle between Shackley, Breziznski, and the mandarins of the extreme right like Dick Cheney, all of whom agreed that the capture of the Caspian Sea energy and the Eurasian region was a priority for the 21st Century.

This personal account is also extremely deceptive. The naive reader who is not widely read or is lacking in professional experience will not be familiar with the very deep literature on drug running and money laundering that was pioneered by CIA officers working out of Laos in the Viet-Nam era, and its subsequent evolution into the Nugen Hand and BCCI money laundering bank activities. Nor is there mention here of the Safari Club or other notorious alliances by select elements of the CIA with South Africa, Argentina, or Saudi Arabia. The account also ignores any reference to the alleged activities of Ted Shackley in running arms to the Contras and bringing drugs back into America via Southern Air Transport, going onwards to Europe to convert the drugs into money and the money into more arms for the Contras (against the will of Congress).

Within this book, the author is at pains to document that he forbade any drug activity to be associated with Air America or any of his operations in Laos, that he conducted spot checks, and on one occasion intercepted and then publicly burned a case of high-grade opium.

He concludes the book with some moderate recommendations for change, but most interestingly for me, as the international proponent for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), he states on page 282 that the world has changed to such an extent (i.e. commercial access to Russia and China and other previously denied areas) that fully 80% of any secret wish list from 1991 can today be satisfied with overt means, including overt human legal travelers. We agree on this important point, which most of the U.S. Intelligence Community continues to deny.

I read this book with care, in part because as resident in Viet-Nam from 1963-1967, and as a clandestine case officer in Central America during very ugly times, I feel I have walked in this ghost's shadow.

I have three bottom lines:

1) By any standard, this was an extraordinary officer who performed at the very top of the profession as it was then defined. He earned the respect of his Laotian counterparts, and I have absolutely no doubt that those whom he was charged with impressing or serving, were impressed and served.

2) Much of what he did was covert action of questionable legality and value, such as the pin prick sabotage attacks against Cuba, but this was not his fault, it was the fault of an extraordinarily stupid political system in America (Bobby Kennedy exceeded Ollie North on the idiot standard in our world).

3) Finally, we have the question mark. I have no direct knowledge, but I venture to suggest that Ted Shackley, according to multiple accounts in the published literature, was at least indirectly if not directly associated with a number of criminal or extra-legal adventures. I do not believe he profited personally--I believe he felt that whatever he was doing was in the service of his government, but like so many others, I do wonder if he did not confuse loyalty to the system with integrity in preserving the Constitution.

Hence, I believe this book, and the author's life, were one third heroic, one third mundane, and one third highly questionable--not because he lacked honor, but because the system that he served lacked honor.

Shackley tells his tale of a career in the CIA. This is not a biography of everything he did and is not intended to be. There are no secrets revealed here. Instead, is an honest look at what life in the CIA was like for Shackley. In the foreword it is suggest that the word 'My' could have been left out of the title. This is a fair assessment of the book.

The book does not read like a novel, but neither it is a dry retelling of historical events. Instead, Shackley uses many different stories to explain different topics such as the use of Air America, Public Relations and Counterintelligence. Details are left to a minimum. Anecdotes such as having to leave behind his daughter's rocking horse because it was too big for the moving allowance or getting overly drunk at a ritual going away party in Laos show the human side of the job.

Why 4 Stars?:
Shackley and Finney tell some good stories and show a lot about what it is like to have a career in the CIA. The book is not meant to be a tell-all of CIA operations and it does not attempt to do so; it fits with the no-nonsense manner that Shackley was known for. Unfortunately, about 50 pages in the middle were just plain boring; my advice to readers is to just barrel through them becuase it gets better and there are a few good pieces of CIA life in there. At times, the book follows chronologically, but there is also quite a bit of jumping around. This weak timeline makes it hard to use as a reference. All in all, it does give an account of a CIA Officer's career and what it was like to be involved in those events.

The seller is very credible.You can be rest assured that your product will be mailed to you in the manner described.

A noble enterprise indeed, in an understudied field. Theoretical perspectives are the end all and be all of international politics, but Pease's book bites off more than it could ever dream of chewing. Critical theory (Marxist and Feminist) is grossly oversimplified, as she not only leaves the reader with a dearth of literary references to actual writers, but moreover gives these marginal perspectives half the page space that she devotes to Realists and liberals/idealists. The organization of the book, though - offering deductive as well as inductive arguments - is intriguing. The case studies make the book worth buying, though the theoretical synopses that precede them, through questionable portrayals, almost negate their practicality. It is a book without rival only because no one else has undertaken the cause. The book is worth buying, although it is a choice of which Faust himself might approve.

Recent world events demonstrate the need to understand that there are multiple world views that differ from US liberal world view. The UN and other international organizations are, simultaneously, tools of the great powers (the US), agents of imperialism and promotors of democracy, development and human rights. They also reflect masculine values and strategies. Pease strikes the right balance between the theory and practice of international organizations, although an Islamist world view would be helpful in understanding how the UN, NATO, WTO and the Arab League are perceived outside of the West. I recommend this text to anyone interested in understanding the governance of world affairs using the world views others.

A noble enterprise indeed, in an understudied field. Theoretical perspectives are the end all and be all of international politics, but Pease's book bites off more than it could ever dream of chewing. Critical theory (Marxist and Feminist) is grossly oversimplified, as she not only leaves the reader with a dearth of literary references to actual writers, but moreover gives these marginal perspectives half the page space that she devotes to Realists and liberals/idealists. The organization of the book, though - offering deductive as well as inductive arguments - is intriguing. The case studies make the book worth buying, though the theoretical synopses that precede them, through questionable portrayals, almost negate their practicality. It is a book without rival only because no one else has undertaken the cause. The book is worth buying, although it is a choice of which Faust himself might approve.

this book assumes that you know nothing of international relations and international organizations. thus, in this context it explains things in a very simple straight forward manner. in addition, pease is repetitive in her analysis of realism, liberalism, marxism and feminism. however, i find that her analysis is limited and fails to take a nuanced approach to the aforementioned theories. in short, her analysis is elementary. i really wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, especially in consideration of the price. to me, a book on international organizations should have a brief theory section, but then examine organizations and their problems in greater depth. furthermore, while reading this book, i was struck with the question of whether or not pease actually wrote this book herself, or if her grad students helped her. there appear to be distinct inconsistencies in writing style between chapters. regardless, this book is mediocre, there are plenty of better scholars.

This book had a lot of promise. Covert action? Very cool. The problem is, it's horribly written. There's an awful lot of sloppy mistakes and repetition. It's loaded with sentence fragments and poor grammer. (Or, "the sentences are fragments and bad, bad written with.") It doesn't interfere with the substance, and maybe I'm being too particular that I couldn't focus on the subject--but I couldn't. It was obnoxious, distracting, and I finally put the book down about three chapters from the end. I'm even a history major--I'll read anything.

"Executive Secrets" reviews the history of covert action since WW2 and provides information the general reader might not have had (contrary to other reviews, there are no "secret" secrets in this book, since the author limits his examples to declassified data approved by the CIA, which eliminates much information in the public domain that the agency can not or will not acknowledge, One good recent example of the impact of this policy is the an attempt by former CIA officer Melissa Mahle to deliver a speech at the 2007 conference of the International Ethics and Intelligence Association on rendition, prevented when the agency "gutted" her talk by removing information in the public domain which it did not want to give an imprimatur of official acknowledgement).

The author is a former ranking official of the CIA and the context of this book is apologetic and defensive. It repetitively makes these points: (1) the CIA acts only when ordered to do so by the President, which orders since 1974 have been reviewed by relevant Senators and Representatives - except when it does not, e.g. Iran-Contra, in which cases it is wrong and (2) the ability to reflect honestly and deeply by an experienced intelligent career professional is compromised significantly by assimilation into the agendas of a complex organizational structure and the bureaucratic distinctions that become highly relevant inside, but not to the outside observer or citizen.

Because these two themes are the subtext of this book and the emotional energy of Daugherty's polemic, what is revealed is the impact of a lifelong career of assimilation to "insider" thinking and the blind spots and hubris that engenders.

Examples:

(1) The department or executive who did or did not approve particular actions is not, to the citizen, what is most important. Inside, it is. "Not on my desk" is a frequent defense, often heard. I once asked why a proposal was languishing inside one of the agencies and was told that it was being moved from desk to desk because no one wanted to go on record denying it. Thus has it always been; thus will it always be.

(2) The entire enterprise of how and why covert action is executed is the primary concern of the citizen, not the oft-repeated mantra that nothing is done without approval of the President. That matters, of course, but it is subordinate to the larger issues which are ignored in this book. To the citizen, what the nation is doing is critical, not simply the chain of command which exonerates intelligence agencies of responsibility by denying deniability to the executive branch. So focused is the author on pressing accountability back to the White House from Truman forward that he does not seem to notice that he is undermining the "plausible deniability" it is his sworn obligation to uphold. Therefore, the righteous indignation which suffuses so many pages is undercut by exactly the kind of CYA activities in Washington that cause citizens to become cynical and dismissive.

(3) The author fails to take fully into account, despite lip service to the fact of it, that the erosion of boundaries between foreign/domestic and our nation/other nation thanks to technological transformation of geopolitical realities (of which I have written extensively) means that "blowback" is not an incidental event but a chronic state of being for all of us. Actions and speech acts take place everywhere in the world at once, not just "here" or "there." Actions prohibited by the Constitution are now undertaken (the author would say - by order of the President! not independently by the agency! - and he would be absolutely right, but he would miss the point) from our ground and on our ground, obscuring former legal distinctions. As far back as the fifties, when the CIA appointed itself a Ministry of Culture and supported writers, artists, publishers, etc. to oppose Soviet "socialist realism" and propaganda, the hidden effect on America was immense. Writers favored by the agency because their works supported a covert political agenda prospered while those who wrote, for example, about the poor, like John Steinbeck, did not, or they made their way on their own without hidden financial and organizational support. Daugherty says of this and other efforts, "it is hard to imagine any American being upset over these actions of the CIA."

There perhaps is the essence of his blind spot. Those who matured during that era were victims as were all other unwitting people in the world of a false belief that a free market for art and literature and music as for other things evolved in an organic way, according to its own internal dynamics. This is, in fact, the essence of a principled conservatism, this respect for and love of the organic processes of society. But what was happening in fact was the emergence of a manipulated, leveraged, hidden structure of power - what Eisenhower called "the military industrial complex" in a warning that went unheeded and which now includes media, entertainment, academia, and all of the key components of a "free market" society - and thus the simple accepted truths of a generation of Americans were fundamentally betrayed by this radical inauthenticity at the core of our American enterprise.

That Daugherty and other apologists like him can not entertain this, can not understand why this betrayal of the marketplace of ideas in the body politic is key to the cynicism of many Americans is the real problem with this work. Insiders become so imbued with the righteousness of their cause and the territorial distinctions of bureaucracy that this wholesale shift is unseen or, if seen, ignored or, if not ignored, celebrated with what feels like a smirk of innate superiority. That the entire establishment in Washington, including the intelligence community, was not elected or authorized to do this except by its own secret and self-justifying machinations is exactly the point. Oversight by a few Congressional representatives who are assimilated into the process as insiders, the elusive quality of executives orders like EO12333 which can be changed without public notice on the fly, the hot potato game of who gave the orders (it is always mutual and collusive) - all this suggests why, when George Bush outlined at Camp David his intended responses to 9/11 and some advisors objected that at least some of them violated the Constitution, and the President replied, "The Constitution is nothing but a piece of paper" ... all of this suggests why we find ourselves, these days, with a cynical electorate, impatient with precisely the kinds of insider distinctions that for Daugherty are the end of the game.

The secret history of our undisclosed espionage and covert agents who defend our liberty

Titles like this may smack of conspiracy theory, but very rarely do authors choose their own titles. A marketing team's title should not be confused with the authors' intent. In this case, a slightly flashy title fits the content--intelligence work is often duller and at the same time more exciting than its glamorous reputation.

This point is made clear by the authors of this excellent book, developed by a fine writer and made infinitely credible by an author of unquestioned expertise. Secrets are revealed, of course, but nothing that couldn't be garnered from rigorous research. It is the meticulous attention to detail, delivered in an exciting, provocative tone, that separates this book from the miasma of contenders. The tone is sharp and compelling. The style is filled with facts and support but never burdened by them.

For fans of solid U.S. history and those who want to know the true nature of intelligence work in America, this book is highly recommended.

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

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

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