Agency-securities Books

i found this very interesting and accurate. I was stationed at Phu Bi 8th Field Station. Enjoyed reading this 100%. It also showed how difficult it is when intercepting traffice, very easy to misinturpret.

Ian Hurd's book is remarkable: concise, crisp, substantively compelling, serene in tone, generous in argument and (mirabile dictu for an academic volume!) jargon-free. Hurd examines conceptions of international legitimacy through the prism of UN Security Council debates and decisions from both International Relations (IR) and Public International Law perspectives. Strongly recommended both for teaching and for the expansion of personal horizons on these important issues.

In 1950, Joe McCarthy started telling USAmericans that there was a Great Communist Conspiracy that had infiltrated the U.S. govt., the Press, the churches, you name it. One of his prime exhibits was the AMERASIA case, where what started as an espionage conspiracy suddenly, mysteriously collapsed. "It's true," said the Right and the Republicans. "Nonsense you're all paranoids," said Democrats, liberals, and the Left. Now, thanks to Klehr and Radosh, we have the truth, and it is stranger than anything either side ever suspected. There were multiple, independent, overlapping conspiracies, at AMERASIA magazine (to spy for Stalin),in the State Dept. (to undermine FDR's China Policy), in the Communist movement (to shape U.S. policy) in the Justice Dept. (to cover up political embarrassments) and in Congress (to cover up the other conspiracies). Had the truth been told then, we might have been spared some of the worst political messes of modern times. Highly Recommended.

Morse's credentials alone and the topic of breach of government security alone should be enough to get every American to peruse this book. But his writing style and pace will make every reader not want to put it down until they've read it cover to cover. The idea of having "spy-master" Walker write a beginning portion of the book was wonderful and very eye-opening.

It's scary to think of all the loopholes the government can stoop to. And the American people put their trust and faith in the government (usually). Of course, everyone working in government from the president on down puts their pants on one leg at a time and uses the bathroom just like the rest of us, but there's a certain sense of awe in Americans that people in these high positions, also CIA, Secret Service, etc., will be upstanding people. Simply checking if someone has ever been convicted of a felony before letting them in certain jobs isn't enough to tell that they won't be bought out once they take that job.

Morse shows readers that our fears are very justified about our government today and that we should take notice of what he has uncovered -- which is our history, now -- and how this applies to what we can do and expect in our future.

A very telling book, told by an author who, I hope, will keep on busting corruption.

Absolutely wonderful read, particularly if you're an "analyst" of any sort.

The fact that it's been written from inside a "three letter agency" is nothing more than secondary titilation since the need to "toe the party line" is hardly confined to the intelligence trade.

The reason for five stars is I have not read anything yet that explains the
way leaders of this arm of the British government are appointed. A veritable select boys own club?

This work is of historical importance for any one interested in the area of history of British Foreign Policy. The subject being the preeminent spy's in the British establishment. The selection and appointment process used to decide who would run this secret organisation are explained.
During the reading of the chapters a question arose to "why would the British government allow this to be published?" Having read other books about MI6 and MI5. I was not disappointed as I approached the end the question I had about why allow this information become public was addressed though indirectly. Like the responses these organistions often give to direct questions. You need to read between the lines.

This book is a very good adjunct to help the reader to understand the unspoken about side of foreign policy that often differs from the public statements expressed by the British Government. As well as the success's of MI6 against the Soviet's more numerous success's against them.

This book explains who within British Embassy's world wide were the agents who worked often against their host country's governments interests and how.

A book that everyone should read. Gives a good account of what led up to 9/11 and beyond.

The authors both held senior positions in the U.S. intelligence community and specialized in Soviet intelligence and security. This work is a product of their shared interest in the history of Soviet State Security operations, from the early days of the Cheka and NKVD to the KGB.
Highly recommended for students and researchers. This would be a publication well worth re-issuing in expanded/updated form.

They sure knew how to write books back then. None of the filth and dirty words these authors use today. Just good old-fashioned common sense and wholesome storytelling.

A+++++

In Building a Bigger Europe: EU and NATO Enlargement in Comparative Perspective, Martin A. Smith and Graham Timmins adopt a refreshingly neutral (not pro-American) tone. Both authors teach at British institutions--Smith at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, and Timmins at the University of Huddersfield. They explain that the book developed from the realization that a gap exists in the comparative literature on the EU and NATO enlargement processes, which is surprising, given the number of countries that belong to both organizations. No single state, except perhaps Germany, has tried to forge policy or to try to link the EU and NATO policies, they explain (p. 21). Although both the EU and NATO are under the rubric of European Studies, few scholars have an equal depth of knowledge about both the EU and NATO" (pg. viii).
The authors stress the need for a broader definition of security than the one that prevailed during the Cold War bipolar military division of Europe. Military security alone will not suffice. Citing Barry Buzan's five-dimensional definition (military, political, economic, societal, and environmental), they stress that more diffuse security challenges will emerge in the twenty-first century, within which economic issues will play a more vital role (p. 14). In 1989 the Cold War security order was suddenly transformed. It altered the structure of the European state system, intensified the relationship between military and economic security and possibly inverted their relative importance, they explain. Overcoming the continuing division of Europe and assuring the future stability of the European security order are contingent, they claim, upon the successful transition of the central and eastern European states to the market economy and multi-party democracy (p. 11).
Some aspects of the formal democratization process can be externally supported and directed, such as the constitution, party-system, elections, and marketization. However, establishing a civil society as a whole is a different story. The authors claim that the creation of a "public participatory and supportive political culture depends upon the political legitimacy that Central and Eastern European electorates afford to the post-communist regimes." (p. 5). Smith and Timmins aver that the EU can foster political legitimacy and economic stability-i.e. "comprehensive security"---better than NATO can. They believe that a security community in Western Europe was developed within the common military structure of NATO, but "is politically and societally distinct from it" (p. 16). It is much easier to earn membership in NATO than in the EU, since the former insists only upon civilian control of the military. According to the authors, NATO does not actually restrict its membership to countries with democratic regimes; member countries such as Portugal and Turkey both had dictatorial regimes, for example.
From the EU's perspective, the end of the Cold War represented a great opportunity to continue the process of trading and building pan-European unity as envisaged by its founding fathers in the 1940s and 1950s (p. 1). NATO, on the other hand, was established in 1949 out of European division. Western states viewed it as a necessary means of resisting the Soviet military threat. Unlike the EU, NATO was compelled to justify its continued existence after the collapse of the USSR amidst expectations of a "New World Order" and the anticipated peace dividend it would yield (p. 1).
Efforts after the Cold War to broaden NATO's functions beyond the military arena have met with no significant success, according to the authors. They write:
Since the deployment of NATO-led international forces to police and supervise the implementation of the Dayton peace accords in Bosnia at the beginning of 1996, and the deployment of a similar force to Kosovo in June 1999, it has become clear that NATO's future utility lies mainly in a revised, but still essentially military, role of deploying and commanding peace enforcement operations in conjunction with the UN in Europe, and perhaps elsewhere (p. 16).

Hence, as a fundamentally military-based institution, NATO cannot address the full range of security needs, either of its existing members or of prospective new ones, the authors claim. NATO thus falls shy as the sole institutional foundation of a European security community (p. 15).
Smith and Timmins adopt the controversial view that both NATO and the EU need to expand to the east if a wider European security community can be developed (p. 14). That is, a pan-European security order will be based on both NATO's "hard security" or military role, and the EU's "soft security" or economic and diplomatic roles (pp. 11, 14). Neither of these two institutions, however, can provide the other two types of security Buzan listed, societal or environmental security.
The authors ominously warn of a so-called "expectations gap" among the electorates of the CEE states. Just as in 1989 the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe collapsed because the command economic system imploded and the political elites failed to satisfy the material aspirations of the masses, so also in the early 21st century, the masses could become disillusioned if their countries are not admitted into the EU and/or NATO soon enough, or if membership in either of these institutions does not benefit the given country as much as previously imagined. According to Smith and Timmins, "The danger is that an expectations gap will develop that cannot be satisfied by pro-western post-communist political elites and that disenchantment will foster the creation of less amenable and undemocratic political systems (pp. 5-6)." ---Johanna Granville, Ph.D.