I caught the first half of this movie on cable, and rented the DVD to see how it ended. I was enchanted, not just by the three actors (Judd whose latest is De-Lovely; Garcia from the Godfather etc; and Juckson from Pulp Fiction, The Negotiator et al), but by the over-all concept and execution.
Ignore the detractors–this is a superb story ably acted and I loved it. We in the clandestine service are quite proud of having the very highest rate of alcoholism, adultery, divorce, and suicide (I have 18 professional suicides in my professional history). I don't carry a badge, I do carry a Walther PPK Limited Edition (with a permit).
All three of these actors are gifted, but seeing Judd in this film, in contrast to her performance and complete make-over in De-Lovely, persuades me that she is one of the greatest female actors of our time and will be offering us many more superb acts with world class male actors for years to come.
This is a lovely first-rate film, and if you have lived with death and dishonor and fear including panic from time to time, this is a homecoming of sorts. Those that do not like it do not understand reality. However, to end on a humble note, spying is 90% boredom, including hours spent in hotel rooms waiting for agents to show up, and the most important skill in spying is typing–four hours for every hour of agent meeting–more if you have to transcribe the required recording of a meeting with a terrorist.
This book is more of a scholarly work and has eye-glazing detail. However, as best I can tell, this is the single best and most carefully documented book, with the stellar advantage of having as a co-author the Honorable Bill Hendon, who is not only a former Representative (R-NC) but was on the POW/MIA beat while there.
I am very very very angry. Our politicians, both Republican and Democratic, have betrayed us all, and this brings me to tears, betrayed the honorable warriors who became POWs or were MIA in Viet-Nam.
There are several points that grab me:
Over 1,500 POWs still known to be in Viet-Nam and probably alive.
Viet-Nam had a clear strategy for capturing AND KEEPING ALIVE our personel in order to charge the US for reparations after the war was inevitably won by the Vietnamese
The authors explicitly suggest that Senator John McCain has been fully witting of the reality of how many have been left behind, and complicit in our federal government's deliberate decision to abandon them rather than pay Viet-Nam the compensation they appear to fully merit given our violation of the Geneva Convention and our intrusion into the civil war between North and South.
I hold the authors of this book, and the excrutiating detail that they have assembled, in the greatest regard.
It is now clear to me that the Federal Government as it is now constituted, cannot be trusted. We need Electoral Reform, open books, and an end to secrecy.
To the right is the current mass paperback cover that is available. Below is the cover of the original hard-copy, and a guest review (Amazon is deleting top reviewer's old reviews to make room for new reviewers, we missed this one when creating this web site to counter that “lost history”).
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning Expose Of Government DesertionOf Its Vietnam Vets!
May 20, 2002
William Stevenson, Monika Jenson-Stevenson
Review by Barron Laycock “Labradorman”
This is a book that should make ordinary American citizens exceedingly sad and angry. Although some may argue that its message is old news, and certainly very dated information, the horror and outrage it should occasion is neither old nor dated. For what the authors contend, and go on to impressively prove, is that our national government deliberately and maliciously betrayed its own soldiers trapped as Prisoners Of War (POWs) in Vietnam, abandoning them in favor of a quick and otherwise painless exit from the war in Southeast Asia. This, as the authors argue, is a truly devastating indictment of the Nixon administration, and one for which they cannot be forgiven.
However, it is more than that. It is also a bizarre story of men left behind for the sake of political expedience and due to a number of highly classified clandestine operations, which were purposely kept from the American people. The story line begins with the sad saga of a young ex-marine who escaped from Vietnam on the late 1970s and claimed to have seen a large number of fellow American servicemen still being held by the Vietnamese. However, he was quickly charged with desertion and collaboration with the enemy, in what seemed to be a desperate effort on the part of governmental officials to bury both him and his story of American prisoners as deeply as possible from public view. From here the plot takes a number of bizzare twists and turns.
As the authors began to investigate the young marine's story, layers of deception, half-truths, and active censorship began to emerge. What they finally uncovered was an amazing tale of official deception from the highest levels in government, and also a very well organized and relentless abuse of official governmental power. This book reveals convincing evidence of American soldiers and sailors deliberately abandoned for political expedience, and of families torn apart by these acts. It also raises quite provocative questions concerning the very nature of democracy, and the corruptibility of ordinary men given such power. Similarly, they show how the use of claims of national security were used to derail efforts to learn the truth, and of an active conspiracy to keep the public from discovering the truth.
There are many of us who have long believed that Nixon and Kissinger made a pact with the devil himself in order to to extricate the United States fro the ongoing horror of Vietnam. What is truly mind-boggling is to discover just how right we were to suspect that they, and many others in the government since that time, would take such drastic action as they have to conceal these facts and to evade the truth. This is a worthwhile book, and one that demands to be read. I hope you can approach it with an open mind. Its arguments and the evidence associated with it are, in my opinion, very convincing. Enjoy!
Marginal Mish-Mash, Annoying to the Intelligence or Digital Professional
October 7, 2007
Dan Brown
This could have been a great book, but the author chose to mix up a kludge of capabilities, fabrications, and red herrings that in the end do nothing other than irritate the intelligence or digital professional looking for a good read.
The “chapters” are 3-6 page vignettes. The book is totally out of touch with reality and I seriously question whether the author actually had help from two “anonymous” NSA employees.
NSA is cash poor–it does not pay well, all of the money goes to beltway bandits that over-charge for single-point technology solutions and outsourced butts in seats.
There is no 5 story crypto vault. Crypto is the LEAST important aspect of what NSA does–pattern analysis and finding links between specific communications devices is 80% of what they do.
NSA does not run clandestine human agents (at least not legally) and it does not do break & entry, that is done by a special CIA unit that is has been my privilege to help on multiple occasions when I was in the clandestine service.
The NSA translation capabilities are largely software, not hardware.
Navy Commanders are in their 30's and 40's, not “56” and certainly not also Deputy Directors of NSA, a flag officer position generally held by a civilian while the Director is a three-star flag officer.
Bottom line: this book is flawed on so many levels I explicitly do not recommend it to anyone, professional or casual.
Just behind Le Carre at the latter's best (George Smiley)
October 7, 2007
Charles CUMMING
This book is quite satisfying. It is not as good as John Le Carre at his best (the George Smiley series), but on balance, for an author that evidently lacks a professional background in intelligence, it filled time crossing the Atlantic and I could not ask for more.
A few highlights that struck me as worthy of a note:
The author does a good job of depicting the pain and discomfort of car surveillance, but completely misses the most important part: the stench of two human beings and assorted drinks and foods after 10 hours can be quite over-whelming.
He does a good job of pointing outthat historical repression is not forgotten and highly relevant to evaluationg today's events.
He does a fine job of outlining how rogue counter-intelligence operaitons, unsanctioned murders of suspected terrorists, makes the perpetrators no better than those they seek to neutralize. I was among those who signed the letter to Senator John McCain against CIA's practice of rendition and torture, CIA Director Mike Hayden's second violation of the Constitution and his oath of office (the first was his warrantless wiretaps when Director of NSA, a decision since ruled illegal by the courts).
Thee author addresses the questions: how do you fight terror if out of control rogue elements adopt terror as their own tactic?
There are enough Spanish-language phrases to justify the tax write-off the author undoubtedly took for his travels to Spain.
I absolutely love his point toward the end, “the terrorists did not count on the government's covering up.” This is what happened when President Kennedy was assassinated by a CIA-trained and CIA-equipped team of Cuban exiles who murdered our President for his “betrayal” at the Bay of Pigs.
He touches on how 20-30 families control Spain (this is generally true in many countries, in El Salvador they refer to the “14 families.”
Bottom line: decent and recommended. When the author absorbed more professional trade-craft and focuses more on the story line and less on the scattering of tax-deductible Spanish phrases, he just might exceed John Le Carre. I will watch for his future offerings, and plan to buy and read anything he writes in the future.
I was thrilled when this book arrived today, put everything aside, and spent the last two hours with the book.
It is useful, but it could have been much better.
The useful part is the academic model, the timelines of CIA and FBI missed opportunities, and in general, taking the kinds of recommendations that I and others have made, and putting them into polite terms that the la-di-dah crowd and the pontificators can accept. Adapt or die is a homage to Bob Gates, who excells at adapting politically, not professionally. When he and I spoke together at the War & Peace Conference in Paris, I went first, he got up, said “I'm not even going to touch that,” and launched into status quo speak. I am sure he shared Sandra Kruzman's view in the 1990's that my publication of “E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution & Intelligence: An Alternative Paradigm for NATIONAL Intelligence” (Whole Earth Review, Fall 1992, easily findable on the web), “confirms Steele's place on the lunatic fringe.” To the extent that this “safe” author and “safe” book nudge the young and mid-grade professionals to peek oput of their cubbies, it is helpful. Unfortunately, most case officers and analysts do not read widely and most have no idea of what world-class commercial intelligence practices and processes are–as John Perry Barlow said in Forbes some time back, “if you want to see the last vestiges of the Soviet era, go to CIA.”
Missing from this book, which could have been a barn-burner, are three things:
Equal coverage of White House, State, and Defense appointee failures
An appendix integrating all 500+ recommendations, most not implemented, with a structure that could have been of extraordinary value to the Director of National Intelligence.
A solid methodologically-grounded trade-off analysis of how best to spend $60 billion a year on national intelligence, including full consideration of both our rotten educational system that General Mike Hayden has ably lamented in two major speeches; and multinational information sharing.
The author's first book was an instant classic. The core point from the first book, that intelligence needs to be fixed big with the full weight of the President, or not at all because marginal fixes are not worth the political capital, remains extant. The DNI has not been empowered to “fix big” nor does he have the deep bench of iconoclasts needed to do anything other than a 500 day plan that is well-intentioned but still on the margins in the larger scheme of governance and intelligence reform.
This book is not as good, largely because is stays within the box and does not offer new substance, only organizes old stuff covered in many other books including my own (which are noteworthy for their absence from the bibliography–that is either contrived, or poor scholarship, take your pick).
Minus one star.
This is a fine book for the non-professional, the innocent bystander that wants something more substantive than Gertz, less polemical than Steele, less original than Allen, Hiam, or a host of others–I list a few below, more are in my lists.
If I were the publisher of this book, I would not reprint it until the author provided a consolidated actionable integrated appendix of all the recommendations structured so as to be immediately useful to Congress, the media, the public, and of course, the DNI whom we all support as best we can.
As I completed my review and spent another half hour with my notes, and especially noting that the books below (and many others) were not considered by this author, it hit me. She's drunk the kool-aid. This is a book by a person who so wants to please Condi Rice (her PhD mentor) and the extremist Republicans, that she was willing to sacrifice more than I expected to stay in the safe lane with safe authorities.
Minus a second star.
Moves the book into the pedestrian category, and that is a real shame, because had she kept her balance and used all the sources and intellect of which she is demonstrably capable, this book could have been most helpful. I am very disappointed. I recommend that the book be completely re-developed, or that an appendix of the integrated recommendations be offered free at the book's home page on Amazon; if that were done the book would be worthy of four stars, in my opinion, and I would change the rating, something Amazon now allows us to do.
Very Disapointing, Incomplete, Dated, and Annoying
September 19, 2007
Richard K. Betts
Retired Reader is as usual being kind. I agree that the book is useful as a sense of what the insider's want us to think, but it is at best a superficial summary (easily read) that has so many errors (of perception) and omissions (of fact) as to hardly be worthy of the read.
I quickly realized the general shallowness, but out of respect for the author stopped reading and instead went and read every single footnote, every single index entry, and indeed confirmed that this is a mix of old work, draws only on “members of the club” work, and fills in the gaps with Op-Eds and newspaper stories written by people who generally have no clue. Then I read the whole book.
Anyone who cites Deborah Burger's pabulum about “revolution in intelligence affairs” is kissing the institution's ass (pun intended); and anyone who considers the Sims-Gerber book to be transformative (as opposed to useful if you want the status quo), is simply out of touch with reality, with the possibilities, and with the complex pathologies that plague both the intelligence community (see my five images) and our politicians, every one of them, but most especially Dick Cheney and Nancy Pelosi, impeachable for breach of trust. For additional background, see my IJCI commentary on “Intelligence Affairs: Evolution, Revolution, or Reactionary Collapse?”
This is in fact what annoyed me most about this book–it glosses over the high crimes and misdemeanors of the White House but also of the Cabinet, as well as the blatant errors and omissions of virtually every senior intelligence officer. The USS Liberty and USS Pueblo were outrageous acts of war that could have been defended against and also justified retaliation, but instead both Administrations covered up, as they covered up on 9/11 and the Kennedy Assassination. In the case of George Tenet, he screwed up three big things: the clandestine service; the hunt for Bin Laden; and his ignorance in refusing to follow the recommendations made by Boyd Sutton in “The Challenge of Global Coverage,” calling for 1.5B a year against the 95% of the world that we ignore at our peril.
This book gets three stars instead of the two I planned originally because the author is an original, has demonstrated he knows what the higher standard is, and I will simply assume that at this time in his life he too busy to read broadly. He could start with my reviews, which are free.
There are so many books over-looked by the author here that I just shake my head. I link to a few below.
I expected the author to be dismissive of open sources of information, and to ignore my own work despite the fact that he has been a speaker at one of my conferences and knows full well the contents of my varied books. What I was not expecting was what I consider to be an abject superficial apologia, almost a hearts and flowers farewell to the John McLaughlin's of the past.
I was also not expecting the quickly evident lack of familiarity (or lack of time to properly integrate if known) with the wealth of information from many authors on both policy and intelligence failures, and the facts thereof. Nowhere in this book, for example, does the author properly credit Charlie Allen with sending 35 line crossers into Iraq to confirm what we already knew from the defecting son-in-law: keep the cook-books, destroyed the stocks, bluffing for regional sake.
Although acceptable in an academic book of this kind, the author's lack of understanding of the magnitude of the budget (it is $60 to 70 billion, not the loose lips $44 billion that Mary Graham gave us) and his lack of understanding of how what we do now fails to address the ten high level threats to humanity that LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret) helped identify, fails to help us create the needed four forces after next including the White Hat Peace from the Sea and Peace from Above, relegates this book to the curiosity pile.
I was particularly annoyed by the disingenuous glibness in speaking of the value of an intelligence reserve, when the author knows full well that because of security blinders the secret puppies talk to just 14 of the 1400 Muslim experts in America; and either his obliviousness or naiveté in suggesting that dissent and multiple advocacy channels are worth anything when our young analysts are near idiots (the World Bank official I spoke to says their assumptions about Sudan and elsewhere are so ignorant as to be frightening); have no processing power, not even the analytic desktop that Diane Webb designed in 1985-1986, at which time I discovered we had no fewer than twenty “compartmented” projects to build the same all source fusion station, only each was a sweetheart deal with a different vendor; or access to the 96% of the information that the secret world does not have access to and will never have access to unless we first create a Multinational Information Sharing Activity outside the wire and able to share without restraint.
The book whimpers to an end. For a free and broader grasp of reality and pathology, see my reviews of other books on intelligence (especially the ones the author neglects to integrate), and sign up for the free weekly report, GLOBAL CHALLENGES: The Week in Review. See Earth Intelligence Network.
I won't even touch the lack of serious coverage of education, commercial intelligence, policy-maker ignorance, and all the other small but important details left out of this book. This book comes nowhere near the reality that you cannot create and maintain smart spies in the context of a dumb nation. This is what we get from a community that spends $60B a year creating a President's Daily Brief ($1.2B/week), largely ineffective at all else.
Old Spy Loves This Movie, February 4, 2008
USG Has Betrayed Us All
