The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Bassey Ekpe, “The Intelligence Assets of the United Nations: Sources, Methods, and Implications”
Grotesquely overpriced, August 1, 2007
Hesi Carmel
Edit of 5 Jul 09: At 288 pages, the paperback should be no more than $30.00 instead of $49.00. Authors are encouraged to publish their own books via reliable online “as needed” publishers.
I publish books and know they cost a penny a page to produce in lots of 2500 or more.
The title and the content are superb.
The pricing is despicable and I will ignore this book for that reason.
I urge the authors to approach me, I can publish this book for sale at no more than $34.94 (it costs about $10,000 to print, Amazon pays 45% of the list price to publishers).
This is outrageous in every sense of the word. No author should allow their work to be handled in this fashion. The individual chapters should be available directly from Amazon for micro-cash, and this publisher should be put out of business.
Not for the General Reader
July 27, 2007
Tennent H. Bagley
Tim Weiner's book, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA is the better book for the general reader as well as any intelligence professional.
This book loses one star for failing to be open about the special prison built for Nesenko at “The Farm,” and the extraordinarily abusive treatment he received at the hands of the Soviet Division in the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO). Old timers are still shaking their heads in dismay.
Recognizing that this book is a profound and detailed telling of the story from the side of those who destroyed Nosenko, I give it a four over all for detail from a particular perspective, a 3 for the general reader.
There is nothing in this book that would lead anyone to believe that the DO was anything less than quite good, and while I was tempted to drop it to a 3 for that reason, I left it at 4 for what I call special purpose reading. Deeper details than most desire, and details that cannot be evaluated alone, but must be considered in the light of many other accounts and context–don't bother if you only want to read one book.
In passing, the author confirms CIA's persistent inability to field officers with language skills, even against the “main enemy,” the Russians. The author also touches on the groupthink mentality of the cult of intelligence.
Other books apart from Legacy of Ashes:
Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC
Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets that Destroyed Two of the Cold War's Most Important Agents
The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West
Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors That Shattered the CIA
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times
Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: U.S. Covert Action and Counterintelligence
Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million
Former Spy and Top Non-Fiction Reviewer Applauds
July 26, 2007
Mark Wahlberg
Most reviewers are missing what insiders would recognize as a very credible scenario for the various assassinations that have taken place in America. I found this movie compelling and I certainly do not subtract anything for any of what others found to be “bombs, babes, and booze.” News flash: that's what it's like.
The movie kept me guessing until the end, and I like it so much I am adding it to my list of “Great Spy DVDs” and palcing it second after only Breach. This movie has a real message that most miss: privatizing our spies and our military is absolutely the fastest way to out-source and lose our national honor.
Four books I especially recommend, for those who want to reflect on just how ugly it can get when money or ideology rather than honor talks:
Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen
Former Spy and Top Amazon Non-Fiction Reviewer Loves This Movie
July 26, 2007
Wesley Snipes
This is a *grerat* movie and a feel-good film to boot. Ignore the negative reviewers, they don't have a life.
Bottom line is that this movie combines an excellent depictiion of the amorality of US covert operations, with a lovely juxtaposition of Wesley Snipes at his best, and two English lovlies, one a Scotland Yard inspector whose father is murdered by the Americans “on official business” and the other a lost young lass who is a good liar, loves horses, and saves the day.
Wesley Snipes is in my top ten action heros, and I am adding this DVD to my list of Great Spy DVDs.
Some really good non-fiction in this general area:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Why We Fight
Should Be a Four, But Overly Harsh Review Calls for Balance
July 22, 2007
Tim Weiner
While I would normally take away one star for a failure to provide useful policy context (the Presidents and their staffs were as much to blame for all these fiascos, and in his eagerness to do primary research, he appears to have completely missed some very important facts as stated in the varied memoires), on balance this is a tour d'force. See my lists for a diversity of other recommended reading.
In two specific instances, the lack of context casts the CIA more negatively than it merits. The Indian nuclear test was missed in large part because the Pentagon was controlling the satellites and focusing them almost full time on Iraq. In Afghanistan, CIA not only performed heroically in establishing the geospatial foundation for precision air strikes, but it also had eyes on Bin Laden for four days, with Rumsfeld in one instance allowing the Pakistanis to evacuate 3000 Taliban and Al Qaeda, and General Franks in another refusing to put Rangers around Bin Laden, claiming it would take weeks. With such idiocy (or deliberate support for Al Qaeda) at the policy level, CIA can hardly be blamed for everything.
The author makes no mention of the reality that CIA was Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC, nor does he review, as I do in The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption, both the long history of presidential and congressional commission dismay over CIA's lack of language skills and open source access and collegial relations with the Pentagon, and the fact that policy is always, invariably, responsible for as many high crimes, misdemeanors, and errors and omissions that comprise the massive betrayal of the public trust that the federal government has come to represent these past fifty years. See The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
On Dick Cheney, who escapes notice in this book, but whose disdain for the CIA is now somewhat more understandable to me, see my review and explicit list of 23 impeachable offenses that the book documents, offenses that should have seen Cheney removed from office two years ago. I refer to Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency.
While Eisenhower's condemning “legacy of ashes” is in the title, the better bottom line comes in the body of the book: “A harvest of lies and a complete lack of intelligence.” Elsewhere the book abounds with hubris and arrogance, blindness, a propensity to slander and assassinate (ineptly). The CIA was “ham-handed and free-wheeling.”
The author draws on varied sources to characterize the clandestine service as skilled at “gross overstatement joined with grotesque incompetence.” The essence of the book and CIA's continuous record of bluster and failure is ably captured on page 126, “Cloaked yet flamboyant–that was the CIA under Allen Dulles. It was a place ‘where truly clandestine practices were compromised” while ‘analysis was clothed in an atmosphere of secrecy that was unnecessary, frequently counterproductive, and in the long run damaging,' Cline thought.”
A few gems:
* Truman wanted a global newspaper, not a cloak & dagger
* Truman was trumped by his own Pentagon, which wanted a spy service
* CIA directors routinely lied to presidents
* Most DCI's left CIA worse off than before
* FBI has more agents in NYC than CIA has case officers around the world
* From the beginning CIA repressed democracy, loved dictators and corruption
* Russians and Cubans have consistly broken all CIA efforts to penetrate (indeed, when all Cubans were doubled, two of my clandestine classmates had the pleasure of appearing on Cuban TV after being covertly filmed “in the act”)
* Thousands (sic) I believe hundreds of thousands, have died because of CIA complicity, errors, incompetence, or plain amorality.
* CIA brought into the USA 100 Nazis every year, the maximum allowed them
* CIA delusional, failed mission after failed mission (but all got promoted)
* P 53: “At CIA, an order is a departure point for a discussion.”
* CIA funded hundreds of “morally reprehensible suicide missions.”
* CIA constantly fell for fabricators, con men, and double agents
* CIA's scorecard in penetrating Manchuria: 101 killed, 111 captured. ALL.
* CIA has had clandestine prisions in Germany, Japan, and Panama, “like Guantanamo only worse.” Now they have others elsewhere.
* CIA all too quickly adopted the tactics of its enemies.
* Never, ever, has CIA had a sufficiency of linguists.
* When Iran took the Embassy, the CIA Station consisted of four officers, not one of whom spoke Farsi. The Iranians were offended.
* It was CIA that put the Bathists and ultimately Saddam Hussein in power.
* CIA's support for “strongmen” inspired populist insurrections.
* CIA suffered from cultural myopia, complete lack of languages, and antiquated information technology
This book destroys Allen Dulles for all time.
There is more but I recommend buying and purchasing this book, because as I write this America is in the midst of what may be the gavest Constitutional crisis of our time–an impotent Congress is allowing Dick Cheney to operate “without limits” in ways that are absolutely and unquestionably in clear violation of the Constitution in multiple ways.
As I put the book down, ignoring some of my notes for lack of word count, I saw two with which to end this review.
Robert Gates: “Adjust or die.” This book puts the final nail in the CIA coffin.
The author did not say, but my reading of the book creates the following note:
US Government a Ship of Fools, with immoral Presidents asking incompetent spies to be equally immoral, while pathetically inept Members of Congress stood idly by, the occasional commission notwithstanding.
Good people trapped in a very bad system where the pathologies of power nurture ideological fantasy and treason against the Republic.
Five other books (see lists also):
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
Of Spies and Lies: A CIA Lie Detector Remembers Vietnam
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
You Can Read This More Than Once, and Learn Each Time
July 22, 2007
Ralph Peters
Ralph Peters is one of a handful of individuals whose every work I must read. See some others I recommend at the end of this review. Ralph stands alone as a warrior-philosopher who actually walks the trail, reads the sign, and offers up ground truth.
This book is deep look at the nuances and the dangers of what he calls the wars of blood and faith. The introduction is superb, and frames the book by highlighting these core matters:
* Washington has forgotten how to think.
* The age of ideology is over. Ethnic identity will rule.
* Globalization has contradictory effects. Internet spreads hatred and dangerous knowledge (e.g. how to make an improvised explosive device).
* The post-colonial era has begun.
* Women's freedom is the defining issue of our time.
* There is no way to wage a bloodless war.
* The media can now determine the war's outcome. I don't agree with the author on everything, this is one such case. If the government does not lie, the cause is just, and the endeavor is effectively managed, We the People can be steadfast.
A couple of expansions. I recently posted a list of the top ten timeless books at the request of a Stanford '09, and i7 includes Philip Allott's The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State. Deeper in the book the author has an item on Blood Borders, and it tallies perfectly with Allott's erudite view that the Treaty of Westphalia was a huge mistake–instead of creating artificial states (5000 distinct ethnic groups crammed into 189+ artificial political entities) we should have gone instead with Peoples and especially Indigenous Peoples whose lands and resources could not be stolen, only negotiated for peacefully. Had the USA not squandered a half trillion dollars and so many lives and so much good will, a global truth and reconciliation commission, combined with a free cell phone to every woman among the five billion poor (see next paragraph) could conceivably have achieved a peaceful reinvigoration of the planet with liberty and justice for peoples rather than power and wealth for a handful.
The author's views on the importance of women stem from decades of observation and are supported by Michael O'Hanlon's book, A Half Penny on the Federal Dollar: The Future of Development Aid, in which he documents that the single best return on investment for any dollar is in the education of women. They tend to be secular, appreciate sanitation and nutrition and moderation in all things. The men are more sober, responsible, and productive when their women are educated. THIS, not unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and predatory immoral capitalism, should be the heart of our foreign policy.
The book is organized into sections I was not expecting but that both make sense, and add to the whole. Part I is 17 short pieces addressing the Twenty-First Century Military. Here the author focuses on the strategic, lambastes Rumsfeld for not listening, and generally overlooks the fact that all our generals and admirals failed to be loyal to the Constitution and instead accepted illegal orders based on lies.
In Part II, Iraq and Its Neighbors, we have 24 pieces. The best piece by far in terms of provocative strategic value is “Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East Would Look.” Curiously he does not address Syria or Lebanon, but I expect he will since the Syrians just evacuated Lebanon and Syria and Iran appear to be planning for a pincer movement on Baghdad after they cut the ground supply line from Kuwait.
A handful of pieces, 5 in all, are grouped in Part III, The Home Front. The best two for me were “Our Strategic Intelligence Problem” in which he points out that more money and more technology are NOT going to make us smarter, it is humans with history, culture, language, and eyes on the target that will tease out the nuances no satellite can handle. He also points out how easily our satellites are deceived. I share his anguish in the piece on “Lynching the Marines.” I called and emailed the Colonel at HQMC in charge of the defense, and offered a heat stress defense that I had just learned about from a NASA engineer helping firefighters. If the body gets too hot, the brain starts to fry, and irrational behavior is the norm. The Colonel declined to acknowledge. That told me all I needed to know about how the Marines were all too eager to hang their own.
Part V was the most unfamiliar to me, covering Israel and Hezbollah. In 17 pieces, the author, an avowed supporter of Israel, pulls no punches, tarring and feathering the Israelis for being corrupt (selling off their military supplies on the black market (to whom, one wonders, since the only people in the market are terrorists?) confident the US will resupply them) and militarily and politically incompetent. To which I would add economically stupid and morally challenged–Stealing 50% of the water Israel uses to do farming that is under 5% of the GDP is both nuts and short-sighted. See the brief by Chuck Spinney at OSS.Net.
Part V, The World Beyond, is a philosophical tour of the horizon, from water wars and plagues (see my lists for books on each of the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers), to precision knifing of Russia, France, and Europe. Darfur, one of over 15 genocides being ignored right now (Darfur because Sudan pretends to be helping on terrorism and the US does not have the will or the means to be effective there) is touched on.
The book ends marvelously with a piece on “The Return of the Tribes,” a piece that emphasizes the role of religion and the exclusivity of cults and specific localized tribes. They don't want to be integrated nor do they want new members.
Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition (Robert Young Pelton the World's Most Dangerous Places)
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
