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Title: Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda by Thomas Powers ISBN: 1-59017-023-7 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: December, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: BOOOOORING!
Comment: This book is not for people with an amateur interest in American secret intelligence. I didn't make it past the third chapter so my review is based on the first two in which the author discusses some underground operations that occurred during WWII and a failed conspiracy to kill Hitler. The book is compiled of a collection of writings that the author did for the New York Review of Books. In these essays, the author often throws out the names of 10 or 12 people in only a few pages and it is difficult to keep track of who they are and what they did... "Smith and Clark got together and met with Jameson. Then on the third day they went to see Johnson and Clark and Smith told Johnson about their meeting with Williams and bla, bla, bla" He just begins talking about them as if they were big names in American history and discusses their involvement in the subject being discussed. He also refers to them by last name only which makes it even more difficult to follow. He'll mention a name once and you won't see it again for 8 more pages and you have to go back and see who the hell he's talking about. Aside from this, which I found really annoying, the subjects being discussed are not that interesting. A whole chapter is devoted to whether or not some of the members of the Manhatten Project (those involved in building the atomic bombs used on attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki) may have been a communist. So what? He goes on and on for pages about one guy who had connections with communists in Russia. It's over and done with. Does it really matter 60 years later if a member of the Manhatten Project knew a communist? And when the author discusses a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, he writes as if this was the only attempt made. I'm sure that at the time, several hundred, if not thousands of people were plotting to kill Hitler. This one teeny tiny incident he mentions wasn't even significant enough to make it into elementary school history books. I want to know about real exciting stuff like who may have killed JFK. And I don't want to know about a grocery list that some guy wrote who was the friend of a cousin of Lee Harvey Oswald's babysitter. This book would make good kindling for the fire, but I think I will try and sell it to a used book store in an attempt to get some of the money back that I wasted on it.
Rating: 5
Summary: A trip down American security policy memory lane
Comment: I'm writing this to counter the troglodytish review posted by the unnamed reader from Alexandria, Virginia. My career was in the national security establishment--defense industry and State Department. I, along with Forrester, also have "no connection or history within the intelligence world." The New York Review of Books serves intellectuals like myself, however, not intelligence professionals. As such, his reviews and this book provides a timely refresher course in the scandals and triumphs of American intelligence over the last some sixty years. It is especially welcome because of the arrival of more scandal in regard to 9/11 and Iraq weapons of mass destruction, and another triumph in the defeat of the Taliban. INTELLIGENCE WARS is stimulating, well written, and engrossing.
Rating: 1
Summary: An outsider making guesses in the dark
Comment: Having spent a number of years in the intelligence world, I anticipated Mr. Power's book and pre-ordered it. Unfortunately, what I soon realized is that Mr. Powers has no experience from which he can authoritatively speak.
While the book's title rather breathlessly promises to deliver the goods on intelligence operations since World War II, what it really serves up is a collection of reheated essays written by Mr. Powers for the New York Review of Books. Mr. Powers has no connection or history within the intelligence world - and it shows.
Like many outsiders, Mr. Powers infers and guesses - figuratively speaking, stumbling in the dark. He relies heavily on other writers, few of whom have any experience in the subject. This reliance on second hand, third hand and often unattributed sources of information might serve to whet the appetite of conspiracy theorists. But it ill serves a considered survey on the subject of intelligence matters. Worse, Mr. Powers writes continuously from outdated notions of how and why the government classifies information, streaming comments from equally uninformed members of Congress. Thankfully, these aren't the people in charge of our nation's security.
Where the books does get interesting is in Mr. Powers' views on the Gulf War, written from the perpsective of December 2002. The reader quickly surmises that Mr. Powers lack of experience on the subject disqualifies him as a reputable source.
There are far better writers on this subject. This book would have more accurately been titled "An Outsiders Collection of Guesses and Opinions, Apropos of Nothing"
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Title: Fixing Intelligence: For a More Secure America by William E. Odom ISBN: 0300099762 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Main Enemy : The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB by James Risen, Milton Bearden ISBN: 0679463097 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage by Philip Taubman ISBN: 0684856999 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 12 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda by JOHN KEEGAN ISBN: 0375400532 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer ISBN: 0471265179 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 18 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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