Trices Group Book Review Journal

CIA At War, The

Kessler, Ronald

by:

St. Martin's Press

Publisher:

Location:

2003

Sarah Delson, Roger Ressmeyer

Cover:

Hardcover

Type:

Lynard Barnes

reviewed by:

01/14/2004

Comment:

Highly recommend, sans editorializing.

The subtitle of this book is “Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror”. Though there is nothing significantly new here, the book is definitely worth reading.

Kessler has demonstrated an ability to look at government bureaucracies and zero in on the warts. He did it with “The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI” (reviewed here in November 2003). In The CIA AT WAR, Kessler, in very quick succession, introduces the last two and current Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). R. James Woolsey Jr., President Clinton’s first CIA Director from February 1993 to 1995, who was replaced by John M. Deutch in May 1995. Deutch resigned at the end of 1996. (One CIA official is quoted as saying, “Deutch was aggressively ignorant”. This official must have been the public relations officer, or at least a trainee). Deutch had selected George Tenet as his Deputy Directory of Intelligence, or DCI. Tenet became the Director in November 1997.

In going through a cursory history of the CIA, Kessler builds a very strong case for the impact of leadership on bureaucracies. This is both Kessler’s strength and weakness as a reporter of history. The reader gets a sense of the dedication and commitment of the lowly bureaucrats toiling away at shuffling paper and implementing management direction. At the top of the agency, he presents the personalities who were responsible for providing direction. That top tier is a very diverse picture in terms of quality and commitment. From the heyday of CIA bureaucratic empire building in 1955 when CIA Director Allen Dulles presided over construction of the new CIA headquarters complex in McLean, Virginia, to the “bring back the glory” days of CIA Director William Casey, Kessler examines an agency that functions pretty much the way it was intended when President Truman authorized it on September 18 by way of Section 107 of the National Security Act of 1947. Like the current Homeland Security Department, the CIA emerged from the attack on America at Pearl Harbor.

Kessler goes over the familiar CIA subscripts: James Jesus Angleton as chief of CIA counterintelligence and the disastrous consequences of his reign of power; Richard M. Bissell Jr., the Bay of Pigs, and the U-2 flights; the Vitaly Yurchenko defection to America and his re-defection to the Soviet Union; and the American spies–Aldrich Ames, Jonathan Jay Pollard, and the spy-network incorporated career of Navy warrant officer John A. Walker Jr.. (For an thorough look at the CIA’s U-2 program, you definitely want to read SECRET EMPIRE by Philip Taubman–an upcoming TG review). The author uncovers no new CIA

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history. But there is the perspective he brings to why things happened the way they happened. This insight makes his work worth reading.

The CIA’s war against terrorist is at the heart of the book. The usual complaints: not enough intelligence sources (agents), not enough language experts to decipher intelligence products, we all hear about the failures, only a select few hear of the triumphs. Then there is the monotonous song of non-cooperation between the various federal agencies entrusted with safeguarding America’s security. It is here that Kessler brings something new. What’s new is George Tenet.

Kessler’s steady praise of George Tenet may seem a bit much. However, what little we see of Tenet the public man backs up the praise and Kessler himself sketches a very good portrait. It comes across very clearly that Tenet is a CIA Director who knows his job. That trait seems a rarity among those heading these humongous bureaucracies.

If there is a mis-step in this book, it is when Kessler discusses the 2003 Iraq war and those never found weapons of mass destruction. He simply misses the point. On page 319 he states that “whether weapons of mass destruction were found. . .became almost as relevent [sic] as whether a serial killer who reaches into the back seat of his car when an FBI agent orders him to keep his hands up actually has a handgun in the back.” The reason the weapons of mass destruction were relevant was because they, in effect, ended up costing over 500 American lives and countless Iraqi lives. They’re the reason America went to war. One can not help to reflect upon another “intelligence” assessment and another President’s reaction to it. In the late 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was being pressured by his political adversaries, the intelligence community and the military to significantly ratchet up American defense spending to counter the so-called missile gap with the Soviet Union. Eisenhower held his ground, attempting to assure the American people above the clamor and fear, that America was safe. American technology eventually allowed Eisenhower to be vindicated. There was no missile gap. It is amazing what differences can spring up between a coupe of generations.

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