Customer Reviews

The Book of Honor: Covert Lives & Classified Deaths at the CIA

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Ted Gups' efforts to pierce the secrecy of the Central Inteligence Agency has revealed the human side of covert operations . My father , John Merriman ,was assigned to the Congo in the summer of 1964 , to provide logistical assistance to an "Instant Air Force " comprised of T-28 , counter- insurgency aircraft and the Cuban exile pilots that crewed them . It is a difficult task to investigate the result of years of secrecy and denial , but Ted Gup has reaffirmed the courage and patriotism of not just the men and women whose names are inscribed in the Book of Honor , but also their families who had to sometimes live with a lie . His work has produced a written legacy to all the othewise nameless menbers of the CIA who made the ultimate sacrifice in unknown circumstances. My fathers story and those of all the others , can come out of the shadow of secrecy and into the light of American history .

An interesting and timely book. "The Book of Honor" sheds light on the extreme sacrifices made by a unique breed of Americans who were involved in the clandestine services and risked all for their country's security. It's appropriate to note and honor those brave men and women--including those who are still "out there"--engaged in our Nation's intelligence business. It is understandable, of course, that in some instances there are valid reasons why certain identities cannot be revealed, when this revelation may implicate others who might still be in the service and may endanger both them and/or their work. In reading about those in the book who have paid the highest price, I hope that others will become aware that there have been--and still are--thousands of men and women doing this dangerous work, all over the world, often under hazardous conditions and in places in which they undergo risks and hardships that would make most Americans cringe. They do it, not only out of a sense of adventure, but out of patriotism and a dedication that is not unlike that of young Americans who have gone to war throughout our country's history. These individuals are highly trained and educated; most could earn much higher salaries in the private sector, but they choose service instead, taking an oath of allegiance to our country and its Constitution. While the author is unable to name all of the fallen heroes that the stars represent, it is hoped that one day it will be possible that they all may be recognized and appropriately honored. For them, it was enough that they be known to their family, colleagues and friends. In the meantime, I hope this book will go a long way towards awakening the reader to the stories of these courageous Americans. The book is a service to their surviving families, who can be proud.

Even though I'm a compulsive reader of books about espionage and intelligence issues, I wasn't sure I was going to like "The Book of Honor." Some of the life stories it tells happened so long ago that at first blush they don't seem relevant to the present day.

Yet I found the book very hard to put down and the story of the first man who died in CIA service (1949) to be one of the most poignant. I won't spoil the tale here but will simply say oh, to have come so far after suffering so much and then to die like that!

James Bond addicts are not going to find much here to their liking. The deaths Gup chronicles are either very ordinary --a car accident, a plane crash-- or provide dramatic proof that even intelligence officers are not immune to a bullet or bomb. But the character sketches of the often heroic men and women who died these sad deaths are quite compelling.

And even though I accept that some of the recent entries in the Book of Honor have to remain annonymous (at least for the time being), it is very difficult to understand why a 21 year old secretary who died in a car bombing 35 years ago in Saigon cannot be acknowledged as one of the Agency's own. I think refusing to do so is cruel to her survivors.

Having just completed F.M. Bailey's classic Mission to Tashkent (out-of-print), this book was a wonderful continuation of the lives and trials that are the pricetag of intelligence gathering. Mr. Gup's book is well written and seemingly very well researched.

Forget James Bond, Derek Flynt and Jack Ryan. Reality, as usual, is far more compelling than anything Hollywood can offer.

The actual quote "and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free", is chiseled in stone and stands across from an artificial star constellation representing those who died in service to this Country. The perfectly aligned stars are as unlike the sky's night-lights as the words regarding truth apply to the Agency on whose walls they are inscribed. Unlike real stars 38 of 71 of these are unnamed, they rise above a book that documents in writing the names of only 33 who have fallen.

This book is worthy of high praise, for the Author who brings us the story, the Families that told of their experience in spite of warnings not to, and the men and women who were the initial victims in these events. I use the qualifier as long after they had died serving this Country their Family and Friends often continued to suffer for decades.

I don't believe that secrecy in protection of our well-being and our goals as a Country are by definition wrong nor are they in dispute in this book. What is at issue is what happens when a select group become the arbiters of what they believe is in the best interest of all, what they would like the truth to be. What is so sad and so angering is that these stories were not about the shading of the truth on some sort of grayscale rather the difference between the truth and lies, misinformation, what have you, that were at times were so absurd that only those who propagated them thought they would be believed.

This book is a history lesson told by sharing the stories of men and women of the CIA and the Families they were apart of as Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Sons, etc. It also is a series of decisions and policies maintained to the very present that can only be thought of as cruel in light of the facts that are known.

This is a sobering book, it is at times terribly sad, and at others will cause you to rage against what was done to these families. The men and women who worked for the CIA knew they would ask much of their Families, the CIA asked even more of the same people. I do not believe any of those who died or those who cared for them believed they would be subject to arbitrary neglect and abuse when their lives ended serving their Country.

This is not a silly spy book. This is a book that confronts the reader with stories of men left to rot in prisons for the majority of their lives over semantics. This is about using secrecy as an excuse for avoiding the need to deal with problems, to avoid admitting error.

Would you believe that 30 or 40 or more years is not long enough to stop the fiction that surrounded the deaths of these people? Even after the truth came about the denials of reality continued to the point that stretches the imagination.

The first obligation of any agency is to the people it serves. Within reasonable parameters those who take high-risk covert assignments know that they and those that survive them will suffer unusual hardship. I do not believe they ever thought that hardship would extend to the level of unjustified cruelty as it repeatedly did for these Families.

A debt is owed to those who are represented by stars etched in marble, to the Families that were left behind, and to the Author for bringing this book to the public's attention.

Unconditionally highly recommended!

This is, on many level, a fascinating book. It is fascinating in terms of the stories it tells, which are often heart-wrenching and difficult to understand. But the real fascination has to be with the reality depicted herein, which may or may not have much to do with anything like honor. The author claims in many cases the Agency used and sacrificed the individuals for the greater good, and did not want to sacrifice others. Perhaps. Certainly one hopes there was good, defensible reasoning behind the use and sacrifice, often for decades, of individuals who were loyally serving the flag.

However, it is also true that much of this information could be construed just as accurately as a portrait of an agency gone corrupt and self-interested, often sacrificing individuals for what amounts to political expediency or personal and career advantage, and then quietly forgotten or sanitized through equivocation, deception, and honorarium. No one debates as whether clandestine operations are necessary or useful in terms of furthering our national interests abroad. Yet we seem particularly sophomoric and unsophisticated in expressing such cries of surprise and anger when we discover what every school boy learns; power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Why then are we so outraged to discover our spymasters sometimes lie, equivocate, and deceive us? Or are we naive enough to expect that they will each be as chaste as Caeser's wife? Not on this planet, and not in the 20th century.

Any faithful explorer of John LeCarre's fictional view of the clandestine world is familiar with the perpetual tensions and pitfalls of a spy organization in service to a democratic government, and how easily individuals are sacrificed for a whole range of reasons such as ambition, expediency, to gain advantage, departmental rilvaries, as well as a whole catalogue of darker purposes serving the wishes and needs of a particularly dark corner in one human heart. Here, the reader gains a great deal of compassion and empathy for the personal and moral and dilemmas which many of these individuals faced, who were caught while clandestinely engaged (or not) and compromised, and then were sacrificed by the Agency for its own reasons, which may or may not have had any legitimacy. Anyone volunteering for such service best heed the devil's warning to abandon all hope, for they have perhaps struck a bargain with him.

This, of coure, leaves the individual to his or her fate, a private and painful sacrifice of ignominious death or endless decades spent withering in some unnamed stinkhole of a prison, and perhaps sometimes over nothing more than the quibbling differences in political semantics that only government bureacrats can appreciate or pretend to understand. Yet the deception and potential for betrayal does not necessarily end here. What makes any reader at all confident that all that was written and described here was absolutely true, or accurate, or necessary?

To entitle such a book "The Book Of Honor" may do credit to brave individuals who perhaps deserve it, but may also be an attempt to gain undeserved credit and a less blemished new cache for an agency gone to hayseed. Remember, these are the guys who claim they couldn't kill Castro! Of course, none of us outside that marbled puzzle palace can know which (if not both) it is. Much of what has been written here could still be a subtle form of propaganda that in some fashion serves the needs of the agency or some departments or individuals within it. Once deception, equivocation, and lies begin, who knows where they may end?

A particularly acute observation made by another reviewer was that this book constitutes a history lesson, and I agree with that. But do we all agree what the lesson was, and what have we really learned from it? The problem is that we seem to keep learning the same history lesson over and over without ever taking its message to heart. It's about time we really started to mature enough as a people to recognize that the existence of organizations like the CIA, NSA or DIA constitute a necessary evil, and that like any evil this poses certain undefineable risks to the continued survival of a free and open society. Yet, these agencies will all continue to do whatever it is they do in the covert world in an absolutely necessary tension with the continuance of a democratic society. This unavoidable tension is created by the possibility that the unknown and unfettered interests, activities, and resources of the clandestine organizations may, at any time, act to interfere with, or even trump, the general or particular interests of the democracy it serves. Yet, short of another fiasco like the Church investigation in the U.S. Senate, we will not shed any additional light on these activities. Moreover, it is hard to argue that it is in the national interest to engage in another round of domestic spy-bashing. At any rate, enjoy. It is an interesting book and a thought-provoking read.

I will not get into plot sumaries (other reviewers have). This book was an excellent one. I picked it up to give to my father as a Father's Day gift. I ended up reading it before he had the chance and was not let down. If you are at all interested in either history or intelligence this is the book. Not only did it cover numerous historical events in great detail, but it allowed us a glimpse at what a lonely life a spy must lead. As another reviewer mentioned, if you are looking for intelligence-James Bond-conpiracy related information this is not the book. If however, you want to learn an appreciation for an otherwise vailed profession, I suggest you read BOOK OF HONOR.

This book tells fascinating stories in intricate detail about people who died in service for their country. It humanizes these sometimes nameless stars and puts the history of the Central Intelligence Agency into perspective through its lost agents' lives.

The author is not only an excellent writer, but also a great professor (I've been a student of his at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland). His writing style has a good rhythm and is enjoyable to read.

In all, a great story told very well.

"The Book of Honor" is an extremely well written account of the lives and families of CIA agents who died for their country. Unfortunately, the author spends more time describing the homes where these heroes grew up rather than the circumstances under which they perished. Not only does it not place enough emphasis on covert operation (or the reasons for them), the book is written from an antagonistic perspective. Throughout the book, the author continually takes jabs at the CIA and U.S. covert operations community. There are some interesting historical facts lightly sprinkled through out its pages, but not nearly enough to make it worthwhile. If you want a little action and insight into the lives of individuals as CIA operatives, please look for another book to read. If you are looking for mundane letters between boyfriend and girlfriend or mother and son, this book is for you.

I'm a surefire fan of spy novels but this isn't one of those, its much better, its the real thing. It's 'real' in the way that Studs Terkel's "Working" is real - it's the well-researched asnd simply stated truth about actual peoples' lives. That these people happened to be employed y the CIA is almost incidental. The stories in this book attract us in the same way that shows like 'Survivor' attract us - here we're a witness to real lives that never knew they would be seen, that lived in a world of secrecy and camouflage - and died there.

I feel that I'm in mourning now for these people who have died, willingly I think, for a cause that they believed in. These people in the Book of Honor have become alive to me in the way that friends and family members are alive - I've heard their wives and sisters voices, seen their snapshots, visited their home towns, climbed Himalayan passes and traveled jungle roads in their company. Thank you, Ted, for bringing these people into my life. If I do forget their names and missions I will never be able to forget their heroism; in these days of such cynicism about patriotism, thank you for renewing my faith. They would be pleased!