Customer Reviews

Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9/11 World

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

For anyone with a remote interest in the intelligence and military communities, this book will be an eye opener. In painstaking (sometimes too much) detail, Arkin has compiled a list of code names that run the gamut of the mundane to the extremely sensitive.
I concur with Arkin (based on his radio interview on NPR) that classifying something from Americans that is in the open for the rest of the world to see, is irresponsible. However, I would also have to say that pushing the envelope with some of the issues covered in this book is also not terribly responsible.
Does the government need to classify plans/programs/activities --absolutely yes. Does the government tend to err on the side of overclassification--of course.
Make the determination yourself by reading this book.
I am not sure who to attribute this quote to, but in the game of politics in Washington, this may not always necessarily be the case..."those who know do not talk, those who talk do not know"

William Arkin published this book out of concerns over the culture of hyper-secrecy that is rampant in Washington, DC today. In his introduction he anticipates concerns that he is disclosing information that will be harmful to US national security by stating that he is more fearful of a government that may not be supporting the public interest by protecting the dirty laundry of some of our allies than of the possibility that terrorists may learn secrets in this book that could kill Americans. He wants to shine a light on the dark underworld of the national security state.

Besides the introduction, this book is not written in the traditional narrative format. It is a reference book of military and intelligence outfits. It is broken into sections discussing activities in nearly every country in the world, a glossary of terms, and an overview of US national security units and agencies. This is a useful book that I would recommend to others interested in the topic.

Anyone labelling Arkin a traitor is either pretty ignorant about special access programs, and/or is just trying to help him sell more books.

No doubt he reveals some sensitive project names, and some of the associated details are accurate, and I'm aware that the topic is something that'd be incredibly difficult to find valid, primary-source information on.

But having been plugged-in to some special access programs myself, when I came across Arkin's book at a bookstore I resisted my first urge to simply buy it & take it home, and instead, I sat down for about 20 minutes and flipped through it at the bookstore.

For a couple of the 'code names' that I am very familiar with, the info he shares for them in his book was completely wrong, and I'm at a loss to explain how in the world he came up with what he did, including some grammatical errors in the way the 'code names' were worded. In a couple other cases, I was happy to see that he merely came across and 'revealed' the project's cover-story instead of the truth. In a few cases, he seemed to just go with info he found on various speculative web pages, including what I think was some near-verbatim text taken off a web page without permission or proper credit.


I'm looking forward to buying this book when I find it on the bargain shelf, but only because I maintain a rather extensive collection of books pertaining to command, control, communications and intelligence matters.

"Code Names" doesn't provide any major breakthroughs in pulling the veil off the secret world of Federal black programs. There are no UFOs, antigravity projects or Terminators here. What "Code Names" provides is a comprehensive list, by country, of the legal framework of the military/intelligence relationship between that country and the US, as well as the definitions of a lot of code names, 70% of which appear to be already-public names of war games of the past 30 years.

So what, you may ask? On its own, this is pretty dry stuff. As other reviewers have noted, this is more of a reference book than something you pick up and read like a novel. However, what "Code Names" does is put some meat on the bones of Chalmers Johnson's concept of the "empire of bases" from his book "The Sorrows of Empire." The agreements, the exercises, the cooperative activities - the mechanisms of imperial control are laid right out in "Code Names," as dry as they are.

You might wish to check this out from the library before you buy it, just to make sure it's something you would be interested in or could even use.

Through some source which I've now forgotten, someone recommended the book Code Names - Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World by William M. Arkin. As a reference book, it's OK. As a reading book, forget it...

Arkin is a journalist and analyst who has spent a great deal of time dissecting and interpreting U. S. military and government operations and structure. As a result, he's far more knowledgeable than most on what the military is up to. His stated purpose in writing this book is to give the reader a chance to see and understand the incredibly large number of alliances and operations that make up U. S. military might in today's world. The book is broken up into four sections after the initial introduction of why the information matters. The first section lists the cast of characters... the listing of all the military and government groupings that come into play here. The next section examines the military relationship between the U. S. and every country in the world. You can easily look up any country alphabetically and see what type of aid or operations we might be carrying on there. The third section, and the biggest by far, covers every single code word or code phrase that the author has uncovered in his research over the years (and we're talking thousands). Most of these you'll never have heard of, and reading the description of each operation gives you some insight as to what matters. The final section serves as a glossary of all the military acronyms that you might ever run across.

From an analysis standpoint, you'd be hard-pressed to find all this information in a single location anywhere. It just doesn't exist. This is probably required reading for every foreign analyst studying U. S. military actions. From the viewpoint of a book that is interesting to read, it suffers quite a bit. Granted, it probably wasn't written with the view towards reading it straight through. Still, the mind starts to go numb after awhile. I also have to question the "wisdom" of making all this information available in one place. Yeah, I know the argument is that in a democracy we should be able to have access to this information. In reality, this just makes it easier for foreign interests to gain intelligence without working for it. I'll also admit a certain bias to the fact that Arkin is heavily involved in Greenpeace activities. Since there's some philosophical differences there for me, I'm probably less inclined to give the guy a break...

I'll give the book an "average" review and let you draw your own conclusion. If you need reference material, you'll like this book and rate it higher. If you want reading material with discussion and analysis, you won't find much of it here. And your political leanings will definitely flavor your attitude towards the book...

There's a plethora of supposedly classified information available for those who do a bit of research. Before 9/11 you could visit a substantial number of government and military web sites containing information that was very sensitive and sometimes classified.

I still have a copy of the controversial book, "The CIA and Cult of Intelligence." As I remember the court ordered that certain sections be deleted. My hobby was filling in the blanks with newspaper and magazine articles.

For those interested in learning things that are still supposedly classified, check out "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage" by Sontag and also "Dark Waters" which reveals the history and missions of the tiny nuclear submarine NR-1.

Sometimes the government goes to extremes by classifying things that are an embarrassment. The USS Pogy (SSN-647) began life at the shipyard in Camden, NJ. That shipyard essentially used devious tactics to scam the government for progress payments not deserved. Later, it was towed to the shipyard in Pascagoula, MS for completion. On the trek, there was a fire, the tow cables ripped off the cleats and the sub had to be guided into a Florida port for a fix. The result was a large hole cut through the sail so the cable would wrap around the bridge trunk. A Navy Chief who was onboard wrote a story about the trip for a military publication. It was suddenly marked classified and disappeared.

I've a funny feeling that our enemies know most of the secrets before an author reveals them.

The author of this book gave an interview on the radio program Democracy Now! on 27 January 05 -- the transcript will be available on the show's website democracynow.org before too long. Just judging from that interview, it's pretty clear that this book is an important resource for anyone trying to understand the scope and breadth both of American military and intelligence activity throughoutthe world, and of the daunting task facing us, as citizens in a Republic supposedly dedicated to the "rule of law," to keep track of what is being done in our names. It will also be immensely useful in the future, when scholars attempt to dissect the sudden and unforeseen collapse of the New American Empire, and the dark days that followed that collapse. I would recommend buying three copies -- keep one yourself for sharing with your friends*, donate the second to your local library, and wrap the third one in plastic and bury it where the archaeologists sifting through the rubble in a century or two or ten will be able to find it.

(* On a lighter note, I could foresee playing a darkly fun party game using this book -- kinda like Liars' Club: for a given code name, two people make up the details and one person has the actual description, and the rest of the folks have to guess which one is real...)

Code Names has been thoroughly researched and is mandatory reading for anyone with a professional interest in national security analysis. If you are a serious journalist, foreign policy academic or defense analyst working in the private sector, Arkin's ground-breaking book should be placed in to your shopping basket and read as soon as it is delivered. Far more contentious than anything you will read in Jane's, Code Names is research with precision and a very handy reference tool if you write countrywide assessments. This is a rare book for any researcher.

++Caution: This is not a book to purchase if you are used to getting your popcorn thrills from reading Tom Clancy.++

I am a USAF retiree who finished with my final three year assignment aboard the Looking Glass, page 417. This book met my expectations. There are several code names I could not find probably because of the secrecy cover and very narrow scope of operations. I have read most of William Arkin's publications and if you are interested in strategic nuclear war you should read his work. This book is an absolute must buy.

This book must be considered in its correct context: that of a reference book. If you're not interested in reading what is basically a dictionary of covert ops codenames and current operations, don't read this book. Otherwise, pick it up, it's fascinating. If you can track it down, Arkin's first book, Nuclear Battlefields is great too.