Customer Reviews

The Enemy Within: A History of Espionage (General Military)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is essentially a book of anecdotes concerning how espionage has played a role in events down through the centuries. It takes us from ancient times to modern and spins tales of spies and how their masters used or abused them. I found the early parts of the book -- the pre-20th Century vignettes -- of much less interest that later tales. I believe the book does a masterful job of describing intelligence activities leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and, later, the development of the atom bomb. So, all in all, I found it an interesting book. Nothing scholarly. Just a fairly good generalized history of espionage.

I chose this book because I needed to do some research and was not familiar with the subject matter. There is always that fine line between too technical and too vague to be helpful. This book found the happy medium for an uninitiated person on the topic of espionage like myself.

I learned a great deal and found evidence of documentation and quotes from others. There is a handy list of sources by chapter and word index in the back. But it was easy to follow and well written. I became so caught up in the writing that I forgot to take notes for my research.

The book covers spying from ancient times to the present.

Recommend for interest or for research.

Terry seemes to cover enemies with in from troy to present but skips over KGB agents inside US agencies and also the Israeli influence inside the US govt. I wonder why.

This history of espionage is primarily a generalized discussion of spies rather than the more technical side of the business that became the major emphasis of American intelligence during the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. When the problem was to count the number of ICBMs they had, the technical aspects of first the U2 and SR-71 missions and then the satellites were the ideal tools.

Unfortunately these National Technical Means (NTM), the term used for such intelligence by the politicoes in the various treaties, proved to be pretty useless in view of what happened on 9/11. The United States had deliberately cut back on it's actual spies in the field.

As this book points out, spies and spying tend to not be nice people doing plesant things. The CIA has a reputation for recruiting at Ivy Leage universities. This is not where you will find dark skinned, un-shaven muslims that would be willing to infiltrate Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the other places where we need to have coverage.

I imagine, I hope, that the people running the CIA already know the things found in this book. I also hope that they are working hard to establish a better spying network in the Middle East.