After decades of writing and research about American intelligence, Joseph Trento has written the most authoritative indictment of CIA splinter groups, two generations of Bush family involvement in illegal financial networks, and the funding of the agents of terror. Prelude to Terror reveals the history of a corrupt group of spymasters—led by Ted Shackley—who were fired when Jimmy Carter became president, but who maintained their intelligence portfolio and used it to create a private intelligence network. After this rogue group helped engineer Carter’s defeat in 1980 and allied with George H.W. Bush, these former CIA men planned and conducted what became the Iran–Contra scandal and, through the Saudis, allied the U.S. with extreme elements in Islam. The CIA’s number-one front man, Edwin P. Wilson, was framed by Shackley and his cohorts so that Wilson’s operations could be taken over. For the first time the story of how CIA director George H. W. Bush was recruited into this network, and brought it into the bosom of the Saudi royal family, is told in detail, as well as how this group’s manipulation of the CIA bureaucracy allowed Osama bin Laden’s fundraising to thrive as al Qaeda flourished under Saudi and CIA protection.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
First and foremost, I think the POV is the CIA's "intelligence" wing(s) vs. the "Ops" goons, a longstanding civil war in the CIA and the other clandestine services where Trento, who has covered intelligence for 35 years, clearly sources to the inteligence side of the battle.
Those of us following scandals from Nixon's treason in 1968 as a private citizen who sabotaged Vietnam War peace negotiations, through Watergate, through Bush I's treason in Iran as a private citizen negotiating the continued retention of American Hostages, through Iran/Contra, through Bush II's treason as a private citizen interfering in Mideast peace negotiations, noticed the same small cabal involved in everything - Ted Shackley, Thomas Clines, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, John Singlaub, George Herbert Walker Bush, James Angleton, Chi Chi Quinterez, Ed Wilson - and at various times, people like Oliver North and even Zbiegniew Brzezhinski operating on their behalf on a regular basis. Two of these, Angleton and Clines, were interviewed by Trento.
This book goes back to the days of Dulles and ahead to the present and shows how the CIA's old boy network can always bite back harder than it's bitten. It deals peripherally with things like BCCI and Nugan/Hand. It's much more critical of Stansfield Turner, whom I have met on a couple of occasions, than I would be, but it nicely fills in the back story on his period as director of the CIA.
This book has nothing about Adnan Kashoggi but does talk about Sarkis Soghnalian, a Turkish/Armenian power broker. I think one of the weak links for the rogue operative network is in fact the information held by their non-American allies. It's possible the US or Israel will attack Iran, and if so, people should be educated enough to understand any revelations the Iranians might have for us in retaliation.
Those of us following scandals from Nixon's treason in 1968 as a private citizen who sabotaged Vietnam War peace negotiations, through Watergate, through Bush I's treason in Iran as a private citizen negotiating the continued retention of American Hostages, through Iran/Contra, through Bush II's treason as a private citizen interfering in Mideast peace negotiations, noticed the same small cabal involved in everything - Ted Shackley, Thomas Clines, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, John Singlaub, George Herbert Walker Bush, James Angleton, Chi Chi Quinterez, Ed Wilson - and at various times, people like Oliver North and even Zbiegniew Brzezhinski operating on their behalf on a regular basis. Two of these, Angleton and Clines, were interviewed by Trento.
This book goes back to the days of Dulles and ahead to the present and shows how the CIA's old boy network can always bite back harder than it's bitten. It deals peripherally with things like BCCI and Nugan/Hand. It's much more critical of Stansfield Turner, whom I have met on a couple of occasions, than I would be, but it nicely fills in the back story on his period as director of the CIA.
This book has nothing about Adnan Kashoggi but does talk about Sarkis Soghnalian, a Turkish/Armenian power broker. I think one of the weak links for the rogue operative network is in fact the information held by their non-American allies. It's possible the US or Israel will attack Iran, and if so, people should be educated enough to understand any revelations the Iranians might have for us in retaliation.
29 of 34 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some Inconsistencies, But Best Synthesis of Bush-Mafia-Dictator-Privatized Intelligence Network
April 30, 2006
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is not a perfect book. It has inconsistencies and errors but this book has helped connect many dots from the other 690+ books I have reviewed.
I had no idea while I was at CIA as a clandestine officer that there are really multiple CIA's and that there are three *external* CIAS: the "Safari Club" led by Saudi Arabia, with France, Egypt, Morocco and Iran (during the Shah's time, not since); the murder network (South Africa, Israel, South Korea, and probably also Chile and Argentina during their worst years); and a privatized CIA running drugs and arms, laundering money, and generally doing things that were "off the books and out of control" as the author titles one of his chapters.
According to the author, Allen Dulles has the first private intelligence service at 44 Wall Street, relying heavily on the recruitment of former Nazis. There is a direct path from the CIA's fascination with former Nazis to the presence of Karl Rove in the White House.
The author draws on good sources to document the long-time relationship between Wall Street and certain companies such as the house of Morgan and Brown that leads us right up to when Buzzy Kronguard, formerly of Alex Brown, was executive director of the CIA at no salary. Prescott Bush, farther of the first President Bush, features heavily in the corrupt relations between CIA and the Wall Street mafia. These people financed the Nazis and weapons that killed Americans.
Interestingly, the Dutch are known to have all the details on the Bush family ties to the Nazis, and I have personally heard from the Dutch that they also have full details from the Chinese on drunken teen-ager George W. Bush, of whom photos are said to exist while he is incoherent and perhaps posed in naked compromising positions with his male Chinese tennis teacher). All of this is inevitably going to be in the public consciousness--right now it falls into what one author calls "Fog Facts"--known openly but not "computed" by the public.
This entire book is a tale of the corruption of intelligence, caused in part by the abysmal failure of US intelligence in the early years, ranging from failing to predict the Korean invasion to trying to assassinate Chinese premier Chou En Lai.
The Viet-Nam era empowered people like Ted Shackley (who died in 2002 and whose memoirs are coming out shortly). CIA learned to run drugs and arms, launder money, start its own banks, and generally avoid Congressional funding limitations and Congressional oversight. Unfortunately, creating a rogue CIA further incapacitated "CIA proper" of which I was a part, and the author reasonably points out that the fall of the Shah of Iran, the failure to understand the 1975 concerns about Shiite terrorism training camps, the assassination of Sadat, the CIA coup plans that were pre-empted by Qadafi, the growth of Al Qaeda, the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban (which deprived Wall Street of its drug crops, now restored courtesy of the U.S. Army)--the list goes on.
According to the author's sources, the CIA opened the Far East to the US mafia, and helped develop pipelines for the drugs that included piggy-backing on US servicemen corpses coming back into Dover AFP. Fast forward to CIA using Special Operations Forces to protect transmitters that allowed hundreds of drug airplanes to land in Panama where drugs could be traded for money and arms.
The author centers the book on Ted Shackley as a bridge figure among many "external" intelligence activities, but Clark Clifford is also key in the founding of the BCCI bank and in asking the Saudis directly to fund an alternative CIA to be known as the Safari Club. BCCI had overtly good intentions--to attract terrorist and criminal funds, but at root it represented the complete "sale" of US intelligence to the Saudis.
The politicization of intelligence is the other major theme in this book, and the Bush family features very prominently.
Side notes:
Ted Shackley recruited Zbigniew Brzezinski as a young Polish-American student, and had full access to him later when he was National Security Advisor.
Don Rumsfeld, today Secretary of Defense, was instrumental in persuading President Ford not to appoint Eliot Richardson, a reformer of known integrity, to the DCI position, and instead got Kissinger to invite Bush from Beijing, all to ensure that Kissinger's role in subverting Chile would be concealed.
As DCI, Turner shut the Israeli's out, essentially forcing them to adopt Shackley as their "black CIA" partner, and then Bush as DCI turned CIA over to the Saudi government.
Shackley fought Inman for the soul of CIA, and the evidence suggests that Shackley won, in part by blackmailing Inman in collaboration with the Israel lobby.
CIA placed officers under cover on the Hill, notably in Senator Dan Quayle's office.
The book left me with three thoughts for reflection:
1) 9-11 was the culmination of decades of CIA corruption and politicization. Of course there are other factors, but from 1975 forward CIA "sold out" and it can be safely said that Viet-Nam killed CIA and opened the doors to the privatization of dirty tricks, murders, and generally very bad out of control covert foreign policy and a consequent subversion of national security.
2) Cheap oil resulting from our support of ruthless dictators set the stage for the radicalization of the Muslim world against America. People are not stupid--they see the link between the US situation, US support for dictators, and their own suffering and exclusion from the wealth.
3) One day, someday, I am going to fund an ABLE DANGER analysis of the history of secret intelligence, starting with Richard Secord, who is in charge of GRAY FOX (the successor to YELLOW FRUIT) and who is not killing terrorists, which is what he is supposed to be doing, but instead continuing the for-profit external CIA, and Ted Shackley.
This is an important book.
I had no idea while I was at CIA as a clandestine officer that there are really multiple CIA's and that there are three *external* CIAS: the "Safari Club" led by Saudi Arabia, with France, Egypt, Morocco and Iran (during the Shah's time, not since); the murder network (South Africa, Israel, South Korea, and probably also Chile and Argentina during their worst years); and a privatized CIA running drugs and arms, laundering money, and generally doing things that were "off the books and out of control" as the author titles one of his chapters.
According to the author, Allen Dulles has the first private intelligence service at 44 Wall Street, relying heavily on the recruitment of former Nazis. There is a direct path from the CIA's fascination with former Nazis to the presence of Karl Rove in the White House.
The author draws on good sources to document the long-time relationship between Wall Street and certain companies such as the house of Morgan and Brown that leads us right up to when Buzzy Kronguard, formerly of Alex Brown, was executive director of the CIA at no salary. Prescott Bush, farther of the first President Bush, features heavily in the corrupt relations between CIA and the Wall Street mafia. These people financed the Nazis and weapons that killed Americans.
Interestingly, the Dutch are known to have all the details on the Bush family ties to the Nazis, and I have personally heard from the Dutch that they also have full details from the Chinese on drunken teen-ager George W. Bush, of whom photos are said to exist while he is incoherent and perhaps posed in naked compromising positions with his male Chinese tennis teacher). All of this is inevitably going to be in the public consciousness--right now it falls into what one author calls "Fog Facts"--known openly but not "computed" by the public.
This entire book is a tale of the corruption of intelligence, caused in part by the abysmal failure of US intelligence in the early years, ranging from failing to predict the Korean invasion to trying to assassinate Chinese premier Chou En Lai.
The Viet-Nam era empowered people like Ted Shackley (who died in 2002 and whose memoirs are coming out shortly). CIA learned to run drugs and arms, launder money, start its own banks, and generally avoid Congressional funding limitations and Congressional oversight. Unfortunately, creating a rogue CIA further incapacitated "CIA proper" of which I was a part, and the author reasonably points out that the fall of the Shah of Iran, the failure to understand the 1975 concerns about Shiite terrorism training camps, the assassination of Sadat, the CIA coup plans that were pre-empted by Qadafi, the growth of Al Qaeda, the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban (which deprived Wall Street of its drug crops, now restored courtesy of the U.S. Army)--the list goes on.
According to the author's sources, the CIA opened the Far East to the US mafia, and helped develop pipelines for the drugs that included piggy-backing on US servicemen corpses coming back into Dover AFP. Fast forward to CIA using Special Operations Forces to protect transmitters that allowed hundreds of drug airplanes to land in Panama where drugs could be traded for money and arms.
The author centers the book on Ted Shackley as a bridge figure among many "external" intelligence activities, but Clark Clifford is also key in the founding of the BCCI bank and in asking the Saudis directly to fund an alternative CIA to be known as the Safari Club. BCCI had overtly good intentions--to attract terrorist and criminal funds, but at root it represented the complete "sale" of US intelligence to the Saudis.
The politicization of intelligence is the other major theme in this book, and the Bush family features very prominently.
Side notes:
Ted Shackley recruited Zbigniew Brzezinski as a young Polish-American student, and had full access to him later when he was National Security Advisor.
Don Rumsfeld, today Secretary of Defense, was instrumental in persuading President Ford not to appoint Eliot Richardson, a reformer of known integrity, to the DCI position, and instead got Kissinger to invite Bush from Beijing, all to ensure that Kissinger's role in subverting Chile would be concealed.
As DCI, Turner shut the Israeli's out, essentially forcing them to adopt Shackley as their "black CIA" partner, and then Bush as DCI turned CIA over to the Saudi government.
Shackley fought Inman for the soul of CIA, and the evidence suggests that Shackley won, in part by blackmailing Inman in collaboration with the Israel lobby.
CIA placed officers under cover on the Hill, notably in Senator Dan Quayle's office.
The book left me with three thoughts for reflection:
1) 9-11 was the culmination of decades of CIA corruption and politicization. Of course there are other factors, but from 1975 forward CIA "sold out" and it can be safely said that Viet-Nam killed CIA and opened the doors to the privatization of dirty tricks, murders, and generally very bad out of control covert foreign policy and a consequent subversion of national security.
2) Cheap oil resulting from our support of ruthless dictators set the stage for the radicalization of the Muslim world against America. People are not stupid--they see the link between the US situation, US support for dictators, and their own suffering and exclusion from the wealth.
3) One day, someday, I am going to fund an ABLE DANGER analysis of the history of secret intelligence, starting with Richard Secord, who is in charge of GRAY FOX (the successor to YELLOW FRUIT) and who is not killing terrorists, which is what he is supposed to be doing, but instead continuing the for-profit external CIA, and Ted Shackley.
This is an important book.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
There is one overwhelming problem with Joseph J. Trento's PRELUDE TO TERROR. After a number of fascinating chapters showing how the CIA has become an increasingly criminal institution, he stops short of drawing the obvious conclusion. In his final chapter he says that today's CIA has become "at best irrelevant and at worst a joke." Try telling that to the poor wretches it is torturing in prisons all over the world! In fact the CIA has had the most profound influence upon American political life, corrupting our entire government to the point where it is by now beyond hope of reform.
Trento's focus upon George H.W. Bush is appropriate, for no one has had a greater influence on this process. The Bush presidency-- the first ever in which a former Director of the CIA held that office-- represents the "Rubicon moment" in American history, when the road to totalitarianism which is now reaching its climax was set in a manner which made it impossible to turn back. Bush moved quickly to end a Cold War which was becoming useless to the American intelligence elite, and initiate a confrontation with the Muslim Middle East. Yes, initiate, for it is abundantly clear that Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was no surprise to the Bush Administration but rather a set-up. After all, the Iraqi dictator had gone to Bush's ambassador to Iraq to sound her out on the possible reaction of the United States to such an invasion, and she had given him a green light. Saddam's response could not have been better suited to the interests of a military-industrial complex which was trembling at the prospect of peace breaking out.
Most telling of all was something I heard a policy analyst say on what was then the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour: He said that Aemricans should expect terrorist attacks on their own soil. This scared the hell out of me, not because I thought that there was any prospect of such attacks occurring, but because I knew then that the Big Lie was being born, and that its purpose could only be to deprive us of our civil liberties. The first war against Iraq ended without any such incidents, but then, it takes a long time to get such things rolling, and maybe Bush was having a hard time convincing his friend Osama bin Laden to take the rap. Besides, he had a son who was very likely to run for president in his turn. What better legacy to pass on to him than 9/11?
It is time for Americans to realize that they are being manipulated. Trento's title, "Prelude to Terror" is a good one, but the terror about to be unleashed on our society is the product of our own government.
Trento's focus upon George H.W. Bush is appropriate, for no one has had a greater influence on this process. The Bush presidency-- the first ever in which a former Director of the CIA held that office-- represents the "Rubicon moment" in American history, when the road to totalitarianism which is now reaching its climax was set in a manner which made it impossible to turn back. Bush moved quickly to end a Cold War which was becoming useless to the American intelligence elite, and initiate a confrontation with the Muslim Middle East. Yes, initiate, for it is abundantly clear that Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was no surprise to the Bush Administration but rather a set-up. After all, the Iraqi dictator had gone to Bush's ambassador to Iraq to sound her out on the possible reaction of the United States to such an invasion, and she had given him a green light. Saddam's response could not have been better suited to the interests of a military-industrial complex which was trembling at the prospect of peace breaking out.
Most telling of all was something I heard a policy analyst say on what was then the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour: He said that Aemricans should expect terrorist attacks on their own soil. This scared the hell out of me, not because I thought that there was any prospect of such attacks occurring, but because I knew then that the Big Lie was being born, and that its purpose could only be to deprive us of our civil liberties. The first war against Iraq ended without any such incidents, but then, it takes a long time to get such things rolling, and maybe Bush was having a hard time convincing his friend Osama bin Laden to take the rap. Besides, he had a son who was very likely to run for president in his turn. What better legacy to pass on to him than 9/11?
It is time for Americans to realize that they are being manipulated. Trento's title, "Prelude to Terror" is a good one, but the terror about to be unleashed on our society is the product of our own government.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A damning account of US failures in intelligence
I stumbled upon this book in a bookshop and bought it wondering if it would be any good. It certainly is and only goes to reinforce my belief that taxpayers of the US have been... Read more
Published 5 months ago by R. Sandquist
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not Perfect, but Paints a Clearer Picture
Sorry I'm not putting much time into this review, but I really wanted to counteract the negative feedback left for this book (i.e. 1 stars). Read more
Published on December 27, 2010 by M. Besenfelder
1.0 out of 5 stars
A CIA Cock and Bull Story
I ordered Joseph Trento's book, Prelude to Terror, and, as soon as I received my copy from Amazon, began reading it with extreme interest. Read more
Published on April 7, 2007 by S. Gonzalez
1.0 out of 5 stars
Appalling
After reading Mr. Trento's "The Secret History of the CIA" (see my amazon review of this book) several years ago I thought Mr. Trento could sink no lower. I was wrong. Read more
Published on January 31, 2007 by Merle L. Pribbenow
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not a perfect book
Unlike the previous reviewer I wasn't that impressed with this book. The author puts Felix Rodriguez at the Watergate break-in, when in reality he had no involvement in it... Read more
Published on February 10, 2006 by Francisco R. Fonseca
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