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For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush

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For the Presidents Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush is exciting reading for fans of secret intelligence or presidential history. The book answers the all important question "what did the president know and when did he know it" and more importantly to secret intelligence buffs "how did he know it." Professor Christopher Andrew provides a through analysis of the intelligence provided to the presidents of the United States during their tenure and how the presidents used that intelligence. He further explains how the President felt about intelligence and how well the Presidents understood what intelligence could and could not do for him. In addition Andrew examines the state of the intelligence services, how the intelligence services changed during each president's term and the president's impact on the intelligence community during their administration.

Christopher Andrew is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cambridge University's Corpus Christi College. He has written many books on secret intelligence including The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev, Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community, and "Comrade Kryuchkov's Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975-1985. Andrew is a frequent host of British Broadcasting Corporation television and radio history productions. He holds the Chair of the History Faculty at Cambridge University, the Chair of the British Intelligence Study Group and is a former Visiting Professor of National Security at Harvard, Toronto and Canberra. Andrew has presented guest lectures at numerous American universities and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Andrew essentially dismisses the intelligence services available to presidents George Washington to William H. Taft as ineffectual or non-existent in the modern sense and gives a quick one-chapter overview of intelligence during their terms. Andrew then gets into the heart of the book with another chapter for presidents Woodrow Wilson to Herbert Hoover. Here he credits the First World War with creating the first modern intelligence service, but then says it was rapidly lost due to the actions of Woodrow Wilson after the war. He claims that the intelligence services were not really reconstituted until the Second World War. The most interesting story here was how British intelligence intercepted the Zimmerman telegram and manipulated the United States into entering the war earlier than it might have otherwise. Andrew then devotes a chapter each to presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt to George H. W. Bush. Each president is covered in-depth and the book gives the details behind every major crisis of the 20th century up through the first President Bush. The later presidents are not covered as the book was published in 1995.

Andrews writing style is very easy to read. The book reads almost like a novel. The only thing difficult is the Professor's use of the original acronyms and abbreviations when describing the various government agencies discussed in the book. The Professor provides a three and a half page table of acronym and abbreviation meaning at the front of the book. However, someone without a military or intelligence background will find the necessity to keep referring to the table a little distracting. The chronological organization of the book provides a logical progression through the material and allows for easy access if one is only interested in a particular President or crisis. It is very interesting to see the contrast between the information that was publicly available at the time of each crisis and what the intelligence was behind it. It is amazing to see what The Presidents kept hidden and why they did. For example, early in the Eisenhower administration there was a public flap over the Bomber Gap. President Eisenhower had the secret intelligence showing that there was no gap. If he had disclosed the information he could have quieted his critics quickly, but wisely refused to disclose the information publicly to keep the fact that we had the U2 spy plane secret. Nearly every president has had similar circumstances and situations. In other instances the book makes one wonder how the United States survived with the inept handling of intelligence and the intelligence services by some presidents. The behind the scene infighting between the different intelligence services led to some of The Presidents worst failures. The biggest case here was the bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought us into World War Two. A similar situation will probably turn up behind the September 11, 2001 bombings. In other cases Andrew describes outright corruption and misuse of the intelligence services that created some of the biggest scandals during United States history. One only need look at the Andrew's description of the "Bay of Pigs" scandal to see how the misuse of the intelligence services can lead to disaster. Andrew is not shy about expressing his opinion of The Presidents or their actions. In his conclusion Andrew claims that only four American Presidents had a flair for intelligence: Washington, Eisenhower, Kennedy and George H. W. Bush. The book is extensively documented with both primary and secondary sources of information and has a very good index. The notes and bibliography alone are over 100 pages. However, they are all in the form of endnotes and placed at the back of the book and so are not readily visible while one is reading.

Andrew succeeds in everything he set out to accomplish in "For the Presidents Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush." The book is well worth reading. It is very eye opening to anyone who has not read about the American Intelligence Services before. It makes one wonder what our Intelligence Services are up to now. One can certainly look forward to what Andrew will write about current events but if one is at all interested in American History one needs to pick up this book now.

This book is extremely well written and very informative. I picked it up as a reference for a term paper, and initially I read just the section pertaining to the term paper. Whenever I opened it to read a passage for the term paper though, I found that I just couldn't put the book down because it was so interesting. While on Christmas vacation, I went back and read the rest of the book. I rank this book right up there with Clay Blair's "Silent Victory," and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about the development of the American intelligence community at the highest levels of government.

"Over the past two centuries only four American presidents-Washington, Eisenhower, Kennedy (briefly), and Bush-have shown a real flair for intelligence." This 660-page book documents this assessment, and ends with the conclusion "The presidents in the twenty-first century, like their Cold War predecessors, will continue to find an enormously expensive global intelligence system both fallible and indispensable." His general findings in the conclusion are instructive: presidents have tended to have exaggerated expectations of intelligence, and have frequently overestimated the secret power that covert action might put at their command. For all that failed, both in intelligence not getting it right and presidents not listening when it did, intelligence undeniably helped stabilize the Cold War and avoid many confrontations. This book is extremely relevant to the emerging discussion, in 2001, about the need to depoliticize the position of the Director of Central Intelligence, and perhaps to consider a new National Security Act of 2001.

"For the President's Eyes Only" proposes and proves a fact most of us would like to ignore: the US intelligence community does not perform its information gathering and covert operations in a vacuum. It is always reportable to the President through the chain of command. This unpleasant fact changes our views of such genial and progressive presidents such as Ike JFK. These two, in particular, were willing to assassinate foreign leaders. It's far easer for us to blame such activities on an out-of-control organization operating in the shadows. This book firmly establishes that the intellgence community, clearly works for the President. Christopher Andrew explores this complex relationship between President, the ultimate user of intelligence, and the intelligence community, the tool of leadership. Andrew makes a strong case for idea that the intelligence community merely serves the President and its effectiveness is based on him. This book explores how each president regarded and used intelligence. It's fascinating and well written. HIghly recommended.

This is an altogether fascinating book on how American Presidents have used, misused, or ignored secret intelligence in the 20th Century. Although Andrew provides a brief introductory chapter on how U.S. presidents from Washington onward have used secret intelligence, the balk of the book concerns 20th Century presidents from Woodrow Wilson to George W Bush (senior). From the beginning of the Cold War (1947-1992) CIA was the principal means by which successive presidents received secret intelligence. Therefore much of this book chronicles the dynamic relationships that developed between CIA directors and their most important individual customer, the President.

As this book makes clear, not all presidents understood the value and uses of the secret intelligence provided through CIA. Also the role of CIA as a purveyor of intelligence was muddied by its ability to conduct covert operations. More than one president was far more interested in the ability of CIA to engage in secret operations to achieve presidential national security objectives than the intelligence that it provided. According to Andrew, excluding John Kennedy, only two modern Presidents really understood the value,use, and limitations of intelligence. President Dwight Eisenhower, thanks to his WWII role as Supreme Allied Commander, came to the presidency with a clear understanding and appreciation of intelligence and established a good working relationship with CIA and the IC. President George W. Bush (Senior) actually served a year as CIA Director under Gerald Ford. This experience gave him an unprecedented understanding (for a U.S. President) of intelligence processes and capabilities as well as a clear understanding of the uses and abuses of covert action. Bush was a very well liked CIA and more importantly trusted. As a result, even if Bush disliked the then CIA Director William Webster, he had a fine sense of the importance of the intelligence that CIA produced. He even added Robert Gates, a career CIA officer, to his National Security Council (NSC). Almost unique among U.S. Presidents, Bush understood the vital differences between predictive and warning intelligence and never expected CIA to produce prophetic warnings on specific events.

In sum this is a well written and well researched book that shows yet again that any intelligence is only as good as the system or, in this case, individual it serves.

The vast differences in how each of our top leaders have used, abused, and changed secret intelligence is presented in a comprehensive and objective way. Some presidents fully understood and effectively used the intelligence tools at their disposal, while others bungled and mismanaged.

It becomes clear that most US presidents didn't get to that office by having "intelligence", being technically knowledgeable, or even by having common sense. Andrew's book details the big mistakes, blunders, and successes of each president.

Future presidents would be well served to read this book before they take office so that they avoid the pitfalls that seem to repeat themselves over and over, president after president.

Overall, this is a fascinating book for anyone interested in military, political, or intelligence history.

The author provides interesting insights into the development of the US Intelligence Community since 1776 to the present. The period of growth has been one influenced by the conflict between national values and geopolitical realities, the idiosyncratic attitudes of each President and his advisers towards intelligence, turf battles between members of the community etc.

Despite the sheer odds faced against the effective use of intelligence collected, the US intelligence community shows itself to be capable in providing the national leadership with options for policy-making. In the post-Cold war era, there cannot be any less to be expected from the intel set-up of the world's lone superpower.

In view of the fact that the bulk of intelligence collected during the latter half of this century are still classified, it would be interesting to see what future books would reveal.

It would also be interesting to view whether the re-orientation of espionage capabilities of the US intel community towards new missions of eradicating narcotics, industrial espionage would work out.

Overall, the author has done a creditable piece of work!

Andrew's book is important: it is essentially US history from the perspective of, and in the context of, the US intelligence services-- it is not simply a history of US foreign intelligence. Being extensively researched, this volume's province is vast. While it is very useful to have this material packaged under one roof, the organization lends to some disorientation: each chapter represents a presidency. Given the volume of unrelated activity per administration, the book would be better served with further breakdown or segmentation.

This was a really quick read and very fun. For those interested in history, it offers insights into the factors leaders had while making decisions that few of us common people would have known about.

This book by Christopher Andrew represents the U.S. presidency and intelligence operations from President Washington's massive network of spies to subvert British operations; to President Bush and the CIA's involvement in Operation Desert Storm. Very informative book, definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in the U.S. presidency and the paradigms that surround the decisions (and in-decisions) of U.S. foreign policy.