Customer Reviews

Sabotage: America's Enemies within the CIA

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Scarborough has written about the Washington scene for the Washington Times and now the DC Examiner for many years. Unlike his counterparts at the Washington Post, he has access to the political policy people and does not rely on the bureaucrats who stumble and bumble for decades messing up the nation's spy agency before they retire. So Scarborough actually writes things that the agency's drones have spent their careers trying to cover up, which is, the agency's massively stupid approach to its job of protecting the USA via collecting actionable intelligence about our enemies.
This book does not go into the full history of the CIA screw-ups that Tim Weiner does in his Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA but concentrates more on recent history, where Wiener's book is rather poor, but shows that the country would probably be better served if we closed down the CIA and started again from scratch.
The great part of this book is that it reveals that most of the shoe clerks who view themselves as intelligence experts are really little different than their counterparts at the Agriculture Department, inept, lazy, and more willing to spend time covering up their incompetence than making the country safer by doing real intelligence work out in the field instead of from behind the desks in their air conditioned offices A great example is how the CIA did not have a single agent in Niger, one of the few countries able to produce yellowcake uranium, and which had sold thousands of tons of it to Saddam in the 1980's and 90's (where it still sits in warehouses) in spite of the proliferation of nuclear programs in Pakistan, Iran, North Korea and other places. The fact that the agency had to send an unemployed ex-ambassador, to visit this country for a week and then come back with a report that actually verified the Iraqis had tried to "improve trade" with Niger ( a country which has no other exports of value other than uranium) in spite of his claims notwithstanding, is but one example. Did the CIA insist on a written report after spending thousands for this boondoggle? Nope. Did they make him sign the standard confidentiality agreement for such assignments? Nope. Did they follow up with their counterparts such as MI5 in the UK? Yes. And ignored the MI5 information, which they still stand by to this day, that Iraq was trying to buy more yellowcake. (And this is not referring to the fake Italian documents planted many months after Wilson's wife suggested him for the mission)

There are many examples of just how effective the entrenched bureaucrats at the agency have been in fighting any attempt at reform, and the list of names of those who battled them and lost is very long.
As Wiener points out in his book, this is an agency that going back to Eisenhower, has a legacy of ashes, and as the hole in the ground where the World Trade Center once stood exemplifies, it is an agency whose incompetence has become lethal to those whom they are supposedly in business to protect. While there have been a few who have risen above the bureaucratic bumbling to do a good job in spite of the agency such as Michael Scheuer or Bob Baer, their small number vs. the thousands of Plames is an indictment of a very ineffective and weak agency that has successfully beaten down anyone sent over to reform it.
This is another good book, as was Ledeen's The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We'll Win. about just how bad the CIA does its job.
An important contribution to understanding how much trouble we are in by relying on a totally flawed agency.

Rowan Scarborough demolishes the stereotype of the CIA as a bastion of reactionary conservatism. It is instead, he convincingly argues, a politically correct leftist institution similar to the professoriate of our "elite" universities. Many of the CIA's employees are contemptuous toward the U.S. Constitution. They even maliciously and arbitrarily betray our elected leaders. The CIA is, to be brutally frank, turning out to be the weak link in our fight against Islamic nihilism. It is literally endangering our lives and those of our loved ones. Sabotage is not too strong a description of the CIA's overall behavior. Might a case even be made that many of its operatives and bureaucrats are traitors? The author may not wish to go that far. I personally have no hesitation in doing so. You can make up your own mind.

Can the CIA even be saved? Would someone like the management specialist Peter Drucker conclude the situation is beyond hope? Was the Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan right on target when suggesting that the CIA be disbanded some two decades ago? Has it outlived its original usefulness? Such questions will unavoidably cross your mind while reading "Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA." You should obtain a copy immediately. It is truly that important of a book.

Bush should have fired every Clinton appointee as soon as he took office. There is a saying at the CIA that goes: "There are no spies or Republicans here." After Carter decimated the CIA in 1976 and Clinton finished the job, their intel output is nil. READ THIS BOOK!

As Americans, we have to face the truths in this book. The Democratic Party is working against it's own country w/in the CIA and beyond. It has sold out fellow Americans - Republicans and other non-Dems - and become its own entity and power in the world. Unless they're holding the reins of power in D.C. then there is no legitimate America in their eyes. They have taken partisanship to very dangerous and un-American levels - it is unprecedented in history (excluding the Civil War). Unfortunately, the liberal media supports them 110%. Eventually, it will ruin their party but in the meantime, all of America suffers from their disunifying treason.

An interesting read and I have to agree with him on most of it but some conclusions are missed. With the V. Plame issue he missed a huge problem. Nigeria's economy is based on exporting yellow cake Uranium. Shouldn't we be asking how it came to pass that we don't have agents or a field office in a country that has for its number one export Uranium? There are many examples of this.

As far as appointing persons to be in charge of national security, shouldn't we have people in charge who are from the field? Not policy paper writers? Also, why are we not prosecuting the people who leak that are working at the CIA? Aren't the carrying a security clearance?

He does make the case that the CIA is riddled with Left wingers who are anti-American. Like many of the democrat senators we have today, they profess to love America but think that our government is the embodiment of evil. So they act like some sort of French resistance to destroy it from within.

The book is well written and details out the facts very well. For the lefties who cry that he is demoralizing the CIA, please feel free to explain why a person with a top secret clearance should be allowed his freedom when he leaks secret programs to a senator or the press when he or she disapproves of the program? Since this person was not elected, nor is he or she in a position to dictate National Security Policy, why should they not go straight to jail for the rest of their life?

Rowen Scarborough's "Sabotage: America's enemies withing the C.I.A." is a good work.

It tells the grim facts of many leading people in a government agency (indeed the general atmosphere within that agency) being more concerned with domestic politics (specifically undermining the Bush Administration, and more generally attacking people who hold that the Iranian government, and other radical powers both Islamic and non Islamic, have hostile intentions towards the United States and deals can not be made with them) than with doing their jobs.

One can think that many of the policy judgements of the Bush Administration were wrong (for example I believe the judgement to go into Iraq in 2003 was a bad judgement), and one can even hold a bad opinion of President Bush himself - BUT executive branch employees, especially in the defence and intelligence area, are not there to undermine Presidents, they are there to carry out their policies (or resign).

As for the opinion of senior C.I.A. people (and people they are linked to) that deals can be made with the Iranian government, or that the Cuban government is not acting against the United States, or.......

Well if these were private political opinions it could be argued that they do not matter. However, Mr Scarborough makes clear that these opinions directly influence how key people do their jobs, and that these people use smear tactics (via the media) to undermine their opponents and to undermine the Administration.

Such activity is not acceptable.

However, the fact that President Bush has done so little about these matters over the last six years also shows what a weak manager (indeed weak man) President Bush must be - a conclusion Mr Scarborough might not be happy with, but which the very facts he brings to light lead me to.

During the sixty years the CIA has existed, it has developed its own permanent bureaucracy and the beatings it has taken from Congress and in the press has allowed for the development of multiple factions to develop. Worse, there are those within the agency, abetted by the political agenda of people like Senator Carl Levin, who have used the CIA as a base for advancing their own private agenda. We have seen this over and over again during the administration of George W. Bush. In agency after agency, permanent bureaucrats have felt free to work against the policies of the President of the United States. According to Rowan Scarborough, the CIA is a hotbed of what amounts to sedition. Oh, those working against the President have their reasons and excuses. The problem is they are engaging in very destructive behavior, breaking laws and oaths, and weakening our country.

The author reveals the stories behind the headlines in showing us how people like Karen Kwiatkowski used her post at the Pentagon to spin out phony conspiracy stories into the press to undermine the efforts of the Bush Administration in Iraq. She was aided in her bad works by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who comes across as an honorable Senator, but works his vicious agenda relentlessly.

We also get a solid look at the Valerie Plame - Joe Wilson affair and their relentless lying and politicking is exposed. However, what they have to say suits the agenda of the New York Times and other bastions of the left working an agenda regardless of the truth.

Scarborough also takes us through the CIA administrations of Tenet and Porter Goss. Goss tried to help fix what was wrong at the CIA, but he was sabotaged by the permanent CIA bureaucracy, the micromanaging of John Negroponte, the left-wing media, and the fumbling by the Bush Administration. Did Goss handle things perfectly? No. However, we need the CIA fixed and it cannot be done by one person. It has to be a concerted effort by all who have input into how the CIA is staffed, administered, and operated.

This is a concise, neatly written revelation of what is really going on at the CIA. Most of us have notions that the CIA is staffed by people loyal to whomever the President is and will help him (or her) implement policy. No such luck. The appendices provide a few interesting documents that support the stories told in the text and there is a handy "cast of characters" section in the back of the book.

I think this book should be read as a balance to what you get in the main stream press. It will change how you view the stories it puts out as fact.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Since the early nineties, a great many books have come out regarding the political left's corruption of our universities. Recently, David Horowitz documented their methods and means in his Indoctrination U, but what philosophically happens to students after they leave the radical confines of the academy is not always known. I guess, as conservatives, we sort of hope that at some point they outgrow the hold their professors have on them, but in Rowan Scarborough's new book a contrary outcome is suggested. A good many of them they may take their activism with them into jobs obtained within the country's national defense apparatus.

Many leftists now go to work in areas of government which most of us would never suspect that they had any interest--such as the Central Intelligence Agency. Certainly, in these pages, the author showcases the fact that many political operatives would rather undermine a Republican Presidency than defend the nation. Scarborough is not afraid to name names and lists off here what appear to be fairly emblematic examples such as Michael Scheuer, Tyler Drumheller, Fulton Armstrong, Paul Pillar, and Ray McGovern. We discover here that the lynching of John Bolton had more to do with the [misperceived] slighting of a CIA functionary than it did anything Bolton professionally did or said. The Bolton saga was a perfect storm of Democratic intrigue and institutional self-indulgence.

If your opinion of the Democratic Party, before reading this, is that they exist to criticize the United States while offering nothing in the way of generative policy initiatives or alternative leadership, Sabotage will do nothing to alter your opinion. It is a wonder how any of these individuals thought they could get by as covert agents and/or American protectors when playing politics was the only thing they ever had on their minds. That their actions exposed America to danger was irrelevant to them. I suppose one might be tempted to think that they would have acted differently under a Democratic President, but caring about the nation's security really cannot be considered a part-time mindset.

Most conservatives are cognizant of government's inherent dysfunctionality and inefficiency, yet many of us suspend judgment when it comes to national defense. We just assume that the people in the essential positions will somehow do what needs to be done--even if it ends up costing the Treasury about a thousand times more than it should. Our assumptions appear rather naïve in regards to this matter as some agents labor in the borderlands between treason and incompetence. Sabotage was highly illuminating although very depressing. It appears that the CIA is just another government zone of toxicity. If Bush manages to undo some of the damage in the nadir of his reign then hopefully he lay claim to something positive for his legacy (although, I have my fingers crossed for the Iraq Surge).

It's funny how the Democrats, who vilified the CIA in the '70s, are now the agency's biggest defenders. This book explains why.

I see the start of the one star reviews. It doesn't take liberals long to jump on the discredit bandwagon does it? This book slams the Valerie Plame case, about the intelligence situation (ie CIA) in Iraq, and probably about the state of our intelligence service and who's allegiance it holds (hint, it is partisan). CIA leaking to the New York Times when we are faced with such a large threat around the world? Pretty scary stuff, and no one is being disciplined about it! I wouldn't say this is preaching to the choir so much as it's a book thats very revealing. Can't wait for a Dem to become President again so that the world is all of the sudden a much better place (thanks to the biased media), can you?