Customer Reviews

The Secret History of the CIA

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The Secret History of the CIA will shake whatever faith you have in undercover intelligence activities by the United States. From the beginning of the Cold War, the CIA (and its predecessors) and the FBI were riddled with double agents for the Soviet Union, Israel, and Cuba among others. But don?t give the foreign intelligence agencies too much credit. U.S. operations were conducted with undue haste, laxness, inattention to detail, and questionable loyalty to ?people with backgrounds like ours.? Key intelligence leaders and operatives are described as typically being drunks, morally corrupt, inept, and callous about others.

In many ways, this history is a good parallel to The Sword and the Shield, which draws on the KGB?s own secret history files. The books reinforce the fundamental message that the Western vulnerability to KGB efforts had its basis in many basic weaknesses within British and U.S. intelligence operations.

The primary sources for this book are retired CIA intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives, many of whom insisted on either anonymity or having their stories told after their deaths. I can certainly see why they were reticent to make these horrible stories public while they were alive.

The mistakes began with wide-open recruiting of former Nazis and their collaborators, which opened the door to long-time Soviet agents like Igor Orlov who appeared to have operated successfully until his death over 35 years later. Later, ?migr? groups were treated the same way, letting more double agents into U.S. intelligence. Counter-intelligence had its hands tied from the beginning because those who had recruited the former Nazis did not want their roles uncovered.

If you are like me, you will be amazed at how those who bungled operations in Berlin from the beginning went on to head up important operations like Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos where they brought new disasters to the United States. One of the most appalling aspects of these stories is the way that hundreds of agents were lost, one right after another, due to leaks within the CIA?s operations. In some cases, many died for information that wasn?t even needed, because no one bothered to check. It was easier to let two hundred people go to prison or to their deaths.

The book also details the many times that private citizens and political figures ran their own illegal intelligence operations, both in the United States and in the Soviet Union.

The story about Lee Harvey Oswald?s connection to the Soviet Union and to Cuba will fascinate you. The book argues that the assassination of John F. Kennedy had Soviet sponsorship, and was part of internal efforts to take power in the Soviet Union.

The book is filled with U.S.-led efforts that manipulated elections, tried to keep leaders from office, attempted and performed political assassinations, and helped establish dictators. You will also learn about deals with the Mafia, opium smuggling, and routinely lying to Congress.

But the biggest shocks for you will probably be how badly the CIA?s ?intelligence? misled U.S. policy makers about Soviet circumstances and intentions. Hundreds of billions of Cold War expenditures were probably needless, and Eastern Europe could possibly have been freed much sooner than occurred.

The main weaknesses of this book are in making claims without listing the arguments against those claims, tending to wallow a bit too much in the personal dirt of sexual misconduct, and failing to be precise about the exact claims being made. Mr. Trento writes in a way that will get your attention, but you will find it hard to tell the differences between one person and another except for the main subjects (like Kim Philby, Jim Angleton, Igor Orlov, Bill Harvey, J. Edgar Hoover, Robert Kennedy, David Murphy, and George Weisz).

As we begin the new efforts to counter terrorism, how can we avoid repeating the horrible mistakes that this book documents? Certainly, we should be very skeptical of claims that there should be no efforts to ensure accountability.

Be sure to act consistently with the highest ideals of the United States, whatever your role is!

Don't buy this book if you are looking for information about the CIA's structure or policies. This is a "National Enquirer" style set of revelations about the CIA's mistakes in judgement and super-tricky Soviet agents' abilities.

The book is written in rough chronological sequence--but, the overlap of some of the stories requires a little backward and forward storytelling. It starts with the pre-CIA origins and moves well into the '90s.

Initial impressions, from early chapters, are that the CIA is foolish; the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing; and the reader is blinded by 20/20 hindsight. As the book progresses, and the reader is carried through the discovery of moles and double/triple agents, the reader begins to understand how hard the discernment of "the truth" can be. In the end, one is left with a mix of sympathy, amazement, and admiration.

Be sure to read each chapter's footnotes for more interesting tidbits!

"All the operations, all the billions spent, all the bodies we left around the world, all the lies to our countrymen, our friends, our families, our allies -- in the end we failed at the mission...Our problem was that we could not discern what mattered." --Dr. William R. Corson, American Counterintelligence Officer

The Secret History of the CIA covers the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, beginning even before World War II was completed. We're in Chapter Six, "The Battle to Control American Intelligence," before we encounter the National Security Act of 1947 and the agency it created, the Central Intelligence Agency.

Published in 2001, too early to include any mention of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, The Secret History of the CIA discusses CIA's history against the Soviet Union in enough detail to let the reader understand how the United States could be so utterly unprepared for what was (retrospectively, in any case) an obvious threat.

The book carries a caveat quoted from CIA mole hunter James Angleton, "Truth, when talking about the CIA, is relative." Despite this note, The Secret History of the CIA comes complete with many end notes identifying sources where possible, painting a picture that is as credible as it is disturbing. Joseph J. Trento's present work is quite different from The Main Enemy, documenting many failures, and some utter disasters funded by American tax dollars. Ultimately, both accounts might well turn out to be right.

Even before CIA was formed, the American intelligence community was plagued by penetrations from Soviet agents. As the agency started to take shape under the guidance of Alan Dulles, he and sixty of his closest friends from OSS, CIA's WWII forerunner, managed to escape the very security measures that they placed on others -- including standard polygraph testing.

As political forces realized the power of CIA's clandestine operations, they came to be exercised with greater frequency. Perhaps surprisingly, the peak of CIA clandestine activity was not during the presidency of former CIA head George H.W. Bush or even his predecessor Ronald Reagan. In his three years in office, John F. Kennedy oversaw more covert operations than Reagan managed in eight. Also of interest is how Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, was so heavily involved in these black ops.

Shedding light on everything ranging from KGB's connections with the Kennedy assassinations to the fall of democratically-elected governments around the world, The Secret History of the CIA is well worth consideration.

Trento's book is an interesting and verisimilar account of how CIA has worked on some of its cases from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War. It does not provide an analysis of the CIA'style or policies in carrying out its job, but it describes operations that have been conducted and the feelings of those who worked as operatives. Since the author relies on two sources of his, who have worked mainly in the Berlin Operating Base, much of the stories are centered on that area with few digressions in other parts of the world according to postings of his sources. The book develops its arguments on different levels and with exhausting flashbacks, so the reader has to go back and forth to disentangle the plot and make a synthesis. However, one of the main character of the book is agent Orlov, a Soviet agent who managed at the end of WWI to be infiltrated in the Nazis and then in the American forces without being discovered until his death decades later in the Washington area. Other episodes are revealed that would make the interested reader in spy stories very into the action. However, two weak spots of the book are: Trento does not provide other reliable sources than hearsays from his own sources, therefore no proof is underpinning the stories. Secondly, the book does not reveal any important facts that would make it really revealing or astonishing, like would have been if he had mentioned something related to the now well known stay-behind operation in Europe. But if you are able to maintain your "suspension of belief" and navigate between the thin line that separates non-fiction from quasi-fiction stories Trento's book is readable and interesting.

Don't buy this book if you are looking for information about the CIA's structure or policies. This is a "National Enquirer" style set of revelations about the CIA's mistakes in judgement and super-tricky Soviet agents' abilities.

The book is written in rough chronological sequence--but, the overlap of some of the stories requires a little backward and forward storytelling. It starts with the pre-CIA origins and moves well into the '90s.

Initial impressions, from early chapters, are that the CIA is foolish; the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing; and the reader is blinded by 20/20 hindsight. As the book progresses, and the reader is carried through the discovery of moles and double/triple agents, the reader begins to understand how hard the discernment of "the truth" can be. In the end, one is left with a mix of sympathy, amazement, and admiration.

Be sure to read each chapter's footnotes for more interesting tidbits!

After changing the tones of the books I have been reading I picked up "The Secret History of the CIA" by Joseph J. Trento. As the CIA is a very secret, by nature, organization it has interested Americans since it's founding.

This book does a pretty good job of looking at how the CIA battled the USSR during the Cold War. The stories were not as tense but more informative. Sometimes if you missed a sentence or two or couldn't remember it all, it became hard to keep up with. It especially was interesting when it went into the JFK investigation. It begged the question what was more important to the FBI and CIA, to find out who killed Kennedy or to make sure it wasn't their fault?

From an Economic perspective the last chapter was full of Public Choice type thinking. It looked over a topic of how secret should be a organization in a free society? How much power can this organization attain due to the ever changing figure heads? In this case, both the President and the Director of the CIA. I think after reading this book and seeing what damage was done to the country and people's lives, it is easy to say that the CIA maybe shouldn't exist in a free country.

How far are we away to a secret police? With the power of espionage, who can truly stop the CIA? As the CIA is a tool of government and government has a monopoly on violence, who monitors the CIA and can they do that job well?

I am sure the CIA has done some wonderful things and will continue to do so. That is definitely not what I am saying here. I sometimes lean towards if government exist then we should have a organization like this, but how can we do a good job to keep it safe?

Disturbing to say the least. The "truth" is difficult to judge after reading this book. The negativity towards the CIA is one sided, with too many "theories". On the other hand, the disasters of our intelligence from the start of the Cold War to 9/11 and Iraq gives credibility to the author's interpretation of history.

This is a great book, however with the amount of information presented, you may have to do as I did and read it several times to fully grasp what you just read. The only beef that I have with the author is that many of his claims in the book are not supported by facts or rather he does not support the information. But that was with only one or two passages that I came across. All in all, this is a great read and well worth the money.

this book is well written, with few typographical, grammatical, or logical errors. the content is consistent with things that i have previously read. the author writes in a relatively engaging style. the reader is generally drawn into the storylines. while the author describes various events that occurred in east germany, vietnam, south america, and the u.s.a., i wish that he would have (or perhaps had been able to) discuss the factors that entered into the executive decisions that impacted those events. once in a while i found myself lost in a swamp of names that were difficult to disentangle. the author built suspense quite effectively. even in these cases, however, i wish that the author had provided the reader with greater character analysis. i also wish that many other elements had been covered, especially cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies (especially israel), cooperation / limitations in working with other american intelligence agencies, information on internal and external terrorism ... overall, i found that this was a very good weekend read. it is well worth the price, especially used, for anyone with an interest in this topic.

Well written and very interesting, a book the CIA and its former employees would like to disappear. One big problem is the author's take on JFK's assassination. Obviouly a coup with the miltary, CIA, FBI, and the mafia being involved, blaming the Cubans and the Soviets is ignoring the facts at hand.