Targeted by the CIA: An Intelligence Professional Speaks Out on the Scandal That Turned the CIA Upside Down [Hardcover]

S Peter Karlow (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 204 pages
• Publisher: Turner; First Edition edition (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563116537
• ISBN-13: 978-1563116537
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,572,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable Story - Should Be A Movie, April 30, 2002

By 

Roy K. JONKERS (McLean, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Targeted by the CIA: An Intelligence Professional Speaks Out on the Scandal That Turned the CIA Upside Down (Hardcover)

What would you do if suddenly you were accused of being a Soviet mole? It would obviously be a complete and utter shock. Peter Karlow lived this nightmare. After service with the Navy and OSS field operations during World War II -- in the course of which he lost part of a leg -- he continued in the CIA, until, one day, he was addressed by two FBI agents and asked to "assist with inquiries," as the British euphemistically call it. This inquiry turned out to be his own. He was accused of being a Soviet spy. Any loyal career officer can understand the shock. His crime, he found out later, was that his name started with a "K." Alexander Golitsin, Soviet defector, had told James Angleton that there was a mole within CIA. He could not remember the name, but it started with a "K." That ended Peter's career and began years of turmoil, until he was finally completely cleared, compensated and decorated.

Peter tells his story, his OSS days (the first 88 pages of 178) with operations in North Africa, Corsica, Italy, the creation of CIA, and his CIA Cold War work, and then when the CIA turned on him -- the FBI interrogations and what followed, including his eventual complete exoneration and decoration, all in easy to read fluid prose. It is not only a shocking story, but an interesting account by someone with an outstanding memory, who tells the story without bitterness or rancor, a treasure of information from a working-level perspective about wartime and peacetime intelligence and "special" operations. It is also an account of the struggles within the CIA (and the Intelligence Community) to deal with the threat of penetration and betrayal -- threats with which we have become familiar with the stories of Walker, Ames and Hanssen, among a host of others. As it worked out, Angleton and Golitsin formed a strange team that indeed can be said to have turned 'CIA upside down,' decimated the work of the Soviet Russia Division and impacted on CIA's defenses against Soviet operations.
This is a remarkable story which would make a complex and fascinating espionage thriller.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blameless Intell Officer's Tale of Being Done Wrong by CIA, January 13, 2003

By 

"drayab" (Santa Barbara) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Targeted by the CIA: An Intelligence Professional Speaks Out on the Scandal That Turned the CIA Upside Down (Hardcover)

As a former CIA FI/Clandestine Services officer, I found TRARGETED BY THE CIA fascinating. Not only because I had participated,on the rim, and very much a junior, in some of the things described, but also, because of that, I could feel Karlow's sense of shock and bewilderment at the utterly shabby way The Agency dealt with him.

Having seen, from documents and a few accounts,how CIA's Inner Circle dealt with the subject of a book I am writing on Bill Harvey, I am not surprised at the way Karlow's case
was handled. His restraint in describing the decades of humiliation and ostracism he felt because of a direly wrongful accusation is admirable. He tells his bleak story with just enough detail that the reader can begin to feel his inner agony, when former friends turned their shoulders, and when white became Orwellian black.

I have long admired the people I knew who stayed on in The Agency, despite the overpowering bureaucracy and the inevitable advance of mediocrity, after the high-flying 1950s. There were
some, of principle and courage . . . although their numbers were dwindling, all too rapidly, under the grinding millstone of political conformity.

TARGETED BY THE CIA reminds us that Peter Karlow wase one of them.