I started reading this on Friday morning and couldn't put it down until I finished it Saturday afternoon. It's a fun read. It appears that Gen. Hayden wrote it himself without a ghostwriter. He has an entertaining and readable writing style, even if he sent me scrambling to a dictionary several times to keep up with his vocabulary. No big new secrets are revealed of course but there's quite a lot of inside baseball of what -actually- was going on regarding some things that have been widely reported already. Widely reported, that is, not necessarily understood or always true. Seems there have been a lot of agency people who've been just itching to finally tell their side of the story. And it's a good story. And he names names (where he can). It may sometimes be a little too fair to some true weasels (IMO) but he doesn't pull any punches when punches need to be thrown.
As somebody with an IT background maybe it is of particular interest to me to peek behind the curtain at NSA. It's long been the stuff of rumor and fanciful speculation. A strong urban mythology persists and probably will endure but in this book many popular (i.e. Hollywood) assumptions about what goes on at NSA or CIA are fairly well obliterated. Some things turn out to be true but some things are just nonsense. A few things commonly believed simply turn out to be beyond the laws of physics, let alone Federal law. In a sense this book liberally applies some strong tinfoil-hat remover. Some people will actually be disappointed that they don't actually do some of that stuff. Additionally there is a theme throughout the book regarding obeisance to constitutional protections that is (surprising to many, I'm sure) actually seems pervasive in the corporate culture at both NSA and CIA. Some will choose not to believe that. But there it sits. Read their stories and see if you still think what you think. I would advise only to be open to the idea that what is written by outsiders (even Intel beat journalists) on intelligence issues is often just wrong. Sometimes in small ways but sometimes in very big ways.
The book is about the last couple of decades in the intelligence community. These years have turned out to be among the more intense and controversial times in our history and both agencies were right in the thick of it. Big Things happened. The Soviet Union fell and Europe reshaped. Newly energized, savage enemies shocked our senses. Sweeping events pushed any preexisting ideas about this new century into a different place than may have been guessed. There have been catastrophic losses, failures and missed opportunities. There are monumental risks that persist in the world and some of the well-intended but tragically mistaken steps that have been taken and are being taken will have costs we cannot yet measure. There have also been tremendous successes and inspiring, even heroic actions, many of which can't be reported. Not even in this book. But some of them are.
One of the interesting things is the personal perspective. We regular people must settle for merely reading and watching the news to find out what's going on. We follow all these names of the people shaping the world: government leaders, public figures of one sort or another, terrorists, freedom fighters (“Rogues, Buffoons and Statesmen” as another book calls them)... all the who's-who in the world. General Hayden due to the career path he's had is one of those uncommon people who hasn't just seen them on TV. He's met them. He's talked with them, argued with them and otherwise gotten to personally know all of these people that are central to history as it is being made. He developed friendships with some, hostility with others and insight (at least) in all. More than anything, it's a history book written by somebody who was there.
General Hayden doesn't firmly stake out any particular partisan political stance. He claims to have mostly (small-l) libertarian personal views but tries to stay apolitical. He was of course first posted to head NSA in the Clinton administration and stayed through the Bush administration into (for a few weeks anyway) the Obama administration. After all-- partisan administrations come and go but career intelligence professionals have to serve both with the same focus. I enjoyed this insight into the work of some remarkable people that we usually never get to know much about.
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Top reviews from other countries
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Amazon KundeReviewed in Germany on November 30, 2016
Gut geschrieben, interessante Background-Stories. Vielleicht etwas "administrationslastig".
- william albert woehrReviewed in Spain on April 10, 2017
Playing to the edge by mike hayden
