Andrew,
Christopher. For the President's Eyes Only:
Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency From Washington to Bush.
New York: HarperCollins, 1995. ISBN: 0-06-017037-9
and
Richelson,
Jeffrey T. A Century of Spies: Intelligence
in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN:
0-19-507391-6
Christopher
Andrew of Cambridge University and Jeffrey T. Richelson of the National
Security Archive are the authors of impressive collections of highly readable,
carefully researched books on intelligence. These two authors have added
to their impressive records with two of the most significant contributions
to the intelligence literature of recent years.
Having
written a splendid history of the British intelligence community (Her
Majesty's Secret Service) and having collaborated with Oleg Gordievsky
on a compendious history of the KGB, Andrew has turned his attention to
the U.S. intelligence community. In one of the most important books about
U.S. intelligence for many years, he focuses on the relationship between
this community of collectors, analysts, and operators and the President.
Richelson has chosen a broader canvas: a survey of 100 years of major intelligence
operations.
Andrew's
ability to write clearly and engagingly has allowed him to write at great
length without boring the reader. In a book of 540 pages of text with almost
2,000 references and an extensive bibliography and notes on sources, he
uses this gift to the fullest.
The
profile of high and low points in the history of U.S. intelligence since
the days of Washington are well known. In a breezy opening chapter we are
taken from the high of Washington (who at one point was spending one-eighth
of the Federal budget on intelligence and secret operations) to the revival
of intelligence during the Civil War and the fitful decline leading up to
the First World War. The revival of intelligence capabilities during the
war and their decline between the wars is described in the second chapter.
Subsequent
chapters describe how Franklin Roosevelt was the inattentive grandfather
of the modern intelligence community (caring more for tales of OSS derring-do
than for the practicalities and political edge given by well-sourced and
carefully analyzed intelligence) with Truman the reluctant father of the
CIA and the NSA. Eisenhower put the community to work in collection, with
particular credit going to his sponsorship of technical collection, and
in covert action. Kennedy learned the hard way about the best ways to use
the intelligence community. He appears to have been the last President before
Bush to do so.
The
litany of bungles, missed opportunities, slapdash and downright illegal
operations conduct at the behest of every President from Johnson to Reagan
is examined by Andrew and used to forcefully demonstrate his central thesis:
when the President does not understand the intelligence community, he abuses
the intelligence product, the community, and the Presidency. This may appear
to be an obvious lesson, but it has not been learned by those to whom it
is a most important one. As the first book to take a hard look at the relationship
between the Presidency and the intelligence community this book deserves
to be read by all for whom intelligence is a major interest. For some it
will be revelatory, and for others, it will give substantial food for thought.
Richelson
does not have a thesis to demonstrate, rather, his book Century of Spies
is in the same mold as many of his others, such as The U.S. Intelligence
Community, Sword and Shield, and Foreign Intelligence Organizations
: it is a resource that the reader may use to start on a more detailed study
of a specific topic. The narrative starts with a brief look at political
and technical developments in the second half of the nineteenth century,
giving the reader a baseline and context for the beginning of this compendious
survey.
Each
chapter has the same structure: a brief opening section that unifies the
various cases studied in the chapter and places the topic and cases in context.
After this, individual topics are reviewed. Most topics merit 1-2 pages
with plenty of references and footnotes used to ensure that information
is made available without disrupting the main flow of the narrative. Some
topics, such as the Cambridge Spy Ring and Israeli intelligence before the
Yom Kippur War, receive more extensive coverage but they are not allowed
to swamp other topics in their chapters.
The
book covers human and technical intelligence in an even-handed manner and
includes some technical topics that are not that well-known to the general
reader, the use of aerial reconnaissance in World War I and Soviet aerial
reconnaissance in World War II are notable. The rise of technical collection
and satellite photoreconnaissance and communications intelligence collection
are clearly explained with the bulk of the coverage going, not surprisingly,
to US efforts.
There
are a few omissions, no coverage of Soviet partisans in World War II for
example, and the Ames case was too recent to merit more than a paragraph
and a footnote, but some recent important cases that did not receive a great
deal of coverage, such as the Hungarian spy ring in the US VII Corps in
West Germany are discussed.
The
style of the book is consistently expository and analytical and not judgmental.
This book is a resource, not a polemic. It is well-written with each chapter
internally cohesive and the overall flow is extremely smooth. References
are extensive at over 2,000 with many of them from comparatively recent
books, journals such as The International Journal of Intelligence and
Counterintelligence, newspapers (mainly articles from respected intelligence
watchers) and news magazines. It will be an invaluable resource for the
student of politics and military history and for the general reader for
many years to come.
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