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Rating: 
Summary: Pogo Lives at FBI--We Are Our Own Worst Enemies
Review:
Although I know the CIA better than I do the FBI, I have spent time in the past ten years with law enforcement officers from over 40 countries including the US, and the bottom line is that the FBI bureaucracy (Supervisory Special Agents and the politically-motivated upper tiers of FBI management) are a worse threat to US security than individual terrorist groups, for the simple reason that as long as the FBI leadership remains in denial, in secret, and ineffective, the entirety of our homeland defense is incapacitated.
The earlier version of this book focused on the decades of historical enmity between CIA and FBI--in the early years, Edgar J. Hoover was clearly to blame for a culture of hostility between the two agencies and between the FBI and military intelligence--in one instance he actually suppressed early knowledge of Japanese intentions on Pearl Harbor obtained from a German agent tasked to fulfill their targeting requirements. In later years the CIA took on more responsibility for shutting out the FBI, consistently refusing to brief them in to either internal counterintelligence failures, or foreign operations with a strong domestic counterintelligence matter. What the author has done in the aftermath of 9-11 is update the book and make it even more relevant to every citizen and every elected official and every bureaucrat. The earlier edition made me very angry about how the senior FBI bureaucracy can sacrifice the national interest at the altar of its own selfish agenda of self-preservation and aggrandizement--from Special Agent Rowley to Special Agent Robert Wright, the FBI leadership consistently spends more time censoring and punishing its own people for honesty, than it does chasing terrorists. This new improved edition should make every citizen, every voter angry, and they should instruct their elected representatives that the time has come for a National Security Act that finally reforms national foreign intelligence, military intelligence, and law enforcement intelligence, and in passing, creates the homeland security intelligence act to create a federated system of state and local intelligence and counterintelligence cadres that operate under the jurisdiction of governors and mayors rather than the federal government. Pogo had it right: we have met the enemy and he is us.
Rating:
Summary: EYE-OPENING
Review: I found the World War II and the Cold War parts of this book pretty fascinating, and maybe the most enjoyable to read. The portrayal of Hoover is very nuanced and fair. The Epilogue about 9/11 is sobering and hits on some themes that I haven't read anywhere else. America was left virtually defensless, Riebling argues, because of the Clinton administration's fateful decision to elevate the FBI over the CIA -- to pursue a law enforcement approach to what had traditionally been intelligence problems. He shows how the Aldrich Ames spy case left CIA bureaucratically paralyzed, and how the FBI, under Louis Freeh, exploited the chance to become America's premier national security power. He traces the numerous interagency foul-ups which led inexorably to our national unpreparedneness for 9/11. He shows how the FBI's suspicion of a mole in CIA -- who turned out to be the FBI's own Hanssen -- sowed distrust which discouarged the sharing of information. This linking of 9/11 failures to the damage wrought by Hanssen and Ames is one of the most important labyrinths explored by Riebling, and I have the feeling that a whole book could be written about this aspect alone.
Rating:
Summary: Secret History with a Definite Point of View
Review: This is an audacious, exhaustive, highly original book. I think it's fair to say that Riebling is somewhat biased toward the CIA and against the FBI, although perhaps not without some very good reasons (for instance, FBI diretcor J. Edgar Hoover clearly didn't understand counterintelligence; also, the FBI refused to do intelligence analysis). Riebling also takes a somewhat revisionist approach to the Cold War, implying in many places that the secret measures taken againt communist sympathizers by our government weren't that extreme, and noting that they were in fact more modest than those taken by Jefferson, Madison, et. al. against suspected British sympathizers in the early decades of the Republic. There's a besetting contrarian current or draft in this work, which sometimes Riebling rides to great heights of interpretation (e.g., on KGB deception ops), but which sometimes blows him into dead-ends where the key data is still classified. The book is rich in detail. There is tradecraft detail here one finds nowhere else -- e.g., Nazi spies' use of butterfly trays to smuggle microdots; the story of Project WALNUT, CIA's first foray into the computerization of its records; a fistfight between FBI agents and CIA officers over custody of a Soviet defector in a Washington, DC restaurant. There are long stretches where one feels riveted as in the best spy novels. The material on Ian Fleming and the influence of the "James Bond" ethos is especially well done. Expertly handled too is the vast amount of original mateiral on the colorful and controversial CIA spycatcher James Jesus Angleton, whose approach is explained with patience and precision. Riebling clearly had access to many who worked closely with Angleton, including FBI liaison officer Sam Papich, and as a result there is a sureness of touch where other writers have played false notes. Overall, despite some disagreements with Riebling's interpretations, I found this book educating and entertaining. It's the only history of our intelligence community I know of which traces our current problems to our past ones. And unlike most other books in the field, it does NOT devolve into nonsenical claims that the U.S. is in imminent danger of becoming a police state simply because it must sometimes use secret weapons against ruthless foes.
Rating:
Summary: Secret History with a Definite Point of View
Review: This is an audacious, exhaustive, highly original book. I think it's fair to say that Riebling is somewhat biased toward the CIA and against the FBI, although perhaps not without some very good reasons (for instance, FBI diretcor J. Edgar Hoover clearly didn't understand counterintelligence; also, the FBI refused to do intelligence analysis). Riebling also takes a somewhat revisionist approach to the Cold War, implying in many places that the secret measures taken againt communist sympathizers by our government weren't that extreme, and noting that they were in fact more modest than those taken by Jefferson, Madison, et. al. against suspected British sympathizers in the early decades of the Republic. There's a besetting contrarian current or draft in this work, which sometimes Riebling rides to great heights of interpretation (e.g., on KGB deception ops), but which sometimes blows him into dead-ends where the key data is still classified. The book is rich in detail. There is tradecraft detail here one finds nowhere else -- e.g., Nazi spies' use of butterfly trays to smuggle microdots; the story of Project WALNUT, CIA's first foray into the computerization of its records; a fistfight between FBI agents and CIA officers over custody of a Soviet defector in a Washington, DC restaurant. There are long stretches where one feels riveted as in the best spy novels. The material on Ian Fleming and the influence of the "James Bond" ethos is especially well done. Expertly handled too is the vast amount of original mateiral on the colorful and controversial CIA spycatcher James Jesus Angleton, whose approach is explained with patience and precision. Riebling clearly had access to many who worked closely with Angleton, including FBI liaison officer Sam Papich, and as a result there is a sureness of touch where other writers have played false notes. Overall, despite some disagreements with Riebling's interpretations, I found this book educating and entertaining. It's the only history of our intelligence community I know of which traces our current problems to our past ones. And unlike most other books in the field, it does NOT devolve into nonsenical claims that the U.S. is in imminent danger of becoming a police state simply because it must sometimes use secret weapons against ruthless foes.
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