Rating: 
Summary: NSA can be proud of its history. Finally it is out.
Review: My wife will never know what I did.. why she shared so many hardships with me.Now, she knows what WE DO overall for the first time. Every installation inside had the sign: What you see here What you hear here Leave here (Compartmentalization] James Bamford has for the first time effectively pierced this veil of secrecy in comsec/sigint. Coupled with the intensity of Red October in relating it, it is a classic book to be read by everybody. The loose cannons who doom their operations by unprotected voice will be reformed by the recital of disasters. From the view of 55 years of emotional involvement even in retirement Thank you, James Bamford, for getting the story out.
Rating:
Summary: Bamford's best, bar none!
Review: It's about time some of these NSA-held secrets were bared. For instance, the survivors have held that Israel attacked the Liberty deliberately, knowing full well it was an American ship, and have been trying to get Congress to conduct an investigation for 34 years. And now we find out that NSA has held the proof all this time! Bamford's book exposes these shameful government secrets. This is a top-notch, well-written documentary and should be must-reading for all American citizens!
Rating:
Summary: A rare inside look at the National Security Agency
Review: Jim Bamford's "The Puzzle Palace" gave the world one of the first in-depth views of the inner workings of this super-secret intelligence agency. Now, years later, having gained the trust and confidence of senior people throughout the organization, Bamford reveals even more. Bamford will inevitably be criticized for telling tales that others might wish had remained untold, but the book is a must-have for anyone who cares what goes on in the intelligence community and what our country does around the world.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Book - Incredibly Engaging
Review: Amazing look at a clandestine organization sometimes called the most powerful in the world. Some true gems in this book, information that has appeared nowhere else. My fave is the overwhelming evidence he presents to prove that the 1967 Israeli napalm attack on the intelligence ship USS Liberty was carried out by the Israelis with full knowledge that they were firing on an American ship. 29 men died that day, the US government and the Pro-Israel lobby covered it up, but here it is, backed up by the best evidence yet to prove the attack was intentional. A great read - buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: Body of Secrets
Review: The book is welll written and very intresting. I liked the book and hope many people will read it and learn about American history that is not in the schools .
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I read Bamford's first book The Puzzle Palace when it first came out and was blown away at his access to such secret information. Now in his new book he takes an even closer look at the supersecret NSA. I particularly like the way it is organized and how he puts NSA in context during the entire Cold War. This is key reading for anyone interested in intelligence or the Cold War.
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Look at America's "Blackest" Government Agency
Review: James Bamford's 1983 bestseller, "The Puzzle Palace", went a long way towards revealing the existence, importance and extent of the ultra-secretive National Security Agency to the American public at large. Now Bamford has followed through masterfully with "Body of Secrets", a detailed and exciting chronicle of the NSA from World War II to the present day. Bamford relies on open sources, recently declassified documents, and interviews with scores of current and former NSA operatives to weave a spellbinding tapestry of American Cold War espionage. Among the fresh revelations here are accounts of US covert operations against the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and many other nations. Bamford provides intricate and alarming detail of the NSA's role in the Vietnam Conflict from the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 to the fall of Saigon in 1975, where the NSA suffered one of its most crushing defeats when a warehouse full of state of the art and super-secret code machinery on loan to the South Vietnamese fell into communist hands. Bamford details American spy plane overflights of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China and North Korea from the 1950s on, some of which ended with the shoot-downs of US planes and the deaths of American airmen. Perhaps most explosive, however, is the new information Bamford reveals about the Israeli air attack on the US Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty during the Six-Day War of 1967. Although the Israelis have always claimed that the attack on the Liberty was a tragic accident brought on by misidentification, Bamford provides convincing evidence [included intercepted Israeli communication traffic] that the Israelis deliberately attacked the American ship in international waters in order to prevent the US from learning that the Israeli Army was massacring Egyptian POWs and civilians on the nearby Sinai Peninsula. "Body of Secrets" is not only enormously informative, but it is equally an enjoyable read. Bamford's style is clear and descriptive, and he never gets weighted down by excessive jargon. Nor is Bamford afflicted with the conspiracy-mongering bug; the conclusions he draws from his data are uniformly reasonable and intelligent. While some of these conclusions may strike some as sinister, this is only because the ability of the NSA to monitor virtually every form of electronic communication in the world is de facto disturbing. In sum, this is an illuminating and informative book which should appeal to a broad audience. Those with an interest in espionage, national security, foreign policy, and twentieth century history -- as well as fans of a good, true spy yarn -- should accord this volume pride of place in their personal collections.
Rating:
Summary: Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Securi
Review: If you liked The Puzzle Palace, need I say how much you'll enjoy this new soon-to-be a bestseller by the same author, James Bamford. When the population of Columbia, Maryland, drives to work more than half of the staff of the National Security Agency (NSA) makes that 15-minute drive east from Columbia to fill the many miles of buildings that house NSA's thirty-eight thousand employees. It hasn't been called "The Puzzle Palace" for nothing! Once again, Bamford unveils more of its secrets--how its highly sophisticated technological advances are employed to become the listening post to the world. From Cold War conflicts, espionage during the Vietnam War, recent global economic influences, and much more make this Body of Secrets a read for those who seek more information. This book will bring you closer to the underbelly of Cold War espionage and the inner workings of NSA.
Rating:
Summary: Information...and disinformation
Review: What is the NSA? and what does it do? This book is an effort to describe and explain the history of an agency that most Americans have never heard of until recently. The Reader is given much information about its role in the past and present. But in the shadowy land that the NSA seems to occupy, such 'information' is not necessarily the same as fact or truth or even recorded non-events.
Diversions, double agents, disinformation and outright deception are what the NSA does on a daily basis and one has to wonder just how much of the information 'released' or 'leaked' about this agency is close to what it appears to be. And that is of of itself is very troubling because if there is ANY agency in the United States that has the alleged ability (or at least the potential) to be "Big Brother", the NSA is the one. The ability to intercept ,monitor, and manipulate just about every type of modern communication is staggering in its implications.
In the post 9/11 world of 'The Patriot Act' (face it, a loyal citizen can now get a reward for 'turning in' a neighbor for undefined 'suspicious acts'), The NSA's seeming ability to 'monitor' everyone as spelled out in this book is very alarming. The spying capability is there and use (or misuse)should be a concern of everyone.
Rating:
Summary: A British Perspective
Review: In brief, I thought this book a bit taxing to read due to the analysis of possible every facet of the NSA that the author was able to investigate, but it contains numerous interesting nuggets of information. For example, the bit about J Edgar Hoover indirectly ordering the NSA to spy on Richard Nixon as he had ordered the NSA to spy on all quakers and Nixon was a quaker. Also interesting to see how the NSA and CIA interact with each other, sometimes in cooperation, but there's also the quote from an ex-NSA boss saying that the CIA is good for stealing a memo from a prime minister's desk and not much else! Also, the stuff about the Kennedy administration and of his its relationship to the military. Apparently, the Pentagon was most fond of President General Eisenhower, who was a military man, obviously, and there was a suspicion of whether a civilian could run the country properly. Following the Bay of Pigs mishap and Kennedy's social reforms, the Pentagon got quite upset, as sources in this book reveal that according to military minds of that time social legislation=socialism=Communism. The stuff about the Britain's GCHQ was new to me: When Mauritius was granted independence from Britain, the condition was that the island of Diego Garcia had to be given to Britain. The inhabitants were then kicked out with no provision made for them and then the island was then handed to the USA to be used as an NSA spy base, and none of this was debated in the British parliament! The book also points some NSA failures, e.g. not realising that India carried out a nuclear test in 1998 and overall is a thoroughly exhaustive study of this organisation. Now, how about a book about decisions made over the years from inside the Pentagon?
| 
