| America's
Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle between America and Its
Enemies |
| George Friedman |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In America's Secret War, George Friedman identifies the United States' most
dangerous enemies, delves into presidential strategies of the last quarter
century, and reveals the real reasons behind the attack of 9/11- and the
Bush administration's motivation for the war in Iraq. It describes in detail
America's covert and overt efforts in the global war against terrorism: not
only are U.S. armies in combat on every continent, but since 9/11 the
intelligence services of dozens of nations have been operating in close
partnership with the CIA." Drawing on Stratfor's vast information-gathering
network. Friedman presents an insightful picture of today's world that goes
far beyond what is reported on television and in other new media. |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| The Secret
History of the Iraq War |
| Yossef Bodansky |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the months leading up to March 2003, fresh from its swift and heady
victory in Afghanistan, the Bush administration mobilized the United States
armed forces to overthrow the government of Iraq. Eight months after the
president declared an end to major combat operations, Saddam Hussein was
captured in a farmhouse in Al-Dawr. And yet neither peace nor democracy has
taken hold in Iraq; instead the country has plunged into terrorist
insurgency and guerrilla warfare, with no end in sight.
What went wrong?
In The Secret History of the Iraq War, bestselling author Yossef Bodansky
offers an astonishing new account of the war and its aftermath -- a war that
was doomed from the start, he argues, by the massive and systemic failures
of the American intelligence community. Drawing back the curtain of
politicized debate, Bodansky -- a longtime expert and director of the
Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare -- reveals
that nearly every aspect of America's conflict with Iraq has been
misunderstood, in both the court of public opinion and the White House
itself.
Drawing upon an extraordinary wealth of previously untapped intelligence and
regional sources, The Secret History of the Iraq War presents the most
detailed, fascinating, and convincing account of the most controversial war
of our times -- and offers a sobering indictment of an intelligence system
that failed the White House, the American military, and the people of the
Middle East. |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| House of
Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most
Powerful Dynasties |
| Craig Unger |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"House of Bush, House of Saud begins with a simple question: How is it that
two days after September 11, 2001, when American air traffic was all but
shut down, 140 Saudi citizens, many kin to Osama bin Laden, were permitted
to leave the country? Why didn't the FBI question the people on the planes?
Why did a Saudi billionaire socialize in the White House with President
George W. Bush on September 13, and why did Saudi Arabia - the birthplace of
nearly all of the hijackers - get preferential treatment from the White
House even at the World Trade Center continued to burn?" The answers to
these questions - and ones far more troubling - lie in a largely hidden
relationship that began in the mid-1970s, when the oil-rich House of Saud
set out for America in the wake of the OPEC oil embargo and soaring oil
prices. Saudi Arabia needed American military protection and a place to
invest its billions of petrodollars. Like wildcatting oil drillers, the
Saudis began prospecting among promising American politicians, including the
Bush family. And with the Bushes, the Saudis hit a gusher - direct access to
presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, as well as
to Secretary of State James Baker, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of
State Colin Powell, and the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
Unger's best pages tell how, in the days of panic and recrimination after
Sept. 11, Prince Bandar managed to spirit prominent members of the Saud and
bin Laden families out of the United States on chartered aircraft. Beginning
on Sept. 13, when private aviation was still restricted, some 140 Saudis,
including about two dozen of the bin Ladens, were flown to Europe. "Didn't
it make sense," asks Unger rhetorically, "to at least interview Osama bin
Laden 's relatives?" James Buchan |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| The
Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered
America |
| Stephen F. Hayes |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the wake of 9/11 no one knew when the next attack would come, or where it
would come from. America's enemies seemed gathered on all sides, and for
several nerve-racking months, we lived in fear that the perpetrators might
be plotting another action or, worse, that our most dangerous enemies -- al
Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's murderous regime in Iraq -- could be banding
together against us.The Bush administration and CIA director George Tenet
warned against complacency and pointed to growing indications that al Qaeda
and Iraq were in league. But their case was undercut by unnamed intelligence
officials, skeptical politicians, and a compliant media. So America relaxed.
A comforting consensus settled in: Osama bin Laden was an impassioned
fundamentalist, Saddam a secular autocrat. The two would never, could never,
work together. ABC News reported that there was no connection between them,
and the New York Times said so too, and pretty soon just about everyone
agreed.
Just about everyone was wrong.
In The Connection, Stephen Hayes draws on CIA debriefings, top-secret memos
from our national intelligence agencies, and interviews with Iraqi military
leaders and Washington insiders to demonstrate that Saddam and bin Laden not
only could work together, they did -- a curious relationship that stretches
back more than a decade and may include collaboration on terrorist acts,
chemical-weapons training, and sheltering some of the world's most wanted
radicals.
Stephen Hayes's bombshell Weekly Standard piece on this topic was cited by
Vice President Cheney as the "best source of information" about the
Saddam-al Qaeda connections. Now Hayes delves even deeper, exposing the
inner workings of America's deadliest opponents and providing a clear-eyed
corrective to reams of underreported, politicized, and just plain wrong
information.
The Connection is both a gripping snapshot of the War on Terror and a case
study in how bureaucratic assumptions and media arrogance can put us all at
risk.
FROM THE CRITICS
Matthew A. Levitt - The Washington Post
In The Connection, Hayes argues that Hussein's ties to al Qaeda presented
just such a pressing threat -- and, moreover, that this threat was not an
interruption of but a critical component of the war on terror. This argument
is not just "the most controversial casus belli," as Hayes acknowledges in
his introduction -- it is also, in view of the failure to uncover
significant evidence of WMDs and the rapidly spreading jihadist resistance
in U.S.-occupied Iraq, the strongest remaining link in the chain of evidence
for those who supported the war most vocally.
Publisher's Weekly
Weekly Standard reporter Hayes marshals a wealth of evidence that, in
contrast with the tenuous connections that have so far made news, point to
ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda. Most intriguingly, Hayes
finds links between Iraq and the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, one of
whom apparently received shelter and financial support from Iraq after the
attack. Hayes also gets confirmation by Czech officials of the alleged
Prague meeting between September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi
intelligence agent. Elsewhere, Hayes points to Iraqi intelligence documents
that mention a "good relationship" with bin Laden. Other sources note an
alleged agreement for Iraq to assist al-Qaeda in making chemical and
biological weapons. Relying both on "open sources" like news articles,
transcripts from the 1998 embassy bombing trials, as well as anonymous
intelligence reports and informants, Hayes allows that some of these stories
may prove unreliable. But he contends that the number, consistency and
varied provenance of reports of high-level contacts between al-Qaeda and
Iraq throughout the past decade allows one to "connect the dots" into a
clear pattern of collaboration. Despite the frustrating absence of source
notes and no knowledge of what cooperative efforts ever came of these
contacts, most readers will conclude from this volume that the Saddam-al-Queda
thread has some play left in it. Agent, Eric Simonoff for Janklow & Nesbit.
(June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| The French
Betrayal of America |
| Kenneth R.
Timmerman |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the wake of French behavior at the United Nations, where Foreign Minister
Dominique de Villepin systematically undermined the efforts of Secretary of
State Colin Powell to convince the Security Council to authorize force
against Iraq, Americans have at best come to suspect our ally of double
dealing, and at worst view them as the enemy. Almost daily over the past
eight months, new stories have emerged of how the government of French
President Jacques Chirac has sought to undermine the U.S. war on terror,
publicly sniping at America and inciting other countries to do the same.
What's wrong with France, a nation and a people that have sided with America
repeatedly over our 200 year shared history? What's behind their recent
perfidy? According to Kenneth R. Timmerman, we don't know even half the
story. After reading The French Betrayal Of America, American anger at
France will turn into outrage. Mr. Timmerman, who worked as a journalist in
France for 18 years, and knows virtually every player in this story, lifts
the veil of Jacques Chirac's scandalous love affair with Saddam Hussein,
beginning in 1975 when he took him on a tour of top-secret French nuclear
facilities. He traces their ongoing relationship right up through the saga
of Chirac's desperate attempt to save Saddam Hussein just prior to Gulf War
II. The French attitude toward Saddam, which seemed to baffle the Bush
administration, was in fact entirely predictable. Put bluntly, it was all
about money, oil and guns. Chirac needed Saddam's oil and Saddam's money,
and Saddam needed French weapons and French nuclear technology. France
grudgingly joined the coalition force in Gulf War I, walking a diplomatic
tightrope with their trading partner, and in so doing losing billions of
dollars in weapons contracts to the U.S. throughout the Middle East and
beyond. They wouldn't make the same mistake twice. But it's one thing to sit
out a war, and quite another to actively support the enemy of a supposed
ally, engaging in dirty diplomacy and helping to sway other European
countries to their side. French war coverage was not merely one-sided: It
was viciously inaccurate, skewed and openly anti- American. And new evidence
has come to light, including the fact that the French stood to gain $100
billion from secret oil contracts they had concluded with Saddam Hussein.
According to Timmerman, the Iraqi crisis exposed fundamental tensions in the
U.S.-French relationship that have existed all along (and that he traces in
detail in this book), but that were subordinated to other concerns in other
times, such as the often secret military and strategic cooperation between
the nations during the Cold War. But with no Cold War focusing the French on
possible extinction, they are left to ponder French grandeur. Timmerman
raises questions of whether the nuclear cooperation agreements still in
force with the French today should be cancelled in light of French perfidy.
The war in Iraq harshly exposed their treachery, and their desire to do
business with the worst of international tyrants, putting their economy,
their international standing, and their relationship with a 200-year-old
friend in severe jeopardy. The French Betrayal Of America is the first and
only book to tell the whole story, from the inside out.
FROM THE CRITICS
The Washington Post
Timmerman is particularly strong on the history of French relations with
Iraq and the massive corruption involved in arms and oil deals between the
two countries over three decades. As a reporter in France for 18 years, he
was a well-placed observer. While he footnotes many of his accusations, he
also protects his sources in some of the most interesting cases (as any good
reporter must), and we are left to judge their veracity on our own. Joseph
S. Nye Jr. |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| The CIA at
War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror |
| Ronald Kessler |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
With the CIA at the core of the war on terror, no agency is as important to
preserving America's freedom. Yet the CIA is a closed and secretive
world-impenetrable to generations of journalists-and few Americans know what
really goes on among the spy masters who plot America's worldwide campaign
against terrorists.Only Ronald Kessler, an award-winning former Washington
Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, could have gained the
unprecedented access to tell the story. Kessler interviewed fifty current
CIA officers, including all the agency's top officials, and toured areas of
the CIA the media has never seen. The agency actively encouraged retired CIA
officers and officials to talk with him as well. In six years as director,
George J. Tenet has never appeared on TV shows and has given only a handful
of print interviews, all before 9/11, but Tenet agreed to be interviewed by
Kessler for this book. He spoke candidly and passionately about the events
of 9/11, the war on terror, the agency's intelligence on Iraq, and the
controversies surrounding the agency.
The CIA at War tells the inside story of how Tenet, a son of Greek
immigrants, turned around the CIA from a pathetic, risk averse outfit to one
that has rolled up 3,000 terrorists since 9/11, was critically important to
winning in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now kills terrorists with its Predator
drone aircraft.
The book portrays Tenet as a true American hero, one who overcame every kind
of Washington obstacle and the destructive actions of previous director John
Deutch to make the agency a success. As Tenet said in a recent speech,
"Nowhere in the world could the son of an immigrant stand before you as the
director of Central Intelligence. This is simply the greatest country on the
face of the earth."
The CIA at War discloses highly sensitive information about the CIA's
unorthodox methods and its stunning successes and shocking failures. The
book explores whether the CIA can be trusted, whether its intelligence is
politicized, and whether it is capable of winning the war on terror. In
doing so, the book weaves in the history of the CIA and how it really works.
It is the definitive account of the agency.
From the CIA's intelligence failure of 9/11 to its critical role in
preventing further attacks, The CIA at War tells a riveting, unique story
about a secretive, powerful agency and its confrontation with global
terrorism.
The CIA at War reveals:
How the CIA devised the plan to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan, rolled up
half the senior leaders of al Qaeda, and sent commandoes to prepare the way
for U.S. forces invading Iraq.
Which press report that the U.S. was listening in on conversations of Osama
bin Laden and his lieutenants led them to stop using the satellite phone
that was being monitored.
How the CIA clandestinely uses mullahs to convey a more moderate message to
the Arab world and to support the U.S. military intervention in Iraq.
How the CIA bugs or intercepts the communications of al Qaeda leaders, OPEC
ministers, United Nations delegates, ambassadors, foreign leaders, and
weapons inspectors.
The truth behind the charge that Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly
visited the CIA as part of an effort to hype the agency's intelligence on
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
How a CIA officer in Iraq, who had been targeted for assassination or
kidnapping by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, returned to Iraq after the war
and captured his own pursuer.
How the CIA uses sensors to penetrate camouflage, determine if weapons of
mass destruction are being manufactured, and pinpoint bombing targets.
How previous CIA Director John Deutch approved a hare-brained scheme to pay
off a CIA operative, whose job had been to break into embassies overseas, to
keep him from revealing to his targets that the CIA had stolen their
communication codes.
How the Israelis break into CIA officers' homes to gather intelligence.
Why the CIA shut out the FBI when interrogating Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,
Osama bin Laden's chief of operations.
How the CIA ignored failed polygraph results of 300 of its employees.
How President Clinton, over CIA protests, diverted satellites from finding
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
How the CIA obtains secret communication codes of friendly countries like
France and South Korea.
What George Tenet's and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III's biggest secret
is. |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| Inside the
CIA: Revealing the Secrets of the World's Most Powerful Spy Agency |
| Ronald Kessler |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Ronald Kessler's explosive bestseller, The FBI, brought down FBI Director
William S. Sessions. Now, in this unparalleled work of investigative
journalism, Kessler reveals the inner world of the CIA. Based on extensive
research and hundreds of interviews, including two with active Directors of
Central Intelligence, William H. Webster and Robert M. Gates, and with three
former DCI's Inside The CIA is the first in-depth, unbiased account of the
Agency's core operations, its abject failures, and its resounding successes.
Kessler reveals how:
CIA analysts botched the job of foreseeing the Soviet economy's collapse
The Agency spies on every country in the world except Great Britain,
Australia, and Canada
The CIA undertakes covert action to influence or overthrow foreign
governments or political parties
The Agency trains its officers to break the laws of other countries
Inside The CIA is an extraordinary guide to the world's most successful
house of spies. |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| Venona:
Decoding Soviet Espionage in America |
| John Earl Haynes,
Harvey Klehr |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
This extraordinary book is the first to examine the thousands of documents
of the super-secret Venona Project--an American intelligence project that
uncovered not only an enormous range of Soviet espionage activities against
the United States during World War II but also the Americans who abetted
this effort.
SYNOPSIS
This extraordinary book is the first to examine the thousands of documents
of the super-secret Venona Project-an American intelligence project that
uncovered not only an enormous range of Soviet espionage activities against
the United States during World War II but also the Americans who abetted
this effort. The stunning revelations of the Venona papers, only made public
in 1995, illuminate in a new way the Stalin era and early Cold War years.
FROM THE CRITICS
Maurice Isserman
...[C]learly establishes the main contours of the previously hidden
landscape of Soviet espionage in the United States in the 30s and
40s..."Espionage" is one of those words...[that] make it difficult to draw
the distinctions necessary to exploring historical complexities... The New
York Times Book Review
Library Journal
Those who were convinced that the Soviets were spying on us during the 1930s
and 1940s were right. Haynes and Klehr have provided the most extensive
evidence to date that the KGB had operatives at all levels of American
society and government. Where Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassilievs The
Haunted Wood (LJ 11/15/98) provided a peek at Soviet spying, Haynes and
Klehr throw open the door, revealing a level of espionage in this country
that only the most paranoid had dreamed of. Building on the research for
their earlier books, The Secret World of American Communism (LJ 6/1/95) and
The Soviet World of American Communism (Yale Univ., 1998), Haynes and Klehr
describe the astonishing dimensions of spying reflected in the cable traffic
between the United States and Moscow. Venona is the name of the
sophisticated National Security Agency project that in 1946 finally broke
the Soviet code. This is better than anything John le Carr could produce,
because in this case, truth is really stranger than fiction. Highly
recommended.Edward Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
David Ignatius - The Washington Monthly
...[W]hat most of us would regard as the "real" evidence is contained in
Venona....Anyone who still has a shred of sentimentality about the Old Left
should read their account....It's an appalling story....The authors...think
Venona shows the Soviets began the Cold War earlier than anyone had
realized...
Maurice Isserman - The New York Times Book Review
...[C]learly establishes the main contours of the previously hidden
landscape of Soviet espionage in the United States in the 30s and
40s..."Espionage" is one of those words...[that] make it difficult to draw
the distinctions necessary to exploring historical complexities...
Jacob Heilbrunn - WQ: The Wilson Quarterly
...[A]ccording to Haynes and Klehr, the Venona transcripts "expose beyond
cavil the American Communist party as an auxiliary of the intelligence
agencies of the Soviet Union"....The implications of these findings are not
trivial.....[Shatters] the fable of communist innocence in America. |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| Masters of
Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces |
| Linda Robinson |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"A journalist with unique access tells the never-before-told, inside story
of America's elite troops in action - from the nadir of their reputation
after Vietnam to their preeminence today on the frontlines against terrorism
around the world." "Special Forces soldiers are daring, seasoned warriors
from America's heartland, selected in a tough competition and trained in an
extraordinary range of skills. In Masters of Chaos Linda Robinson tells
their story through a select group of senior sergeants and field-grade
officers, a band of unforgettable characters like Rawhide, Killer, Michael
T, and Alan - led by the unflappable Lt. Col. Chris Conner and Col. Charlie
Cleveland, a brilliant but self-effacing West Pointer who waged the largest
unconventional war campaign since Vietnam in northern Iraq." "Robinson
follows the Special Forces from their first post-Vietnam combat in Panama,
El Salvador, Desert Storm, Somalia, and the Balkans, to their recent trials
and triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq. She witnessed their secret sleuthing
and unsung successes in southern Iraq, and recounts here for the first time
the dramatic firefights of the western desert. Her blow-by-blow story of the
attack on Ansar al-Islam's international terrorist training camp has never
been told before." The most comprehensive account ever of the modern-day
Special Forces in action, Masters of Chaos is filled with intimate detail in
the words of a close-knit band of soldiers who have done it all.
FROM THE CRITICS
James Bradley - author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys
Linda Robinson has gone beyond the headlines and the hype to bring us into
[the Special Forces'] brotherhood.
Robert Baer - author of See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil
This fascinating, dramatic account of the Special Forces... shows us the
face of war in the 21st century.
Publisher's Weekly
This impressively readable account chronicles the role of the U.S. Army's
Special Forces (aka the Green Berets, a label they do not care for) over the
past 15 years. Special Forces operations included Somalia, the first Gulf
War, the Balkans, Afghanistan and once again the Gulf. The latter two
operations are are allotted half the book, with the ongoing presence in Iraq
being the forces' largest operation since Vietnam. Based on interviews with
30-odd operators, the book is a compelling group portrait of some of
America's most dedicated warriors. A journalist specializing in national
security subjects, particularly unconventional warfare, Robinson mostly
shows the men performing their original role: organizing and training local
friendlies to liberate their countries or at least achieve American goals.
Recent achievements along those lines include organizing Shiite militias in
Iraq and leading Kurdish forces to tie down Saddam's army in the north.
Robinson also presents in some detail the new role of the Special Forces,
one of major strategic significance: calling in aerial fire support on enemy
targets in support of either U.S. or indigenous forces in distant lands.
Still mostly secret, she finds even after careful investigation, is their
work with the FBI after 9/11. Agent, Flip Brophy for Sterling Lord
Literistic. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| Hillary's
Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists |
| Richard Poe |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Hillary's Secret War is the true story of how a group of renegade
journalists fought to expose America's darkest scandals through the
Internet--and how the most powerful woman in the world tried to stop them.
From her own "war room" in the White House, Hillary Clinton commanded a
secret police operation dedicated to silencing dissent, muzzling media
critics, intimidating political foes, whitewashing Clinton scandals, and
obstructing justice. Hillary's operatives infiltrated every level of the
news media, federal law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and the federal
court system.
They looked upon the "unregulated" datastream of cyberspace as a threat to
their power, potentially devastating in its ability to bypass the
controlled, corporate media. For that reason, Hillary's secret police
persecuted Internet dissidents with special ferocity.
Mainstream news media spiked the story of Hillary's secret war--and of the
scandals she sought to conceal. But the courageous new journalists of the
Internet underground defied the odds and exposed the shocking truth about
history's most corrupt presidency. This is their story.
Written with all the drama and tension of a gripping novel, this carefully
researched book gives the inside story of how these modern-day patriots
endured Hillary's attacks, and emerged from the battlefield to become a
sprawling, innovative news source reaching tens of millions each day.
Hillary's Secret War presents a tale of dogged courage and sacrifice, one of
the greatest untold stories in the annals of journalism.
"Hillary's Shadow Team," says Poe, "will no doubt play a crucial role in
smoothing the way for her plannedreturn to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Likewise, the Internet will figure prominently in the effort to stop her."
|
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| Germs:
Biological Weapons and America's Secret War |
| Judith Miller,
William Broad, Stephen Engelberg |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the wake of the anthrax letters following the attacks on the World Trade
Center, Americans have begun to grapple with two difficult truths: that
there is no terrorist threat more horrifying -- and less understood -- than
germ warfare, and that it would take very little to mount a devastating
attack on American soil. In Germs, three veteran reporters draw on top
sources inside and outside the U.S. government to lay bare Washington's
secret strategies for combating this deadly threat.
Featuring an inside look at how germ warfare has been waged throughout
history and what form its future might take (and in whose hands), Germs
reads like a gripping detective story told by fascinating key figures:
American and Soviet medical specialists who once made germ weapons but now
fight their spread, FBI agents who track Islamic radicals, the Iraqis who
built Saddam Hussein's secret arsenal, spies who travel the world collecting
lethal microbes, and scientists who see ominous developments on the horizon.
With clear scientific explanations and harrowing insights, Germs is a
masterfully written -- and timely -- work of investigative journalism.
SYNOPSIS
In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, Judith Miller,
Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad of The New York Times uncover the truth
about biological weapons and show why bio-warfare and bio-terrorism are fast
becoming our worst national nightmare.
Among the startling revelations in Germs:
How the CIA secretly built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ
bomb, alarming some officials who felt the work pushed to the limits of what
is permitted by the global treaty banning germ arms.
How the Pentagon embarked on a secret effort to make a superbug.
Details about the Soviet Union's massive hidden program to produce
biological weapons, including new charges that germs were tested on humans.
How Moscow's scientists made an untraceable germ that instructs the body to
destroy itself.
The Pentagon's chaotic efforts to improvise defenses against Iraq's
biological weapons during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
How a religious cult in Oregon in the 1980s sickened hundreds of Americans
in a bio-terrorism attack that the government played down to avoid panic and
copycat strikes.
Plans by the U.S. military in the 1960s to attack Cuba with germ weapons.
|
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| Secret
History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala,
1952-1954 |
| Nick Cullather,
Piero Gleijeses |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In 1992, the Central Intelligence Agency hired the young historian Nick
Cullather to write a history (classified "secret" and for internal
distribution only) of the Agency's Operation PBSUCCESS, which overthrew the
lawful government of Guatemala in 1954. Given full access to the Agency's
archives, he produced a vivid insider's account, intended as a training
manual for cover operators, detailing how the CIA chose targets, planned
strategies, and organized the mechanics of waging a secret war. In 1997,
during a brief period of open disclosure, the CIA declassified the history
with remarkably few substantive deletions. The New York Times called it "an
astonishingly frank account ... which may be a high-water mark in the
agency's openness." Here is that account, with new notes by the author which
clarify points in the history and add newly available information. This book
reveals how the legend of PBSUCCESS grew, and why attempts to imitate it
failed so disastrously at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and in the Contra war in
the 1980's. The Afterword traces the effects of the coup of 1954 on the
subsequent unstable politics and often violent history of Guatemala.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
This is a fascinating study, first commissioned in 1992 by the CIA itself as
an internal teaching tool and classified "secret," and later (in 1997) made
public during a brief vogue for more open disclosure policies at the agency.
The relatively few redacted portions are represented in the present volume
by blank spaces. The study exposes the specific conditions which led to the
CIA's short-lived "success" in its Guatemalan operations, why that success
indeed proved illusory, and how the CIA was in error to use the results of
its campaign in Guatemala as encouragement to proceed with covert operations
in other countries, such as Cuba. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland,
OR (booknews.com) |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| The
Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War |
| Thaddeus Holt |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In World War II, the Allies employed unprecedented methods and practiced the
most successful military deception ever seen, meticulously feeding
misinformation to Axis intelligence to lead Axis commanders into erroneous
action. Thaddeus Holt's elegantly written and comprehensive book is the
first to tell the full story behind these operations. Exactly how the Allies
engaged in strategic deception has remained secret for decades. Now, with
the help of newly declassified material, Holt reveals this secret to the
world in a riveting work of historical scholarship.Once the Americans joined
the war in 1941, they had much to learn from their British counterparts, who
had been honing their deception skills for years. As the war progressed, the
British took charge of misinformation efforts in the European theater, while
the Americans focused on the Pacific. The Deceivers takes readers from the
early British achievements in the Middle East and Europe at the beginning of
the war to the massive Allied success of D-Day, American victory in the
Pacific theater, and the war's culmination on the brink of an invasion of
Japan.
Colonel John Bevan, who managed British deception operations from London,
described the three essentials to strategic deception as good plans, double
agents, and codebreaking, and The Deceivers covers each of these aspects in
minute detail. Holt brings to life the little-known men, British and
American, who ran Allied deception, such as Bevan, Dudley Clarke, Peter
Fleming, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Newman Smith. He tracks the development
of deception techniques and tells the hitherto unknown story of double agent
management and other deception through the American FBI and Joint Security
Control.
Full of fascinating sources and astounding revelations, The Deceivers is an
indispensable volume and an unparalleled contribution to World War II
literature.
FROM THE CRITICS
Victorino Matus - The Washington Post
The level of detail is staggering. The list of colorful personalities is
endless. But beneath the mountains of data (and more than 200 pages of
appendices and references) lies the story of how American and British
officers created deception and eventually mastered it.
Washington Post
[A] monumental history. Holt fully reveals Allied attempts to "mystify,
mislead, and surprise" the enemy, while identifying the intelligence
failures, the successes and the many operations whose decisiveness remains
unclear even today. The level of detail is staggering. Holt has provided us
with a historical record. And this he does this definitively.
Sewanee Review
Thaddeus Holt's The Deceivers is an important contribution...the least that
can be said about the book is that for the next several decades it should
serve intelligence and defense communities as a bible about how to deceive
an enemy in wartime....The finished product is as close to definitive as we
are likely to see....Holt's narrative line will hold the reader's attention,
carrying him through the occasional dense patches to leave him astounded by
the end result. Invariably that result is a much more thorough knowledge for
any reader about what was actually taking place at any particular moment
during World War II.
Publisher's Weekly
This colossal and valuable study is clearly a labor of love for Holt, a
lawyer and former deputy secretary of the army. It chronicles in thorough
detail and smooth prose various operations that the Allies conducted to
mislead the Axis as to the time, place, strength and direction of a host of
military operations. The foremost of those was, of course, D-Day, and the
origins, conduct and imposing logistics of Operation Fortitude are laid out
in unsurpassed detail. So are a host of smaller operations, such as
Operation Mincemeat, the subject of the book The Man Who Never Was. The men
and women behind the planning and execution included the British career
soldier Brig. Dudley W. Clarke; Gordon Merrick, later the author of The Lord
Won't Mind and its successors, one of the first mainstream successes in gay
fiction; and actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who was an amateur sailor and
leader of a fine decoy effort in southern France. The achievements of the
deceivers were invaluable if not always decisive. Few of them have been
chronicled this completely or this well, at least for American readers, in a
volume that reads with the fluency of a thriller for any reader with a
minimal knowledge of and interest in the war. Agent, Phyllis Westburg. (June
6) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In this massive chronology, Holt, former deputy undersecretary of the U.S.
Army, details the complete story of the Allied deception plans undertaken
during World War II. Drawing on freshly declassified Pentagon documents, he
begins with the early British accomplishments in the Middle East and Africa
under the aegis of Brig. Dudley Clarke and ends with Operation Pastel, the
deception plan covering the invasion of Japan. The war's story appears in an
entirely different light when overlaid with the various deception plans,
most spectacularly the vital D-day feint that led Hitler to expect a landing
at Calais. This story would only be half told without the work (well
detailed here) of the agents and double agents who made strategic deception
a success, from the well-known Peter Fleming, brother of James Bond creator
Ian, to the little-known Juan Garcia, code-named Garbo, decorated by both
the British and the Germans for his war work. Highly recommended.-David Lee
Poremba, Detroit P.L. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Mr. Holt's history of Allied deception in World War II is definitive. He has
trawled through all the documentation, interviewed all the survivors, and
put together a history as comprehensive as it is readable and entertaining.
It is an astonishing achievement, and no library of the war can afford to be
without it.
Michael Howard
A highly professional yet entertaining analysis of the dirty tricks
ingeniously dreamed up by unscrupulous Allied intelligence personnel in
World War II to defeat the enemy. Easily the best book yet written, or ever
likely to be, on the subject, drawing on the most recent documents
declassified on both sides of the Atlantic.
Nigel West
A truly wonderful book! Deeply researched and written with authority and
verve, it tells the full story of Allied deception during World War II. The
Deceivers not only recounts every major operation, it describes in detail
how each operation affected the enemy. It will be essential for the
bookshelf of every serious student of World War II.
Ernest May
Just when you have convinced yourself that you have long ago imbibed the
last word on the secret side of World War II, along comes Thaddeus Holt and
his remarkable study. Superbly researched and full of fresh revelations, The
Deceivers is not only immaculately written but wonderfully readable.
Robert Cowley
Thad Holt has written a brilliant account of Allied military deceptions in
World War II. It will become a standard work on military intelligence
tactics. And best of all, it reads like a novel!
Joseph S. Nye
Thaddeus Holt has given us a riveting history of the Allied deception
operations in World War II. The British were especially masterful -- the
sphinxlike and sardonic Dudley Clarke and his colleagues had a huge hand in
the victory. Far more dramatic than any fiction.
R. James Woolsey |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| Tuxedo
Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the
Course of World War II |
| Jennet Richards
Conant |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the fall of 1940, as German bombers flew over London and with America not
yet at war, a small team of British scientists on orders from Winston
Churchill carried out a daring transatlantic mission. The British unveiled
their most valuable military secret in a clandestine meeting with American
nuclear physicists at the Tuxedo Park mansion of a mysterious Wall Street
tycoon, Alfred Lee Loomis. Powerful, handsome, and enormously wealthy,
Loomis had for years led a double life, spending his days brokering huge
deals and his weekends working with the world's leading scientists in his
deluxe private laboratory that was hidden in a massive stone castle.
In this dramatic account of a hitherto unexplored but crucial story of the
war, Jennet Conant traces one of the world's most extraordinary careers and
scientific enterprises. She describes Loomis' phenomenal rise to become one
of the Wall Street legends of the go-go twenties. He foresaw the stock
market crash of 1929 in time to protect his vast holdings, making a fortune
while other bankers were losing their shirts. He rode out the Depression
years in high style, and indulged in the hobbies of the fabulously rich. He
raced his own America's Cup yacht against the Vanderbilts and Astors, and
purchased Hilton Head Island in South Carolina as his private game reserve.
Conant writes about the glamour and privilege of his charmed circle as well
as Loomis' marriage to a beautiful but depressive wife, whom he sent away
for repeated hospitalizations while he pursued a covert affair with his
protege's young wife. His bitter divorce scandalized New York society and
drove Loomis into near seclusion in East Hampton.
At the height of his influence on Wall Street, Loomis abruptly retired and
devoted himself purely to science. He turned his Tuxedo Park laboratory into
the meeting place for the most visionary minds of the twentieth century:
Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, James Franck, Niels Bohr, and Enrico
Fermi. With England threatened by invasion, he joined Vannevar Bush, Karl
Compton, and the author's grandfather, Harvard president James B. Conant, in
mobilizing civilian scientists to defeat Nazi Germany, and personally
bankrolled pioneering research into the radar detection systems that
ultimately changed the course of World War II.
Together with his friend Ernest Lawrence, the Nobel Prize-winning atom
smasher, Loomis established a top-secret wartime laboratory at MIT and
recruited the most famous names in physics. Through his close ties to his
cousin Henry Stimson, who was secretary of war, Loomis was able to push FDR
to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to create the advanced radar
systems that defeated the German Air Force and deadly U-boats, and then to
build the first atomic bomb. One of the greatest scientific generals of
World War II, Loomis' legacy exists not only in the development of radar but
also in his critical role in speeding the day of victory.
FROM THE CRITICS
New Yorker
In the prewar years, Alfred Lee Loomis was one of the most powerful men on
Wall Street. But he was also a crucial, if heretofore unsung, figure in the
evolution of experimental physics in America. In this brisk, entertaining
biography, Loomis emerges as "the last of the great amateurs," a gentleman
scientist in the mold of Benjamin Franklin, with a quintessentially American
interest in practical, rather than merely theoretical, work. Both patron and
player, he turned his massive Tuxedo Park home into a kind of Yaddo for
scientists, while also helping to develop a host of inventions, including
the atom-smashing cyclotron. Once the Second World War began, he became a
central figure, along with his friends Vannevar Bush and Ernest Lawrence, in
the orchestration of American science's contribution to the war effort.
Conant shows how Loomis, as the head of the M.I.T. Radiation Laboratory,
dexterously governed "a scientific republic" of physicists who ended up
making major contributions to anti-submarine warfare, radar, and the
accuracy of night bombing. Her group portrait offers a healthy reminder of
how much good science depends on community and collaboration, not solitary
genius.
Publisher's Weekly
Alfred Lee Loomis (1887-1975) made his fortune in the 1920s by investing in
public utilities, but science was his first love. In 1928, he established a
premier research facility in Tuxedo Park, N.Y., that attracted such
brilliant minds as Einstein, Bohr and Fermi and became instrumental in the
Allies' WWII victory. Conant, a magazine writer, draws on studies, family
papers and interviews with Loomis's friends, family and colleagues (she's a
relative of two scientists who worked with Loomis) to trace the story of the
tycoon's professional and social life (the latter fairly racy). At the
Tuxedo Park lab, Loomis attracted top-flight scientists who experimented
with sound, time measurement and brain waves. During WWII, he established a
laboratory at MIT (the "rad lab") where radar was developed. He also served
as a conduit between civilian scientists and Roosevelt's military
establishment. Although he lost some of his top people to the Manhattan
Project, the "rad lab" was a major contributor to the allies' defense. In
his well-publicized personal life, Loomis angered family members by trying
to have his emotionally unstable wife institutionalized while he pursued an
affair with another woman. Through Conant's spare, unobtrusive prose and
well-paced storytelling, Loomis emerges as a contradictory man who craved
scientific accomplishment and influence, but rarely took credit for himself.
Those interested in science or WWII history will appreciate this
well-researched bio. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
More than a vivid biography of Alfred Lee Loomis, this is a bright and
intelligent portrait of a season of science in America that changed history.
Conant, who has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, Esquire, and GQ,
follows Loomis, a son of privilege, through his several incarnations as
lawyer, financier, and scientist. Using his immense wealth, Loomis, one of
the few tycoons to survive the Great Depression intact, founded his own
private laboratory in Tower House, his mansion within the exclusive New York
enclave of Tuxedo Park. Here, he and the many scientific worthies he
attracted conducted brainwave research as well as the seminal microwave
studies that led to the development of radar systems crucial to Allied
victory in World War II. Conant is so good at capturing the high-spirited,
freewheeling methodology brought to bear on the many critical research
projects that one sometimes forgets that the precocious upstarts behind the
method were greatly responsible for saving the world from fascism. Highly
recommended for both public and academic libraries. Michael F. Russo,
Louisiana State Univ. Libs., Baton Rouge Copyright 2002 Cahners Business
Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An examination of the remarkable role of the shadowy but powerful "amateur
physicist" whose intellect and energy spurred critical scientific research
that shortened and helped win WWII. The author cites the association of
Alfred Lee Loomis with her grandfather James Conant (president of Harvard
for 20 years) to underscore her fascination with what, in the absence of
extensive personal records, sometimes reads like fiction. Shrewd enough as a
young investment banker to convert the bulk of his investments into a pile
of cash on the brink of the Depression, Loomis got only richer as Wall
Street foundered. He had all anyone could want in cars, yachts, and island
hideaways (Hilton Head), so he funded his principal avocation: scientific
investigation. The physics laboratory he had built into his mansion in the
gilt-edged community of Tuxedo Park, New York, matched almost anything
industry or academia could offer. At first, the scientific community called
him an "eccentric dabbler," but soon figures like Bohr, Fermi, Einstein, and
Ernest Lawrence were cajoled into visits to Tuxedo Park, finding their host
to be a serious thinker and accomplished experimenter who could also pour
bathtub gin with a steady hand on the butler's night off. Fascinated by
physical phenomena, Loomis had investigated everything from ultrasonics to
brain waves as the world moved toward war in 1940. Realizing early on that
R&D would be critical to Allied success, he parlayed his influence, charm,
and connections (Secretary of War Henry Stimson was a cousin) into a key
management role in the refinement of super-secret radar technology and,
later, into championing the nuclear fission projects that led to the first
atomicbomb. Following a scandalous divorce, Loomis lived out his life in
relative obscurity, hastened into oblivion by the intense desire for privacy
that had always kept him out of the limelight Remarkable and remarkably
told, as if F. Scott Fitzgerald had penned Batman. |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| Sisterhood
of Spies: The Women of the OSS |
| Elizabeth P.
McIntosh |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
The daring missions and cloak-and-dagger skullduggery of America's World War
II intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), are well
documented and have become the stuff of legend. Yet the contributions of the
four thousand women who made up one-fifth of the OSS staff have gone largely
unheralded. Here for the first time is a chronicle of their fascinating
adventures, told by one of their own. A seasoned journalist and veteran of
sensitive OSS and CIA operations, Elizabeth McIntosh draws on her own
experiences and interviews with more than a hundred other OSS women to
reveal some of the most tantalizing stories and best-kept secrets of the war
in Europe and Asia. McIntosh weaves intimate portraits of dozens of
remarkable women into the storied development and operation of the OSS in
the 1940s. Along with famous names like Julia Child and Marlene Dietrich,
readers will discover such intrepid agents as Amy "Cynthia" Thorpe, who
seduced a Vichy official and stole naval codes from the French embassy;
Virginia Hall, who earned a Distinguished Service Cross for her work with
the French resistance running an underground railroad for downed fliers; and
others who recruited double agents, pioneered propaganda and subversion
techniques, and tracked the infamous Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny. Filled
with previously unpublished photos, this entertaining account is a historic
contribution to the literature of World War II and the culture of
intelligence operations.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publisher's Weekly
Within the ranks of America's intelligence community retirees, former agent
McIntosh is a legend. A one-time war correspondent, the young McIntosh
joined the fledgling Office of Strategic Services in 1943 and plunged gamely
into her assigned task of running morale operations against the Japanese in
Burma and China. She went on to become a longtime employee of the CIA. After
WWII, she wrote a rollicking account of her wartime experiences in
Undercover Girl (1947), now long out of print but still spoken of admiringly
by fellow former agents. In this new memoir, McIntosh includes others in the
"sisterhood of spies." Recording the exploits of an international cast, she
underscores how women were grossly underused in the wartime spy agency,
often being relegated to mainly secretarial duties. But McIntosh doesn't
skimp on the adventures of female combatants, such as the remarkable
Virginia Hall, aka "The Limping Lady" because of the gait produced by her
wooden leg. Hall was so daring she was dubbed by the French Gestapo as "one
of the most dangerous Allied agents in France." Another notable female spy
was the intrepid Betty Lussier, who was instrumental in forming an extensive
double-agent network in France. Amid the tales, interesting nuggets of spy
craft emergefor instance, that Morse code transmission is like handwriting,
individualized to the extent that trained recipients instantly recognize a
change in the sending "fist." This is an enthralling tribute to the largely
unsung Mata Haris who worked undercover to help win the war, told with
aplomb by one of their own. 25 photos, not seen by PW. (May)
Library Journal
This appears to be the first historical overview of the women who worked for
the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. Individual women who were involved,
including the author and Julia Child, have already written biographies
detailing their OSS work, but this book is broader in scope. Each chapter
outlines an individual woman or women in a particular department at the OSS.
McIntosh clearly demonstrates the breadth of activities in which the women
were involved, such as coding and decoding messages, creating
disinformation, organizing resistance groups behind enemy lines, and
analyzing research. The restrictions placed on women in the workplace are
noted but not harshly stated. The rule against spouses being placed in the
same theater of war is given as a factor in several divorces. In
less-skilled hands the chapters would be choppy, but McIntosh provides
excellent segues. Though written at a level that high school students can
understand, this book will be useful to undergraduate and graduate students
as well. For public and academic libraries.Julie Still, Rutgers Univ. Lib.,
Camden, NJ
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
McIntosh does justice to the brave and resourceful women who served the
nation so well in the Office of Strategic Services during the tense days of
the Second World War.
Arthur Schlesinger |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| The Secret
in Building 26: The Untold Story of America's Ultra War Against the U-Boat
Enigma Codes |
| Colin Burke, Jim
DeBrosse |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Reams have been written about the success of the British "Ultra" program in
cracking the Germans' Enigma code early in World War II, but few people know
what happened in 1942 when the Germans added a fourth rotor to the machine
that created the already challenging naval code - and tracking German
U-boats once again became impossible." "Joe Desch, an unassuming but
brilliant thirty-five-year-old engineer at the National Cash Register
Company in Dayton, Ohio, was given the task of creating a machine to break
the new Enigma settings - an assignment whose secrecy rivaled that of the
atom bomb project, and that was perhaps just as daunting. Not only was Desch
under unrelenting pressure to build the machine before the Battle of the
Atlantic was lost, but because he was the son of a German immigrant mother,
his own life was pinned under a microscope." "The Desch Bombe, as the
codebreaking machine was called, was a mammoth electromechanical marvel that
stood seven feet high, eleven feet long, and two feet wide. Row upon row of
commutator wheels imitated the rotors of the Enigma machine at extremely
high speeds, attempting to crack the code. But an earthshaking scandal
erupted late in 1943, when it was discovered that one of the engineers at
NCR was in touch with German and Japanese embassies. This engineer and his
wife were seized immediately, but the story of what happened to them has
never been revealed until now." Joe Desch suffered a nervous breakdown from
the pressure of his work; still, he was given the National Medal of Merit,
our country's highest civilian honor. When he died in 1987, even his
daughter had no idea how important his career had been to the Allied victory
in World War II. The Secret in Building 26 brings Desch's story, and the
entire story of the war against Enigma, to life.
FROM THE CRITICS
Alan L. Gropman - The Washington Post
The Secret in Building 26 is not easy going -- it could not be simple and
still be faithful to its subject. It needs to be read, however, by those who
want to understand the indispensable role of information technology in
modern warfare.
Kirkus Reviews
A hitherto unwritten chapter in WWII history, in which the worlds of cloak
and dagger and geekdom collide. Most of the extensive literature surrounding
the decipherment of the German navy's Enigma code centers on Bletchley Park
and the British contribution. When German cryptographers added a fourth
rotor to Enigma in 1942, write journalist/mystery novelist DeBrosse
(Southern Cross, 1994, etc.) and Burke (History/Univ. of Maryland), they
created a coding system that they were sure was unbreakable: "Theoretically,
at least, the number of ciphering possibilities generated by the advanced
naval Enigma of 1942 was far greater than the number of all the atoms in the
observable universe." The capture of several Enigma machines at sea-the
British navy made it a point to seek out German weather ships just for the
purpose-and the deconstruction of their complex wiring reduced the number of
possibilities, but not enough. Enter the good folks at the National Cash
Register Corporation of Dayton, Ohio, newly put to work for the Allied war
effort, and NCR's head of electrical research, Joseph Desch, "a devout
Catholic, a heavy after-hours drinker and a chain-smoker considerate enough
to confine his habit to his own office." The British were at first reluctant
to share data with the Americans, but in time they admitted Desch and
company as junior partners in the Enigma-cracking enterprise, and with a
little help from the legendarily eccentric British physicist Alan Turing,
the NCR staff eventually developed a machine capable of deciphering encoded
German naval communications. Surprisingly, the Germans never caught on, even
though a disgruntled NCR employee, one of those classic loners, did his best
toleak information to Axis agents. More surprisingly, the NCR folks honored
their pledge to secrecy long after the war, and only recently has any
documentary evidence been available to historians. Good stuff for those
interested in cryptography and WWII-era military intelligence. Agent:
Frances Collin |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| Against
the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the
Twentieth Century |
| Mark Sedgwick |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Against the Modern World is the first history of Traditionalism, an
important yet surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern
movement. Comprising a number of often secret but sometimes very influential
religious groups in the West and in the Islamic world, it affected
mainstream and radical politics in Europe and the development of the field
of religious studies in the United States, touching the lives of many
individuals.In the nineteenth century, at a time when progressive
intellectuals had lost faith in Christianity's ability to deliver religious
and spiritual truth, the West discovered non-Western religious writings.
From these beginnings grew Traditionalism, emerging from the occultist
milieu of late nineteenth-century France, and fed by the widespread loss of
faith in progress that followed the First World War. Working first in Paris
and then in Cairo, the French writer Rene Guenon rejected modernity as a
dark age, and sought to reconstruct the Perennial Philosophy -- the central
religious truths behind all the major world religions -- largely on the
basis of his reading of Hindu religious texts. Guenon's works stressed the
urgent need for the West's remaining spiritual and intellectual elite to
find both personal and collective salvation in the surviving vestiges of
ancient religious tradition.
A number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to Guenon's call with
attempts to put theory into practice. First in Europe, then in America and
the Islamic world, Traditionalists founded institutes, Sufi brotherhoods,
and Masonic lodges. Some published very successful books. Some attempted
without success to guide Fascism and Nazism along Traditionalist lines;
others later participated in political terror in Italy. Traditionalism
finally provided the ideological cement for the alliance of antidemocratic
forces in post-Soviet Russia, and at the end of the twentieth century began
to enter the debate in the Islamic world about the desirable relationship
between Islam and modernity. Although its appeal in the West was ultimately
limited, Traditionalism has wielded enormous influence in the field of
religious studies, through the work of such eminent Traditionalists as
Ananda Coomaraswamy, Huston Smith, Mircea Eliade, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Against the Modern World tells the previously untold story of how this
far-flung intellectual movement helped shape twentieth-century religious
life, politics, and scholarship, all the while remaining invisible to
outside observers. |
|
|
--------------------==========<<<<<~>>>>>==========-------------------- |
|
| The China
Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America |
| Bill Gertz |
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In his New York Times bestseller Betrayal, Bill Gertz exposed the sorry
state of America's foreign policy and military preparedness.Now, in The
China Threat, Gertz reveals the tragic consequences of America's misguided
foreign policy. Through missteps, fumbling, and outright appeasement, the
United States has helped establish the People's Republic of China as a new
global power that threatens American national security and world stability.
Shocking, previously unreported stories allow Gertz to tell the unvarnished
truth: The Communist Chinese dictatorship has targeted the United States
with an aggressive espionage campaign and aims to push America out of the
Pacific with a barrage of ever-increasing military threats. In addition to
his eye-opening revelations, Gertz offers a clearheaded strategy for
countering the China threat.
Gertz lays out how the Chinese are adhering to Mao Zedong's famous maxim:
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." And he shows how the
barrel is pointed at the United States.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
Gertz, a reporter for , takes a vehement stand on American foreign policy
with China, arguing that the US has made a grave error in assisting China in
its rise to global power. He accuses the Clinton administration of
deliberately leaking information about Chinese intelligence to avert the
FBI's campaign finance investigation, as well as covering up intelligence on
China that would have exposed their espionage abilities and arms sales.
Strongly worded, accusatory, and verging on the conspiratorial, this book
should be read with some reservations. Annotation c. Book News, Inc.,
Portland, OR (booknews.com) |
| |
| |
| |
| |
