Former CIA CI Chief: To Catch A Spy: The Art Of Counterintelligence

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of James M. Olson’s To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence 

For more than three decades, James M. Olson ranked high among the CIA operatives tasked with pilfering secrets from the enemy — in those days, chiefly the Soviet Union. As a young officer he went underground, literally, to tap a buried cable connecting an outlying military post with a Moscow office.

He ended his career as chief of counterintelligence (CI, in intel jargon), one of the more ticklish positions at CIA. As one of the successors to the controversial James J. Angleton, Mr. Olson inherited a “disgraceful legacy that for years discredited the CI profession.” As he puts it, “Do operators really want to hear that there may be problems with their careers?”

He is credited with restoring CI’s reputation. In retirement, Mr. Olson joined the faculty of the Bush School at Texas A&M University.

Why is counterintelligence important? As Mr. Olson writes, it “consists of all the measures a nation takes to protect its citizens, secrets and technology from foreign spies.” And over the years some 80 countries (including friends) have attempted to spy on the United States.

Mr. Olson offers several commandments for effective counterintelligence. First on his list is taking the offensive — through double-agent and penetration operations. He cites several instances in which in-place CIA sources fingered American turncoats — including CIA officer Philip Agee and agency employee Larry Wu-Tai Chin, for instance, who spied for the Soviets and Chinese, respectively.

Knowing that the CIA is actively recruiting inside sources would keep the opposition off-balance. He would have American agents constantly probe rival agencies for recruits, to the point of sending bogus “walk ins” to foreign embassies to offer their services.

Conversely, he advocates strong in-house vigilance to detect enemy penetrations. If a colleague is acting suspiciously, or showing signs of sudden unexplained wealth, alert the counterintelligence office so that an investigation can be made. Such vigilance could have toppled CIA officer Aldridge Ames early on when he began lavish spending — with Soviet money, as events proved.

And why was not suspicion directed at Ana Montes, the ranking Cuban specialist in the Defense Intelligence Agency — and who made no secret of her admiration of the Castro regime, and her loathing of U.S. policy toward Latin America. She spied for Cuba for six years before she aroused suspicions of an alert co-worker.

As Mr. Olson laments, one reason persons remain silent about a suspicious colleague is the inbred American aversion to acting as an informer on acquaintances. “Had [Montes] kept her mouth shut,” Mr. Olson writes, she might have escaped exposure forever.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/7/book-review-to-catch-a-spy-by-james-m-olsen/ 

Kidnap: The Ransom Business

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business.

In “Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business,” author Anja Shortland calls kidnapping “the trickiest trade in the world.” Thousands of persons are kidnapped annually, in many instances to be ransomed by employers’ insurance, a multimillion dollar annual business. And Ms. Shortland addresses the logical question: “Does kidnapping for ransom insurance encourage kidnapping? Would people be safer if insurance did not exist?”


At hand is a read that is both fascinating and terrifying — of innocent persons snatched off the streets and threatened with death unless someone pays for their release. Kidnapping is so prevalent in odd corners of the world that freeing of hostages has led to the establishment of “ground rules” that are generally obeyed both by villains and the ransom payers.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/5/book-review-kidnap-inside-the-ransom-business-by-a/

Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler & A Woman Of No Consequence: The Untold Story of The American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a review in the Washington Times of Madame Fourcade's Secret War and A Woman of No Importance, two books that honor two women spies in WWII.

In time of war, should women be shunted aside and the fighting left to men? Call it chivalry or sexual prejudice, but the notion of women on or near the battlefield was historically anathema to most societies.

So consider the shock felt by French males early in World War II when they realized that two of the main leaders in their country’s resistance were females. Biographies that are exceptionally written and researched explore their respective careers.

Quite a pair, to be sure. Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, from a socially prominent family, at age 31 was “cool and elegant, with porcelain skin and high cheek-bones,” a blonde “used to being the object of male scrutiny.” The mother of two children, Fourcade was estranged from her husband. (She ignored her married name during the war; after peace, she married a man named Fourcade, the name used in the biography.)

In the late 1930s, she met a former French army intelligence officer alarmed at Hitler’s rise to power. She joined him in publishing a journal which detailed German strength, including a smack-on accurate order of battle. Such became her entry into intelligence.

… Of equal importance, perhaps, was intelligence on a top-secret site where the Nazis were developing guided missiles to rain down on Britain, hoping to create war-ending public hysteria. An innocent-appearing female secretary at the site gleaned all that was needed to know. Bombing raids destroyed so much of the facility that its missile attacks (the so-called V-2s) were an ineffective nuisance.

Ironically, many men in Alliance did not realize that they worked for a woman. And when they realized her gender, many grumbled. A British intelligence chief objected to women “as a matter of principle.”

Marie-Madeleine did not hesitate to use her considerable charm when necessary; yet she was captured twice by Nazi security. In one instance, she surveyed the space between her cell bars, stripped naked and slithered to freedom.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/3/book-review-madame-fourcades-secret-war-by-lynne-o/ 

Kill Caesar: Assassination In The Early Roman Empire

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Rose Mary Sheldon’s Kill Caerar: Assassination in the Early Roman Empire for the Washington Times.

The truly professional service officers sworn to guard chiefs of state and other dignitaries — notably U.S. Secret Service officers — have a hard rule: Good intelligence is the key to saving the subject’s life.

When intelligence fails, the result can be disaster. And such certainly was the case in the Roman Empire. Despite the detailing of up to 9,000 men to guard the emperors, 85 percent of the men who sat on the throne were assassinated.

Even Rose Mary Sheldon, a professor of history at Virginia Military Institute, and our foremost authority on ancient intelligence, was startled at the body count.

Why and how did the Romans resort to assassination to rid themselves of rulers? Ms. Sheldon explores the fate of Julius Caesar and his four immediate successors to explore what went horribly wrong in Rome — how security failures and seemingly endless family wrangles cost so many lives.

Her case studies show that the Roman Empire was a boiling cauldron of conspiracy, where even an emperor’s brothers or sons were not beyond suspicion. She lists four broad groups an emperor had to control to feel safe: The aristocracy, the military, the populace and his own family.

More unsettling, “the very people who made up the emperor’s closest circle were also the ones who could endanger his security.” 

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/4/book-review-kill-caesar-by-rose-mary-sheldon/

Presidents Of War

Joseph C. Goulden, a veteran journalist and author of Korea: The Untold Story of the War and Truth Is the First Casualty, on the Tonkin resolution, offers a good review in the Washington Times of Michael Beschloss’ Presidents Of War.

A distinguished historian who has written 10 outstanding books perhaps can be excused for a single outrageous sentence that leaves a reader shaking his head in disbelief.

Michael Beschloss makes just such a misstep in his otherwise magnificent account of how American presidents went to war over the centuries. He writes that the way the nation entered World War II “did so much to elevate [President] Roosevelt’s standing that it increased the temptation for later Presidents to elevate their reputation by seeking foreign conflict.”

Pardon my dissenting blink. As Washington correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer 1967-68, I witnessed Lyndon Johnson’s open agony on a daily basis as he fought a war that essentially destroyed his presidency. And I thought of the frustrations endured by President Truman by waging the Korean conflict into which he was abruptly thrust. Neither man felt that war “elevated” their reputations, to be sure.

That quibble aside, Mr. Beschloss offers fascinating insight about how presidents have dealt with what is surely their most demanding responsibility: That of asking Congress to put the nation into war.

The men who created the United States wisely decided that such a decision should not be left to the president alone. Memories of European wars commenced by unrestricted monarchs haunted the Founding Fathers. In their view, “war would be a last resort under the political system they had invented.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/1/book-review-presidents-of-war-by-michael-beschloss/ 

Best Of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story Of The Cold War

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War for the Washington Times.

A quiet but deadly game is constantly waged in Washington and environs between CIA and FBI officers and their Russian counterparts.

The goal is to persuade the adversary to switch sides in the age-old game of spying. How often do such overtures succeed? Such secrets are safely sequestered in vaults.

That such contests could evolve into friendship is perhaps unspeakable. But at hand is a truly remarkable account of one such bonding, with an outcome of international significance — a highly readable work that is headed for Hollywood.

At first glance, John “Jack” Platt and Gennady Semyovich Vasilenko were an unlikely match. Born in San Antonio, Texas, Platt served a hitch in the Marines before joining the CIA. His daily western garb earned him the nickname “Cowboy.” A self-described third generation alcoholic, he knocked back 12 to 14 beers daily — plus nips of harder stuff — during a series of agency jobs.

Boisterous and profane, Platt, had a knack for recruiting that propelled him up the ranks, with assignments abroad. A study of defector motivation created a list of vulnerabilities stated in the acronym MECMAFO — “Money hunger, Ego, Criminal acts, Midlife crisis, Addiction, Family trouble and Outcast loners.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/14/book-review-best-of-enemies-by-gus-russo-and-erick/ 

The Spy Who Was Left Behind: Russia, The United States, And The True Story Of The Betrayal And Assassination Of A CIA Agent

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Michael Pullara’s The Spy Who Was Left Behind: Russia, the United States, and the Betrayal and assassination of a CIA Agent. 

The 1993 murder was a mystery from the start. A single rifle shot to the head killed Fred Woodruff, CIA branch chief in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, as he rode in a car on a remote mountain road.

The driver was the body guard for Eduard Shevardnadze, formerly foreign minister under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Once the USSR dissolved, he became chair of Georgia’s governing State Council.

Woodruff was in Georgia to help Shevardnadze form a protective security force. The country was suffering political and social turmoil, with crime syndicates running the equivalent of a shadow government. And the Soviets were trying to regain control of Georgia.

Author Michael Pullara, a Houston attorney, became interested in the murder because he had known the Woodruff family as a boy in the small town of Searcy, Arkansas.

Early press reports blamed the killing on a Georgian soldier, Anzor Sharmaidze, 19, who was angered when the car carrying Woodruff ignored his wave for help with his own broken-down car.

Although Sharmaidze claimed he was tortured into falsely confessing, a judge found him guilty and sentenced him to six years in prison.

A veteran trial lawyer, Mr. Pullara doubted that the full truth was told. The military had fuzzed the truth about the death of his father In Vietnam, thus he was no stranger to official fibbing.

He wanted to know more. As he writes, “I wondered what I can do with a law license, a passport and a credit card.” Thus began an odyssey for the truth that consumed almost 20 years. 

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/7/book-review-the-spy-who-was-left-behind-by-michael/ 

Mussolini And Hitler

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Christian Goeschel’s Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance.

Might we call it “the pact made in Hades?”

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, tyrants who did not especially care for one another personally, signed onto a partnership that was a major step toward the war that devastated much of Europe.

Hitler wanted his southern flank protected, recognizing the ability of the Royal British Navy to land a force in Italy that could cut the legs beneath his campaign centered on France.

Mussolini had his eyes on converting much of North Africa into Italian colonies, ousting the British and French.

The “partnership” — the alliance deserves the quotation marks — was fraught with betrayal and mistrust. Many historians have depicted the duo as “vain, pompous, and jealous rivals.” Mussolini especially has been described as, a “boob” and opportunist.

Nonetheless, British historian Christian Goeschel contends, convincingly, that the partnership, despite its many flaws, was “decisive in destroying the inter-war Wilsonian order.”

At first glance, the men were ideological opposites. Hitler bullied his way to leadership with rhetoric promising to “restore” war-ruined Germany. Mussolini, a sometime editor, started as a socialist; by the time he achieved power in 1921, he cared naught for democracy.

Initial relations were restrained. Mussolini ridiculed Hitler’s putsch as a “caricature of Italian Fascism” — a backhanded acknowledgement of his power. After some early slurs, Hitler recognized Mussolini as a “tough anti-Marxist” in his book, “Mein Kampf.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/1/book-review-mussolini-and-hitler-by-christian-goes/ 

The Skripal Files: The Life And Near Death Of A Russian Spy

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a review in the Washington Times of Mark Urban’s The Skripal Files. 

Speaking to reporters in December 2010, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied that his spy agencies had assassination squads that targeted defectors. But he voiced an ominous warning. “Whatever thirty pieces of silver those people may have gotten, they will stick in their throat.”

Despite his shortcomings as a decent human, give Mr. Putin credit: He carries out his threats. Any person unfortunate enough to cross him is a step removed from the grave.

The civilized world was shocked in March when a defected Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, were stricken with a mysterious poison in the quiet British town of Salisbury. They were in critical condition for weeks but survived. Scientific tests identified the poison involved as Novichok, developed by Russia for germ warfare. It had been smeared on the door knob of the Skripal home.

The attack matched earlier Russian murder operations, notably the poisoning death of defector Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

Mr. Skripal, a onetime Red Army airborne colonel, had shifted to the GRU, the military’s intelligence arm. Disillusioned with the Communist regime, he tried to resign, but was refused. (As Mr. Putin himself once said, “There is no such thing as an ex-KGB man.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/21/book-review-the-skripal-files-by-mark-urban/  

Bureau Of Spies: The Secret Connections Between Espionage And Journalism In Washington

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Steven T. Usdin’s Bureau of Spies: The Secret Connections Between Espionage and Journalism in Washington.

Having spent a lifetime in and around journalism, I can attest to the profession’s overlap with espionage. Practitioners in both fields are devoted to acquiring information, by one means or another.

The major difference is that we ink-stained wretches share what we find with the public, while spies work for other masters, often adversaries of the United States.

But the crafts frequently come into proximity, wittingly or not. Steven Usdin provides a readable accounting of a relationship centered around the former citadel of Washington journalism, the

As he documents, for years the building abounded with intelligence agents, both open and disguised. The reasons are obvious. Undeclared spies can cadge information from reporters who are unaware of the affiliation of persons with whom they chat, be it in the elevator or at the press club bar.

Even more important, from the espionage point of view, is the opportunity to use a trusting press as a means of “planting rumors and lies,” as Mr. Usdin writes.

The 14-story National Press Building was hailed as the most modern private office building in Washington when it opened in 1927, under auspices of the National Press Club. Located on 14th Street NW, a few strides off Pennsylvania Avenue, it is an easy walk to the White House.

Over the decades spies and snoops of many loyalties flocked to the building. Mr. Usdin ticks them off: Soviets. Nazis (both foreign and domestic). British. Japanese. Even the White House and CIA.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/2/book-review-the-bureau-of-spies-by-steven-t-usdin/

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine Q&A with Joseph C. Goulden via the below link: 

 www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2012/05/q-with-joseph-c-goulden-author-of.html 

The Secret World: A History Of Intelligence

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Christopher Andrew's The Secret World: A History of Intelligence. 

At hand is a truly magisterial work, a sweeping history that stretches from the biblical era to the present. Christopher Andrew is the leading academic intelligence historian of our time. A professor at the University of Cambridge, he has written a veritable shelf of books on intelligence.

“The Secret World” is a must-read for any person with a serious interest in intelligence. But be forewarned. The more than 800 pages of text require more than a casual scan, but are well worth the investment of serious time.

His evidence, buttressed in 111 pages of documentation sources, is rich with anecdotes and opinions of world leaders who relied on — or ignored — intelligence as a tool of office.

Despite his overall admiration of the intel trade, Mr. Andrew is coldly objective about instances where matters were flubbed. Consider, for instance, Israeli spies who scouted Canaan as the Promised Land centuries ago. The Canaanites, they claimed, “included giants who made them feel no bigger than grasshoppers.” He also notes that some glitches are timeless, citing a biblical operation where spies ended up in a brothel, thus melding “the two oldest professions.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/19/book-review-the-secret-world-by-christopher-andrew/ 

A Spy Called Orphan: The Enigma Of Donald Maclean

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Roland Phillips’ A Spy Named Orphan: The Enigma of Donald Maclean.

Even after the passage of more than half a century, anyone even vaguely familiar with national security clearances must blink at British handling of the coterie of Soviet spies known as “The Cambridge Five.”

Consider the rogue at hand, Donald Maclean. Although a blithering drunk for much of his career in the Foreign Office, he seemed on a path to be foreign minister while in his mid-30s.

Roland Phillips, who had a long career in London publishing, uses newly-released British archives to add fresh details on the oft-told story of the five Cambridge students recruited as Soviet agents the 1930s.

He also gained access to Maclean family papers.

Aside from H.R. “Kim” Philby who culminated his career as counterintelligence chief for British intelligence, Maclean was the most effective agent.

Campus communists inevitably drew the attention of Soviet recruiters. Maclean possessed four desirable qualities of a secret agent: “an inherent class resentfulness, a predilection for secretiveness, a yearning to belong, and an infantile appetite for praise and reassurance.” He was given the code name “Waise” in German, meaning “Orphan.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/10/book-review-a-spy-named-orphan-by-roland-phillips/ 

Star Of The North: A Chilling Novel About The Brutal Regime In North Korea

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of D.B. John’s Star of the North for the Washington Times.

At hand is what could be termed a double-header of a book. The main story line involves the search by a Korean-born CIA officer for her twin sister, abducted as a child as part of a sickeningly nefarious plot by the country’s leader.

Yet this account is overshadowed by D.B. John’s depiction of the wretched daily lives of the Korean people under the rule of three generations of tyrants. (A personal note. I have been a “Korea watcher” for 30-odd years, since writing a book on the Korean War. And Mr. John’s depiction of life in the North is so brutal as to thrust the “thriller element” of his book into the shadows.)

The book is set in the reign of Kim Jong-il, second of the family of tyrants which has ruled since the 1940s. How does the “Dear Leader” (and his son, the current ruler, for that matter) remain in power?

In the words of an observer, “He’s a survivor, playing a poor hand with great skill. His weapons keep him safe from us. Hunger keeps him safe at home. His people think only of where their next meal is coming from, not of rebellion. And he’ll kill as many of them as it takes to stay in power.”

The portrayal of famine-induced suffering, as told in the words of an elderly shopkeeper, is so heartrending as to be unreadable. Children pick through the droppings of oxen “in search of undigested seeds to eat New graves were dug up, and the corpses vanished. Parents took food from their own children.”

This human suffering is carried out against a backdrop of giant murals that are omnipresent on every street displaying the smug face of The Great Leader — Kim il-Sung, grandfather of the current tyrant.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/1/book-review-star-of-the-north-by-db-john/ 

A Bombshell Breach Of Security Issues

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers an interesting piece in the Washington Times.

The admonition “do not brag” likely will not be found in any intelligence manual. But strictures on revealing “sources and methods,” as well as common sense, dictate that certain matters are not discussed in public.

The obvious drawback to such disclosures — be they deliberate or accident — is that adversaries will take advantage of such information to avoid future losses.

Thus, considerable concern and dismay were heard in the intelligence community in early May about what can only be described as a bombshell breach of security procedures.

In an article distributed worldwide, the Reuters news agency reported that what were described as “four very senior members” of the Islamic State terrorist group were captured near the Turkish border by American and Iraqi intelligence officers.

Reuters reported that the team used intelligence garnered from what was described by as “a popular messaging app, WhatsApp,” which was attached to the cell phone of another ISIS figure who was captured earlier.

The chain of events began in February, when Turkish counterterrorism officers captured a man named Ismail al-Eithawi, who was a close aide to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, described as the “Iraqi-born leader of the group known as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” (ISIS).

The capture produced the “WhatsApp” device and a sizable amount of electronic gear and other documents. The captured man, al-Eithawi, was no flunky. According to Iraqi security officials, he was tasked with arranging the secret transfer of ISIS funds to bank accounts around the world.

…One can envision what happened when the Reuters report was circulated through Middle Eastern media: A mad scramble by ISIS figures to dispose of mobile phones that might be tapped, and to clean out the covert bank accounts before they were seized.

Who was responsible for the leak? Several retired American intelligence veterans — stressing that they had no first-hand knowledge of the episode — were hesitant to point a finger.

But these veterans stressed that any Americans with even basic training by the Central Intelligence Agency would have known instantly the necessity of keeping the seizure a secret.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/16/a-bombshell-breach-of-security-issues/ 

When The 'Bomb' Prevented A War: 1983: Reagan, Andropov, And A World On The Brink

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Taylor Downing's 1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink. 

  

Will historians ever acknowledge that the atomic bomb, despite its horrors, stands as the most effective anti-war weapon in history?

The last worldwide conflict ended in 1945. The ensuing years, to be sure, were marred by conflicts of varying intensity — Korea and Vietnam, to name two. But for 73 years, the world has avoided a major-powers conflict of the magnitude that bloodied Europe for centuries.

The most significant stand-off of the era was the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, with a mutual antipathy and exchange of threats that could have resulted in nuclear disaster.

One particularly frightening flash point came in 1983, when events on both sides caused the adversaries to veer toward a showdown that author Taylor Downing, a veteran British TV producer, likens to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

But there was a significant difference. The showdown over Cuba was carried out publicly, with detailed media attention as American forces were mobilized because of Soviet installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba.

But the severity of the 1983 confrontation, with several exceptions, was known only to a handful of military and intelligence officials.

Both adversaries realized that any conflict carried serious consequence. President Eisenhower’s declared policy was “massive retaliation.” Under Ronald Reagan, the catch words were “mutual assured destruction” — MAD, in defense lingo. Mr. Reagan came into office in 198l as a hard-line anti-communist. He began strengthening U.S. weapons systems. Nonetheless, he sent friendly handwritten notes to Leonid Brezhnev, who then ruled the USSR, urging the relaxation of tensions beginning with the release of political prisoners. Mr. Brezhnev sent back “an icy reply.”

Yuri Andropov, Mr. Brezhnev’s successor, had established his own tough credentials as head of the KGB. The Reagan build-up caused fears that the U.S. would use its superiority to wipe out the Soviet political leadership.

The Soviets began developing powerful new missiles. They also strongly backed proxy “revolutionaries” in locales ranging from Central America to Angola.

Yet despite his rhetoric, one of Mr. Reagan’s first overtures was a proposal to cut nuclear arsenals by 33 percent — a move Moscow rejected. (In retirement, Mr. Reagan would call MAD “the craziest thing I ever heard of.”)

But relations were uneasy from the start. 

Communication glitches resulted in both the U.S. and the USSR receiving false (and quickly discounted) reports of incoming missiles — errors that contributed to mutual jitters. In both instances, preemptive counterstrikes were barely avoided.

Then the Soviets shot down a South Korean airliner that had strayed off course on a flight from Alaska to Seoul, killing 269 persons. The Soviets claimed to have mistaken the commercial aircraft for an American reconnaissance plane. Mr. Reagan denounced the attack as a “crime against humanity.”

As they watched Mr. Reagan’s military buildup, Soviet officers became convinced that what they called “the correlation of world forces” was turning against them. As a psychological warfare tactic, U.S. air and naval probes tested Soviet borders.

Mr. Downing contends that officials in the Reagan administration did not understand the depth of Soviet fears. He ignores a CIA analysis at the time describing Soviet leaders as “pedestrian, isolated and self-absorbed paranoid and fearful of their own people and of a world they believed [was] relentlessly hostile and threatening.” They feared a repetition of the June 1941 German invasion that almost destroyed the USSR.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/18/book-review-1983-by-taylor-downing/ 

I Like Ike: The Age Of Eisenhower

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of William I. Hitchcock's The Age of Eisenhower: American and the World in the 1950s.

Academic historians are giving the presidential performance of Dwight D. Eisenhower a well-deserved second look, and the results show the contemporary political pundits who derided him were either biased or blind to his accomplishments.

A 2017 poll of presidential historians ranked Gen. Eisenhower fifth, behind Lincoln, Washington and the two Roosevelts.

William Hitchcock, of the University of Virginia, spent eight years of meticulous research in newly accessible archives to produce a splendid biography that belies the image of Mr. Eisenhower as a benign do-nothing president who was more interested in golf than governing.

Mr. Eisenhower had already achieved fame as the conqueror of Germany, a feat that made him the most popular person in America.

As a military man, he had no interest in — or need for — further acclaim. Thus powerful Republicans expended much energy in convincing him to seek the presidential nomination in 1952. (Disclosure: My father was in the Texas delegation whose vote helped him defeat the early favorite, Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio.)

The slogan “I Like Ike” echoed around the country, and he won handily on a pledge to “fix the mess in Washington” resulting from 20 years of Democratic rule. He cited “unchecked inflation, a spike in taxes, and the spreading tentacles of a grasping bureaucracy.”

You can read the rest the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/13/book-review-the-age-of-eisenhower-by-william-i-hit/ 

The Kremlin's Candidate

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Jason Matthews’ The Kremlin’s Candidate for the Washington Times.

An ever-present nightmare for an intelligence agency is the prospect of an enemy officer winnowing his or her way into a position where he or she can endanger operations.

High-level traitors are not unknown in the trade. Consider the British officer Kim Philby who spied for the Soviets while working in counterintelligence for his country’s Secret Intelligence Service.

Author Jason Matthews posits an even more audacious penetration in his delightfully-readable novel in which Russia has positioned a candidate for the position of director of Central Intelligence.

Mr. Matthews writes with the insider-authenticity of an officer who served for 33 years in the CIA’s Operations Directorate, specializing in denied-area assignments.

“The Kremlin’s Candidate” is the third book in his Red Sparrow series, with carry-over characters, but nonetheless a stand-alone work. It reinforces Mr. Matthews‘ dominance as a writer of intelligence fiction.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/8/book-review-the-kremlins-candidate-by-jason-matthe/ 

The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia And The Ghosts Of The Past

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a review in the Washington Times of Shaun Walker’s The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past.

Fellow writers take note: Your work is being monitored every day by a Russian agency that formerly was part of the Russian SVR foreign intelligence service, successor to the KGB of the old Soviet Union.

Officers examine the world’s press, searching for instances of what they term to be “Russophobia,” loosely defined as anything critical of the regime of President Vladimir Putin.

The agency’s director, Igor Nikolaichuk, maintains what is tantamount to an enemy list, ranking other nations’ hostility to Russia. One listing he displayed to Shaun Walker, author of this insightful look into Mr. Putin’s Russia, ranked Austria as the most hostile, followed closely by the U.S.

Depicting the West — and its “controlled press” — as an enemy scheming to overthrow Russia is one of the methods enabling Mr. Putin to maintain a considerable popularity. He is essentially unopposed as he seeks a fourth term in March, which would keep him in office until 2024.

Mr. Walker, a reporter for the Guardian, a British newspaper, has worked in Russia for two decades. His portrayal of Mr. Putin’s rule is based on interviews throughout Russia, from the Pacific shores to Europe. The man has astounding courage — seeking out, for instance, Chechen thugs who would happily put a bullet into his head.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/18/book-review-the-long-hangover-by-shaun-walker/ 

Hitler In Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood And America

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden reviewed Steven J. Ross' Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America for the Washington Times.

As Adolph Hitler tried to spread his Nazi tentacles beyond Germany in the 1930s, he benefited from a so-called “fifth column” of ideological supporters in several nations, notably France.

But many of his henchmen — formal or free-lance — also had their eyes on the movie capital of the world: Hollywood. An estimated 150 million persons worldwide saw at least one movie weekly, most of them produced by Hollywood studies with Jewish owners.

So Germany launched a two-pronged attack on the industry. The first goal was to prevent the studios from producing films attacking Hitler or his government, a chore eagerly pursued by Georg Gyssling, the German consul in Los Angeles.

Hitler was well-aware of the propaganda value of movies. As he wrote in “Mein Kampf,” movies had greater propaganda value than the written word because people “will more readily accept a pictorial representation than read an article of any length.”

The second target was the movie mogul themselves, and the major stars of their films, who were targeted for assassination by ad hoc bands of Nazi sympathizers. One plot discussed was to have machine-gun squads drive through the Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights, murdering anyone in sight.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/11/book-review-hitler-in-los-angeles-by-steven-j-ross/ 

Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability In The United States

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden reviewed Loch K. Johnson’s Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States for the Washington Times.

In 1984, author Loch K. Johnson took advantage of a dinner encounter to ask a question of William Casey, then the director of central intelligence: “What is the role of Congress in intelligence?”

One can imagine the snort that came with Mr. Casey’s reply: “The business of Congress is to stay the [expletive deleted] out of my business.”

Although the political correctness of the times dictates that few persons in the intelligence community would publicly agree with Mr. Casey, such a sentiment exists, even if sub rosa.

Mr. Johnson, a professor at the University of Georgia, has been pushing for enhanced intelligence oversight for more than 40 years, commencing with his staff work with the Senate’s Church Committee in 1975.

The intelligence community was reeling about disclosure of programs that, in Mr. Johnson’s understated words, “strayed outside the boundaries of law” — most notably, operations aimed at discrediting the Vietnam War peace movement and the struggle for civil rights.

Sen. Frank Church, Idaho Democrat, the presidency in his eyes, picked up on a comment he attributed to McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser to President Kennedy, that the CIA was a “rogue elephant on a rampage.”

Mr. Church set out to prove such a case and opened uncountable drawers filled with dirty linen. But as testimony brought out, many of CIA’s claimed misdeeds were performed on presidential orders, and Mr. Church had to sidle away from his key charge.

Nonetheless, his crusade resulted in the creation of intelligence oversight committees in both houses of Congress.

In the opinion of many retired and present officers, the result is that intelligence now is run by hypercautious lawyers, rather than professionals. Officers shy away from risky (but important) operations rather risk grilling by hostile congressmen in public hearings.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/4/book-review-spy-watching-by-loch-k-johnson/