Tim Weiner's 'Enemies' Wears Its Anti-FBI Agenda On Its Sleeve

Susan Rosenfeld, the FBI's first official historian is critical of Tim Weiner's Enemies: A History of the FBI. She offers a detailed look at Weiner's book at the History News Network.

This book is not an objective study of FBI history. Instead it selects examples that bolster the contention that the FBI put its wars against anarchists, Communists, the New Left, and foreign and domestic terrorists ahead of any consideration for the Bill of Rights. Weiner concedes that proponents from all these groups actually committed acts of espionage or violence. But for the most part, he features perpetrators who were never punished.

Weiner also oversells the role that surveillance played in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and beyond. As former foreign counterintelligence (FCI) agent Robert Lamphere noted in The FBI-KGB War, “only a small fraction of the New York field office [in the 1940s]—fifty or sixty men out of a thousand—was concerned with Soviet espionage and few agents outside the squad really knew or cared much about Soviet spies.”   

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

http://hnn.us/articles/tim-weiners-enemies-wears-its-anti-fbi-agenda-its-sleeve

Note: The piece offers a link to a rebuttal by Tim Weiner, but I was unable to link to that piece.

Sin Won: Island Of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Dommed Quest To Clean Up Sin-Loving New York

Joseph C. Goulden, the author of The Dictionary of Espionage: Spyspeak Into English, wrote a good review of Richard Zachs' Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York (Doubleday) for the Washington Times.    

...Years before Roosevelt became president (in 1901), what happened when he took on the happily corrupt city of New York? Sin won.

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

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/16/when-teddy-took-on-sin/

Former CIA Field Commander Gary Berntsen On The Recent Attacks In Afghanistan

Gary Berntsen, the former CIA field commander in Afghanistan appeared on CNN and commented on the recent attacks in Afghanistan and how the Afghanistan security forces responded.

You can watch the video via the below link:

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2012/04/16/exp-cia-berntsen-afghanistan-troops.cnn#/video/bestoftv/2012/04/16/exp-cia-berntsen-afghanistan-troops.cnn

Ronald Kessler's Column: Secret Service Agents Violated Top Secret Clearance

Ronald Kessler, the veteran journalist and author of In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect, broke the story of Secret Service agents hiring prositiutes in Colombia.

He writes in his latest Newsmax.com column that the Secret Service agents violated their Top Secret clearances.

By allegedly hiring prostitutes, married Secret Service agents in Colombia violated their top-secret security clearances.

Every agent has such a security clearance. An extra-marital affair if proven can be grounds for revoking a clearance. Without that, no one can be an agent.

While some are single, most of the 11 Secret Service agents and uniformed officers suspended in the Colombia scandal are married. Two are supervisors. Aside from jeopardizing security clearances, engaging prostitutes violates the basic Secret Service code of conduct.

The scandal began last week two days before President Barack Obama’s trip to Cartagena in conjunction with the Summit of the Americas. A prostitute at the Hotel Caribe refused to leave an agent’s room because he had not paid her.

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

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/secret-service-colombia-prostitutes/2012/04/15/id/435919

George Washington Named Britain's Greatest Ever Military Opponent

Foxnews.com reports that George Washington has been named Britain's greatest ever foe, according to Britain's National Army Museum.

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/04/15/george-washington-named-britain-greatest-ever-military-opponent/#ixzz1s5i2fdPm?test=latestnews

You can also read Jasper Copping's report at the Telegraph via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9204961/George-Washington-named-Britains-greatest-ever-foe.html

Was A Cop Killer An FBI Informant?

Micah Morrison at the New York Daily News reports on the idea that the man who is suspected of killing NYPD Officer was an FBI informant.

Forty years ago this weekend, Police Office Phillip Cardillo was gunned down in Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam Mosque No. in Harlem. No one was ever convicted in the case. To the police rank and file, it is the greatest scandal in NYPD history — a story of murder, betrayal and coverup.

On April 14, 1972, Cardillo and three other patrolmen were lured into an apparent ambush in Mosque No. 7 by a fake “officer in distress” call. In the ensuing melee, all four officers were badly beaten and Cardillo was shot. Top NYPD brass quickly ordered a full retreat from the mosque.

The result: no crime scene, no physical evidence, no witnesses.

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

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/a-killer-fbi-informant-article-1.1061461?localLinksEnabled=false

In Search Of The Third Man

Mary Russell at the Irish Times takes a tour through Venna that retraces one of my favorite films, The Third Man.

The film The Third Man, made in 1948, only three years after WWll ended, shows the underbelly of this elegant city almost totally destroyed by Allied bombs, divided like Berlin and patrolled by the same Allied Forces, its postwar shortages making it a haven for black marketeers. Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles, is an American racketeer living in the Russian quarter where, our guide tells us, most of the criminals lived. Why? Because the Russians were easily bribed. Harry’s friend Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) turns up to look for him and finally locates him, Harry’s hiding place betrayed by his loving cat.

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

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/travel/2012/0414/1224314659446.html

Above is a photo of Orson Welles as the criminal Harry Lime in the film and below is a photo of the director of The Third Man, Carol Reed, and the writer of the film, Graham Greene.