The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB
by Milton Bearden, James Risen
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Book Summary Information
Author: James Risen, Milton BeardenEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Published: 2004-08-31
ISBN: 0345472500
Number of pages: 576
Publisher: Presidio Press
Book Reviews of The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB
Book Review: The Ending of An Age
Summary: 4 Stars
To many Americans, the CIA and KGB are things of a James Bond movie. Lots of sex and violence with the KGB being at best stupidly evil. In addition,many Americans today think of the CIA as almost more of an enemy to the Republic than Moslem terrorists, the Chinese, or the resurgent Russians. Far too many people today blame the CIA for not having clearer information about Iraq or worse actively plotting with the 'Government' to get us into a war.
This book of Bearden and Risen though, is one that both popular historians and casual reader alike can get into. They show that often intelligence services make educated guesses on fragments of information that may or may not be compromised by the enemy. Concerned with a period of global turmoil that was surprisingly governed by understood rules of intelligence gathering and other activities, this book brings the reader into the world of the CIA. Far from the James Bond style killing and counter killing by the Allies and Soviet Empire, it was one of limited violence between the two principal powers. A busted or captured agent was interrogated briefly and put on a plane for home, no killing and seldom more than a mild roughing up.
The dying days of the Soviet Empire were ironically the period that that the KGB (with help from American traitors like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hannsen)had wiped out most of the CIA operatives in Russia. The Americans had been sent home and the Russian agents of the Americans killed. The US had virtually no human intel assets behind the Iron Curtain. This is some of the most interesting parts of the book, seeing how much damage a couple of American traitors did as we blindly tried to understand what was going on. The bewildered KGB agents simply cannot believe their Empire is collapsing while they have gotten the upper hand over their Western enemies.
Bearden's insider accounts need to be taken with a grain of salt but his recounting of that period and the US efforts in Afghanistan are informing. Many of us who have studied the period or were in the Armed Forces knew in a general manner what was going on, but seeing the CIA somehow keep Congress on their side while turning on the heat on the Russians in Afghanistan is a both a pleasure and source of wonder. One does not have to think hard to wonder what our present Congress would have done in similar circumstances.
This book illustrates a critical period in our history. Depicting intelligence services being blindsided by events is something critics should remember happens far too often. No intel service of any country has a 100% batting average, not even the legendary Mossad of Israel and that is something Congress and the American public too often forget.
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