The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB by Milton Bearden, James Risen Summary and Reviews
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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.
Book Review: Cabul wasn't so important in USSR's defeat
Summary: 3 Stars
I read this regular book, here in Brazil.This book was writen by two CIA's men.This book is about the last years of Cold War.The years between 1985 and 1991 are the focus of this regular book.
The failures of this are:
1-Has too much space dedicated to Afghanisthan.
2-This book is very biased.
3-Even having some little paragraphs about years, before 1985, this book almost talks about 1985 and 1991.
War in Afghanisthan wasn't so important, in Soviet Union's defeat.The real thing was that socialism was defeated in Afghanisthan, years before Soviet Union invasion of Afghanisthan.As a source of lives, Afghanisthan killed (in almost ten years) just about 15,000 soviets, against more than 23,000,000 just between 1941 and 1945.The authors were in afghanisthan and they use this experience as a big part of this book.
As a external way to broke Soviet Union the fall of oil's price, between 1985 and 1986 was a sucess.Soviet Union paid its food, from oil's money and money from weapons selled to oil's exporters.When the oil's prices fell between 1985 and 1986, Soviet Union became a crippled country.And this fact has too little space in this book.
This book is too much biased.Aldrich Ames made so much calamities, not just because of himself, but because of CIA's failures.Before of CIA's men, the CIA's agents are americans, having the american failures.To search for confort and happiness are americans, but they can be a calamity, because spies are to be looking for duty, not confort.
Book Review: The Main Enemy
Summary: 5 Stars
Good book. Gives unique insights. Shows to what degree the heroes in the CIA go to protect this great country.Book Review: Disjointed narrative makes for tough sledding
Summary: 2 Stars
There's lot of spy vs. spy folklore here but it's presented in a format that really jumps around, making it unnecessarily confusing. The story of the CIA's operations in Afghanistan could have made a separate book and doesn't fit with the rest of the more familiar spy games. In fact, that book has already been written- Ghost Wars, the Pulitzer-Prize winner by Steve Coll. It seems like Bearden wasn't sure whether he wanted to write an autobiography or a history of CIA operations. Book Review: for the cheep detective story lover
Summary: 1 Stars
This reads like a Tom Clancy novel only cheep. We have seen this story before in many spy movies. There is little substance and a lot of editorializing (which I thought was a bit heavy on the US side). At one point the author tells us the CIA boss was so wonderful even the KGB studied him for his professionalism. PLEASE!!!