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: Milt Bearden gives us the data dump
Summary: 4 Stars
My introduction to Milt Bearden came from reading "Charlie Wilson's War" by George Crile. A great book by the way, I would highly recommend it.
I would recommend this book to people who are interested in Cold War history.
My only dissapointment with this book is that in the epilogue Milt doesn't approach the question of whether or not the rules have changed from when he was chief of the SE Division, and if those changes are for the better. For example, let's take "extraordinary renditions" - in the days when Milt was chief of SE Division the unwritten rule was that USA and USSR didn't kill or unduly rough up each other's spies. Now that we engage in those kinds of activities, are our CIA operatives in the DO more cautious? Are there more restrictions on their movements when they are overseas? And has the change in methods and attitudes affected our relationships with other intelligence agencies, and if so, for the better or for the worse?
Book Review: A curious discrepancy
Summary: 5 Stars
Much as I have enjoyed this fascinating book, I wish to point out a startling anachronism. Bearden makes much of the delivery of the "120 mm Spanish mortar" to the Mujahideen in 1987, and elaborates on how teams were trained in applying GPS readings to precisely deliver their ordnance beyond visual range. "It came...with a ranging system worked out by Langley...that fused the low-tech mortar with the high-tech world of satellite guidance." And "Once their exact coordinates had been calibrated, the leader of the team would feed the GPS data into a small computer, add the coordinates of the target, and then query the computer for the precise compass direction and elevation..." This procedure, GPS and all, supposedly led to devastating night attacks on the Spetsnaz battalion at Chagasaray on 28 Nov 1987 and 15 Dec 1987.
Problem: Although initial use of GPS was reported in 1990, it did not become operational until 1993. In 1987 the satellites had not been launched yet (this was during the Challenger stand-down).
We can only conclude that while the attacks and the mortars were real, the procedures and the "ranging" method used must have been invented by the authors for literary convenience. No doubt this is the ghost writer's shortcut, not Bearden's, but this does raise questions about technical accuracy throughout the volume.
Book Review: Valuable insight into the climax of the Cold War
Summary: 4 Stars
In a brief period of time between 1989 and 1991, the world changed dramatically. Several significant events transpired, each literally changing the way the world worked overnight. In The Main Enemy, Milt Bearden and James Risen provide a detailed and fascinating view into the struggle between the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Soviet security service, Komitet Gosudarstvenoj Bezopasnosti (KGB).
Anyone aware of the state of world affairs for the last half of the twentieth century would be hard pressed to believe any of the events that took place as the final decade of the century was poised to begin. Starting with the Soviet Union's withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989, we observed as one event followed another, each coming as a greater surprise than the previous. We watched the collapse of the Berlin Wall and saw the reunification of Germany shortly thereafter. Not long behind Germany's rejection of socialism, we saw revolutions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and elsewhere. In the latter half of 1991, we watched a failed coup in the Soviet Union, and as that year drew to a close, the Soviet hammer and sickle was replaced with the Russian tricolor flag over Moscow.
These were not events that took place on their own. These were the highly visible climax of an ongoing struggle between the proponents of the Soviet Revolutskyj Mir ("World Revolution") and their counterparts in the West -- including Britain's MI6 and America's CIA. Such a conclusion wasn't always assured, and there were times when CIA was baffled by the tremendous success of KGB's operations against Western agents and interests. It is during these "1985 losses" that the book opens, providing a foundation that helps the reader to see just what was happening in the world of intelligence.
Milt Bearden is a career CIA officer, having spent a lifetime in the shadows and working for America's interests. James Risen is an accomplished journalist. The collaboration -- which also includes the input and assistance of many other players from many sides in this international game of strategy and intrigue -- is an admirable success. The story is gripping, compelling, and personal. The book is well-structured and the prose makes it easy to forget that The Main Enemy isn't a novel, but a book of real history.
For those of us whose understanding of intelligence is primarily from the technical side -- most likely through Bamford's glimpses into the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) -- The Main Enemy is instructive, helping us to see the value of human intelligence (HUMINT) and its role in world affairs.
While hardly the definitive work on the operations of CIA, The Main Enemy provides valuable insight into the climax of the Cold War. Hopefully its accessible style will help to open this important chapter of history to a wide audience -- not just spy buffs.
Book Review: I LOVE SPY BOOKS
Summary: 4 Stars
This is another terrific spy book that is worth reading. Was completeley drawn in by this one !!! Another Cold War era book I would recommend is the one by Benjamin Weiser titled " A Secret Life" about a Polish Colonel ( Ryszard Kuklinski ) on the Polish General Staff who passed on some 40,000 Warsaw Pact and Soviet documents to the CIA from 1972 to 1981.Book Review: The CIA KGB Game
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the story gathered through hundreds of interviews with both US and USSR players of the battle between the CIA and KGB in the closing days of the Cold War, 1985 through the collapse of the Soviet Union.Part I, Year of the Spy tells of the efforts to "turn" KGB agents, Government officials and high-ranking military and subsequent contacts by their American controllers. We're told of the constant surveillance of embassy officials, the training of new agents, tricks for eluding tails. Surprising to me was the involvement of spouses who often accompanied the agents on "runs" or otherwise aided the agents. In training there would be surprise arrests that would seem real to the agents, they would include a roughing up by FBI agents. The test for the agent was to hold back his CIA connection.
Starting in 1985 a string of our moles were arrested by the KGB. Despite ridicule of James Jesus Angleton whose paranoia about moles inside the CIA was legend, it appeared now that his paranoia was well-placed.
The luring of moles, their exchanges of money and information at drop points are covered from both sides. For example meticulous planning has gone into a "run," i.e., CIA meeting with a KGB agent to exchange money, needs, information. The story is told by the US agent arriving at the drop site, having shaken his KGB tail; the same story is then told by KGB officials who are setting him up and the capture of the spy (a scientist in this case).
Almost at the same time, June '85, Aldrich Ames was meeting in DC with his Russian handler, delivering to him the name of every spy he knew. He did this because John Walker, US Navy man, had been arrested in May as a Russian spy. Ames feared Walker had been fingered to the FBI by someone in the KGB that the CIA had previously "turned." He didn't want the same fate.
In their recruitment efforts the CIA always had to be on the alert for "dangles." These were spies trying to be double agents. Some of the Russians turned for money, some for ideology, a hatred for the Communist system. Edward Lee Howard was a CIA agent who was fired by the CIA and who betrayed us out of his anger over what he thought was unfair treatment. He eluded capture and escaped to Russia with help from his wife, his training in eluding tails, and the incompetence of the FBI.
There were constant turf wars between the FBI and CIA which sometimes got in the way.
Robert Hanssen (FBI) started spying in 1979. Among information turned over to the KGB was his revealing to them the spy tunnel under the Soviet embassy in DC.
There were many more tales of recruitment, capture and sometimes execution.
Part II, Afghanistan. In December 1979 Russia invaded Afghanistan. They were fearful of the country coming under the sphere of the US, further completing the ring around the USSR.
When the British decided decades earlier to withdraw from Afghanistan, the cost of marching out was horrific, 16,000 men were reduced to 1 left standing
After the loss of 15,000 soldiers, in 1986 Gorbachev decided enough was enough. He wanted to get out, but how to do it without looking like the US in Vietnam or with the costs the British incurred.
US efforts helped Gorbachev reach his decision to exit. We had been pouring in money and arms. The destruction of a huge Russian arms depot was pivotal in firming up his mind as was the introduction of Stinger missiles and advanced anti-tank weapons, both of which produced spectacular results.
They managed the withdrawal at a minimum loss of life. Then began the tribal chiefs dislodging the puppet leader in Kabul and the jockeying amongst themselves for leadership.
Part III, Endgame. The story here is the winding down of the Soviet Union, starting with tearing down the Berlin Wall, the role of the East German secret police, STASI and the interplay with the CIA. The dissolution of Reagan's Evil Empire, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and the Baltic states; the fragility of the new Russia and its near fall to reactionary forces, the emergence of Yeltsin.
Aldrich Ames was arrested in 1994 after 20 years of spying. A Russian agent provided enough information but no name, enabling the CIA to identify him. A group within the CIA had spent years trying to locate the leak that James Jesus Angleton was sure existed.
Robert Hanssen was arrested in 2001 after 22 years of betrayal, his capture also aided by Russian agents.
The author Milt Bearden was close to all the activities he recounts. He concluded after a thorough analysis of times and dates that there must be another mole yet to surface within the CIA.
I found much of the book exciting. After all, this wasn't fiction; these were real people and events.