Burn Before Reading

August 15, 2005
President George H.W. Bush may have called it "the best job in Washington," but many of those who have held the position of director of central intelligence (DCI) may beg to differ. Retired Admiral Stansfield Turner, for one, did not want to take the post, which meant giving up his long naval career. Nevertheless, Turner took Jimmy Carter's offer and went on to become one of just two DCIs who lasted the entire term of the presidents who appointed them. In this volume, Turner, with the research and writing help of Allen Mikaelian, presents a straightforward look at the relationships between DCIs and the presidents they served. It is often not an inspiring picture. Turner shows that very few presidents worked well with their CIA directors and that the relationships were often severely strained over matters of politics, personality and loyalty. Things reached a nadir under President Nixon, who "came to the job already despising the CIA." Most interesting to general readers, however, is Turner's claim that this rocky history led directly to the agency's two biggest intelligence failures: not preventing the 9/11 attacks and not providing the correct information about Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

November 1, 2005
The war on terrorism has made critical the timely and accurate collection of secret intelligence in order to prevent another 9/11. These two informed works demonstrate that since the CIA's founding in 1947 intelligence gathering has often been neither. Barrett (political science, Villanova Univ.; "Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His Vietnam Advisers"), offers the first book about the CIA's relationship with Congress from 1947 to 1961, a period that he calls -intelligence oversight's dark ages. - This is a fascinating, scholarly appraisal of the interaction between the directors of Central Intelligence (DCI) and Congress. Tensions were often inflamed because legislators were asked to support the CIA's covert operations with only limited knowledge due to necessary secrecy and because subsequently many of these actions ended in failure. Allen Dulles, DCI under presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, receives much attention. During his tenure, intelligence breakdowns in Guatemala and Hungary and the CIA's failure to predict the Soviet Sputnik satellite all diminished the agency's reputation. In 1961, following the Bay of Pigs fiasco -Kennedy's worst diplomatic embarrassment -Dulles was forced into retirement.

Turner ("Terrorism and Democracy"), DCI under President Carter, shows that Dulles was not the only DCI overwhelmed by the office's demands. This book offers perceptive, if sometimes dry, views of the relationship between the DCIs and the presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to George W. Bush. Turner shows that several presidents, notably Truman, Nixon, and Clinton, were skeptical about the intelligence agencies. He reveals how dealings between these agencies and the departments of State and Defense deteriorated frequently into jealous squabbles. Included is a fascinating account of the Iranian hostage crisis, in which Turner played an important role. He concludes that the 9/11 intelligence failure is a good reason to place a less autonomous CIA under the control of the director of National Intelligence, a position created in the 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004. Turner's personal account is recommended for public libraries and Barrett's exhaustive study is strongly recommended for academic collections." -Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA"

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2005
Turner served as director of the CIA from 1977 to 1981. He is obviously qualified to offer an insider's perspective on the relationship between presidents and their CIA directors from World War II to the present. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the first; here Turner reveals the amazingly primitive state of U.S. espionage before WWII, when the bluebloods of the State Department viewed spying as ungentlemanly. Turner proceeds to detail the origins of the CIA as a Roosevelt favorite, "Wild Bill" Donovan, founded the O.S.S. Under Truman, the CIA grew in power, despite Truman's discomfort with some of their activities. Turner's description of some of the roughest moments in CIA relations with Kennedy (the Bay of Pigs fiasco) and Nixon (Watergate) are recounted with frankness and insight. In every administration, Turner maintains that providing the president with concise intelligence unvarnished by political and bureaucratic considerations remains a problem, and his concluding suggestions for remedying the problem deserve serious consideration.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)