Reading between the lines of certain events that came to light in the 1970s and 1980s and making note of the reoccurring individuals - Nugan Hand Bank, the "Safari Club", the EATSCO scandal, the Edwin Wilson Libya case, the Contra supply operation and Iranian gun running of Iran-Contra - brings to light the sordid fact that a clique of retired military and intelligence personnel had come together in the wake of the Pike and Church Committees, the Rockefeller Commission, the Halloween Massacre, and the attempted reforms of Stansfield Turner telling themselves the government could not be trusted any longer with covert operations and that they alone knew what was best they engaged in a privatized version of what they believed policy ought to be, and if in the process of using their connections and these operations they also happened to make a buck on the side well they also seemed to also to tell themselves isn't that just the American way?

Daniel Sheehan and the Christic Institute came close to looking at this but went off on a tangent trying to expand this corruption into a grand unified conspiracy theory responsible for every ill deed.

The first part of the book is about Wilson who was the lynch pin for this graft, but it loses focus and sprawls just like Sheehan with only a tangential connection in the general cultural tendency among the powerful to mix personal business with government policy. The events and anecdotes recounted later in the book about intelligence provided to Iraq and dodgy uniform sales and events from the 1990s onwards are interesting and speak of further corruption but they appear to be entirely independent and parallel to the original thrust of the book at its beginning, Edwin Wilson and his trial. And because of this distraction the central thrust becomes completely lost - it doesn't even cover his 2012 retrial and acquittal thanks to evidence eventually being uncovered that confirmed his claims that he was following orders and not a rogue. ( )

4 stars. Few books have shaped my thinking like this book. It's hard to write a review of it because there are so many incredible stories in this book. If you want to know the history of the CIA, this is your book.

The author has spent over 35 years as an investigative journalist covering military and intelligence operations. This book is a compilation of 35 years worth of first-hand interviews, painstaking research, and incredible use of the Freedom of Information Act to obtain previously classified and unknown documents. He has done a good job compiling all of this into a readable book (one 46-page chapter has 93 separate citations).
Americans have never heard of Ted Shackley or Ed Wilson, but men like these have shaped our country's intelligence networks and influenced the course of history (click the links to get a sense of what we're talking about here).

The book is essentially about 2 people: Ed Wilson and George H.W. Bush. Wilson was a good businessman who was part of a CIA that became essentially a privatized business network after Watergate. He was later framed and imprisoned by Shackley and the government, mainly because he knew too much.

George H.W. Bush was the son of one of the original CIA men, Prescott Bush. He worked with anti-Castro CIA activities in the 1960s, and later helped protect the CIA from Congressional scrutiny as CIA Director during the 1970's. He partially oversaw the privatization of the CIA, and his Saudi connections would end up making the CIA reliant on foreign intelligence services and embroiled in controversy like Iran-Contra and Iraqgate.

This book definitely shows a different side of Bush "41". His long-running extramarital affair with Jennifer Fitzgerald, stories of his business failures, proof of him working for the CIA long before he says he did, his role in undermining Jimmy Carter, his role and deposits in illegal banks used for black operations, and his protection of the Saudis while arming both Saddam Hussein and Iran in the 1980's, policies which greatly contributed to Gulf War I and 9/11. You won't find this in his autobiography or at his museum in College Station.

It also fills in many of the gaps in House of Bush, House of Saud which I reviewed here and here a couple years ago.

Very little is said about G.W. Bush, 9/11, and Gulf War II, but the history in the book leading to those events is fascinating. Current President Bush is shown as inheriting a mess. This is the author's commentary on the last page:

"George H.W. Bush 's long partnership with American and Saudi Intelligence and money set in motion events that would fall on the shoulders of a son totally unprepared for the challenge. The arc from Prescott to George W. Bush is a three-generation saga of the rise to power of an American family. Ironically, the Bushes survived and prospered in each generation by making alliances with some of the most anti-American elements, and yet disguised these involvements with the noblest rhetoric of public service. President George W. Bush has a lifetime of friends and family who have always come to his rescue. But sometimes friends fail... as Bush learned when he heard the awful news on September 11, 2001... In that moment, his personal history and the dark secret history his father and grandfather helped shaped all came together."

There's so many events beyond the Middle East that are mentioned in this book. Vietnam, South America, Eastern Europe. Mind-blowing information.

After reporting on the CIA for 35 years and seeing it change shape various times, the author comes to this sad conclusion:


"The CIA during the George W. Bush administration has become at best irrelevant and at worst a joke... The people in charge...have taken America's Intelligence, foreign policy, and military into a private world..."

How it got to that point is shown clearly in the long history recorded in the book. ( )