BOOK REVIEW: The Spy Masters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future
by Chris Whipple
Reviewed by Tammy Kupperman Thorp
BOOK REVIEW -- A decade before he was killed in what reportedly was a joint Israeli-American operation, the CIA had devised a daring plan to capture Imad Mughniyeh, the Hizballah weapons expert whose hands were awash in the blood of Americans. At the time, he was public enemy #1 for the US. Ultimately, the CIA plan was abandoned after it was deemed too risky by then CIA Director George Tenet, claims Chris Whipple who reveals the plan, along with tantalizing details, in his book, The Spy Masters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future.
Whipple’s book about the history of CIA directors is more political thriller than spy thriller yet is still a page-turner. He gives the reader tales of intrigue, politics, bloodletting, and demonstrates the old axiom that history repeats itself by pointing again and again to echoes of Richard Nixon. Whipple masterfully tells the history of the nation’s spymasters and their relationships to presidents, and how those interactions shaped history. Through Directors’ West Wing access, Whipple shows the Agency’s frequent battles against politicization and uses the legacy of Nixon to highlight the challenge the Director faces today. One need only follow Twitter to understand the pressure Intelligence Community leaders feel now to deliver intelligence that isn’t seen by the President as an attempt to undermine him and his Administration.
But political influence – and concerns over it – are nothing new. In the Nixon years, James Schlesinger took over from Richard Helms who had approved some questionable operations and broken the law, but “would not let Nixon make the CIA a scapegoat for White House crimes; nor would he commit obstruction of justice to save his presidency,” writes Whipple. The specter of the White House loomed large for the next Director who told senior analysts on his first full day, that the CIA “is going to stop fucking Richard Nixon.” He also massively cut CIA staff in his short but memorable tenure.
Meanwhile, Reagan’s powerful CIA chief Bill Casey, of whom much has been written especially regarding his role in the Iran-Contra affair, “politicized intelligence when it suited his purposes,” says Whipple. “…what Casey did for Reagan was lie, obfuscate, evade, and break the law. He politicized intelligence when it suited his purposes… In the end, the CIA was corrupted—and weakened—on Casey’s watch,” the author concludes.
As a long-time observer of Washington intrigue, I found the insights Whipple gleaned from former Directors and their family members especially fascinating. Take for instance Schlesinger’s daughter, Cora, who told Whipple that her father’s approach was so unpopular that his security detail was enhanced reportedly because of death threats. She recalled hearing from her mother that her father was warned to move his living room chair away from the window to avoid potentially being shot.
Whipple also spoke to Admiral Stansfield Turner before he died. Even though he was suffering from dementia, the sting of the failed Iran hostage rescue attempt still haunted him. The author recounts, “’I was devastated,’ he said softly. He stared into the distance, his bright eyes clouded by the terrible memory. ‘I just didn’t know what to do.’” But the Desert One disaster did not occur in a vacuum. The intelligence community called the precariousness of the Shah’s hold on power wrong. The late Les Gelb told Whipple, “The abysmal failure of our intelligence community with respect to Iran is hard to imagine and impossible to justify…we didn’t have a clue.”
Whipple even keeps alive questions about the death of former CIA Director William Colby. He was officially found to have drowned following a likely “cardiovascular incident,” but some believe he was murdered.
Much of the actual work of the Agency is not at the heart of the book. As the title suggests, Whipple focuses in The Spy Masters on the leaders of the organization and how they coped with political pressure, intelligence failures, and revelations of dark parts of the CIA’s history such as haphazard attempts to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and the so-called “Family Jewels.” With the descriptions of mass firings under Directors Schlesinger and Turner, it is a wonder the Agency survived and has ultimately prospered. Much of that is credited to George Tenet who “hugged the workforce literally and figuratively,” embracing the CIA “like a battered child.”
Under Tenet, who said he inherited an agency that was almost in “chapter 11,” the Agency flourished and he told employees he had their backs. Before 9/11, the Agency warned of a possible terrorist attack on the US, but ultimately that prescience was overshadowed by intelligence failures on Iraq’s WMD program that provided the needed pretext for the Bush Administration to wage war there.
Moving closer to today, Whipple charts the changes at the Agency that parallel current events, including the decision to use drones to take out terrorists and the controversies surrounding the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. The CIA Director has also had to adapt to no longer running the whole Intelligence Community, but instead reporting to an overall Director of National Intelligence. Whipple notes the political savvy of former CIA Director Leon Panetta who successfully outmaneuvered DNI Dennis Blair who wanted to assign the CIA’s top spies overseas.
In this book, Whipple delivers a cautionary tale of the intersection of the West Wing and the CIA Director’s suite. He describes major historical events through the lens of the CIA Director and his or her relationship with the President. It leaves the reader wondering if any one of a series of factors had been different – from rapport with the President to domestic politics and missed intelligence analyses, how our history would have changed. The Spy Masters is an engaging read of politics, off-the-books plots, and struggles for CIA identity and access that is masterfully woven.
This book earns a respectable 3.5 out of four trench coats.
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