Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II

Every voter should read this book. This is perhaps the best book to give an overview on the major covert activities of the CIA and its ancestor agencies. A very well researched book. The author appears to have done an immense amount of research to write this book. Very informative and an easy read. The author appears to be unbiased and without an agenda. Every tidbit of covert CIA activity that I read about in past years was discussed in this book, plus many more activities new to me were discussed. Drawing upon this text I believe the average American can get a better feel for the sucess and failure rate of covert activities, risks v.s. advantages. These covert activities ofter are the first steps that leads the U.S. into succeedingly hostile overt activities. The process is complicated by the fact that a covert operation has some loose oversight within our democracy. The author gives the reader a good feel for the past endeavors of the agency and analyzes the results. I would recommend this book to any American because wherever the CIA is most active will generally be a place where crucial and influential American foreign policy decisions will follow. It is beneficial to have the past record of covert activity available. Covert activity is as the author states probably the most convenient and easiest way to accomplish a short term foreign policy objective and always a temptation to every U.S. administration, but it often comes with the price of a longterm political backlash from the populace involved.

John Prados begins the book with seldom related histories, particular are the accounts of Baltic and Ukrainian insurgents in post WWII. This is the first time I have run into modern cold war accounts were the planning of covert operations in Central and Eastern Europe ran so close to the end of WWII. Prados underlines that the "youth" of Central Intelligence Agency and the treachery of Philby severly undermined any attempts to support these insurrectionist movements behind Soviet lines. Further declassfication of past interogation reports throw new light on the extent of these movements and how unstable Central Europe actually was. Prados contines into the Cold War up to the 80's and 90's where the bilateral covert conflict no longer seemed to have the raw personal nature of covert action in post WWII and the fifties. Author has obviously had a very generous access to herby unpublished documents. A must for those concerned with Cold War history