Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev

It's hard to argue whether or not Lunev wrote this book. There's no reason for him not to have. But he wasn't needed; it's devoid of anything that he could have uniquely said. The book is full of little tactics that anyone would account for in a simulation. All you learn is that the Soviets had established the possibility for operations on US soil. From a strategic perspective, once you start flinging nukes at each other it doesn't much matter what you do to someone's water supply. Terrorist operations can only provoke war; if you want to knock out the ones waging the war, you have to go for the heavily defended military officers. The military has been granted much insulation from what happens in the civilian population. When it comes to fullblown war, politicians are only a secondary objective, to hit morale. The warning probably isn't worth it. Killing the politicians off just makes the US military more efficient. This book really isn't information. ! From the perspective of the people writing it, it's to keep us on our toes, to make us see that the world is even scarier. No doubt some country is thinking right now about launching a nuke from Russia with the intent that the US and Russia will no longer be competitors. So if the publishers of this book are lying, I still find their lies completely reasonable.

Being a resident of the Washington DC area I find the topics discussed in this book very disturbing. While DoD and counterintelligence budgets are being slashed by congress, the Russian Mafia lead empire formerly known as the USSR is spreading its influence throughout the world. All the while duping American companies into partnerships with the Russsian Mafia. The sad part is that in the name of economic reform and international trade we are rekindling the Cold war and fueling our own destruction. Let's pray that Russia can get some control over the mafia in the future. Perhaps this period in Russian history mirrors our own problems with the Mafia in the 30's. While their problems are quite different, our Counterintelligence activities need to be increased to counter the Industrial sabotage and legistlation needs to be introduced to place stricter monitoring on Russian-US corporate alliances.

With the knowledge of one who spent most of his professional life in Russia's most secretive intelligence agency, Colonel Lunev provides a riveting and disturbing -- and very credible -- look at the GRU and how it has resisted the reforms that have swept its country. Lunev provides an equally troubling yet compelling analysis of how the corruption of the Soviet system hijacked economic reform in Russia and turned the country into what President Yeltsin himself once called the "superpower of crime."There are few books about the GRU. The best-known ones, written under the pseudonym Suvorov by a former GRU officer named Rezun who defected to the United Kingdom, are excellent works but many scholars suspect that they rest heavily on material provided by British intelligence. While this does not diminish the value of the Suvorov books, it does contrast with that of Lunev who, with the help of a co-author, offers a perspective completely unique to his exper! ience.Suvorov's books remain valuable, because the GRU has changed little if at all, and its mission remains the same. But being written in the Soviet period, they lack the context of the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War as we knew it.U.S. intelligence was slow to realize the depth of criminalization within Russia's government and its security and intelligence services, and American policymakers have yet to accept this fact. Policymakers are also reluctant to admit that Moscow has preserved the Soviet-built mechanisms to decapitate the civilian and military leadership of the United States in the event of crisis.Lunev describes the situation lucidly. One cannot understand the situation in Russia today without reading this book.J. Michael Waller, Ph.D. Author, "Secret Empire: The KGB In Russia Today" (Westview, 1994). Executive Editor, "Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization." Vice President, American Fore! ign Policy Council, Washington, D.C.

Before you get sucked in by this book, read up on the shennanigans of the CIA since WWII...you'll understand then who this author truly works for...