Audiobook9 hours
In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story
Written by John Stockwell
Narrated by Tom West
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
"Secret wars" waged by CIA task-forces are usually confined to the pages of spy-thrillers. But when the storyteller is the former Section Chief in charge of planning and field operations in Angola, and his story is true, the "spy thriller" becomes chilling fact.
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Reviews for In Search of Enemies
Rating: 4.071428661904762 out of 5 stars
4/5
21 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book should be read as an unofficial followup to General Smedley Butler's classic "War is a Racket."
I looked up this book after seeing an archival interview with John Stockwell on The Jimmy Dore Show in which he talked about how he planted stories to serve his propaganda interests. As another reviewer here mentioned, Stockwell portrays the CIA as hopelessly bureaucratic and lacking any clear mission. His war was the Angolan war, but he comments on the neighboring CIA operations involving the killing of Patrice Lumumba and the support apartheid South Africa.
The best chapters are towards the end in which he presses his case that the CIA lacks an overall purpose and will inevitably make Americans less safe overall. Chapter 11 covers the use of propaganda. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book should be read by anyone who thinks the CIA assassinated JFK, or otherwise dominates the government.He depicts a bureaucracy that is totally inept.People are just looking for conflicts to justify their existence and maintain their expense accounts.Stockwell was assigned people completely unqualified for Africa, or anything really. Vietnamese linguists assigned to the African desks because Colby promised there would be no reductions following the Vietnam War, the widow of a Special Activities Division officer with no qualifications except that the agency took care of its family, the sons and grandsons of retired officers who would start work at 10am and spend half the day fiddling with their pipes, people in the field spending money on villas and buying ice plants for their pals, and British and Portuguese mercenaries that were total psychopaths and French mercenaries who defrauded the agency taking it for a ride.The whole Angola operation got CIA attention for no other reason than they needed to find a conflict after Vietnam, and their involvement ultimately brought the Soviets in on the side of the MPLA and 15,000 Cuban troops on the ground. Creating a conflict and death and destruction that could have been avoided through diplomacy.Meanwhile as the Pike and Church committee hearings are going on the CIA high command are lying through their teeth about what they are doing.And soon as its done and its gone completely balls up and their adventurism has made things worse what do they want to do? Get involved in Ethiopia and Somalia!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5As a spy novel, it is pretty good. Stockwell, however, tries too hard to be fair. With the background he has, he should just simply "let 'er rip" and let the chips fall where they may. I would read other books by this author.