Book Description
This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on November 14, 2001. The length of the article is 587 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: La CIA solicita espías.(Agencia Centra de Inteligencia de los Estados Unidos)(TT: The CIA wants spies.)(TA: United States Central Intelligence Agency)(Artículo Breve)
Author: Agustín Gutiérrez Canet
Publication: Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: November 14, 2001
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Volume: 48Issue: 2526Page: 18

Article Type: Artículo Breve

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Tale of Idiocy
Poisoned diving suits, syringes made to look like pens, exploding seashells and cigars--these are but a few of the 612 known plots against Castro between the years of 1959-1993.Apologists for the CIA and the terrorists among the Cuban exile community cannot dismiss this book as Cuban disinformation because the records provided here are CIA declassified files.This book is the smoking gun.

To read this book is to learn how hatred makes people not only violent but ridiculous as well.Murdering Castro wasn't always the aim of each plot, although, no doubt, that was the would-be assassins ultimate aim.At times they sought to embarrass and discredit Castro in ways that ranged from the childish and prankish to the sinister.

There were plots to slip him LSD before one of his speeches so that he would laugh hysterically and discredit himself.One harebrained analyst believed the secret of Castro's charisma lay entirely in his beard.He proposed that thallium salts be placed in Castro's shoes so that his beard would fall out.Imagine the insult to the Cuban people suggested by this plot: the Cuban people loved Castro not for his ideas and ideals but because they were captivated by his facial hair.The contempt of the slur is only exceeded by the idiocy of the plot.

I used to believe that Castro and the revolution in Cuba survived forty-plus years of USA overt and covert onslaught because of the intelligence of Castro and the guardians of the revolution. Not any longer, although that was part of it.Another part--a huge part as this book demonstrates--is that the enemies of the revolution are imbeciles, made dumb by their hatred and unwillingness to accept that history in Cuba has moved past them. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Cozy picnics in a CIA safe house; an official dinner party with the head of SAVAK, the dreaded Iranian secret police; a romantic dinner interrupted by mortar fire on the Mekong Delta--even meals can be cloak-and-dagger if the cooks happen to be connected to the Central Intelligence Agency. In Spies, Black Ties and Mango Pies CIA employees and their spouses share the recipes that got them through the hard times, and the good. Along with a delectable recipe for West Indies Paella, you get a hilarious account of a linguistic misunderstanding that resulted in this dish being served with tin molds for tart shells instead of mussels; the recipe for Chicken with Tofu comes garnished with an anecdote about life in Laos during the Vietnam War.

The recipes range from homey to exotic, but it's the stories accompanying them that make this book special. Read about serving the Soviet Ambassador's wife cui (a South American rodent) as you prepare the recipe for Soft Fried Chicken; contemplate a hasty exit from Libya as you nibble Sweet Onion Rings in Beer Batter; imagine eating Langouste a la Maison as shells fall all around in Vietnam. And if you're wondering whether spies can really cook, just remember--Julia Child got her start with the Office of Strategic Services--the forerunner of the CIA. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Important novelty item for the student of food
I didn't realize this book was listed on Amazon until just now, or I would have put comments here years ago.It was published in 1997 on the 50th anniversary of the CIA, and is an informal collection of employee family recipes, and anecdotes.Some of them, indeed, unusual.It's more notable for the novelty and for the bits of first-person history than for revelations of recipe secrets.For instance, Patricia (Mrs. Admiral Stansfield) Turner learning, after entertaining an unpleasant official from pre-revolution Iran, that he was the notorious secret-police chief, whom she characterized as "a butcher;" thereupon furiously sterilizing the dishes he'd touched.Such details are more memorable than their menu that night.

Most unusual; Americans at their international best!
I had not realized that Julia Child had served in the Office of Strategic Services (the CIA) during WWII.In fact, there is much that I had not realized prior to reading this fascinating book.But wait!It's also acookbook!The authors were often challenged with new and foreigningredients and their collection of recipes from around the world isexcellent.It seems that our intelligence officers and their families liketo eat, and well!Highly recommended.

Live vicariously through the kitchens of brave ladies!
I have never even had a passport, but for 2 years I have edited some stories and completed all of the nutritional analysis for the recipes in this book.I cried when I read the piece titled "Raincheck", (and I didn't recommend changing a word).There were other stories that needed a little grammatical clean up, but the goal for all of those involved in this project was to maintain the voice of the original author. Some stories are scary, some are hilarious, and all are compelling.The recipes were used mostly for entertaining, so this is NOT a diet cookbook.If you can occasionally part ways with the American Heart Association, you will find most of the recipes tasty, although a few require a sense of adventure.I've tested several recipes myself.Ladda's Yellow Curry is now a staple in my home, and several of the desserts would be if I allowed dessert in the house. I make the desserts to carry to other people's houses.The drawbacks are minor, but annoying.The book is small (so is the type), and there isn't a blank page in the front of the book to prevent the titled page from sticking to the cover.This book is worth reading though.It allows those of us who stay safely in the U.S. to share in the experiences of being a CIA agent's spouse overseas. All of the profits will fund scholarships for CIA dependants.Neither myself, or any of the authors, were paid for their work on this piece.Now that the book is out I am immensely proud it, and of the CIA spouses who made it possible. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on October 10, 2001. The length of the article is 749 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: El Frankestein de la CIA.(Agencia Central de Inteligencia, Estados Unidos)(TT: The CIA's Frankestein.)(TA: Central Intelligence Agency, United States)(Artículo Breve)
Author: Jesús Hernández Garibay
Publication: Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: October 10, 2001
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Volume: 48Issue: 2521Page: 40

Article Type: Artículo Breve

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
While much has been disclosed about the CIA's cloak-and-dagger activities during the Cold War, relatively little is known about the real origins of this secret organization. David Rudgers, a 22-year CIA veteran, has written the first complete account of its creation, revealing how the idea of "centralized intelligence" developed within the government and debunking the myth that former OSS chief William J. Donovan was the prime mover behind the agency's founding.

Creating the Secret State locates the CIA's origins in governmentwide efforts to reorganize national security during the transition from World War II to the Cold War. Rudgers maintains that the creation of the CIA was not merely the brainchild of "Wild Bill" Donovan. Rather, it was the culmination of years of negotiation among numerous policy makers such as James Forrestal and Dean Acheson, each with strong opinions regarding the agency's mission and methods. He shows that Congress, State and Justice Departments, Joint Chiefs, and even the Bureau of the Budget all had a hand in the establishment of this "secret state" that operates nearly invisibly outside the American political process.

Based almost entirely on archival and other primary sources, Rudgers's book describes in detail how the CIA evolved from its original purpose--as a watchdog to guard against a "nuclear Pearl Harbor"--to the role of clandestine warriors countering Soviet subversion, eventually engaging in more forms of intelligence gathering and covert operations than any of its counterparts. It suggests how the agency became a different organization than it might have been without the Communist threat and also shows how it both overexaggerated the dangers of the Cold War and failed to predict its ending.

Rudgers has written an accurate and balanced account that brings America's undercover army in from the cold and out from under the cult of personality. An indispensable resource for future studies of the CIA, Creating the Secret State tells the inside story of why and how the agency was called into existence as it stimulates thinking about its future relevance in a rapidly changing world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good Intentions

This is a well balanced, well documented, and definitive book on the beginnings of the current U.S. intelligence system. It also provides an interesting smaller window on the development of the entire post WWII U.S. National Security Establishment. For all its merits, this book is not for the general reader because it deals with a very small and specialized slice of modern American history. A more general and equally important book, "Flawed by Design" by Amy Zugert (Amazon.com) would be a better choice for individuals who don't wish to deal with the impressive amount of detail that this book provides. Nonetheless this book is indispensable to any anyone wishing to understand the process by which the current U.S. Intelligence System and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created.

As the author makes clear, the intelligence system that was established was very much the product of the disinterest that senior policy makers and the U.S. Congress had in intelligence matters in the wake of WWII. Excepting for intelligence professionals and some far seeing bureaucrats there were no strong constituencies or lobbying groups who cared about a national intelligence system. The author demonstrates that the CIA in particular was very much a creature of good and bad compromises that were imposed by the legitimate concerns of the military intelligence establishments, the FBI and State Department. Reading this book one is impressed with intelligence and dedication of the military and civilians who ultimately still ended up creating the dysfunctional intelligence system that we have today.

In the course of recounting this story, the author quotes an all but forgotten bureaucrat of the immediate post war era, named John Ohly, who, after reviewing the proposals for a CIA, pointed out that there was a lack, "of an intelligence concept which has been carefully thought out and which serves as a clear guide to the various collection and sources and which permits and requires the establishment of priorities as to areas and subjects." This reviewer knows of no more succinct statement on what is presently wrong with the U.S. Intelligence System.

Deep Insider-Doctoral History, Relevant Today
This is an admirable and unusual work, of doctoral-level quality in its sources and methods, while also reflecting the professional intelligence career status of the author.It complements Amy Zegart's broader book, Flawed By Design, in an excellent manner.This book, focusing as it does on the CIA alone, and on internal sources not readily available to Zegart, fills a major gap in our understanding of the CIA's origins.The author excels at demonstrating both the actual as opposed to the mythical origins of the agency, and pays particular heed to the role of the Bureau of the Budget and that Bureau's biases and intentions.At the end of it all, the author notes that the agency was moving in controversial directions within four years of its birth, quickly disturbing Harry Truman, who is quoted as saying, twenty-years after the fact (in 1963), "For some time I have been distributed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment.It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making arm of Government....I never had any thought when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations." The author himself goes on to conclude that "the nature of the new threats and the revolution in information acquisition and dissemination have thrown traditional ways of intelligence organization, collection, evaluation, and distribution into question....CIA has entered the second half-century of its existence striving to avoid the fate of its OSS parent.In the process, it is groping for new missions and purposes while blighted by the legacy of its past derelictions, and while operating amid a rapidly changing global environment and technological revolution that are rendering its sources, methods, organizations, and mystique obsolete."I would hasten to add, as my own book documents, that we will always have hidden evil in the world and will always needs spies and secret methods to some extent, but this book, combining academic rigor with insider access, must surely give the most intelligent of our policy, legislative, and intelligence managers pause, for it very carefully documents the possibility that 75% of what we are doing today with secret sources and methods need not and should not be done.This book has much to offer those who would learn from history. ... Read more