Christopher Andrew
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By: Harpercollins
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Eye Opening Reading For Secret Intelligence Buffs 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.
For the Presidents Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush is exciting reading for fans of secret intelligence or presidential history. The book answers the all important question "what did the president know and when did he know it" and more importantly to secret intelligence buffs "how did he know it." Professor Christopher Andrew provides a through analysis of the intelligence provided to the presidents of the United States during their tenure and how the presidents used that intelligence. He further explains how the President felt about intelligence and how well the Presidents understood what intelligence could and could not do for him. In addition Andrew examines the state of the intelligence services, how the intelligence services changed during each president's term and the president's impact on the intelligence community during their administration. Christopher Andrew is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cambridge University's Corpus Christi College. He has written many books on secret intelligence including The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev, Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community, and "Comrade Kryuchkov's Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975-1985. Andrew is a frequent host of British Broadcasting Corporation television and radio history productions. He holds the Chair of the History Faculty at Cambridge University, the Chair of the British Intelligence Study Group and is a former Visiting Professor of National Security at Harvard, Toronto and Canberra. Andrew has presented guest lectures at numerous American universities and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Andrew essentially dismisses the intelligence services available to presidents George Washington to William H. Taft as ineffectual or non-existent in the modern sense and gives a quick one-chapter overview of intelligence during their terms. Andrew then gets into the heart of the book with another chapter for presidents Woodrow Wilson to Herbert Hoover. Here he credits the First World War with creating the first modern intelligence service, but then says it was rapidly lost due to the actions of Woodrow Wilson after the war. He claims that the intelligence services were not really reconstituted until the Second World War. The most interesting story here was how British intelligence intercepted the Zimmerman telegram and manipulated the United States into entering the war earlier than it might have otherwise. Andrew then devotes a chapter each to presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt to George H. W. Bush. Each president is covered in-depth and the book gives the details behind every major crisis of the 20th century up through the first President Bush. The later presidents are not covered as the book was published in 1995.
Andrews writing style is very easy to read. The book reads almost like a novel. The only thing difficult is the Professor's use of the original acronyms and abbreviations when describing the various government agencies discussed in the book. The Professor provides a three and a half page table of acronym and abbreviation meaning at the front of the book. However, someone without a military or intelligence background will find the necessity to keep referring to the table a little distracting. The chronological organization of the book provides a logical progression through the material and allows for easy access if one is only interested in a particular President or crisis. It is very interesting to see the contrast between the information that was publicly available at the time of each crisis and what the intelligence was behind it. It is amazing to see what The Presidents kept hidden and why they did. For example, early in the Eisenhower administration there was a public flap over the Bomber Gap. President Eisenhower had the secret intelligence showing that there was no gap. If he had disclosed the information he could have quieted his critics quickly, but wisely refused to disclose the information publicly to keep the fact that we had the U2 spy plane secret. Nearly every president has had similar circumstances and situations. In other instances the book makes one wonder how the United States survived with the inept handling of intelligence and the intelligence services by some presidents. The behind the scene infighting between the different intelligence services led to some of The Presidents worst failures. The biggest case here was the bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought us into World War Two. A similar situation will probably turn up behind the September 11, 2001 bombings. In other cases Andrew describes outright corruption and misuse of the intelligence services that created some of the biggest scandals during United States history. One only need look at the Andrew's description of the "Bay of Pigs" scandal to see how the misuse of the intelligence services can lead to disaster. Andrew is not shy about expressing his opinion of The Presidents or their actions. In his conclusion Andrew claims that only four American Presidents had a flair for intelligence: Washington, Eisenhower, Kennedy and George H. W. Bush. The book is extensively documented with both primary and secondary sources of information and has a very good index. The notes and bibliography alone are over 100 pages. However, they are all in the form of endnotes and placed at the back of the book and so are not readily visible while one is reading.
Andrew succeeds in everything he set out to accomplish in "For the Presidents Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush." The book is well worth reading. It is very eye opening to anyone who has not read about the American Intelligence Services before. It makes one wonder what our Intelligence Services are up to now. One can certainly look forward to what Andrew will write about current events but if one is at all interested in American History one needs to pick up this book now.
Editorial Review:
Based on in-depth research, an examination of how American presidents used secret intelligence is filled with anecdotes, personalities, and surprising events, and reveals that the two most successful soldiers--Washington and Eisenhower--were most skillful at using intelligence.
