A review of Eisenhower's use of intelligence resources and covert operations—first as Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, then as president—which, though variously flawed, does demonstrate a vital linkage between the two: because of his wartime experience, Ike was ready and willing, come the Cold War, to apply covert action by the CIA to any international problem, especially in the Third World. Ambrose, an old Eisenhower hand, and Immerman, a CIA specialist, present Ike as the epitome of the managerial general in his direction of the myriad wartime intelligence activities. His first exposure to covert action occurred when the OSS tried unsuccessfully to woo the Vichy French to passivity prior to the North African invasion. He learned the dangers of overreliance on ULTRA intercepts when his intelligence head failed to foresee Rommel's offensive at Kasserine Pass. Then, with D-Day in prospect, he managed the elaborate deception that cloaked the true invasion site. And, the authors write, he used ULTRA preeminently for early warning of Hitler's planned attack at Mortain to choke the Allied breakout from the Normandy beachhead. Somewhat more dubious, in the light of new evidence, is their contention that the failure of the Arnhem operation "indicated that the Allies had come to rely too heavily on ULTRA." In other instances, too, their interpretation of intelligence failures involving ULTRA is open to challenge. But on the whole their account of Ike's relationship to wartime intelligence is adequate if no breakthrough—except for its bearing on his enthusiasm, as president, for the early CIA of Allen Dulles. Apropos of those years, however, they merely describe—with little new information—familiar covert operations in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Cuba; they ignore the use of the CIA in the Middle East (in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq); and they obscure the extensive CIA involvement in the Congo by concentrating on whether or not Ike ordered the assassination of Patrice Lumumba (in apparent ignorance, moreover, of the admitted CIA role). Finally, the continuity of CIA programs from the Truman to the Eisenhower administrations is barely explored—leaving the reader with a faulty impression of Ike's particular input. While the WW II section will serve for some purposes, the treatment of the presidential years is apologetic in tone and verges on palace, not critical, history.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 1980
ISBN: 1578062071
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1980
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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