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The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA, by Evan Thomas
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The Very Best Men is the story of the CIA's early days as told through the careers of four glamorous, daring, and idealistic men who ran covert operations for the government from the end of World War II to Vietnam. Evan Thomas re-creates the personal dramas and sometimes tragic lives of Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes, and Desmond FitzGerald, who risked everything to contain the Soviet threat.
Within the inner circles of Washington, they were regarded as the best and the brightest. They planned and acted to keep the country out of war—by stealth and “political action” and to do by cunning and sleight of hand what great armies could not, must not be allowed to do. In the end, they were too idealistic and too honorable, and were unsuited for the dark, duplicitous life of spying. Their hubris and naïveté led them astray, producing both sensational coups and spectacular blunders like the Bay of Pigs and the failed assassination attempts on foreign leaders in the early 1960s. Thomas draws on the CIA's own secret histories, to which he has had exclusive access, as well as extensive interviews, to bring to life a crucial piece of American history.
- Sales Rank: #138488 in Books
- Model: 1775990
- Published on: 2006-10-17
- Released on: 2006-10-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.44" h x 1.20" w x 5.50" l, .89 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 432 pages
Review
"A brisk, readable, lively account of fifteen turbulent years of history . . . Informed, anecdotal, full of colorful details." -- The New York Times
"A jewel of a book." -- The Washington Post
"A thoughtful, provocative, and absorbing book, as scrupulously fair as it is responsible, bringing new details and shedding new light on forgotten events and personalities of years past." -- Chicago Tribune
"An elegantly crafted group biography of four CIA officers during its glory days, from 1947 to its decline after the mid-1960s." -- The Christian Science Monitor
About the Author
Evan Thomas is the author of The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the C.I.A.; Robert Kennedy: His Life; The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst and the Rush to Empire, 1989; Sea of Thunder: The Last Great Naval Command, 1941-1945; and John Paul Jones. His most recent book is Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World.
Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Spies like (the) U.S.
By mrliteral
It's important to have ideals, but it's also important to be pragmatic. Some of the greatest problems come from people who cling to pie-in-the-sky notions, even when reality dictates a different approach. From a psychological standpoint, however, facing this reality can be crushing. This is reaffirmed as one of the lessons of Evan Thomas's early history of the CIA, The Very Best Men.
To a large extent, the four principal figures of Thomas's book are all idealists, out to create a better world by containing the evils of the Soviet Union. Of the four, Frank Wisner dominates the early part of the book, as he laid the foundation for the post-World War II intelligence agency that would become the CIA. Wisner would eventually be overcome by his own demons and Richard Bissell would take his place. Also important, but to a lesser degree, were Tracy Barnes and Desmond Fitzgerald.
Thomas makes the distinction between the two types of operations the CIA would be involved in. The first sort involved espionage, the secret gathering of information. The second sort (often in conflict with the first) involved trying to effect political outcomes, often through covert operations. Both types would have their victories in the 1950s, leading to a hubris that would hurt the CIA in later years. For example, the successes in creating coups in Iran and Guatemala would lead to the belief that other governments could be as easily overthrown, resulting in the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Similarly, the U2 spy plane would provide some great intelligence but also embarrassment when the Soviets shot it down. These attempts to win the Cold War often made it worse.
Beyond the wins and losses for the agency, Thomas also delves into the human toll, as his four "heroes" pay a price for their efforts. At best, they would be burned out, but there would also be damaged reputations (Bissell had a leading role in Bay of Pigs) and physical and mental effects. The CIA would go on, of course, and suffer perhaps greater damage in its faulty intelligence on WMDs in Iraq. To many, this would be even a greater crime than the Bay of Pigs: the seeming cherry-picking of information to suit the goals of a particular administration, with all the resulting costs.
The Very Best Men is a reminder that even in the seemingly simpler time of the Cold War, things weren't really that simple. It also reminds the reader that the CIA is not a bunch of James Bonds and Jason Bournes, but a bureaucracy with all the attendant issues. Thomas has done a good job of bringing one part of our Cold War history to life.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Love the book
By Rob
Evan Thomas is a terrific writer, this is the second book I've read from this author.
Great stuff if you love history!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Great insight into the CIA
By cas
This is quite a "read". I learned a lot about the CIA. This book helped me piece together a lot of things that happened during my youth that gave me new perspective on how history developed during the '50 - '80s. It is not easy to have an accurate understanding of the limits of intelligence agencies (for good or ill). This book helped me a lot.
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