This was a difficult book for me to rate, and even more difficult to review. It is also rather remarkable that bad reviews of this book can come from both sides of the fence, those who defend the CIA, and those who loathe it, and perhaps this is an indication that the author had been undecided on the stance he should take. Probably 'none' would have been his best option.

American readers who are hardcore flag-wavers swelling with national pride resented his occasional (and in my view, mild) disparaging tone critical of the Agency's covert operations. On my part, I got the impression that the author tended to sentimentalize their destructive adventurism, and only found fault with those cases that failed. To me he was more of an apologist than a critic. I found his term referring to case officers as "secret warriors" an annoying example of this.

Another illustration of this is his detailed bio of key individuals, often including quirks and habits of the top CIA officers. Who the funk cares whether so and so was a good golf player, or that he was known by some cutesy nickname given to him by so and so. This ruins the flow of the book, forcing me to slog my way through pages of personal trivia after the author had already introduced the historical background of an operation pages back, compelling me to skip forward until I could finally pick up the thread again further on.

2 stars for effort; I'm sure there are better books. Otherwise, for a 'just the facts ma'am' approach, there's always Wikipedia and other online sources. ( )