Product Description

The recent resignation of CIA boss George Tenet has only highlighted what is for many the greatest political scandal of a generation: the failure of the U.S. intelligence community to combat the threat poised by Islamic fundamentalists and prevent the 9/11 attacks. Melissa Boyle Mahle risked her life working as an undercover CIA field operative in the Middle East until her departure in 2002. She therefore has a unique vantage point from which to view the political and operational culture of the agency in the post–Cold War climate. From Reagan to Bush Jr., Mahle provides a vivid personal and historical narrative on how the CIA became an anorexic organization, lost in the post–Cold War world. Afraid to take risks that might offend Washington politicos and European allies, gutted of the clandestine operators who knew how to run secret wars, exhausted from reform whiplash, and demoralized by demonization and poor performance, the CIA simply became unable and unwilling "to get down and dirty to do the hard part to fight a real war on terrorism." Denial and Deception describes the last generation of the CIA and is a unique contribution to our understanding of the secret world of intelligence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #815422 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A former clandestine agent specializing in the Middle East, Mahle begins with September 11th (she was doing intake on prospective applicants), but the bulk of her work recounts the CIA's involvement in such low watermarks of American intelligence as the Iran-Contra and the Ames affairs, and what she says have been their the devastating internal consequences. This is not just a memoir; Mahle joined the agency in 1988, and she pings back and forth in time, covering events and periods with which she was not directly involved. She decries what she characterizes as indiscriminate Congressional investigations, as well as political pressures to tailor conclusions to the biases of superiors. Both have led, she says, to demoralization and to a serious reduction in the CIA's overall capabilities-with the effects being fully felt now, as the U.S. finds itself in dire need of HUMINT (or human intelligence) from the Middle East and elsewhere. Reading the book is like talking to one of Seymour Hersh's sources, but with the relevance filter off; there's tons of information here-with a good deal on pre- and post-September 11th al-Qaeda-but very few readers will find all of it engaging. Nevertheless, as a major debriefing from an insider, one who writes clearly and often wryly, it succeeds.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
A former clandestine agent of the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO), the author was posted in the Middle East in the 1990s. In this memoir, Mahle includes autobiographical anecdotes as well as analyses of the CIA's organizational and leadership problems in that decade. According to Mahle, the CIA's biggest problem was figuring out what to do after the cold war. Mahle details reforms proposed by successive directors from Robert Gates to George Tenet, and the extent to which these filtered down the line to the DO. She also imparts the flavor of her career--its operational excitement and sense of participating in history (one startling example: her proposal, eventually denied, to snatch a future 9/11 terrorist, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad). Although Mahle is generally supportive of the CIA, she delivers criticism bound to be pertinent to her core audience--potential CIA applicants--concerning an internal-security system she regards as unaccountable. She ran afoul of that system, which terminated her career. She also criticizes the conditions facing women in the male-dominated DO. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Excellent Useful Single-Person Account Focused on CIA
Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

This is a very personal story by a female case officer who served overseas, did some very hard time over the course of at least fifteen years with the Directorate of Operations, and has produced a very rare book, one that provides some useful documentation of the ups and downs of clandestine operations under five Directors of Central Intelligence (this would be even more impressive if the five had not all been appointed in the space of six years).

This is, without question, one of the best books available on the intimate subject of the clandestine culture, and it offers some lovely gems and personality assessments that intelligence professionals will appreciate more than the general public. I have taken one star off for lack of detail and context, but strongly recommend the book to anyone who has served in the clandestine service and wishes to be reminded of the dark years, and to anyone who has not served in the clandestine service, and wishes to have a small glimmering of the down side of it all.

Although the book does a good job of weaving a somewhat superficial (that is to say, the highlights, not the irrelevant) history of counter-terrorism with a history of bureaucratic mis-steps by a series of DCIs, and the book does a superb job of shredding both CIA lawyers and CIA security officers and CIA's complete lack of counterintelligence, this is primarily a book about the failure of the Directorate of Operations as a tribe, not about the failure of the US Government in the global war on terrorism.

In retrospect, 1983-1985 are the years when the USG and the IC should have gone to "General Quarters," and 1992 was the year when Congress should have risen to its role and passed the Boren-McCurdy National Security Act of 1992. No one comes out of this book looking better than Senator Dave Boren (today the President of the University of Oklahoma) and Congressman Dave McCurdy, both from Oklahoma, both in charge of the respective committees on intelligence, and both bright men with good hearts who were unable to prevail against their less enlightened colleagues.

The author does an excellent job of capturing some of the really low moments in CIA's clandestine history (such as in the 1990's when case officers were advised to take out legal liability insurance, both to protect themselves from CIA witch-hunts and to protect themselves from witch hunts mounted by others against which CIA would not be helpful to them).

The author, who got into trouble over some Palestinian relations that led to her being fired, has *not* written a bitter or a revenge book. This is an excellent and useful book, and for those who wish to study the CIA's clandestine service and its ups and downs in the 1980-2005 timeframe, this is destined to be a core reference. It captures nuances and insights that are not available to outsiders in any other source.

I do, however, want to highlight the author's brief discussion of CIA Security and the shortcomings of CIA security, the excessive reliance by CIA Security on the polygraph (which both Ames and the Cuban agents that blew two of my classmates passed), and the "room from hell" that is created by CIA Security and CIA management for those who are "suspect," more often than not without cause. I was stunned to learn that in the post-Ames environment 400 case officers (400--that is, by some accounts, at least 10% and perhaps as much as 30% of the entire case officer corps!) failed the polygraph as roughly administered by CIA Security, and were referred to the FBI for full field investigations. I cannot articulate the depth of my disdain for any CIA manager that would allow that to happen.

There is a great deal wrong at CIA, and I give the author top marks on her discussion of CIA's over-all attitude of denial and deception across two decades; and her helpful discussion of the culture of deceit and self-service that has prevented the clandestine service from adjusting to reality and being more effective in protecting America. However, as the author is careful to point out, CIA's failure take place in the context of the failures of the FBI, of the White House, and of other governments.

This is not a book I recommend for applicants to the clandestine service, mostly because I do not want to see them dissuaded from applying. The clandestine service is the last great adventure left in the U.S. government, outside of special operations, and no matter how screwed up it might yet be, there is no greater honor and no greater life-affirming engagement, than to be a case officer in the service of your country. Miles Copeland, Without Cloak or Dagger : The truth about the new espionage-- remains my single best suggested work for applicants to the clandestine service.

See also, for the good in CIA:
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander
The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB

And also the bad:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars

One last comment: over the next ten years I want to reduce the secret intelligence budget by 80%, down to $12 billion, and redirect the savings into national education and global connectivity for the five billion poor. You can learn more by seeking out information on collective intelligence, peace intelligence, commercial intelligence, gift intelligence, cultural intelligence, and Earth Intelligence. My first book, On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World remains the standard work on why this needs to be done.

Not a real memoir, but a very insightful book
Mahle writes only sparsely about her own career with the CIA clandestine service in this book, most likely because her former employer wouldn't let her, as she herself says a few times. This well-written book is full of insights, especially, on the sorry state of the clandestine service of the CIA (also known as the Directorate of Operations, DO) during the last fifteen years or so. The author writes about general developments within the DO and its position within successive US administrations. Partly due to Iran-Contra, the DO from the second half of the 1980s had to work under all kinds of ethical and political restrictions that made operations very difficult if not impossible in many cases. Operations would be cancelled if there was only the slightest chance of them resulting in bad publicity. Agents could only be recruited if they would lead the life of saints and go to church and confession at least once a week. Whereby the author makes abundantly clear that saints do not usually make good agents. Support from headquarters for clandestine officers in the field was weak at the best of times, if Mahle is to be believed. This was the time I think when a CIA officer in the field, before going off on an important but risky mission inquired first if the headquarters at Langley was still in friendly hands. It could always be that the enemy had taken over by the time he came back from his mission, of course. I seriously wonder if there was ever a great power in the last century whose clandestine service had to labor under such restrictions and under such a fear of risk-taking. After 9/11, of course, the pendulum swung completely in the other direction again, witness the program of 'extraordinary rendition', for example, about which much has been written lately. Apparently, in American political culture it is very difficult to find a kind of balanced middle road for the clandestine service that is a necessary tool for every great power in this imperfect and evil-ridden world. For an intelligence service in a democracy, there have to be some restrictions, of course, in the means used, but not excessively so. I found Mahle's analysis sharp but at the same time objective and balanced. She doesn't seem to bear a grudge towards her former employer but as an American citizen and a patriot, she naturally regrets the sorry state of an important part of the CIA during the time she worked there. I should also mention that her book is well-written and a good read.

Help Wanted: Editor
This book could use a good editor and a good re-write. While the small part of the book I actually read was OK in content, there seemed to be a lot of repetition, and a scattershot approach to the presentation. After just under a hundred pages, I gave up.

Perhaps some would call the following nitpicky. OK, that's fine. However, when I see a glaring error in the text of a book, I tend to question the entire book. Was this the only error? Or is the entire book filled with such errors? At one point the author says something to the effect of it being midnight in Washington DC, but 3 pm in the Middle East. Well, that may be, but one place or the other would have to have changed time zones for this to be so.

I'd like to read an edited version of this sometime. As a former spook, of sorts, back during the Stone Age, I greatly enjoy reading good books on this subject.

It took me nearly three weeks to make it through the short portion of the book that I did. Constantly putting it down in frustration, then picking it up again due to my great interest in the subject matter. The content of the remainder of the book might warrant a thorough reading, but I apologize: I'll have to leave that to another reader.