Don't read this if you have any positive views of the CIA. The read I'm referring too is Doug Feith's War and Decision.
This
book is a masterpiece of history written close to the time history was
being made by one of the key participants. We have never had anything
like this before. Every historian has a right to be overjoyed.
There will be plenty of reviews of this book that will tell you the main contents (so far the MSM has completely ignored the book, hoping the truth will go away.)
What I can tell you is that Feith is completely convincing in his honesty and candor. This man is incapable of lying and incapable of distorting what he has seen, experienced and read.
One of the key things he experienced and something I have known for nearly two decades is that the CIA is incompetent. What Feith adds to my understanding of the CIA is that it is dishonest, corrupt and is a political operator usually acting against the interests of the United States. Like the time CIA employees told Castro we were about to invade Cuba.
Knowing this about the CIA and knowing it can't be fixed is good reason to lose sleep at night.
Second, the State Department does not work for the United States. The State Department is an arm of the UN. It has always been since the UN was created by the State Department and always will be. Again, good reason to lose sleep. Every Secretary of State ends up parroting the internal State Department culture...which is 'We are an arm of the UN. Even if the UN has some minor flaws we must first work with the UN we must support the UN.'
If you doubt the truth or
accuracy of either of these statements, it is time to read the book.
On the other-hand, if you aren't capable of confronting the reality of
our government as it really is, that is a reason not to read the book.
Lastly, in any discussion of the freedom of the press it is important, after reading this book, to understand that the NYTimes and the WPost are both instruments of dissent wielded (without concern for honesty) by internal government bureaucrats to defeat the implementation of policies and programs after the bureaucrat has lost the internal battle against the policy or program.
If there is something beneficial from this role of the press, it needs to be compared to the horrible consequence of officially sanctioned dishonesty actively spread around the world by enemies of America
