America’s Team: the Odd Couple
Frank Aukofer and Vice Admiral William P. Lawrence, USN (Ret.). Nashville, TN: The Freedom Forum, 176 pp. App. Bib. Ind. Photos. Free. Apply directly to The Freedom Forum.
Reviewed by Brigadier General Thomas V. Draude, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
In Neil Simon’s "The Odd Couple,” two diverse personalities join together out of necessity and, despite initial problems, learn to tolerate each other’s idiosyncrasies. In America’s Team: The Odd Couple, Frank Aukofer and Vice Admiral William Lawrence describe a similar union of the U.S. military and the media, giving historical perspectives of the relationship and recent examples of successes and failures. Also included is an enlightening survey of mutual perceptions. Of particular use is the executive summary at the beginning, and separate recommendations for the military and the media, individually and combined. The final section contains excerpts of the 63 interviews conducted with government officials, media representatives, and military officers.
The authors have done a good job of describing the natural, healthy tension that exists in our "Odd Couple.” The media wants to do its job of reporting the war. They need access, information, and the means of getting their stories out. The military wants to carry out its task: to win wars. In doing so, it is inclined to restrict access and information for security reasons and it doesn’t share the reporters’ sense of urgency in getting news back to their editors. Each side has committed fouls in the Past, but both are capable of working together for benefit to themselves, each other, and the American people. My own experience in Desert Shield/Desert Storm convinced me of that.
Junior officers would benefit from fading this book in order to understand how a positive relationship can be established. Their attitudes are critical in setting the tone for media representatives in their areas. In reality, reporters are normally more inclined to believe junior officers and their troops than the generals and admirals. Training exercises are ideal opportunities to help acquaint the news reporters with things military and for the military to get used to the presence of reporters in daily activities.
This book is an easy read. Some of the quotes are used several times, but this is not a distraction. My only concern is the absence of interviews with Kirk Spitzer and Molly Moore. Those were two of the real successes in working with Marines in the Gulf War. A bit too much ink was given to the failed relationships of other services.
As Oscar and Felix demonstrated, the secret of living together is to live together. Recitations of past offenses and slights do not help in getting on with the challenge of working together productively in the future. America’s Team. The Odd Couple is a most useful tool in understanding and beginning such a relationship.
General Draude is a highly decorated combat veteran with more than 30 years of service. He was Assistant Div ision Commander of the 1st Marine Division during Operation Desert Shield/Storm. His final assignment was as Director of Public Affairs. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps.
Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: U.S. Covert Action and Counterintelligence
Roy Godson, Washington, D.C.: Brassey's 1995. 330 pp. notes, index, bib. gloss. $24.95 ($22.45).
Reviewed by Jeffrey Richelson
For a number of years Roy Godson, as coordinator of the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, has produced, edited, and contributed to collections of essays written by scholars and intelligence professionals, examining U.S. intelligence requirements in a variety of areas, from analysis to covert action.
In this volume. Godson serves as the sole author, addressing the role of what he believes to be two neglected elements of U.S. intelligence activity: counterintelligence and covert action. He argues that while neglect of these elements is usually not fatal to the security of democratic regimes, their “neglect . . . makes it riskier and more costly for such a state to fulfill its foreign and defense goals.” In both cases, he believes they could be better exploited to advance U.S. national interests.
At one level, the book serves as a primer, providing an overview of the components of, and issues concerning, covert action and counterintelligence. Thus, chapter two consists of a historical survey of U.S. covert action since 1945. while chapter three performs a similar function for counterintelligence, in the process covering FBI, CIA, and military counterintelligence. The two following chapters consist of detailed treatments of the various forms of covert action (fourteen types, including intelligence support, paramilitary operations, and political action) and counterintelligence. With respect to the latter subject. Godson explores analysis (including counter-deception analysis and the connection between counterintelligence analysis and positive intelligence), collection (via open sources, human sources, and technical systems), and exploitation—for deception and positive intelligence purposes. Along with his descriptions of these activities. Godson offers some analysis of the deficiencies of past practices, as well as discussions of ways these activities should be conducted in the future.
If there is one common flaw in these two later chapters it is in the nature of the examples used to illustrate various forms of covert action and counterintelligence and the issues involved. For example, the seven-page covert propaganda section of chapter four contains examples from World War II, the Kingdom of Mesopotamia, Elizabethan England, the American Revolution, and the Ming Dynasty. Examples that look so far back into history may not be the best means of preparing the reader to look ahead.
But Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards is most disappointing in its failure to confront directly the future of U.S. covert action and counterintelligence activities. Godson does discuss some practices or attitudes that limit the value of counterintelligence operations—including the Air Force’s policy of combining criminal investigation and counterintelligence activities under one roof (the Air Force Office of Special Investigations) and the CIA’s approach to counterintelligence, in which it serves as an adjunct to collection operations rather than as a means of conducting offensive operations.
However, there is no detailed discussion of the international environment in which future U.S. covert action and counterintelligence operations will be conducted. With respect to covert action. Godson does not, with the exception of a section concerning counterterrorism, attempt to address in any detail questions such as: what nations or activities are the most significant to United States interests in the years ahead? What forms of covert action, if any, are likely to be appropriate to address those threats? What are the risks faced in attempting covert action against such threats - whether it be drug cartels or the North Korean regime? What lessons, if any, can one draw from past U.S. covert action operations that are relevant to operations against specific targets?
Similarly, with regard to counterintelligence Godson does not address in any detail the difference in the intelligence threats facing the United States as the new century approaches, or the impact of the information revolution on counterintelligence activity. The world of the Internet, massive computer data bases, and high-resolution commercial imagery satellites is a very different one from that of even a decade ago. That difference is certain to have an impact on the way foreign intelligence services operate and which U.S. responses are appropriate and feasible.
Thus, Godson’s book, while useful as background for an examination of the future of U.S. counterintelligence and covert action operations, unfortunately does not take the reader into the future.
Dr. Richelson is an author and consultant. His most recent books are The U.S. Intelligence Community (Westview, 1995) and A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1995).
Savage Peace: Americans at War in the 1990s
Daniel P. Bolger. Novato, CA: Presidio Press. 390 pp. Ind. Maps. Notes. $27.95 ($25.15).
Reviewed by Lieutenant General John H. Cushman, U.S. Army (Retired)
I first heard of this book several months ago from the commander of the infantry brigade of the U.S. Army’s Southern European Task Force, in Livorno, Italy. His two airborne infantry battalions were slated to be the first U.S. troops to move into Bosnia. I was preparing a talk on Bosnia for a local civic group, and asked him for an insight on his training program. He told me to read Daniel Bolger’s account in this book of what went wrong with the U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1982-83. He said, “We are not going to let that happen to us.”
Although the entry of the U.S. Army into Bosnia began after this book went to press, there is no better collection of case studies on what confronts American troops who, in peacetime, are committed to situations near to war—situations that are complex, fraught with danger, and. like war itself, unforgiving of mistakes.
The author is an active-duty lieutenant j colonel in the Army (infantry). He offers a useful discourse on the new world situation and on the use of military force therein, but the main value of Bolger's book is its detailed presentation of five cases.
He addresses the commitment "in the Sinai Desert, under the supervision of the Multinational Force and Observers [of] never more than twelve hundred Americans and a thousand or so more from ten other countries [that have] kept peace between perennial opponents Egypt and Israel since 1982. . . ."
He tells the story of Beirut, 1982-83, where "each choice made or deferred pushed the force toward trouble, yet every act or decision . . . reflected a logic that made sense at the time [and] one thing led to another . . . the whole situation gathering momentum into a whirling, seemingly inevitable death spiral that culminated in in the horrific truck bombing of 23 October 1983.” Bolger’s words here may be overblown, but his account of that tragedy’s evolution and its lessons is laid out dispassionately.
He covers Provide Comfort, 1991-92, in which, post-Desert Storm, America led a coalition force into northern Iraq to save the Kurds. Bolger cites three reasons for Provide Comfort’s success:
- “A feasible mission . . . wisely limited…to relieving Kurdish misery, not reversing centuries of ethnic conflict.”
- “A battle focus, in which the “allied forces maneuvered and defended as if the next minute might bring on World War III.”
- “A strong, cooperative chain of command, in which the organization of multiservice and international forces all the Way down to mixed battalions and air squadrons demonstrated the full maturity of the American system of warpower”—to which most of the credit goes to (then lieutenant general John) Shalikasvili,” who commanded the multinational task force.
And at the end of a chapter that describes, from the President’s to the squad leader’s level, how the Somalia venture unfolded into disaster, Bolger concludes that “Somalia showed American foreign policy at rock bottom, aimless and costly. Worse than Beirut because it followed that tragedy, and policy makers from two administrations should have known better.”
Taking the reader to the Army’s Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, the author devotes one chapter, called “Dirty Work,” to the training of troops and their leaders in this kind of operation. It is encouraging to see how the military services are training nowadays, but in the final analysis the difference between success (Provide Comfort and the Sinai) and failure (Beirut and Somalia) is the quality of the judgments made by the civilian and military decision-makers at the top, down through leaders in the field.
General Omar Bradley is said to have remarked that “good judgment comes from experience—and experience comes from bad judgment.” There are important lessons about judgment to be learned from this very worthwhile book.
Books of Interest
By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Ship Production: Second Edition
Richard L. Storch, Colin P. Hammon, Howard M. Bunch , & Richard C. Moore. Centreville, MD: Cornell Maritime Press, 1995. 456 pp. Bib. Figs. Gloss, Illus. Ind. Photos, Tables. $80.00 ($76.00).
Suitable as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses and a valuable resource for practicing shipbuilding and repair professionals, this latest edition reflects the changes in technology that have occurred since the appearance of the first edition in 1988. The portion of the book devoted to ship conversion, overhaul, and repair has been significantly expanded as well. Chapters include such topics as “Shipbuilding Management Theory,” “Shipyard Layout,” “Planning, Scheduling, and Production Control,” and “Accuracy Control,” among others.
Female Tars: Women Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail
Suzanne J. Stark. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996. 192 pp. Illus. Ind. Notes. $26.95 ($21.56).
Sorting fact from fiction, Stark reveals the heretofore little-known roles of women in the Royal Navy during the time when wooden ships were supposedly manned by “iron men." In an age when many men had to be forced into service by the infamous press gangs there were women who disguised themselves as men in order to go to sea. There also were hundreds of prostitutes "'ho swarmed aboard ships as soon as they returned from sea. This account of such occurrences reveals not only the facts but the reasons behind them. Through careful documentation, authentic first-person reports, and lively anecdotes, Stark brings this social history to life.
U.S. Foreign and Strategic Policy in the Post-Cold War Era: A Geopolitical Perspective
Howard Wiarda, Editor. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. 272 pp. Ind. Notes. 559.95 ($56.95).
Written by professors of national security policy at the National War College, these essays Propose a comprehensive post-Cold War foreign policy for the United States. Chapters deal with each major geopolitical region of the world in a quest to answer a set of common questions: “What are the dynamic changes that have occurred in the region? How have security and foreign policy issues changed since ’he Cold War? What is the history of U.S. policy in the region? How must U.S. policy change to adjust to new realities?"
Blood on the Sea: American Destroyers Lost in World War II
Robert Sinclair Parkin, New York, NY: Sarpedon, 1996. 375 pp. Append. Bib. Gloss. Ind. Maps. Photos. $29.95 ($28.45).
Including the USS Reuben James (first U.S. destroyer lost in World War II) and USS Callaghan (last U.S. destroyer lost in World War II), 71 U.S. tin-cans went down while fighting the largest naval war in history. Parkin recounts the details of the demise of each of these ships as well as providing a brief history of the ship before its end. The result is not only an exciting collection of “short stories” about combat at sea but a view of the scope and diversity of World War II. Global in coverage, replete with awe-inspiring heroism, touched with poignant irony, and just plain exciting, this is a significant historical document and an entertaining read.
The New World Strategy: A Military Policy for America’s Future
Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr., USA (Ret.). New York, NY: Touchstone Books, 1995. 275 pp. Bib. Ind. Notes. $11.00 ($9.90) paper.
The author of the classic On Strategy, which provoked so much discussion of the meaning and lessons of the Vietnam War, now offers his views on what U.S. strategy and policy should be in the post-Cold War world. Colin Powell writes that "Once again, Colonel Harry Summers cuts through contemporary noise and takes us back to basics. The New World Strategy is must-reading for card-carrying strategists, and exceptionally informative for the lay reader. Among the insights and prescriptions offered. Colonel Summers offers his views on “the American way of war" and peacekeeping operations and proposes “the ten commandments” of U.S. strategy.
The Battle for History: Re-fighting World War II
John Keegan. New York, NY: Vintage Books. 1996. 130 pp. Notes. $10.00 ($9.00) paper.
Famed military historian John Keegan evaluates the literature of World War II, including general histories, biographies, individual experiences, and campaign studies. Noting that there has not been—despite the great quantity of World War II literature—a definitive history of that great conflict, Keegan observes that for two generations since the last shot was fired, the war has been re-fought on paper countless times. Despite this gargantuan literary effort and the passage of a more than a half-century, there still remains a significant number of unanswered questions (Could the Allies have returned to Europe sooner? Did Roosevelt have foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor? Could the Allies have impeded the Holocaust by bombing the Auschwitz railroad?) And so on.
The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Struggle Over Policy
Roger Hilsman. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996. 192 pp. Bib. Ind. Notes. Photos. $45.00 ($42.95).
Hilsman was head of intelligence at the U.S. State Department during this nuclear crisis in which naval quarantine, aerial reconnaissance, and backdoor communication channels were key factors. Using newly disclosed information from the Soviet side, as well as his own vantage point, Hilsman’s account is hair-raising and inspiring while providing a unique viewpoint of this moment of superpower confrontation.
Quonset Point Naval Air Station: Gem of the Atlantic
Sean Paul Milligan. Dover. NH: Arcadia, 1996. 128 pp. Photos. $16.99 ($15.29) paper.
More than 200 photographs capture the history of this naval base through four wars. Originally built as a Neutrality Patrol Seaplane Base, Quonset became an important component of the World War II struggle in the Atlantic and served as a premier industrial naval air station during the Cold War-era. More than half of the U-boats sunk in the Atlantic by U.S. aviation were the victims of Quonset-trained squadrons and much of the training and maintenance work done in support of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts was accomplished at this New England site. This photographic essay offers a nostalgic look at naval aviation history as well as a remembrance of a once-im- portant naval base.
Carrier Lexington
Hugh Power, College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1996. 175 pp. Append. Bib. Gloss. Illus. Ind. Photos. $14.95 ($13.45) paper.
In 1991, the Essex-class carrier Lexington retired as the last of the World War II-era flattops. Now permanently berthed at Corpus Christi, Texas, she is a fitting memorial to a proud history of American naval aviation. Through many photographs and fitting text, this book takes the reader into the world of carrier aviation and into the distinguished history of this once formidable weapon. During WWII, she destroyed more than a thousand Japanese aircraft and sank more than a million tons of enemy shipping. As a training carrier from the early 1960s until decommissioning, Lexington spawned generations of naval aviators, in addition to being one of the most decorated of all U.S. carriers.
Shadow Warriors: The Covert War in Korea
William B. Breuer. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1996. 275 pp. Ind. Maps. Notes. Photos. $27.95 ($25.15).
Secret missions, guerrilla operations, and heavy propaganda all were components of the Korean War that have been overshadowed by the more conventional aspects. Relying upon interviews with participants, Breuer paints a colorful picture of these behind-the-scenes war efforts. Publishers Weekly calls this book “an absorbing text with colorful yams . .. suitable for serious students of history [and] for fans of cloak-and-dagger mayhem military style.”
A Bitter Peace
Michael Peterson, New York, NY: Pocket Book, 1995. 405 pp. $24.00 ($21.60).
Well-known author Jack Higgins praised A Bitter Peace as "The Winds of War of the Vietnam conflict,” Peterson’s previous work, the highly acclaimed novel A Time of War indisputably proved his mettle as a novelist. Now he turns his impressive skills to a new work of historical fiction, this one with its roots in the Vietnam War and continuing on through America’s struggle with the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran.