Spytime: Library Edition

Rating:
Summary: Decent
Review: A very decent book and an interesting read, but Buckley's
fictional account of some of Jim Angleton's anti-communist
work lacks enough detail to really prove engaging.
As a mystery, the story seems a little weak, but passable.
A more glaring omission is Buckley's usual detailed knowledge
and background, and we are allowed only the slightest insight
into Angleton's thinking and motivation. It's especially glaring here because the author has significant knowledge
of the events and eras covered, but he has chosen not to share
it with the reader.
Angleton was the CIA's Chief of Counterintelligence for 20
years, and he was one of the leading anti-communist fighters
of all time, and he devoted his life to that cause, and we
have to wish Buckley would have shared significantly more of
his insights and knowledge. Even in a fictionalized account,
the author could have easily added far more interesting details
and stories.
This work is barely an introduction to either the life and times
of the famous Angleton or to the enormous anti-communist
effort so many Westerners made for decades.
This is a book to read in between more serious pursuits.

Rating:
Summary: Cold Warrior or Soviet Dupe???
Review: Being somewhat familar with this genre, I was quite amused with the back alley tidbits with which Buckley sprinkles this light hearted tome. Unfortunately, another work on Angleton, "Cold Warrior" does not give us a "House of Mirrors" portrait of Angelton to pose against Buckley's oh-so-clever innuendo & Georgetown gossip. But it is fascinating to see how Buckley portrays the Philby-Angelton connection, with Golitsyn as a Soviet disinformation Mephistopheles to feed Angeltons alcoholic paranoid delusions.

One wonders if Angelton really slept with the murdered-on-the-Towpath Kennedy mistress, and retreived her diary to protect JFK or himself? Although Buckley mentions Hollis in passing [together with Burgess, Maclean, Philby & Blunt],the book ends with a sardonic choice: Was Colby or Angelton the Fifth Man of the latest version of The Trust? Both were not responsible for the Ames/Hanssen round, but both were in place during the Walker & Falcon/Snowman runs. Was Pollard an Angelton protege, ala Crespi? The Lovestone comments are worth the price of admission, albeit the technique was used by Nixon against Allende.

One appreciates Buckley's discussion of the damage caused by NSA's Martin & Mitchell, and the Army Driver who was exempt from full searches entering and leaving No Such Agency, since he ran bootleg errands for the top NSA brass, before Costco & Sam's Club displaced the Fort Meade Exchange & Commissary.

Orchids to orchids and dust to dust,
if the booze don't get you, Nosenko must.

hUMPTY dUMPTY

Rating:
Summary: Sorry, wrong personal obsession
Review: I have been concerned about finding an analytical book on "The Undoing Of James Jesus Angleton," as counterintelligence has been one of the strongest enemies which clear thinking had to face during his lifetime, and for far too long since then. Trying to understand this on an individual level which is much more familiar in the literature of our time, SPYTIME by William F. Buckley, Jr. uses the style of the typical mystery detective to muse on the inner confusion which drove the ideology of secrecy in search of "The Golitsyn Epiphany: the United States Government continued unaware of the lengths to which Soviet policy was based on persistent, systematic, dogged disinformation and deception." (p. 144). Chapter 56 covers Angleton's last 45 minutes on the job, from DCI Colby's "Effective at noon today you are relieved of all duties," (p. 299) but Colby didn't actually say that his job was being terminated, so naturally James Jesus Angleton kept thinking along the same lines as throughout the book, obsessing on what is going to happen to things in his safe at "almost two in the morning." (p. 302). The final chapter is clearly from Angleton's point of view. "I am doing an important exercise." (p. 303). In the end, the nature of Angleton's personal obsession is made perfectly clear, but the vast stretched time in which the book is set, skipping from December, 1962 (Chapter 36, p. 205) to January, 1966 (Chapter 51, p. 271) to November, 1972 (Chapter 52, p. 276) to February, 1973 (Chapter 53, p. 281) to 1974 for the final chapters, manages to miss the length of time the agency lost to confusion in unnecessary disputes, as: "On the matter of Nosenko, for instance, I [Angleton] ruled that his credentials were suspect." (pp. 291-2). If ever an agency did not want to believe what a Soviet agent was saying (the best example of a perfect failure since the great tragedy "Oedipus Rex"), it was whenever Nosenko was talking to the CIA, but the ability of intelligence to defeat itself is not what this book is about.

Rating:
Summary: An intriguing book
Review: William Buckley has in his later years developed a surprising talent for fiction, and he couldn't have picked a more intriguing subject to focus it on with this book than James Angleton. How does one portray a man like Angleton? The spy novel genre, as epitomized by writers like John Le Carre, tends towards heavily convoluted plots, language, and characterizations in the effort to force the literary vehicle itself into a representation of the dark and twisted ethos of espionage. And one might have expected Angleton, as the quintessential cold-war spymaster, to have inspired just such a brooding study. However, Buckley will have none of that with his book, and taking the opposite tack, he crafts his novel with the same crisp lucidity that animates his political commentary. Employing spare sentence structure, sprightly characterization and fast-paced narrative, he draws a portrait of Angleton that has nothing sinister or even particularly mysterious about it. The legendary CIA counterintelligence chief emerges from this as entirely human - flawed and quirky, but brilliant, loyal to friends and motivated by a sincere patriotism. Underlying the story, however, is a kind of sad commentary by Buckley on the tragic nature of espionage as a profession. Much like a good cop corrupted by the violence of a high-crime neighborhood, Angleton by the end of his career seems helpless against the pressures driving him into a paranoid pathology. Frustrated by his failures to detect genuine traitors in his own ranks, Angleton becomes suspicious of everyone and begins voicing reckless accusations. This being historical fiction, of course, we all know how the story ends. When the CIA comes under hostile scrutiny during the post-Watergate period, Angleton has few friends left able or willing to defend him from his detractors, and he is sacked from the Agency he had devoted his life to. In what must have been the bitterest of ironies for him, attacks on his own loyalty are among the charges that doom him. Buckley touches on all this only very lightly at the end of this short work, but the simple brushstrokes paint a poignant picture. Spytime is a very good book and I recommend it.