For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush

by Christopher M. Andrew and Christopher Andrew

Book Overview

From the co-author of KGB: The Inside Story and an acknowledged authority on the subject comes the most important book ever written about American intelligence.--David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060921781
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 688 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.6" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Presidential Intelligence

This is an altogether fascinating book on how American Presidents have used, misused, or ignored secret intelligence in the 20th Century. Although Andrew provides a brief introductory chapter on how U.S. presidents from Washington onward have used secret intelligence, the balk of the book concerns 20th Century presidents from Woodrow Wilson to George W Bush (senior). From the beginning of the Cold War (1947-1992) CIA was the principal means by which successive presidents received secret intelligence. Therefore much of this book chronicles the dynamic relationships that developed between CIA directors and their most important individual customer, the President. As this book makes clear, not all presidents understood the value and uses of the secret intelligence provided through CIA. Also the role of CIA as a purveyor of intelligence was muddied by its ability to conduct covert operations. More than one president was far more interested in the ability of CIA to engage in secret operations to achieve presidential national security objectives than the intelligence that it provided. According to Andrew, excluding John Kennedy, only two modern Presidents really understood the value,use, and limitations of intelligence. President Dwight Eisenhower, thanks to his WWII role as Supreme Allied Commander, came to the presidency with a clear understanding and appreciation of intelligence and established a good working relationship with CIA and the IC. President George W. Bush (Senior) actually served a year as CIA Director under Gerald Ford. This experience gave him an unprecedented understanding (for a U.S. President) of intelligence processes and capabilities as well as a clear understanding of the uses and abuses of covert action. Bush was a very well liked CIA and more importantly trusted. As a result, even if Bush disliked the then CIA Director William Webster, he had a fine sense of the importance of the intelligence that CIA produced. He even added Robert Gates, a career CIA officer, to his National Security Council (NSC). Almost unique among U.S. Presidents, Bush understood the vital differences between predictive and warning intelligence and never expected CIA to produce prophetic warnings on specific events. In sum this is a well written and well researched book that shows yet again that any intelligence is only as good as the system or, in this case, individual it serves.

Eye Opening Reading For Secret Intelligence Buffs

For the Presidents Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush is exciting reading for fans of secret intelligence or presidential history. The book answers the all important question "what did the president know and when did he know it" and more importantly to secret intelligence buffs "how did he know it." Professor Christopher Andrew provides a through analysis of the intelligence provided to the presidents of the United States during their tenure and how the presidents used that intelligence. He further explains how the President felt about intelligence and how well the Presidents understood what intelligence could and could not do for him. In addition Andrew examines the state of the intelligence services, how the intelligence services changed during each president's term and the president's impact on the intelligence community during their administration. Christopher Andrew is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cambridge University's Corpus Christi College. He has written many books on secret intelligence including The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev, Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community, and "Comrade Kryuchkov's Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975-1985. Andrew is a frequent host of British Broadcasting Corporation television and radio history productions. He holds the Chair of the History Faculty at Cambridge University, the Chair of the British Intelligence Study Group and is a former Visiting Professor of National Security at Harvard, Toronto and Canberra. Andrew has presented guest lectures at numerous American universities and the Central Intelligence Agency. Andrew essentially dismisses the intelligence services available to presidents George Washington to William H. Taft as ineffectual or non-existent in the modern sense and gives a quick one-chapter overview of intelligence during their terms. Andrew then gets into the heart of the book with another chapter for presidents Woodrow Wilson to Herbert Hoover. Here he credits the First World War with creating the first modern intelligence service, but then says it was rapidly lost due to the actions of Woodrow Wilson after the war. He claims that the intelligence services were not really reconstituted until the Second World War. The most interesting story here was how British intelligence intercepted the Zimmerman telegram and manipulated the United States into entering the war earlier than it might have otherwise. Andrew then devotes a chapter each to presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt to George H. W. Bush. Each president is covered in-depth and the book gives the details behind every major crisis of the 20th century up through the first President Bush. The later presidents are not covered as the book was published in 1995. Andrews writ

perspective from the 5 star himself........

hell of a book...........what about a new disney film about a shy young kansas farm boy who wears glasses and stutters around girls.......but when he visits his local school's ROTC building and changes clothes in the bathroom..... HE IS INSTANTANEOUSLY AND LITERALLY TRANSFORMED IN AN AMERICAN 5-STAR GENERAL!! WITHOUT GLASSES!! AND NOT SHY AROUND THE BABES ANYMORE!! He become a great leader of the people, but when the Chinese discover the great secret, they make plans to take over the bathroom and ruin the grand scheme....... Surely, a great Disney film for American children to watch and learn...

Fascinating history of the American intelligence community

This book is extremely well written and very informative. I picked it up as a reference for a term paper, and initially I read just the section pertaining to the term paper. Whenever I opened it to read a passage for the term paper though, I found that I just couldn't put the book down because it was so interesting. While on Christmas vacation, I went back and read the rest of the book. I rank this book right up there with Clay Blair's "Silent Victory," and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about the development of the American intelligence community at the highest levels of government.

This should be required reading for all future presidents

The vast differences in how each of our top leaders have used, abused, and changed secret intelligence is presented in a comprehensive and objective way. Some presidents fully understood and effectively used the intelligence tools at their disposal, while others bungled and mismanaged. It becomes clear that most US presidents didn't get to that office by having "intelligence", being technically knowledgeable, or even by having common sense. Andrew's book details the big mistakes, blunders, and successes of each president. Future presidents would be well served to read this book before they take office so that they avoid the pitfalls that seem to repeat themselves over and over, president after president.Overall, this is a fascinating book for anyone interested in military, political, or intelligence history.