Burn Before Reading

In this "thoughtful, entertaining, and often insightful" book, a former CIA director explores the delicate give-and-take between the Oval Office and Langley.

With the disastrous intelligence failures of the last few years still fresh in Americans minds--and to all appearances still continuing--there has never been a more urgent need for a book like this.

In Burn Before Reading, Admiral Stansfield Turner, the CIA director under President Jimmy Carter, takes the reader inside the Beltway to examine the complicated, often strained relationships between presidents and their CIA chiefs. From FDR and "Wild Bill" Donovan to George W. Bush and George Tenet, twelve pairings are studied in these pages, and the results are eye-opening and provocative. Throughout, Turner offers a fascinating look into the machinery of intelligence gathering, revealing how personal and political issues often interfere with government business--and the nation's safety. Read more Continue reading Read less FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
President George H.W. Bush may have called it "the best job in Washington," but many of those who have held the position of director of central intelligence (DCI) may beg to differ. Retired Admiral Stansfield Turner, for one, did not want to take the post, which meant giving up his long naval career. Nevertheless, Turner took Jimmy Carter's offer and went on to become one of just two DCIs who lasted the entire term of the presidents who appointed them. In this volume, Turner, with the research and writing help of Allen Mikaelian, presents a straightforward look at the relationships between DCIs and the presidents they served. It is often not an inspiring picture. Turner shows that very few presidents worked well with their CIA directors and that the relationships were often severely strained over matters of politics, personality and loyalty. Things reached a nadir under President Nixon, who "came to the job already despising the CIA." Most interesting to general readers, however, is Turner's claim that this rocky history led directly to the agency's two biggest intelligence failures: not preventing the 9/11 attacks and not providing the correct information about Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. (Oct. 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. FROM BOOKLIST
Turner served as director of the CIA from 1977 to 1981. He is obviously qualified to offer an insider's perspective on the relationship between presidents and their CIA directors from World War II to the present. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the first; here Turner reveals the amazingly primitive state of U.S. espionage before WWII, when the bluebloods of the State Department viewed spying as ungentlemanly. Turner proceeds to detail the origins of the CIA as a Roosevelt favorite, "Wild Bill" Donovan, founded the O.S.S. Under Truman, the CIA grew in power, despite Truman's discomfort with some of their activities. Turner's description of some of the roughest moments in CIA relations with Kennedy (the Bay of Pigs fiasco) and Nixon (Watergate) are recounted with frankness and insight. In every administration, Turner maintains that providing the president with concise intelligence unvarnished by political and bureaucratic considerations remains a problem, and his concluding suggestions for remedying the problem deserve serious consideration. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Admiral Stansfield Turner served as director of central intelligence from 1977 to 1981, heading both the Intelligence Community and the CIA. Previously, as an admiral in the U.S. Navy, he served as the commander of the U.S. Second Fleet and president of the Naval War College, and as the commander in chief of NATO's Southern Flank. Admiral Turner is on the faculty of the University of Maryland's Graduate School of Public Policy. He lives in Washington, D.C. Read more Continue reading Read less

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.