Denial and Deception; An Insider's View of the CIA from Iran-Contra to 9/11

New York: Nation Books, 2004. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good/poor. xi, [1], 403, [1] pages. Notes. Glossary of Intelligence and National Security Terms. Bibliography. Index. DJ as part of front cover and front flap gone. Inscribed on the front free end paper. Inscription reads: 20 Dec 04, Heidi, To one of the brave & dedicated officers serving to keep America safe. I hope you enjoy this historical narrative, and, at times, critique of a great organization--the CIA Melissa Boyle Mahle. As this book was going to press, the CIA insisted on a number of changes to the typeset pages. The published chose to indicate the parts of the book so censored by blacking out the relevant passages. Previous CIA redactions resulted in rewritten pages or a note in the book that the Agency had requested the change. Melissa Boyle Mahle is a writer and former Central Intelligence Agency officer. She graduated from University of California, Berkeley and went on to acquire fluency in Arabic. Mahle worked as a CIA "field officer" (spy) for the CIA from the mid-1980s until 2002 in the Middle East. She was involved in US intelligence operations in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Her service spans the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, to the beginning of George W. Bush. Since leaving the CIA, Mahle has worked as a commentator, movie consultant, author, and publisher. In 2004, after leaving the CIA, Mahle published Denial and Deception, in which she criticized in detail the CIA as rudderless and adrift in a post-Cold War world up to 9/11. She also described the challenges of being a married woman field agent (in a covert career that overlapped with Valerie Plame). This book offers an insider's view of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1990s, the strengths and the weaknesses, and how the CIA contributed to the intelligence failure of September 11.. This book was written in part to answer the question of why the CIA failed to anticipate the attacks. Derived from a Kirkus review: A tattler's tales-some censored-from the hidden files of The Agency. Being in the CIA is different from being in just about any other walk of life, writes former case officer Mahle: "We tell 'cover stories,' not lies. We motivate agents to 'collect intelligence on their behalf'; we do not manipulate, trick, or coerce. We 'assess and exploit target candidate's vulnerabilities'; we do not prey upon the weaknesses and entrap people by virtue of these weaknesses. We 'collect intelligence'; we do not steal information." Mahle suggests, the CIA is deeply compromised, having been overseen by a succession of directors who prized technology over human intelligence and steadily eliminated agents who, by virtue of speaking various languages and maintaining various networks, could actually turn up useful information. Not that human agents were infallible; as Mahle writes, "in an amazing act of stupidity and bravado," the senior agent in charge of tracking Somalian strongman Mohammed Farah Aideed blew his brains out in a game of Russian roulette, and Aideed went on to Black Hawk Down infamy. A worse blow, by Mahle's account, came when the paramilitary power of the CIA was all but destroyed following the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s. "Not only did the CIA no longer have a real capability to wage a secret war," she writes, "it no longer thought in those terms." Which, of course, has made the Agency all but useless in the days following 9/11. There are a few gaps in Mahle's argument-the CIA "requested" that several passages be removed, including at least one that "discussed a lack of accountability for Iraq operations". Still, a valuable critique of an intelligence unit that is clearly in need of reform-and, one gathers, of more money, power, and people.