PDF Ebook The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz
Your impression of this book The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz will certainly lead you to get what you specifically require. As one of the inspiring publications, this publication will offer the existence of this leaded The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz to accumulate. Also it is juts soft data; it can be your cumulative file in device and various other gadget. The crucial is that use this soft file book The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz to read and take the advantages. It is exactly what we indicate as publication The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz will certainly enhance your thoughts and mind. Then, reviewing book will certainly also boost your life top quality a lot better by taking great activity in well balanced.
The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz
PDF Ebook The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz
Exceptional The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz book is consistently being the best friend for investing little time in your office, evening time, bus, as well as everywhere. It will be a good way to merely look, open, and check out the book The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz while because time. As recognized, experience and skill do not consistently featured the much cash to obtain them. Reading this publication with the title The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz will certainly let you understand more things.
Do you ever before recognize the book The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz Yeah, this is a quite interesting book to review. As we told previously, reading is not sort of responsibility activity to do when we need to obligate. Reviewing need to be a behavior, a great practice. By reviewing The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz, you can open up the new globe and get the power from the world. Everything could be acquired with guide The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz Well in brief, publication is really powerful. As what we provide you here, this The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz is as one of reviewing publication for you.
By reading this book The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz, you will obtain the very best thing to get. The brand-new thing that you don't have to invest over money to get to is by doing it on your own. So, just what should you do now? See the link page and download guide The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz You could get this The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz by on the internet. It's so easy, right? Nowadays, modern technology actually sustains you tasks, this on-line publication The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz, is too.
Be the very first to download this e-book The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz and also let read by surface. It is quite simple to read this publication The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz due to the fact that you do not have to bring this published The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz everywhere. Your soft data publication could be in our kitchen appliance or computer system so you could appreciate reading everywhere and each time if required. This is why great deals varieties of people additionally read guides The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz in soft fie by downloading guide. So, be among them who take all benefits of reading the book The Great Game: The Myth And Reality Of Espionage, By Frederick P. Hitz by on the internet or on your soft file system.
In this fascinating analysis, Frederick Hitz, former inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency, contrasts the writings of well-known authors of spy novels—classic and popular—with real-life espionage cases. Drawing on personal experience both as a participant in “the Great Game” and as the first presidentially appointed inspector general, Hitz shows the remarkable degree to which truth is stranger than fiction.
The vivid cast of characters includes real life spies Pyotr Popov and Oleg Penkovsky from Soviet military intelligence; Kim Philby, the infamous Soviet spy; Aldrich Ames, the most damaging CIA spy to American interests in the Cold War; and Duane Clarridge, a CIA career operations officer. They are held up against such legendary genre spies as Bill Haydon (le Carré’s mole in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), Magnus Pym (in le Carré’s A Perfect Spy), Tom Rogers (in David Ignatius’s Agents of Innocence), and Maurice Castle (in Graham Greene’s The Human Factor).
As Hitz skillfully weaves examples from a wide range of espionage activities—from covert action to counterintelligence to classic agent operations—we see that the actual is often more compelling than the imaginary, and that real spy case histories present moral and other questions far more pointedly than fiction.
A lively account of espionage, spy tradecraft, and, most of all, the human dilemmas of betrayal, manipulation, and deceit.
- Sales Rank: #1223780 in Books
- Published on: 2004-04-20
- Released on: 2004-04-20
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.64" h x .84" w x 5.91" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 224 pages
From Publishers Weekly
This compact study contrasts the fictional treatment of espionage with its real life machinations, and manages to be both informative and entertaining in spite of its modest size. The author, a former CIA officer now teaching at Johns Hopkins, focuses particularly on how living a double life affects the players’ personalities. Each part of the actual spies’ career—from recruitment (or recruiting others) to arrest or retirement—is studied in terms of how differing character traits often lead to different sets of decisions in the construction of a shadow self, and how spies re-train their physical and emotional instincts so that their new personalities feel natural. Such alterations are part and parcel of "tradecraft"; CIA traitor Aldrich Ames and the famous Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky may have been deadly, but they were sloppy in keeping their spy personae and actions consistent, while FBI mole Richard Hanssen was exquisitely careful except where one woman was concerned. (Yes, sex is a part of many espionage scenarios—though Hitz suggests that that these arrangements are more complex than any a novelist would dare create.) Hitz then goes on to analyze fictional spies, giving John Le Carre’s creations high marks, as well as Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, based on the author’s WWI experience with British intelligence. Hitz also has good things to say about Tom Clancy’s characters, notably Marko Ramius of Red October. As for the future of spying, Hitz believes that satellite-based snooping will exist alongside "human intelligence," but that even the office technocrats behind the controls will have tics that affect their work—and the information they gather.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Hitz, who has had a lengthy career in the Central Intelligence Agency, expounds in varied and interesting ways on how the literature of espionage compares with its actual practice. Copiously quoting from classics ranging from Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901) to W. Somerset Maugham's Ashenden (1928) to the cold war convolutions of Graham Greene and John le Carre, Hitz concludes that in most instances truth is more surprising and peculiar than fiction. Breaking the espionage trade into its components, such as recruiting spies, Hitz discusses the rarity with which recruitment pitches succeed in real operations; typically, spies are not seduced but voluntarily offer their services (e.g., Oleg Penkovsky and Robert Hanssen). Yet counterexamples, such as the Soviets' recruitment of mole Kim Philby, present models that le Carre crafted into his novels about mole-hunter George Smiley. Hitz feels that such creations, while reflecting the psychology of this secretive world, cannot keep up with the motivations that lie behind real-life betrayals and deceptions. Perfect for spy-story fans who crave an insider's assessment of the reality behind the entertainment. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“A lucid overview of 20th-century espionage that says more about the great game as it was played by Americans and their allies and adversaries than just about anything else ever published.” –The Washington Post Book World
“Absorbing . . . A hit for the avid spy-fiction reader. . . . A can’t miss for Clancy fans.” --Detroit Free Press
“Hitz . . . shows [that] nothing is certain in the shadow world of spies and betrayals, not even the truth.” --The New York Times
“Hitz is at his best when he reveals juicy details of intelligence lapses. . . . He has genuine insight into the inner workings of intelligence bureaucracy.” --San Francisco Chronicle
“A good read and good fun and quite informative. . . . By weaving together reality and image, the author provides insights into espionage unlikely to be obtained elsewhere.” –James Schlesinger, former secretary of defense and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency
“A delightful little jewel of a book. . . . A steady stream of insdier’s reflections, including details regarding American traitors, makes this not only a smooth and entertaining read, but a handy reference work.” –The Roanoke Times
“Hitz is a strong researcher who can turn a nifty phrase. . . . Enjoyable and useful.” –St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Informative and entertaining.” –Publishers Weekly
“Perfect for spy-story fans who crave an insider’s assessment of the reality behind the enetertainment.” –Booklist
“A slender but rich–and quite entertaining–introduction to the shadowy world of spy vs. spy. . . . A perfect companion for fans of John le Carr?.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred)
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Spy Fact, Spy Fiction
By Rob Hardy
If you are a fan of spy films and fiction, you will appreciate the countless times double agents are integral to their plots, and how often the Americans, say, would dangle rewards to recruit Soviet spies to come over to the other side. It worked in fiction; it never worked, not once, in any significant way, in actual spying. Frederick P. Hitz, who has a long history of service with the CIA, knows this and says it is confirmed by former CIA director Robert M. Gates and case officer Dwight Clarridge. In _The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage_ (Knopf), Hitz gives an overview of 20th century spying, comparing fiction to the real thing. It will be a book best appreciated by those who are familiar with the work of such authors as le Carré and Graham Greene, but it can be appreciated not just for the comparisons between fact and fiction, but for the many observations of fact about the spying game.
Rather than recruitments, there were walk-ins by Soviets; a spy (or potential spy) literally walked in to an embassy and offered his services. Changing sides comes from diverse motivations. Some Soviet walk-ins disliked the repression of the Soviet state. Others needed money. Aldrich Ames walked into the Washington Soviet embassy in 1985 with what he estimated was $150,000 in CIA and FBI secrets, ready to sell because he had a lot of bills for his extravagant way of living. Frequently spies have resentment towards their own bureaucracies and failures to rise in them. Sometimes people are tricked into spying. Even the James Bond novels describe a specific sort of "honey pot" entrapment, whereby the sexual liaison would be filmed and the victim forced to spy if he wanted to avoid exposure. The Soviets could apparently insist to attractive female workers that their bodies belonged to the state and had duties as lures, not the sort of order that western countries could make to their female employees. It is interesting that honey pots did not work in the opposite direction for another reason. Entrapped westerners would fret about exposure, but when such entrapment was tried on Soviets, they "...would invariably laugh off the threat of exposure as not very compelling in their country." Gadgets so beloved by the movies are downplayed here. There have been, for example, extraordinary advances in miniaturization of microphones and transmitters, but a cat equipped with a microphone makes too many sounds of its own; thus the "Acoustic Kitty" of the Technical Support Division "died a deserved death as technically infeasible."
Spy reality has affected spy fiction. Where the heroes used to be unsung good guys doing their patriotic duties, after Vietnam and Watergate, novelists like le Carré and Clancy wrote about obsessives, misfits, and power freaks who were interested in playing the spy game for itself rather than for national interest. The end of the Cold War and the effect of terrorism have potential for bringing back the hero spy. Perhaps we have hero spies now and Hitz simply is not able to sing their praises because they are still spying. His book is good at giving details of such things as the treasons of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, and also the contributions of Soviet double agents to the information Kennedy needed to decide on the Cuban blockade. It is in giving these inside stories that Hitz succeeds in conveying his thesis: leaving aside the more fantastic Bondian conceits, "...real espionage cases are often more bizarre, more deserving of a place in Ripley's than the fictional accounts."
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Amusing, Inaccurate, Silly, Not Informative -- Doubtful That The Author Ever Met Or Recruited A Spy
By David M. Dougherty
I bought this book hoping to read an intellectual treatise of the reality faced by spies and their handlers as contrasted to fictional representations in spy novels. In short I expected an expose` of what really goes on (which is pretty mundane) as compared to riveting and thrilling adventures. What I read was a silly half-baked comparison of fictional spy characters from Ashenden to The Hunt For Red Oktober" (not really spies) to ten well-known and exposed spies, five Brits, two Soviets and two Americans (Ames and Hanssen.) There was little to learn, and what there was was well-hidden.
The author brings interesting bureaucratic credentials to the table having served in the CIA, Departments of State, Defense, and Energy, and finally as inspector general of the CIA. However, although his first position was as an "operations officer" (note the does not use the term "case officer"), he may have spent his entire 18 years at Langley, and all those after his first stint in positions requiring a lawyer. In short, his bio indicates he was the ultimate Washington bureaucrat rather than an intelligence operative. Nonetheless, one would think at least he would know something about spies from osmosis, but this book failed to display any insider knowledge, or indeed, anything that could not be gleaned from reading the fictional works referenced and widely published books by others on the real spies he used for comparisons. The best that can be said for this standard product of an Ivy League school (Princeton) and Harvard Law School is that he can write fairly well, although repetitiously.
Hitz points out that the CIA failed to penetrate the Soviet Union, was unable to ferret out Soviet agents in the CIA itself, and has become increasingly inept, bureaucratic and bureaupathic (my word.) Two statements were telling. One, that Americans were "too nice" to be successful in an inherently dirty game, and two, that meaningful contact between American case officers in diplomatic cover and Soviet targets was non-existent so that recruitment of Soviet agents was precluded. Unfortunately, Hitz fails to point out the obvious. The solution to the first problem is to stop recruiting socially acceptable personnel from Ivy League schools who cannot function outside diplomatic cocktail parties, and the second is solved by moving case officers to non-official cover where life becomes personally dangerous and have them recruit indigenous spotters and assessors. Oh wow, that means the Agency has to hire non-elite personnel who will be willing to take risks.
Hitz never discusses what makes up a good spy (access and motivation) or an effective case officer (in his term "spy-runner.") Frankly I prefer the MI term "agent handler", but spy-runner will do. Allow me to make up for what Hitz omitted. The first requirement for an agent handler is fluency in the host language. Requirements two through nine are fluency in the host language. Tenth is the willingness to take risks to accomplish the mission, eleventh is an understanding of people, and twelfth is political adeptness in handling the home office.
There are many errors in this book such as his statement that the Venona Project was not publicized during the forties and fifties due to the "sensitivity" of the project. This is a red herring since the project had already been betrayed to the Soviet Union by a Soviet Agent William Weisband in 1946 (or 1948). If there was any sensitivity it was that the American people were not ready to hear that several hundred Soviet agents were active in the Federal Government, most notably the State Department. McCarthy was actually almost spot on, leading some analysts to surmise that McCarthy had been tipped off to Venona by someone on the project. Hitz mentions the Soviet spies confirmed through Venona such as the Rosenbergs, Hiss, Currie and White, but fails to mention those spies who were not brought to trial like Ted Hall. This and other errors makes it seem like Hitz possesses little knowledge beyond what has already been published and widely accepted.
In addition, given that the CIA has become increasingly bureaucratic and incompetent, one wonders what part the author played in inhibiting or enhancing this trend as the CIA's inspector general for eight years. If this misbegotten book is any indication, Hitz does not figure prominently among the good guys.
In short, this book is amusing, but has little otherwise to offer. It will only appeal to literary types who have no personal experience in intelligence activities and can readily confuse reality with fiction. It does not present the reality of life in positive intelligence gathering that one might have expected -- rather Hitz confuses some arcane reality in his own mind with myths contained in spy books.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A pretty good book
By Joseph Biskup
I enjoyed this book, though it has several frustrations. It is a relatively small book, and a relatively quick read. Overall, the text is very approachable and the subject matter broad but not deep. Each chapter is for a particular aspect of spying such as: sex, tradecraft, gadgets, recruitment, betrayal, retirement, etc. Each chapter is presented in an artificially independent manner; rarely does one chapter refer back to a reference in another chapter. I suppose this can help keep things straight, but it makes it more difficult to create a continuous thread of understanding through the whole book.
Throughout the book, Hitz compares his experiences (rarely explicitely said or rarely a specific incident cited) to about 10 fictional accounts and about 5 true-life books previously written. There are many extended quotes followed by a short interpertation by Hitz. Most of the book focuses on what the author deems an accurate (versus inaccurate) portrayal. If you are not familiar with most of the sources he uses then you may have a difficult time keeping keeping the references straight throughout the book (as I did).
I had a difficult time deciding whether to give three or four stars. The book is a nice read, but not to deep. I felt myself constantly looking for more; wondering what Hitz was leaving out, what he couldn't say and what is still classified "secret" by the government. In the end, I am not a spook so I have to give Hitz the benefit of the doubt and assume he is relatively thorough and honest.
The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz PDF
The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz EPub
The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz Doc
The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz iBooks
The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz rtf
The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz Mobipocket
The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick P. Hitz Kindle
No comments:
Post a Comment