Armstrong,
Scott. The Chronology: The Documented Day-to-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras. New York: Warner, 1987.The items included here cover the covert war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Material dealing with the Iran-Contra uproar is treated separately. Why? Because that matter is best seen as a crisis of the Reagan administration, not specifically a crisis of the CIA. See "Iran-Contra."
Armstrong,
Scott. The Chronology: The Documented Day-to-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras. New York: Warner, 1987.
Benda, Susan. "Violations
of Law in the Covert War Against Nicaragua." First Principles
12, no. 2 (1987): 7-9. [Petersen]
Bouchey, L. Francis,
ed. The Real Secret War: Sandinista Political Warfare and Its Effects
on Congress. Washington, DC: Council for Inter-Americn Security and
Inter-American Security Educational Institute, 1987.
The best that can be said for this book is that it is a rightist propaganda tract.
Brooklyn Law Review. Editors. "Beyond Institutional Competence: Congressional Efforts to Legislate United States Policy Towards Nicaragua -- the Boland Amendments." 54 (1988): 131 ff. [Petersen]
Bundy, McGeorge. "Covert
Operations in Nicaragua: Will the Sandinistas Cry Uncle?" First
Principles 10, no. 4 (1984): 10-12.
Petersen: "Report on Congressional testimony in opposition to support of the Contras by the Kennedy-Johnson National Security Adviser, 1961-1966."
Chamorro, Edgar. "Running
the Nicaraguan War: An Inside View of CIA as Master of the Contras."
First Principles 11, no. 1 (1985): 1-7, 13. [Petersen]
Clarridge, Duane R.
("Dewey"), with Digby Diehl. A Spy for All Seasons: My Life
in the CIA. New York: Scribner's, 1997.
Clark comment: These are the memoirs of a long-time, senior CIA officer whose personal and sartorial eccentricities are known to all who came into contact with him. Clarridge's close association with running the Reagan administration's anti-Sandinista war, as well as with other major operations in his lengthy career, makes this book interesting reading.
In dealing with memoirs, the question of "truth" is always an issue. With this book, the reader gets Clarridge's truth. When he tells his story of life in the CIA's Clandestine Service, he tells it "as it was." His judgments about the meaning of his experiences are, however, another matter. There is too much settling of old scores here for my taste, but it would be foolish to expect any less from a man who had the end piece of his career pounded flat on the anvil of domestic politics. Question: Is Dewey, like Patton, the last of his kind? Should the world be relieved or saddened?
Chambers suggests that this book is "well worth reading.... Clarridge gives us a clear look at the ways the Clandestine Service has operated at several levels, including the interaction with the NSC. There are insights into the inner circles of Washington decision making, the clandestine campaigns in Central America and against terrorism.... Finally, there is Clarridge himself: a man of action, strong beliefs and opinions. One may not agree with him all the time, or even all that often, but that makes him all the more interesting." Click for Chambers' full review.
Warren, Periscope 22.1 (also CIRA Newsletter 22.2), views A Spy for All Seasons as "the standard self-serving, set-the-record-straight, tell-it-like-it-is, avenge-all-slights memoir" that is typical of intelligence literature. Nevertheless, Clarridge presents "an unsurpassed description of the life of a DO case officer"; former colleagues "will find themselves saying constantly, 'Yes, that's the way it was.'" The perspective central to this book is one of a black and white world, but "[e]spionage is mostly a world of grey."
For Wise, WPNWE, 24 Mar. 1997, this is a "swaggering, defiant memoir" in which Clarridge "settles old scores with undisguised glee.... Although Clarridge suffers from a chronic case of machismo and an unbounded ego..., his memoir is redeemed in part by flashes of unusual candor." In addition, he also "offers some interesting, even valuable, thoughts on the agency's problems and its future."
Fein, WIR 16.1, comments that "Clarridge shows himself as a man of dash and action, not of scholarship and reflection." What is startling is "Clarridge's very detailed descriptions of methods of recruiting informants." Along the way, Clarridge "intermittently offers glib political commentary that betrays a gross lack of understanding."
To Cohen, FA 76.4, A Spy for All Seasons is "[o]ne of the best spy memoirs in recent years." Isenberg, IntellectualCapital.com, 15 May 1997, calls the book "an eminently readable, delightfully acidic and barbed memoir.... The most interesting parts of the book deal with the mundane nuts and bolts of espionage tradecraft."
Horton, IJI&C 10.1, finds that the "tone, the words, the expressions[] are so faithful to Dewey Clarridge's conversation that the text reads as oral rather than written history." But Clarridge's story "bogs down where he milks tiring detail from the cases he chose to dramatize his exploits."
Pincus, Washington Monthly, Jan./Feb. 1997, comments that "whether you love or hate the CIA, Duane R. 'Dewey' Clarridge's memoir … is worth reading. Its freshness, openness, and plain arrogance make it by far a better starting point for discussing where the trouble-laden clandestine side of U.S. intelligence has been and should go than the myriad presidential, congressional, and think-tank studies churned out in the post-Aldrich Ames era.”
Cockburn, Leslie. Out
of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua,
the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection. New York:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.
Cruz, Arturo, Jr. Memoirs
of a Counterrevolutionary: Life with the Contras, the Sandinistas, and the
CIA. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1989.
Surveillant 1.1 identifies Cruz as a "revolutionary and an important advisor in the Sandinista movement who later became a key player in the Contra resistance. [His] unique position gives him insights into America's role in Central America."
Dickey, Christopher.
With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1987.
Dillon, Sam. Commandos:
The CIA and Nicaragua's Contra Rebels. New York: Henry Holt, 1991. 1992. [pb]
According to Surveillant 2.2, Dillon was "part of The Miami Herald's team of reporters who won the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Iran-contra scandal."
For Radosh, WPNWE, 13-19 Jan. 1992, this is a "riveting and well-documented book" that exposes the corruption and human rights abuses on both sides in the Contra-Sandinista war.
NameBase calls Dillon's book the "best treatment of the CIA in Honduras [?] that we've seen, but it could have been better. Unfortunately, either Dillon or the publisher's lawyers are squeamish about naming some names."
First Principles.
Editors. "House Intelligence Committee Report on Covert Operations
in Nicaragua." 8, no. 6 (1983): 1-10. [Petersen]
Garvin, Glenn. Everybody
Had His Own Gringo: The CIA and the Contras. Washington, DC: Brassey's,
1992.
Polk, WPNWE, 25-31 May 1992, says that "Garvin has it just about right": that the fumbling by the Reagan administration of its support to the contras "was a continuation of how American policy toward Nicaragua has always been run."
Gutman, Roy. Banana
Diplomacy: The Making of American Policy in Nicaragua, 1981-1987. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
Kagan, Robert. A
Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990. New York:
Free Press, 1996.
Hendrickson, FA 75.4, calls this book a "brilliant and encyclopedic history of the American intervention in Nicaragua." Kagan, a midlevel State Department official during the Reagan administration, approaches the subject "from the more detached and objective station of the historian, and his literary gifts make the work appealing despite its oppressive length."
Kinzer, Stephen. Blood
of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua. New York: Putnam, 1991.
Clark comment: Kinzer was Managua bureau chief of the New York Times from 1983 to 1988.
Leiken, WPNWE, 1-7 Jul. 1991, finds that Kinzer's "reporting sometimes appeared an exercise in constituency balancing: a little criticism, a little praise and a glut of phrases such as 'there was wide difference of opinion of whether....' In the book the balancing act creates incoherence."
Kornbluh,
Peter. Nicaragua: The Price of Intervention, Reagan's War against the Sandinistas. Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 1987.
Moore, Alan, and Bill
Sienkewicz. Brought to Light. Forestville, CA: Eclipse, 1989.
Chambers rightly dismisses this book as "Christic Institute nonsense."
Moore, John Norton.
The Secret War in Central America: The Sandinista Assault on World Order.
Frederick, MD: University Press of America, 1987. [Chambers]
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