Armstrong, Scott. The
Chronology: The Documented Day-to-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance
to Iran and the Contras. New York: Warner, 1987. Armstrong, Scott. The
Chronology: The Documented Day-to-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance
to Iran and the Contras. New York: Warner, 1987.
See National Security Archive, The Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras (New York: Warner Books, 1987).
NameBase: "The Chronology draws on some government documents, but this is mostly a compilation of Iran-contra tidbits from the media, beginning in 1980 and getting progressively more detailed through 1986 -- a year that takes 400 pages of the book. It is valuable for researchers who need to understand how specific events may have fit into a larger pattern. There is a complete index and no conclusion."
Bradlee, Ben, Jr. Guts
and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North. New York: Donald I. Fine,
1988.
Published before the resurrection of North as political candidate and frontperson for "Christian" right-wing causes.
Bruemmer,
Russell J., and Marshall H. Silverberg. "The Impact of the Iran-Contra
Matter on Congressional Oversight of the CIA." Houston Journal of
International Law 11, no. 1 (1988): 219-243.
Bruemmer was CIA General Counsel from 1988 to 1990; Silverberg served as CIA Assistant General Counsel.
Cinquegrana, Americo
R. "Dancing in the Dark: Accepting the Invitation to Struggle in the
Context of 'Covert Action,' The Iran-Contra Affair and the Intelligence
Oversight Process." Houston Journal of International Law 11,
no. 1 (Fall 1988): 177-209.
Petersen: "Analysis of oversight legislation and executive orders 1976-1988."
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." For Chambers' full review, click HERE.
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.”
Cohen, William S. [Sen.]
and George J. Mitchell [Sen.] Men of Zeal: A Candid Inside Story of the
Iran-Contra Hearings. New York: Viking Penguin, 1988.
Petersen notes that this book is "based on Congressional hearings" and "discusses CIA involvement." See also review by Loch K. Johnson, "Sentries in the Senate," International 2, no. 4 (1988), pp. 593-601.
Currie, James T. "Iran-Contra
and Congressional Oversight of the CIA." International Journal of
Intelligence and Counterintelligence 11, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 185-210.
This is a quick and opinionated overview of Congressional oversight of the CIA before, during, and after the Iran-Contra affair.
Draper, Theodore. A
Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affair. New York: Hill and Wang, 1991.
In Lowenthal's view, Draper "does not achieve his goal of complete objectivity, but this is a very useful account of the complex series of operations."
Luxenberg, WPNWE, 17-23 Jun. 1991, says that the book contains "nothing much that is new or startling about either the Iran arms sale or the Reagan administration's secret resupply of the contras in defiance of Congress." Nevertheless, Draper "has written a readable and detailed narrative that ... may be the standard reference for anyone who does not wish to go to the source documents."
Feldman, Daniel L.
"Constitutional Dimensions of the Iran-Contra Affair." International
Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 2, no. 3 (Fall 1988):
381-397.
"The balance between security concerns, reflected in executive secrecy, and the free flow of information, necessary for informed dissent and debate, has shifted too far toward secrecy, and should be shifted back to a balance between the two."
Fisher, Louis. "Review
Essay: How to Avoid Iran-Contras." California Law Review 76
(1993): 919-929.
Koh, Harold Hongju.
The National Security Constitution: Sharing Power After the Iran-Contra
Affair. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990. KF4651/.K64
According to Valcourt, IJI&C 4.2, Koh is a Yale law professor and former adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice. "The Iran-Contra affair constituted a 'fundamental interbranch dispute over what the rule of law governing national security should be.'... Congress perhaps did not 'so much misdefine its institutional task as leave it unfinished." The National Security Constitution "consists of the U.S. Constitution and several legislative enactments pertaining to foreign policy.... [M]ost presidents have misused this [military and intelligence] power by committing U.S. forces to overt or covert action without having obtained sufficient consensus from Congress and the public." This is a "thoughtful book on the current state of the relationship between the executive and the legislative branches."
Kornbluh, Peter, and
Malcolm Byrne, eds. The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History,
A National Security Archive Documents Reader. New York: The New Press,
1993.
Surveillant 3.2/3: "101 documents."
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