Blond Ghost

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews with former CIA officers, this is an informative biography of a ``company man'' who ran secret wars against Cuba and Laos in the 1960s, managed intelligence operations in Vietnam and rose to the rank of associate deputy director of operations at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Primarily a desk officer (``a spy in a grey flannel suit''), Ted Shackley contributed significantly to the de-emphasis within the agency on classic intelligence gathering in favor of covert operations. (During the Vietnam War, the CIA was often accused of running a separate war against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.) Portrayed in these pages as a colorless, coldly efficient workaholic, Shackley had such a low profile that Corn has trouble presenting him other than two-dimensionally. ``People who hold the secrets,'' he argues somewhat defensively, ``do not necessarily have to be deep or interesting.'' The book does, however, provide a glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive agency, throughout the 1960s and '70s. Corn is Washington editor of the Nation. Photos. (Oct.)

Library Journal

To recount some of the main events of the Cold War, this book uses a biographical format, telling the life story of dedicated CIA employee Ted Shackley. The topics covered include the attempts to kill or overthrow Castro, the secret war in Southeast Asia, bureaucratic politics at home, and Shackley's involvement with gunrunner Ed Wilson. The author emphasizes that Shackley was very much a tactical management/detail man, at home in either espionage or covert operations. Corn, the Washington editor for The Nation, claims to have interviewed over 250 people in preparing this book (although Shackley only gave him a few hours). He supports the theory that the CIA ignored reports contrary to what they wanted to believe and that it hurt itself and the country by supporting so many covert operations that publicly failed. Still, it is important to remember the emotional and strategic context of the Cold War when trying to understand Shackley's actions, and the operational details alone make this an interesting book. Photos not seen; the inclusion of some maps would have aided readers. Recommended for informed readers and specialists.-Daniel K. Blewett, Loyola Univ. Lib., Ill.

Gilbert Taylor

Using the career of Theodore Shackley as his paradigm, Corn joins the long line of critical authors purporting to expose malfeasance at the Central Intelligence Agency. There's an approach/avoidance syndrome with such authors. On one unspoken level, they guiltily revel in the espionage world, for why spend five years, as did Corn, digging into the life of functionary Shackley? On the public level of affronted rightousness, they light into unsavory episodes in CIA history. Among other transgressions, Corn targets the covert war in Laos, which Shackley conducted as the Vientiane station chief. Underneath his castigations of his man's actions, Corn seizes upon the thesis of the spy bureaucrat, the "intellcrat" fighting the cold war, to reflect Shackley's ambitious rise against the agency's gung-ho, shackle-free heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. And by the time its secrets unraveled in the 1970s, Shackley was near the top, aiming to become the director. The Stansfield Turner interlude squelched that desire, and Shackley went into the private security biz--there to gain about the only sympathy Corn confers: as the object of a frivolous suit brought by the bizarre Christic Institute. Immense detail bespeaks authorial diligence, and appeals but to highly honed spy tastes.