Crusade

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Tripodi worked undercover for the CIA, the DEA and other federal drug-enforcement agencies. In this shapeless memoir, written with thriller novelist DeSario ( Limbo ), he recalls his experiences with paramilitary Cuban exiles in Florida and with Tibetan guerrillas in Colorado, and serving as a member of the interrogation team that attempted to establish the authenticity of KGB defector Yuri Nosenko. His most important assignment, he notes, occurred in 1978 when he undertook a precedent-setting solo mission to Palermo, Italy, to fight the Mafia heroin trade. Though Tripodi's reluctance to go much beyond generalities is perhaps understandable (he was, after all, an undercover agent), the memoir is frustratingly incomplete for readers expecting the usual plethora of dramatic anecdotes in a book of this kind. Tripodi retired in 1985 after 27 years as a federal agent. (Apr.)

Library Journal

Tripodi worked for 27 years, until 1985, for various federal drug enforcement agencies and the Central Intelligence Agency. His anecdotal memoirs are wide-ranging, covering his work with anti-Castro Cubans, questioning KGB defector and possible double agent Yori Nosenko, and helping to prepare drug cases against the Mafia in Sicily. An underlying theme is criticism of the federal bureaucracy, which he feels hampered the efforts of motivated agents. Tripodi's undercover work was actually quite sporadic and not especially successful. Despite novelist DeSario's ( Sanctuary , LJ 7/89) efforts, a lack of personal details and sustained drama as well as an absence of well-known cases is likely to limit the general appeal of this book. Appropriate for large law enforcment collections.-- Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis

Joe Collins

A former agent in the CIA and various federal narcotics agencies, Tripodi has aptly entitled his autobiography, for in it he crusades against the Mafia, the KGB, and street dope peddlers; but he also tells of righteous fights against agency corruption and battles with many of his superiors, whom he characterizes as "gutless wimps." His career covers about 25 years, beginning in 1960, and his accounts of the now old-fashioned days of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the early 1960s are exciting and action-packed. The book, like federal law enforcement itself, is riddled with politics; Tripodi seems to have no use for longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, but lavishes praise on former U.S. attorney Rudy Guiliani, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York a couple of years back. Tripodi also makes a few interesting claims from an insider's viewpoint: he says the war against drugs is winnable; he asserts the CIA had nothing to do with the assassination of JFK; and he scorns Oliver North for how the Iran-Contra operation was handled. Occasionally bogged down by Tripodi's own reaction to what he felt was unfair treatment by his bosses, "Crusade" is an absorbing look at the life of an undercover agent.