The Very Best Men
by Evan Thomas
Buy on AmazonThomas has drawn on his original research in CIA archives and interviews with scores of old agency hands to evoke the urgency and uncertainty, as well as the giddiness, of the shadow wars of the 1950s and early 1960s when the country, with reason, felt itself in danger from Soviet-led Communist aggression. Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes, and Desmond FitzGerald embodied the confidence, daring, and arrogance of the WASP elite that dominated the CIA at its founding. Thomas brings these men to life as they move boldly, and a bit innocently, into the corrosive life of secrets.…
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"This is about the four people who were recruited into the predecessor of the CIA during WWII and how they were brought back in when the organisation was recreated in 1947 to resurrect their wartime successes. The idea was that the CIA would act as a warning signal, as the dog that barked before the attack so that there would never be another Pearl Harbor . They were to use wartime actions in peacetime. What they got up to was fairly murky at times. Who could possibly say. I could not possibly say. Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes, and Desmond FitzGerald all came from privileged backgrounds, upper-class social circles, which was how they got to know each other and how they became involved with the government. During the war one of them was in the Far East and one was with us in London, but they were all trying to swing the course of the war. Now we’d frown upon a lot of what they did – there was a fair amount of corruption and bribery."
Pioneers of Intelligence Gathering · fivebooks.com