Book Reviews by LTC Christopher E. Bailey, US Army

Book Reviews

By LTC Christopher E. Bailey, US Army

Last of the Cold War Spies by Roland Perry

Spying from Space: Constructing America's Satellite Command and Control Systems by David Christopher Arnold

Perry, Roland. Last of the Cold War Spies. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005. 395 pages. $27.50 cloth.

Roland Perry has provided an immensely readable and well-researched biography of Michael Straight - the only American in Britain's Cambridge spy ring. Michael Straight was born to a wealthy New England family. While attending Cambridge University in the 1930s, he fell in with a notorious circle of friends who were already working for Soviet Intelligence: Guy Burgess, Don Maclean, Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby. Michael Straight served a 40-year career as a KGB agent and agent of influence that included working in the State Department, supporting Henry Wallace's 1948 bid for the Presidency, running The New Republic magazine, and working for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

Michael Straight made a false confession of his involvement to the FBI in 1963, claiming that his covert activity had ended in 1942. Roland Perry sorts through the fact and fiction of Michael Straight's life, drawing upon archival material from U.S. and former Soviet sources, and upon interviews with former CIA and KGB agents. As a result, this biography is the first complete portrait of Michael Straight's life.

I found numerous aspects of Straight's intelligence career to be intriguing:

·         that no agent should ever stray from the course once recruited - the KGB had a direct means of decommissioning agents;

·         the problems caused by the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact - how does a control officer explain this to an ideologically committed agent who is also opposed to fascism;

·         Straight's unwise allegations against J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - the allegations led to increased surveillance of his own activities;

·         Straight's attempt to come before the House Committee on Un-American Activities as an anti-communist - the attempt backfired on him;

·         Straight's enterprising work as a fiction writer (itself uncharacteristic for him), purportedly researching a novel, as a cover for espionage activity during the construction of the Cheyenne Mountain complex;

·         Straight's decision to come "forward" with his espionage activities in 1963, while in fact conducting a long-term disinformation campaign to mislead and deceive the FBI and MI5 (the British counterintelligence service); and

·         Straight's use of a connection to Richard Nixon, an arch anti-Communist, to secure a position on the National Endowment for the Arts - a position he then subtly used to promote liberal, anti-Administration themes.

All said, Roland Perry has provided an accessible, well-researched portrait of a generally unknown member of the Cambridge spy ring. I recommend this book to persons interested in intelligence history.

Buy this book: The Last Of The Cold War Spies: The Life of Michael Straight by Roland Perry

Arnold, David Christopher. Spying from Space: Constructing America's Satellite Command and Control Systems. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. 232 pp. $34.00 cloth.

Spying from Space fills an important gap in intelligence history, chronicling the previously classified development of the command and control system for America's reconnaissance satellites. The Corona satellites provided a quantum increase in American reconnaissance capability - in one mission, the Discoverer 14 acquired more coverage of the Soviet Union than all previous U-2 flights combined. This achievement, however, could not have been possible without the combined efforts of the Intelligence Community, the U.S. Air Force and government contractors to create the Air Force Satellite Control Facility, tracking stations and the supporting communications architecture, all designed to support the National Reconnaissance Program.

This book provides interesting information on the "social construction of technology" - that is to say, the relationship between a technological innovation and the institutions supporting it. The author reviews the political, economic, organizational, environmental and legal challenges that faced the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division and the Satellite Control Facility. The program developers faced unique problems and had to find unique solutions, such as:

·         TRW was set-up as a systems integrator to bring together complex sub-disciplines, a task in which the Air Force lacked expertise,

·         the Lockheed "engineering culture" in which launch failures were regarded as engineering tests - successful learning experiences,

·         the satellite command and control system, originally designed to support a reconnaissance satellite, had to evolve into a complex system capable of supporting multiple systems, each with different intelligence missions, operating parameters and consumers, all outside normal procurement channels,

·         the transfer of both management and operational responsibility from Lockheed to the Air Force (contractor to blue-suit issues), and

·         the competing requirements of the Ballistic Missile Division, Strategic Air Command, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The evolution of the Air Force satellite command and control system, from a single-user to a complex common-user system, is a story well-told by Mr. Arnold. The story is ripe with important lessons for modern leaders confronted with the need to harness technological innovation to meet changing intelligence requirements. The problems faced by the Intelligence Community and the Air Force were complex and defied easy solution. In fact, it is unlikely that anyone could have foreseen the down-stream effects from the initial Discoverer launches, highlighting the need to manage innovative programs through learning organizations. I recommend this book.

Buy this book: Spying From Space: Constructing America's Satellite Command And Control Systems (Centennial of Flight Series) by David Christopher Arnold