Book Review | Enemies: How America's Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets--and How We Let It Happen

CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence
Studies in Intelligence, 2007

Enemies: How America's Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets--and How We Let It Happen

Bill Gertz. New York: Crown Forum, 2006, appendices, index.

Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake, curator of the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection

In Enemies, Gertz uses case studies and interviews with counterintelligence (CI) experts to make the case that there are critical shortcoming in US CI efforts. Some of the case studies are well known, including Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, and STAKEKNIFE--a British penetration of the IRA.1 Less so are the cases of agents recruited by North Korea, China, Cuba, the Philippines, and Al Qa'ida. His interview subjects include former key players Michelle Van Cleave, former director of the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) (whose article on strategic counterintelligence appears in this issue), Richard Haver, formerly with the Defense Department and Intelligence Community Management Staff, and David Szady, former special agent with FBI's CI unit.

The chapter on North Korea shows a surprisingly high level of activity and describes its troubling and little-known "rendition" efforts. Chinese espionage cases the book documents include the PARLOR MAID (Katrina Leung) case. Treated in more than a chapter, it is the most detailed treatment of the case to date. The Chinese effort to acquire US technology is described in the chapter devoted to the RED FLOWER operation. Gertz devotes a chapter to Americans who have been caught spying for the Chinese, including three former CIA officers who were caught but for various reasons were never prosecuted. Russia's intense post-Cold War espionage efforts are described in another chapter.

Enemies includes a chapter on DIA officer, Ana Montes, who spied for Cuba, and contains material--albeit unattributed--from Scott W. Carmichael's book True Believer: The Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba's Master Spy, also reviewed in this issue. To underline weakness in current FBI CI abilities, Gertz devotes a chapter to Brian Kelly, the CIA officer wrongly suspected for three years of committing the espionage eventually traced to Hanssen. Gertz gets the details of the case right, but even he cannot explain how experienced FBI special agents could have been blind to evidence pointing to Hanssen for so long.

Oddly, it seems, Gertz treats cases in which agents were caught or confessed--presumed successes--yet he argues that "FBI is out of control" (199) and American CI isn't doing anything right, largely because it takes too long to catch the culprits, a problem he blames on the lack of high-level attention. Like others before him, Gertz argues that more resources, better leadership, and proactive programs are needed.