Book review of a novel by Nick McDonell, Atlantic Monthly Press, NY, 2009.
The action in this novel unrolls in East Africa and Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is kind of an odd amalgam, but the story moves on in a satisfactory fashion and keeps the reader engaged.
Misperception, trust and betrayal are the core issues investigated. The tale begins with an armed attack on a Somali village that the protagonist, a newly minted CIA officer, seems to have unwontedly instigated. Following is a series of intrigues as he and others try to unravel the mystery of the motives for the massacre and who did it. Other characters include a Harvard academic, a brilliant Somali student - who happens to have had relatives in the village Рhis society coed girl friend, a jaundiced CIA chief and a panoply of various hangers-on. Although some characters have substance to them, most are fairly shallow as befits the speedy pace of the story. I thought the hero was a bit too perfect. His basic flaw was naivet̩.
On the one hand the novel is a spy thriller, but on another it is a satirical portrayal of Harvard – its politics, student life, clubs and old boy networks. As such the book appeals to Harvard insiders, but these aspects of it leave the rest of us a bit perplexed. The East African scenario appealed to me and by and large I found descriptions accurate. Author McDonell noted in a forward that he distorted tribes and geography, which he indeed did; shrinking distances and using wrong names for people of this or that tribe. I doubt, however, that many readers will catch these discrepancies. In one instance, however, he relates an incident in Nairobi and later refers to it as having occurred in Khartoum. Maybe he was just trying to see if we were alert?
Don’t read this book for political insight into the complex politics of terrorism, Somalia or Kenya. Nor should you believe that it accurately reflects how the CIA operates. Yet with those disclaimers, it remains a good yarn.
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Friday, October 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Book Review - Chief of Station, Congo
Following is a review of Larry Devlin's memoir entitled Chief of Station, Congo, published by Public Affairs, NY, 2007.
For all Americans overseas who have been wrongly accused of being CIA agents, and who often wondered just what a CIA agent might do, this book provides the answer. It is a tell-all memoir by Larry Devlin, head of CIA operations in the Congo in the early 1960s.
Devlin unashamedly blows his own horn in recounting narrow escapes from drunken soldiers, armed burglars and blowhard ideologues. Perhaps some of these stories aren’t too embellished as the Congo was, in its early independent days, truly a wild and wooly place. Yet the heart of the memoir is a serious defense of – and an attempt to explain to contemporary readers – America’s cold war motivations, i.e. our conviction that Africa in general and the Congo in particular risked sliding irrevocably into the embrace of the Soviet Union. Such an eventuality would threaten the United States by loss of access to the Congo’s mineral wealth, including uranium, but more importantly would strengthen the Soviet Union’s standing world wide. Consequently if the Soviets rose, the U.S. would fall. Even though archaic by current standards and a bit foolish in hindsight, Devlin does accurately portray the intensity that policy makers – including presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and CIA chief Dulles – felt about the global contest with Khrushchev.
With that as a backdrop, Devlin immerses the reader in the minutia of Congolese politics: President Kasavubu, his squabbles with enigmatic Patrice Lumumba, the danger posed by Katangan secessionist Tshombe, and the behind the scenes role of the Binza group, especially that of Joseph Desire Mobutu. Their machinations played out against a nation in turmoil unprepared for independence where a UN peacekeeping force was a recalcitrant western presence. Devlin used the power, i.e. money, of his position to recruit a number of influential agents. In retrospect this was not difficult as his agents - of course, names are fudged - shared the U.S. objective of keeping Lumumba and fellow “communists” out of power; plus the added benefit of putting themselves in. Devlin recounts how he and the ambassadors he reported to used their entrè and contacts to influence developments.
Devlin takes pains to note that he deliberately stonewalled an instruction to assassinate Lumumba, instead believing that isolating him politically was sufficiently effective. Secondly, he denied any role in planning or abetting Mobutu’s 1965 coup d’etat, even though he readily admitted using his relationship with Mobutu afterwards to forward U.S. goals.
This memoir is an interesting read, especially for those aficionados of Congolese history or of clandestine operations.
For all Americans overseas who have been wrongly accused of being CIA agents, and who often wondered just what a CIA agent might do, this book provides the answer. It is a tell-all memoir by Larry Devlin, head of CIA operations in the Congo in the early 1960s.
Devlin unashamedly blows his own horn in recounting narrow escapes from drunken soldiers, armed burglars and blowhard ideologues. Perhaps some of these stories aren’t too embellished as the Congo was, in its early independent days, truly a wild and wooly place. Yet the heart of the memoir is a serious defense of – and an attempt to explain to contemporary readers – America’s cold war motivations, i.e. our conviction that Africa in general and the Congo in particular risked sliding irrevocably into the embrace of the Soviet Union. Such an eventuality would threaten the United States by loss of access to the Congo’s mineral wealth, including uranium, but more importantly would strengthen the Soviet Union’s standing world wide. Consequently if the Soviets rose, the U.S. would fall. Even though archaic by current standards and a bit foolish in hindsight, Devlin does accurately portray the intensity that policy makers – including presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and CIA chief Dulles – felt about the global contest with Khrushchev.
With that as a backdrop, Devlin immerses the reader in the minutia of Congolese politics: President Kasavubu, his squabbles with enigmatic Patrice Lumumba, the danger posed by Katangan secessionist Tshombe, and the behind the scenes role of the Binza group, especially that of Joseph Desire Mobutu. Their machinations played out against a nation in turmoil unprepared for independence where a UN peacekeeping force was a recalcitrant western presence. Devlin used the power, i.e. money, of his position to recruit a number of influential agents. In retrospect this was not difficult as his agents - of course, names are fudged - shared the U.S. objective of keeping Lumumba and fellow “communists” out of power; plus the added benefit of putting themselves in. Devlin recounts how he and the ambassadors he reported to used their entrè and contacts to influence developments.
Devlin takes pains to note that he deliberately stonewalled an instruction to assassinate Lumumba, instead believing that isolating him politically was sufficiently effective. Secondly, he denied any role in planning or abetting Mobutu’s 1965 coup d’etat, even though he readily admitted using his relationship with Mobutu afterwards to forward U.S. goals.
This memoir is an interesting read, especially for those aficionados of Congolese history or of clandestine operations.
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