Six Nightmares: Real Threats in a Dangerous World and How America Can Meet Them - Former national security advisor Anthony Lake examines major security threats facing the United States at the start of the 21st century: biological terrorism, cybercrime, the perils of peacekeeping, and so on. Each of the scenarios he describes in Six Nightmares begins with a fictional introduction to the topic; one, for instance, is a transcript of a conversation between the presidents of the United States and South Korea, discussing a civil war in North Korea and worrying about what China intends. The best parts of the book read like a memoir. Lake served under President Clinton for four years before he was nominated to head the CIA. When it became clear the GOP-controlled Senate was not likely to confirm him, Lake withdrew his name. The experience left him disappointed with "a Washington obsessed with political gamesmanship"--and also eager to settle a few scores, which he does between these covers. He strives for evenhandedness in a critique of Congress, but he's also quick to attack Republicans. The Senate's rejection of the comprehensive test-ban treaty in 1998, he writes, showed that "a handful of Republicans cared more about their hatred of the President than about their undoubted love for their country." He also takes digs at Clinton political advisor Dick Morris (for believing, he says, in poll-driven foreign policy) and The Washington Times (for breaking sensitive stories that he thinks hurt the national interest).

While America Sleeps : Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today - In the aftermath of costly victory in World War I, the government of Great Britain downsized its military, avoided confrontations with powers large and small, and attended to domestic matters and quality-of-life issues. While England slept, in Winston Churchill's famous phrase, governments less concerned with sticking close to the hearth rose elsewhere and held sway. The result was World War II and, after it, the cold war. The post-cold war United States, historians Donald and Frederick W. Kagan argue, resembles that cozy England in many ways. In the wake of Vietnam, the American government has been reluctant to commit its forces to the purpose of policing the world--though, the Kagans write, "if the United States is not to take a leading part in such a constabulary, who will?"--and has pursued a policy of brief, limited military encounters that involve little risk of incurring casualties. This policy, coupled with a long period of reductions in military spending and staffing, will, the Kagans believe, lead to disaster, as some other Hitler, or Saddam, or Kim Il Jung rises to trouble the world. Acknowledging that historical analogies are only approximations, the Kagans earnestly argue that England's and America's respective patterns of "self-deluding pseudo-engagements" have proved and will again prove to be misguided evasions, and that it will be in the world's ultimate interest for the United States to remain militarily strong and unafraid of a fight.

Terrorism and The Constitution-Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security traces the history leading up to the Anti-terrorism Act of 1996 "one of the worst assults on civil liberties in decades." The authors review of the abuses occuring today-denials of due process, detentions of aliens based on secret evidence, investigations of support for lawful humanitarian activity - culminates with recommendations for a counterterrorism strategy that would conform to the Constitution - one focused on individual culpability for acts of violence rather than on political ideology. Written for the general audience, yet laden with endnotes of value to activists and lawyers, Terrorism and The Constitution is a balanced examination of the problem of terrorism from a civil liberties perspective.

The Puzzle Palace : A Report on America's Most Secret Agency - In 1947, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand signed a secret treaty in which they agreed to cooperate in matters of signals intelligence. In effect, the governments agreed to pool their geographic and technological assets in order to listen in on the electronic communications of China, the Soviet Union, and other Cold War bad guys--all in the interest of truth, justice, and the American Way, naturally. The thing is, the system apparently catches everything. Government security services, led by the U.S. National Security Agency, screen a large part (and perhaps all) of the voice and data traffic that flows over the global communications network. Fifty years later, the European Union is investigating possible violations of its citizens' privacy rights by the NSA, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public advocacy group, has filed suit against the NSA, alleging that the organization has illegally spied on U.S. citizens. Being a super-secret spy agency and all, it's tough to get a handle on what's really going on at the NSA. However, James Bamford has done great work in documenting the agency's origins and Cold War exploits in The Puzzle Palace. Beginning with the earliest days of cryptography (code-making and code-breaking are large parts of the NSA's mission), Bamford explains how the agency's predecessors helped win World War II by breaking the German Enigma machine and defeating the Japanese Purple cipher. He also documents signals intelligence technology, ranging from the usual collection of spy satellites to a great big antenna in the West Virginia woods that listened to radio signals as they bounced back from the surface of the moon.

Inside CIA's Private World : Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992 - In 32 essays originally written for the Central Intelligence Agency's internal journal, Studies in Intelligence, authors, most of whom are CIA agents, talk shop. These recently declassified articles, written between 1955 and 1992, provide an offbeat internal history of CIA operations. Some delve into arcane areas of tradecraft, and could be considered essential reading for historians as well as spy buffs: CIA operatives detail secret operations, offer practical how-to advice, and critique themselves and their work. This engrossing book presents the most interesting articles from Studies in Intelligence-a previously classified in-house Central Intelligence Agency journal that was for CIA eyes only-and provides insights into CIA strategies and into events in which the organization was involved.

Body of Secrets : Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century - The National Security Agency (NSA), writes Bamford, has made the United States an "eavesdropping superpower," capable of capturing, deciphering and analyzing "signal intelligence"communicationsin whatever form it may exist and from whatever nation it may be transmitted. Yet with a budget ($4 billion a year) and staff (numbering in the tens of thousands) that dwarf its more famous cousin, the CIA, and with a headquarters, known as "Crypto City," that is its own self-contained community, little is known of NSA among the public and, more troublingly, even within other parts of government. Uncovering the secrets of NSA, its history and operations, has become Bamford's life's work, first begun in his now classic The Puzzle Palace (1982) and continued in this significantly revised and expanded present volume. With remarkable access to highly sensitive documents and information, Bamford takes the reader from the beginnings of NSA during the early cold war, through its roles in such watershed events as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War, to the amazingly sophisticated developments in information technology taking place within NSA today.