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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas C. White who wrote (27944)	6/7/1999 2:26:00 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Much as a ballerina, you don't survive in the spy biz without lots and lots of hubris. And as all we mythology lovers and old theatre majors know, hubris leads to tragedy, and it did for these men. Just read the first chapter of the book and interestingly, it mentions this very fact. One of the four, Frank Wisner, was with the OSS in Romania and witnessed the Russian takeover of Eastern Europe, and it left him with a personal mission. He believed the same "tools" used by the Russians should be used against them. The group believed wholeheartedly in the predominance of America and they ran as hard as they could with the freedom given them. From what I just read, (the intro) these men were idealistic, self-confident, but naive. They took the power too far at times and these excesses were kept from the public- later, when they came out, the public went too far in its reaction. The book is about the personalities, the men themselves, more than the CIA in the political sense. Thomas interviewed 66 former officials for his book. He is also the first "outsider" as he puts it permitted to view secret documents. I think I'll have to read it. It looks interesting. Apparently I offended you and nihil with the comment about hubris, ineptness, unethical. Not having read the book, I can't defend the comment. I don't think it was meant to be an attack on the CIA as an entity, but on the insanities that came about during its inception. On the other hand, who knows? 18 year olds have a great deal of hubris themselves. Although here's a quote from one of the wives of the four men, Janet Barnes, commenting on the Bay of Pigs and the CIA's involvement: "How could they have been so dumb?"