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dragonbonechair's review against another edition
4.0
“ the government should not break the law to enforce the law.” - Attorney General Edward Levi
Enemies: A History of the FBI by reporter and author Tim Weiner is a comprehensive look at the FBI from its creation in 1908 to the beginning of the Obama administration. Weiner’s book tells the story of the FBI,not as a police force, but an institution of counter intelligence. The book is divided into four eras, anchoring the history of the FBI through the scope of the domestic and foreign policies of the United States throughout the 20th and early 21st century. The efforts of the agency to go after communists and people it perceived, justified or not, of being “reds” is the primary focus of this history. Though the last quarter of his book is on the War on Terror.
Looming over the majority of this book is J Edgar Hoover, whose 40 plus year career as the bureau’s director, helped to shape the FBI into an intelligence institution.
We see through Hoover, the oscillating relationship between the bureau and Presidential administrations. It was fascinating to see which Presidents and Hoover were adversarial and which ones developed into great partnerships, using the apparatus of the FBI towards their national security goals. Weiner continues to explore this thread even after the death of Hoover. Relationships between President and Director ran the gamut of speaking daily to not speaking for four years.
Additionally, at various points in its history, the Bureau worked in conjunction with Congress and the Courts while other times kept them in the dark about their methods of intelligence gathering. One thing you can say is it was never static, often changing with the culture and needs of the time.
Weiner devotes a lot of time on how Hoover and the bureau challenged the rule of law and engaged in illegal surveillance, via black bag jobs, wiretapping, opening up of mail, and bugging in their effort to keep America safe from subversive individuals, real and imagined, often times trampling on the civil liberties of citizens. In doing this, Weiner argues the bureau went against the values and ethics of the nation in an effort to preserve them. If I were to pick a theme of this book it would be the ways in which the FBI violated the Constitutional rights of citizens in the name of security.
Weiner also writes about the FBI’s rivalry with the CIA, often times the two organizations undermined or withheld information from the other. He lays out how often the failures and breaches in national security that have happened stemmed from an unwillingness on the part of the bureau and CIA to work together or when the FBI’s priorities are misplaced or wrongly focused, resulting in failures to prevent bombings, killings, and catching of agents of foreign countries. He argues that the politics and egos of the respective agencies did more damage than good for the USA.
He also does not shy away from the bureau’s failures. For example, the slowness of the agency to update their computer and information systems to meet demands of internet age, their difficulty during WWII to recruit competent agents, their negligence in the pursuit of counter terrorist leads, and the infiltration and stealing of state secrets from the FBI by enemies of the USA.
By the end of the book you really appreciate the time and energy taken to trace the ups and downs of the bureau from its nascent beginnings, growing pains and all, to its disreputability in the aftermath of Watergate, to Robert Mueller and the Patriot Act and the legalities and violation of civil liberties that came out of that legislation.
This book is effective because it paints a balanced portrait of the FBI, its directors, and its role in American history as an intelligence agency.
60 pages of notes and sources shows the meticulous dedication Weiner had to telling this story. A must read for Americans interested in counter intelligence and inner workings of the government.
Enemies: A History of the FBI by reporter and author Tim Weiner is a comprehensive look at the FBI from its creation in 1908 to the beginning of the Obama administration. Weiner’s book tells the story of the FBI,not as a police force, but an institution of counter intelligence. The book is divided into four eras, anchoring the history of the FBI through the scope of the domestic and foreign policies of the United States throughout the 20th and early 21st century. The efforts of the agency to go after communists and people it perceived, justified or not, of being “reds” is the primary focus of this history. Though the last quarter of his book is on the War on Terror.
Looming over the majority of this book is J Edgar Hoover, whose 40 plus year career as the bureau’s director, helped to shape the FBI into an intelligence institution.
We see through Hoover, the oscillating relationship between the bureau and Presidential administrations. It was fascinating to see which Presidents and Hoover were adversarial and which ones developed into great partnerships, using the apparatus of the FBI towards their national security goals. Weiner continues to explore this thread even after the death of Hoover. Relationships between President and Director ran the gamut of speaking daily to not speaking for four years.
Additionally, at various points in its history, the Bureau worked in conjunction with Congress and the Courts while other times kept them in the dark about their methods of intelligence gathering. One thing you can say is it was never static, often changing with the culture and needs of the time.
Weiner devotes a lot of time on how Hoover and the bureau challenged the rule of law and engaged in illegal surveillance, via black bag jobs, wiretapping, opening up of mail, and bugging in their effort to keep America safe from subversive individuals, real and imagined, often times trampling on the civil liberties of citizens. In doing this, Weiner argues the bureau went against the values and ethics of the nation in an effort to preserve them. If I were to pick a theme of this book it would be the ways in which the FBI violated the Constitutional rights of citizens in the name of security.
Weiner also writes about the FBI’s rivalry with the CIA, often times the two organizations undermined or withheld information from the other. He lays out how often the failures and breaches in national security that have happened stemmed from an unwillingness on the part of the bureau and CIA to work together or when the FBI’s priorities are misplaced or wrongly focused, resulting in failures to prevent bombings, killings, and catching of agents of foreign countries. He argues that the politics and egos of the respective agencies did more damage than good for the USA.
He also does not shy away from the bureau’s failures. For example, the slowness of the agency to update their computer and information systems to meet demands of internet age, their difficulty during WWII to recruit competent agents, their negligence in the pursuit of counter terrorist leads, and the infiltration and stealing of state secrets from the FBI by enemies of the USA.
By the end of the book you really appreciate the time and energy taken to trace the ups and downs of the bureau from its nascent beginnings, growing pains and all, to its disreputability in the aftermath of Watergate, to Robert Mueller and the Patriot Act and the legalities and violation of civil liberties that came out of that legislation.
This book is effective because it paints a balanced portrait of the FBI, its directors, and its role in American history as an intelligence agency.
60 pages of notes and sources shows the meticulous dedication Weiner had to telling this story. A must read for Americans interested in counter intelligence and inner workings of the government.
stevenyenzer's review against another edition
4.0
Fascinating and riveting. Goes deep enough to feel thorough without dragging.
oltombom's review against another edition
4.0
This was extremely good. This shows how the FBI has been violating the constitution and breaking the law since its beginning. Every president and the FBI director (namely J. Edgar Hoover) have used the FBI to spy on, harass, and arrest American citizens, especially racial minorities, communists, and the president's and/or FBI Director's political opponents. The FBI was obsessed with suppressing communists and with claiming that the U.S. is so much better than the Soviets. But there isn't that much difference between the two systems ultimately.
As bad as the FBI was and is, there were many communist spies in the U.S. and in the U.S. government before and during the Cold War. And the leadership of the Communist Party in America usually were funded by and taking orders from the Soviet Union in the old days. So there were and are actual threats, but I don't think the FBI is the answer.
As bad as the FBI was and is, there were many communist spies in the U.S. and in the U.S. government before and during the Cold War. And the leadership of the Communist Party in America usually were funded by and taking orders from the Soviet Union in the old days. So there were and are actual threats, but I don't think the FBI is the answer.
nightchough's review against another edition
2.0
I heard an interview with Tim Weiner on NPR and thought this book would be *great*. Meh. Good biography of J. Edgar Hoover, but after he dies, the book loses much of its its raison d'être. It also seemed to be written for a high school reading level: this happened, then that happened.
bkeving_74's review against another edition
5.0
Fascinating account of the history of the FBI
This book was very insightful and captivating. It is a must read for any person interested in all facets of American history. I am also reading this author's history of the CIA. Highly recommend this book.
This book was very insightful and captivating. It is a must read for any person interested in all facets of American history. I am also reading this author's history of the CIA. Highly recommend this book.
clarks_dad's review against another edition
5.0
Current events have peaked my interest in everything from Watergate to the history of the FBI. I'd seen Weiner's Enemies cited by a number of media outlets as a definitive modern history of the institution, so I was excited to jump right in and see what history tells us about the FBI's current role in partisan squabbling. I have to admit, I was a bit surprised by a lot of what I found and simultaneously disheartened and assured by our present situation given some more historical context.
The book can be divided into two major parts –The Hoover Era and Everything After the Hoover Era – that follow a single theme centered around the Fourth Amendment as its sanctity is alternately violated or fetishized depending on the way the political winds were blowing and whether or not Americans felt afraid enough to tolerate violations of their civil liberties. The short of it is, according to Weiner, the FBI has mostly not been a faithful steward of our rights and has regularly relied on extraconstitutional methods to obtain evidence or to persecute individuals the bureau believed were dangers to American political and social stability. They often behaved in this way at the explicit direction of presidents of both parties.
For a long time, the arbiter of what preserved America and made her safe was one man: J. Edgar Hoover. The first half of the book reads almost like a biography. It should. Hoover fought for the creation of the FBI and then ruled over it like a feudal lord using its resources to protect his interests and advance the interests of various presidential or congressional patrons from FDR to McCarthy and Nixon. He served presidents of both parties with equal faith and what bought his loyalty more than political ideology were promises of independence and funding for his beloved Bureau. The more power and independence promised and delivered, the more Hoover tried to fulfill the wishes of that president. What was most remarkable to me about this era of the Bureau was the ambiguity of its mission. Born in 1980, I've always associated the FBI with law enforcement. That's not the way Hoover originally envisioned its mandate, however. In his mind, the FBI was an intelligence agency, focusing at times on finding and eliminating terrorist or espionage threats from Communists to Nationalists (and the occasional Civil Rights organizer). He was loathe to pursue the mob and white collar crime barely seemed to register to him. He viewed the CIA as a competitor and regularly sought to undermine it and supplant it with the FBI. In the meantime he approved thousands of black bag jobs, warrantless wiretaps, and authorized the collecting and storing of useful information about political rivals for the future.
After Hoover, the FBI struggled to regain its reputation, stature, and a clear sense of purpose. To this day Congress hasn't fully defined in legislation the legal mandate of the Bureau. After Watergate and a string of other controversies (including the revelation of the COINTELPRO program), a string of directors struggled to change the culture at the agency and set it on a legal footing that didn't involve presidential authorizations to engage in extraconstitutional behavior. It wasn't until the tenure of Robert Mueller that it seems to have found that footing. As Weiner recounts, Mueller set up over the course of his tenure a legal framework where the FBI could seek and get classified wiretaps against hostile powers through normal (judicial) legal channels. The culture of the agency changed. Where once it was common to engage in breaking and entering, the FBI found itself in a position to bear witness to and reveal to the rest of America abuses in detention and interrogation that became common at black sites throughout the Iraq War and the War on Terror. It was FBI agents who reported abuses at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and the agency finally seems to have very recently discovered a backbone when it comes to protecting and defending the constitutional rights of citizens. Well...I guess that last bit depends on who you're asking these days, but clearly its behavior is far more constrained than it was in Hoover's day.
Overall this was a phenomenal work of history that relied on thousands of documents and interviews. Weiner spins an excellent narrative for an agency that has a hundred year history in everything from counterintelligence to mob-busting. The success he has lies in his discipline. Weiner always finds a way to turn the events he's narrating back to the central theme of privacy and the fourth amendment's protections as a way of grounding the story and preventing it from straying too far afield. A very helpful piece for those perplexed about the Bureau's sudden intrusion into our politics. It's not really that new. What's new is that we're actually hearing about it.
The book can be divided into two major parts –The Hoover Era and Everything After the Hoover Era – that follow a single theme centered around the Fourth Amendment as its sanctity is alternately violated or fetishized depending on the way the political winds were blowing and whether or not Americans felt afraid enough to tolerate violations of their civil liberties. The short of it is, according to Weiner, the FBI has mostly not been a faithful steward of our rights and has regularly relied on extraconstitutional methods to obtain evidence or to persecute individuals the bureau believed were dangers to American political and social stability. They often behaved in this way at the explicit direction of presidents of both parties.
For a long time, the arbiter of what preserved America and made her safe was one man: J. Edgar Hoover. The first half of the book reads almost like a biography. It should. Hoover fought for the creation of the FBI and then ruled over it like a feudal lord using its resources to protect his interests and advance the interests of various presidential or congressional patrons from FDR to McCarthy and Nixon. He served presidents of both parties with equal faith and what bought his loyalty more than political ideology were promises of independence and funding for his beloved Bureau. The more power and independence promised and delivered, the more Hoover tried to fulfill the wishes of that president. What was most remarkable to me about this era of the Bureau was the ambiguity of its mission. Born in 1980, I've always associated the FBI with law enforcement. That's not the way Hoover originally envisioned its mandate, however. In his mind, the FBI was an intelligence agency, focusing at times on finding and eliminating terrorist or espionage threats from Communists to Nationalists (and the occasional Civil Rights organizer). He was loathe to pursue the mob and white collar crime barely seemed to register to him. He viewed the CIA as a competitor and regularly sought to undermine it and supplant it with the FBI. In the meantime he approved thousands of black bag jobs, warrantless wiretaps, and authorized the collecting and storing of useful information about political rivals for the future.
After Hoover, the FBI struggled to regain its reputation, stature, and a clear sense of purpose. To this day Congress hasn't fully defined in legislation the legal mandate of the Bureau. After Watergate and a string of other controversies (including the revelation of the COINTELPRO program), a string of directors struggled to change the culture at the agency and set it on a legal footing that didn't involve presidential authorizations to engage in extraconstitutional behavior. It wasn't until the tenure of Robert Mueller that it seems to have found that footing. As Weiner recounts, Mueller set up over the course of his tenure a legal framework where the FBI could seek and get classified wiretaps against hostile powers through normal (judicial) legal channels. The culture of the agency changed. Where once it was common to engage in breaking and entering, the FBI found itself in a position to bear witness to and reveal to the rest of America abuses in detention and interrogation that became common at black sites throughout the Iraq War and the War on Terror. It was FBI agents who reported abuses at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and the agency finally seems to have very recently discovered a backbone when it comes to protecting and defending the constitutional rights of citizens. Well...I guess that last bit depends on who you're asking these days, but clearly its behavior is far more constrained than it was in Hoover's day.
Overall this was a phenomenal work of history that relied on thousands of documents and interviews. Weiner spins an excellent narrative for an agency that has a hundred year history in everything from counterintelligence to mob-busting. The success he has lies in his discipline. Weiner always finds a way to turn the events he's narrating back to the central theme of privacy and the fourth amendment's protections as a way of grounding the story and preventing it from straying too far afield. A very helpful piece for those perplexed about the Bureau's sudden intrusion into our politics. It's not really that new. What's new is that we're actually hearing about it.
nikita_barsukov's review against another edition
4.0
Four stars, only because I wished this book would be much longer. Weiner builds an interesting case of FBI as the most competent intelligence agency in the US. At least he portrays FBI with more respect and more favorably than CIA in his previous book. With this approach Weiner omits almost everything else: Mafia and organized crime, serial killers, prohibition and bootleggers - almost nothing of this is in the book, which is unfortunate.
Central premise of this book: FBI was created as an organization to fight enemies of state. At the very beginning enemies of state were anarchists and socialists (FBI dates back to 1910s after all), and then - communists and USSR. Parts where FBI looks over KKK, organized crime in favor of strengthening surveillance over suspect communists and deviants are very telling.
Central premise of this book: FBI was created as an organization to fight enemies of state. At the very beginning enemies of state were anarchists and socialists (FBI dates back to 1910s after all), and then - communists and USSR. Parts where FBI looks over KKK, organized crime in favor of strengthening surveillance over suspect communists and deviants are very telling.
tsharris's review against another edition
2.0
Very mediocre. Straight recitation of facts, very little analysis about what the role of a domestic intelligence agency should be in a democracy, what the FBI has done right and done wrong.
erikinthedistrict's review against another edition
4.0
Drags on a bit, but overall, excellent read about parts of the FBI that are rarely discussed