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stevenyenzer 's review for:
I have to admit that I don't really understand the love for this book. It was certainly interesting to get a firsthand account of O'Neill's important role in the Robert Hanssen case. But that was about the only thing that kept me going.
Firstly, I just didn't believe a lot of O'Neill's recollections. He made himself seem so inept that I couldn't believe the FBI would have chosen him for this case. At one point he actually says to Hanssen, “I mean, they give us access to all of these secrets, ask us to protect the nation, but pay us less than an administrative assistant at a law firm. Then they wonder why people become spies.” Really?
Secondly, O'Neill spends a lot of time on how his relationship with his wife was negatively affected by his undercover work. It could have been interesting, but they have essentially the same arugment over and over again. For whatever reason she doesn't seem to get the hint that he might be doing undercover work, despite the fact that he works for the FBI and doesn't seem to be trying very hard to come up with plausible lies.
Side note: O'Neill is the kind of enlightened modern man who refers to his wife as "very independent." And when Hanssen — whom O'Neill now knows is an evil Russian spy — looks at a picture of O'Neill's wife and says, "You’re a lucky man," O'Neill "suppresses a smile." Gross.
Thirdly, O'Neill's manly patriotism and unexamined idealism began to wear on me almost immediately. He is not really interested in nuance — for him, Hanssen is an evil spy, spies are evil (except, presumably, the ones who spy for the U.S.), and the FBI is a well-meaning organization whose worst error is not modernizing its computer system. I was not surprised to hear him present an uncritical picture of J. Edgar Hoover, whom he lauded for his filing system innovations.
Ultimately there wasn't much in Gray Day to distinguish it from a second-rate spy thriller except that most of it is, theoretically, true. Unfortunately O'Neill admits in the end that he changed a bunch of stuff in the name of poetic license — and I would not be surprised if he changed even more than he revealed. Gray Day benefits from being based in fact, but that's about the only thing going for it.
Firstly, I just didn't believe a lot of O'Neill's recollections. He made himself seem so inept that I couldn't believe the FBI would have chosen him for this case. At one point he actually says to Hanssen, “I mean, they give us access to all of these secrets, ask us to protect the nation, but pay us less than an administrative assistant at a law firm. Then they wonder why people become spies.” Really?
Secondly, O'Neill spends a lot of time on how his relationship with his wife was negatively affected by his undercover work. It could have been interesting, but they have essentially the same arugment over and over again. For whatever reason she doesn't seem to get the hint that he might be doing undercover work, despite the fact that he works for the FBI and doesn't seem to be trying very hard to come up with plausible lies.
Side note: O'Neill is the kind of enlightened modern man who refers to his wife as "very independent." And when Hanssen — whom O'Neill now knows is an evil Russian spy — looks at a picture of O'Neill's wife and says, "You’re a lucky man," O'Neill "suppresses a smile." Gross.
Thirdly, O'Neill's manly patriotism and unexamined idealism began to wear on me almost immediately. He is not really interested in nuance — for him, Hanssen is an evil spy, spies are evil (except, presumably, the ones who spy for the U.S.), and the FBI is a well-meaning organization whose worst error is not modernizing its computer system. I was not surprised to hear him present an uncritical picture of J. Edgar Hoover, whom he lauded for his filing system innovations.
Ultimately there wasn't much in Gray Day to distinguish it from a second-rate spy thriller except that most of it is, theoretically, true. Unfortunately O'Neill admits in the end that he changed a bunch of stuff in the name of poetic license — and I would not be surprised if he changed even more than he revealed. Gray Day benefits from being based in fact, but that's about the only thing going for it.