book reviews and summaries, comments, analysis
This is one of these books that tries to intimidate the reader into believing that intelligence operations can only be understood (and carried out) by a small cadre of specially trained spookmeisters. (The rest of us must just read books and gape in admiration, I presume.) BULLSHIT! You wanna read what makes a good spook? Read Rudyard Kipling's Kim about the boy of the same name: a witty, worldy, wise and wonderful hustler in his teen years. More information is obtained in the course of ordinary commerce than these military guys ever dreamed of--a fact the US Intelligence community is finally waking up to. I also hate intelligence guys who hide behind acronyms and Evanhoe, with OSS,OSU,UDT,USNSOG,K, CK,FECLEG,FECOM, CCRAK,ATIS,HID,TILO,KMAG and a few others by page 15 of the text is starting to get my goat. The reader will be bored stiff hearing about Washington turf wars; but it is important to understand the vacuous, credentialist swamp that spooks are forced to inhabit and in which administrators thrive.
Well, what about the book? Not bad in alot of places. Typical for such books, the author starts out with a summary of Korean history and the peninsula's unfortunate strategic importance as a bridge to the Asian mainland. America's intelligence focus on Europe, and McArthurs distrust of the CIA, meant we had to build a network in the area. Hans Tofte performed this job well.
When Evanhoe finally gets around to specific operations, the book also takes a turn for the better. Task force Leopard, with its use of ligistical wonders such as hot-headed diesels, false bottom 'honey pots', and such, made amusing reading. Operation Virginia, with its goal of blowing up rail lines, tunnels and bridges, starts out sounding like Lawrence of Arabia. Plagued by poor planning and unrealistic logistics, it ends up sounding like the Donner party. Operation Spitfire learned enough from Virginia to make a whole new set of mistakes of its own. Mustang II was a wild goose chase to try and free General Dean.
More successful and colorful were the use of Donkey/Partisan groups on the Korean Islands and Mainland to raise hell behind enemy lines. Navy Lt. Clark found that young kids and old geezers made the best intelligence gatherers (shades of Kim) since they could masquerade as refugees. Still, William Breuer's book (reviewed above) does a better job talking about donkey/partisans than Evanhoe does.
For an more technical review of Evanhoe's book, try Kimsoft's website.