THE REVIEWER IS THE AUTHOR OF THE FORTH MAN:THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT OF KIM PHILBY, GUY BURGESS, AND DONALD MACLEAN AND WHO RECRUITED THEM TO SPY FOR RUSSIA.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500044-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 44
• Publication Date: February 23, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500044-7
A1TICLE - THE WASHINGTON POST
03 FAGI_D. ---- 23 February 1981
Reviewed by
Andrew Boyle
judgment can be applied to Wise's pa-
thetic antihero, Director Black, who
certainly does not appear to under-
stand modern Americans.
Allowing for the author's implicit
fixation that the CIA, in the wrong
hands, may sometimes be made to
operate almost as a state-within.-the
state, ascribing to itself a higher amor-
ality owing nothing to God or man, I
find it hard to resist the conclusion,
that Towny Black embodies that oth-
er ancient Greek warning. "Whom the
gods would destroy, they first make
mad." In the twilit secret world,
whether in Soviet Russia or anywhere
.else, people do tend to live cut- off'
from mundane reality. They may go
mad in extreme cases; but then it is
the good novelist's business, to sketch
in - the sorry = process, - as Graham
Greene did with customary finesse
when accounting for Doctor Percival's
authorized decision in "The Human
'Factor" to eliminate the wrong mole
inside M16 by tactfully poisoning him,
with cocktail nuts. (I have heard sen-
ior British secret service executives ex-
pressing outrage at Greene's unwhole-
some lack- of delicacy, so I can well
imagine the unfavorable reactions that
will be shortly stirred among CIA offi-
cials, past and. present, by this cata-
logue of Black's baleful misdeeds.)
As for the' CIA's station director in
.London, Robert-- Travers, who deeply
mistrusts his rival and chief and who
narrowly escapes assassination in his
attempt to unmask him, here again I
must admit ~? to finding the character
drawing thin and finally unconvincing.
After'", Travers did work with Black
in the early stages of Spectrum, con-
niving at the scandalous use -of a
Catholic confessional (duly bugged)
and of a minor CIA operator, mas
querading ' as a shriving priest. within,.
intent on extracting information from
a simple workman no longer keen to
continue stealing uranium -pellets on
the CIA's behalf. Where Travers drew
the line, a line-always invisible, to the
unspeakable Black, was in condoning
the exemplary torture. of that simple
but uncooperative workman.
Israel; the first beneficiary of Spec-,
trum, was not the only one. In the au-
thor's words, "Black' enjoyed being the
[Director of Central Intelligence], not
only because- he wielded great power
but because his was secret power .. ,
He?.could reach out almost anywhere
in the globe from-Room 75706. His
decisions could mean life or death for
men and women thousands of miles'
from here ... He culd, Black real-
?
ized, overthrow a prime minister be-
fore breakfast or snuff out the life of
a minor KGB agent in Macao over af-
temoon tea". - -
With considerable ingenuity and at-
tention to- technical detail, the author
develops and unwinds the final phases
of his unlovely plot: -Black's attempt
to hold the president and American
people to ransom by a force of Honest
John missiles The ensuing events are
quite dramatic, but the novel ends
with, testimony before yet another
Senate committee on the latest - ex-
travaganza perpetrated by a wicked
A. ..The reviewer is-the author of "The
Fourth ltifan. The Definitive Account
of -.Kim Philby. Guy Burgess, and
-Donald MacLean and Who Recruited
Them to Spy for Russia,"
,As might be-expected of an author
so conversant with the structural and
-technical weak sees and strengths of
,the. agency, David:. Wise, coauthor of
"The Invisible Government" and au-
thor-of "The American Police State,;"
hardly ? puts a Ut wrong in setting
ythe. scene =for .the CIA's outlandish:
BoA-World
::;SPECTRUM--By David Wise.
- .(54 .37'pp.$12Ls)
Aeration Spectrums" the theft in
--1965 of 381-pounds-of weapons ade -
-uranium - from a;- nuclear plant in
Perinsylvania:
The metivjlous-realism ends-there,
?' alas: The crisp, cle 'style cannot re-
" deem the sick; black plot, which ex-
-poses a mythical director named Gra-
-:ham Townsend ('Towny") Black: as a
.:comtpt and - power-crazed individual
Black seeks to bend the president of
the. United States to= his malignant
-*ll: by- threaten*. ; to- wipe- out the
,:White House, `,ashington- and- pre-
sumably the rest oC4 resisting Ameri-
:ca, with -a cunningly secreted. hoard of
nuclear weapons' 'Macabre- and, far-
fetched? Yes, indeed- Not even James
-Bond, they amoral hero- of Ian Flem-
Jng'ss wild-fantasies-would-have beerrr
a1lowed-to=indulgs=himself so. farrThis
first-novetby-Whie--m-thrilling enough;
- all-it lacks- is=Uxweharacterization and
a plot beerir -:fie=semblance -to
probabitlty_ It was.aptl-. ofSir John. Simon,
a particularly bad British foreign sec-
.-xetary of,the-:i93* , -that "the only.
foreigners he- -really-understood' were
the - classical -reeks,. and they had
b een dead;.. a.4wg_time_" ;The same
ex-director of the CIA. .,
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500044-7