A SPY THRILLER TEACHES THE COST OF US INVOLVEMENT IN LEBANON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403040002-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 26, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: October 21, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26 :CIA-RDP90-009658000403040002-2 ?-
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Aga~Ks of Innocanq: A Spy Story, by David Ignatius. New
York and London: W. W. Norton. 444 pp. $17.95.
Tb its critics, and not a few of its admirers, United
States foreign policy has always been quixotic -forging
friendships best left unmade, ignoring, until too late,
threats to global peace, abdicating global responsibili-
ties. Call it naivetk, innocence, or just plain misjudgment,
the results have often led to more problems than have
been resolved, as underscored by a remarkable novel,
"Agents of Innocence: A Spy Story."
Perhaps few inddents in recent US foreign policy so
capture the American talent for ineptitude -hidden
behind a facade of rectitudinous certainty - as the ill-
fated American peacekeeping force in Lebanon in the
1980x. Why exactly were US Marines in that nation? 'Ib
protect the Lebanese people? Keep the Syrians and their
Soviet backers at bay? Support Israel?
BOOKS
David Ignatius, a former Wall
Street Journal correspondent in the
Middle East, is now an editor with
the Washington Post
He has w
itt
.
r
en
a masterly novel that brings home to Americans the
costs of the US involvement in Lebanon with all the force
of a howitzer blast hitting the Mediterranean coastline.
I
i
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gnat
us
tale of the deepening US involvement in
the sto of Tbm Ro ers, a CIA ent in Beirut. ~ intes-
senti y encan, ogers ;