PRAISE FOR WHISTLEBLOWER AT THE CIA
“Mel Goodman shines a critical whistleblower light into the dark recesses of the CIA as a former insider. His book serves in the public interest as a warning and wake-up call for what’s at stake and why we cannot trust the CIA or the intelligence establishment to do the right thing.”
—Thomas Drake, former NSA senior executive and whistleblower
“Mel Goodman’s Whistleblower at the CIA is not just an insider’s look at politics at the highest levels of government. It’s also a personal account of the political odyssey Goodman had to negotiate for telling the truth. The CIA likes for its employees to believe that everything is a shade of grey. But some things are black or white, right or wrong. Mel Goodman did what was right. He may have paid with his career, but he’s on the right side of history.”
—John Kiriakou, former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
“Mel Goodman’s Whistleblower at the CIA confirmed for me what my own experience had revealed during six hectic days and seven sleepless nights at CIA headquarters, getting Colin Powell ready for his presentation to the UN Security Council on Iraq’s ‘Failure to Disarm’ on February 5, 2003. Mr. Goodman provided exhaustive detail on why the agency has failed, again and again, and will continue to fail if some future president and congress do not step in and dramatically change the way CIA functions.”
—Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
“A refreshingly honest, well-sourced expose of the CIA that not only furnishes the author’s compelling personal story of standing up to inflated estimates sprinkled with little-known but historically significant details of the jewels and the warts, the successes and failures of decades of U.S. intelligence analysis. Especially instructive to our current era plagued by faulty group-think and the ‘war on whistleblowers,’ the book chronicles how ‘contrarian’ analysts are often ‘the best source for premonitory intelligence.’ This book is a must-read not only for political historians and American citizens wanting to know the unvarnished and often surprising truth about the intelligence side of the CIA but for all students contemplating a career with the CIA or other intelligence agency.”
—Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent
“In this fascinating and candid account of his years as a senior CIA analyst, Mel Goodman shows how the worst enemies of high quality intelligence can come from our own midst, and how the politicization of intelligence estimates can cause more damage to American security than its professed enemies. Whistleblower at the CIA is a must-read for anyone interested in the intricate web of intelligence-policymaking relations.”
—Uri Bar-Joseph, author of The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel
ALSO BY MELVIN A. GOODMAN
National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism
Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA
Bush League Diplomacy: Putting the Nation at Risk (with Craig Eisendrath)
The Phantom Defense: America’s Pursuit of the Star Wars Illusion (with Craig Eisendrath)
The Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze (with Carolyn M. Ekedahl)
The End of Superpower Conflict in the Third World
Gorbachev’s Retreat: The Third World
WHISTLEBLOWER AT THE CIA
A PATH OF DISSENT
Melvin A. Goodman
City Lights Books | San Francisco
Copyright © 2017 by Melvin A. Goodman
All Rights Reserved
Cover design: Herb Thornby
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Goodman, Melvin A. (Melvin Allan), 1938- author.
Title: Whistleblower at the CIA : an insider’s account of the politics of intelligence / Melvin A. Goodman.
Other titles: Whistleblower at the Central Intelligence Agency
Description: San Francisco : City Lights Publishers, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016047282 (print) | LCCN 2017000887 (ebook) | ISBN 9780872867307 (paperback) | ISBN 9780872867314 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Goodman, Melvin A. (Melvin Allan), 1938- | United States. Central Intelligence Agency—Officials and employees—Biography. | United States. Central Intelligence Agency—Management. | United States. Central Intelligence Agency—History. | Intelligence service—Political aspects—United States. | Whistle blowing—United States. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Freedom & Security / Intelligence. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Political. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Freedom & Security / International Security. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / General.
Classification: LCC JK468.I6 G6633 2017 (print) | LCC JK468.I6 (ebook) | DDC
327.12730092 [B] —dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047282
City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
CONTENTS