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Title: Into Tibet: The CIA's First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa by Thomas Laird ISBN: 0-8021-3999-X Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.88 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Splendid, fascinating, fast moving history,
Comment: This is an intelligent adventure story about an American agent, Douglas Mackiernan, who was stationed by the CIA at a remote diplomatic outpost in north China in the late 1940s. Nominally he was a State Department employee. In fact he was setting up seismic instruments intended to monitor and pinpoint the sites of Russian atomic bomb tests, which were evidently expected to occur a few hundred miles to the north in Russia. And did.
When Mao-Tse Tung took over China, Mackiernan was essentially cut off from an easy exit path. He had to trek out, and headed south toward Tibet, which was then still free -- the avenue to India and escape. To give you an idea of the difficulty of this journey, he began by purchasing from a nomad chieftain a train of camels and horses that were willing to eat meat. The little caravan was headed into lands so high, cold and barren that there would be no possibility for the animals to graze on grass. The men shot game daily to keep themselves and their pack animals fed.
The pack animals were carrying a radio for encoded communications with the CIA, gold and machine guns -- which begins to hint at some of the layers of complexity in this story. Suffice it to say this was an intelligence mission, not a boy scout trip, and it ended terribly for Mackiernan, who was shot to death near the Tibetan border, apparently by mistake.
The author is a photographer as well as a writer, with long experience in Asia. His ability to present richly visual, graphic pictures of this wildly beautiful and dangerous country, in words, makes the book a real pleasure to read.
He has probably researched the story as well as it can be researched. He found a good deal of material salted around in the National Archives, and he made use of the Freedom of Information Act insofar as possible. He has also extensively interviewed survivors of the trip, and Mackiernan's family. The story was first told in a Life Magazine article in the 1950s, but the author's re-telling is far more careful and better informed. All that said, it is a story about spies. Mackiernan was a deeply complicated man, as were his companions, and you have to make your own judgements, reading along, about who was who and what really happened. It is a hall of mirrors, really - but the author manages to convey this: Without directly contradicting his interviewees, he signals you when skepticism is in order.
One thing that comes through unambiguously is how GOOD these guys were. Scientifically and technically skillful, multilingual in many difficult languages and dialects, good with guns, good with horses, good at haggling - street smart and scholarly at the same time. Amazing, exotic Americans.
The book now and then turns into a polemic. The author seems eager to be outraged about this and that - the course of diplomatic history, American blunders, the China Lobby, McCarthyism, corruption, whatever. The heated exposition interrupts an otherwise clear narrative line, but not often, and you can kind of see it coming a skip a paragraph or two if necessary.
This is a splendid book, and I read it straight through over the Christmas holiday.
Rating: 4
Summary: too explicit.
Comment: This is not a novel, I feel that the there is need for the author to elaborate as what they were actually saying to each other. Those are not true, and it slows down my reading. :)
Also he is very biased against Chinese government. For example, he wrote that during the Cultural Revolution, xx% tibet province monasteries were destroyed. Yea, it sounds horrible that so many were destroyed. However, he failed to mention that it was a wide spread phenomena through out China. By if you didn't know that, you would think that Chinese government did that particularly to destroy the tibet province culture which is not true at all.
So if you want to really understand the complex history of tibet province, I suggest that you read the book called The snow lion and the Dragon by Goldstein. That is a book that is not biased.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent Adventure Book
Comment: I thought this was a great adventure narrative, but it also included the political perspective as well. I had the pleasure of meeting the author in New Orleans and he has written a wonderful book. Buy it today.
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Title: The CIA's Secret War in Tibet by James Morrison, Kenneth J. Conboy ISBN: 0700611592 Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Spies in the Himalayas: Secret Missions and Perilous Climbs (Modern War Studies) by M. S. Kohli, M. S. Kohi, Kenneth J. Conboy ISBN: 0700612238 Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Siege of Shangri-La : The Quest for Tibet's Sacred Hidden Paradise by Michael McRae ISBN: 0767904850 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 24 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Return to Tibet: Tibet After the Chinese Occupation by Heinrich Harrer, Ewald Osers, Harrer Heinrich ISBN: 0874779251 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The CIA's Russians by John Limond Hart ISBN: 1591143527 Publisher: United States Naval Inst. Pub. Date: 30 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
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