Fighting Dirty: The Inside Story of Covert Operations from Ho Chi Minh to Osama Bin Laden

by Peter Harclerode

Book Overview

From CIA operations in Eastern Europe after 1945 to the Afghan war and its legacy, FIGHTING DIRTY investigates the use of secret armies. As Peter Harclerode reveals, the Afghan war was not the first... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0304353825
• ISBN13: 9780304353828
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Cassell
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.4" x 6.9" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

a good overview and starting point for covert ops/insurgency research

This is a very interesting book with alot of information. Some of the subjects covered are obsecure conflicts where there are simply not very books of any kind available. Harclerode knows his subjects and the book could have probably been three times as long. What I found the most interesting was his coverage of early cold war covert operations in eastern europe and the soviet union. He had more information that I'd ever seen before on operations including why some of the operations failed. There is probably at least three books worth of potential source material in these chapters alone. The other really interesting sections were on the conflict in Borneo from 1962 to 1966...and Oman from 1958 to 1976. These are british conflicts that are not commonly covered or end up being footnotes in books. The less successful portions of the book are where he tries to cover huge conflicts like Malaya, Algeria, Vietnam and Afghanistan. He doesn't have enough pages to do much more than summaries. And casual readers will find that there isn't much in the way of background material to help. But on almost every page there is all sorts of interesting information. For example, he shows how Vietnam the security surrounding covert ops was so bad that team after team was sent to be captured & turned or ambushed/killed. The striking thing is how willing various people were to continue throwing covert teams into traps while nobody was willing to step up and get the security problem fixed. The book has a heavy focus on covert operations and covert teams at the expense of broader understanding of strategy or politics. I've actually found the book more useful as a research aid (or reference) than as a book to read from cover to cover.

gavin's book of osama bin laden

The book was about Osama Bin Laden he was born in afganastan his dad was rich bin laden was the 16th child that his dad had 12 wives.On 9/11/01 bin lad en had his men attack the twin towers then they tryed to go to dc where the president was.They were going to crash into the white house but the passengers took over and traped the tarest.And they saved the president fron the tarest.The gaurds from the president took bush to safety where the tarest couldt get to bush.So know to this day U.S. troops are in afganastan fighting for our country.We americans are trying to suport our solders.Good luck and god bless.This what my book was about.