Enemies: A History of the FBI

This is a well written and researched book that everyone should read. Similar to the story that Weiner told about the CIA, this is also a story of incompetence, illegality and straggle for personal power. But there are some differences between the two organizations: the CIA was far more incompetent than the FBI, engaged in far more illegal activities than the FBI and its leadership was motivated less by personal power and more by a pathological fear of communism which resulted in a psychotically aggressive behaviour towards anyone who dared to talk about justice, fairness or compassion towards other people.I now believe all those movies and TV shows that show the FBI correlating a bunch of different databases in real time to find a suspect must be funded by the FBI to promote their image. According to Weiner, as late as 2004 the FBI did not have a searchable database and its computers, designed in the 1970s, could only send emails within an office, i.e. not across different offices.The only negative about the book is that it spends a disproportionate amount of time on the FBI during the years of WW I, WWII and the Hoover years. I would have preferred a more contemporary account but I can see the reason for this: it take a long time for documents to get declassified.

This is an exceptional history of the FBI for several reasons, the most important of which is that Tim Weiner completely ignores the FBI's own meticulously cultivated promotional image. Throughout its 100-year history, the FBI has cultivated a made-for-Hollywood brand as the nation's guardian against mankind's darkest impulses: greed, gangsterism, serial killings, and child abductions. And while the FBI can genuinely lay claim to that mantle, that is the self-chosen public face of an organization that doesn't just react to crime - it plays offense, too, against threats to the country's national security. Tim Weiner's book focuses like a laser on the many cases in the FBI's history when it has chased these shadows - suspicions of German and Japanese saboteurs, delusions of communist infiltration into American institutions, and the FBI's more recent attempts to follow President Bush's (and later Congress') mandate after the 9/11 attacks: to *prevent* terrorism, rather than just bring perpetrators to justice. And therein lies my main counterpoint to Weiner. From the first chapter to the last, Tim Weiner could have written a very different book if he'd made the focus the terrible national security laws enacted by Congress and signed by the President in response to national trauma and crisis (which give the FBI its enforcement authority). Tim Weiner's early chapters describe how the FBI found its early footing in the 1910s enforcing the Espionage Act, which was blatantly used to punish innocuous speech opposing the US involvement in World War I. For the next 40 years under Hoover's control, the FBI acted as a Congressional and Presidential Id, controlling and suppressing threats to policymakers' power and agendas. As far as countries go, The United States is a particularly good one, but even our government has overstepped in its exercise of power and protection of national security. This is an excellent account of times when the government got it wrong, which we need to understand in order to get it right in the future.

A masterful follow-on to Legacy of Ashes. This is easily Tim Weiner's finest book.

“Enemies” is a colorful tale of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from its humble beginnings in 1908 fighting organized crime to its recent involvement in the War on Terror. Based on a wealth of research, declassified documents and interviews, the book devotes many of its pages to the larger-than-life character of its first director, J. Edgar Hoover, who for half a century personified the FBI and left an indelible stamp on the agency housed in the Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. I was compelled to read this book after watching a biopic on Hoover in order to get a fuller picture of the legendary man. The book offers an in-depth, no-holds-barred look at the Bureau and its leadership from Hoover to its most recent director, James B. Comey. Effusive in his praise and sharp in his criticism, the author paints a picture of a government agency torn between balancing its mission to provide security and fight criminal and terrorist activity and the need to protect civil liberties so that “Americans could be both safe and free.” Its first century has been one of successes, failures, and a constant struggle to find or upset this balance. The author draws from a wealth of documentary evidence to portray a Bureau that in many ways operates like a tragicomedy as it tries to make sense of and respond to ever-changing threats, often in heavy-handed and arguably unconstitutional ways. Weiner does an apt job of bringing the FBI to life. Although the author makes no attempt to tell an impartial story, his interpretation of history makes it all the more interesting. Putting the FBI through the lens of constitutionality and civil rights, he chides the Bureau for its many deficiencies but commends it where it has taken strides to improve, such as discontinuing (at least publicly) warrantless searches and seizures and improving its information systems. He leaves the reader with the impression that the organization has moved away from many mistakes of the past and has a promising future as the U.S. Government’s primary law enforcement agency. The book’s Achilles heel is its over-reliance on archival information. Much of it is devoted to the Hoover years, while events after his death seem glossed over. Depictions of evolution of the FBI during the War on Terror seem rushed. The author felt it necessary to tell the Bureau’s full history, but his lack of source material and apparent lack of access in the post-Hoover period is evident. It might have been better to focus on the agency’s first 50 years and save the last half century for another book.I give this book five (5) stars and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the FBI, federal law enforcement, and civil liberties.

Here's a quick summary of why you might want to read this: it's a well-researched and documented history of the FBI, including all the good and they bad, about Hoover in particular, but the good-bad stuff didn't end with him of course. Hoover led the FBI for 55 years (about 2/3 of its existence) and so there's a lot about him and his relationships with the many presidents who came and went over during his tenure. The last third of the book takes on the post-Hoover decades: how it slowly rose from the disgrace of Hoover's decline and the Nixon years, through the shock of the terror attacks of the 90s and early aughts. It ends around 2010, so our man Comey hasn't come along yet (except in a fascinating vignette as the Deputy Attorney General).

This book gave me a lot more context in which to place the FBI (and Comey) today, to say nothing of simply being a well-written (the author won a Pulitzer for his history of the CIA) and fascinating history.

An excellent history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this book gives a balanced and fair — if discouraging — account of the Bureau's genesis, its development, and, most importantly, its basic purpose. To sum things up at the very outset, the book demonstrates that the FBI was never intended to be, primarily, a law enforcement agency (although its successes and failures in actual crime-fighting are well known). It was, rather, established as an internal security force, dedicated to monitoring the activities of foreign agents and American citizens alike — suspected or alleged "enemies of the state," hence the book's title.In July 1916, German saboteurs bombed the munitions factory on Black Tom Island in New York Harbor. Killing four people and destroying an estimated $20,000,000 in military goods, the "Black Tom bombing" served as a catalyst for the establishment of an intelligence gathering group within the Justice Department, aimed at preventing such attacks by spies and others in the future. Authorized by President Woodrow Wilson, the War Emergency Division of Justice beefed up its Alien Enemy Bureau, which had the power to arrest, imprison, and deport suspected foreign nationals who were up to no good. The leader of the Alien Enemy Bureau was J. Edgar Hoover, aged 23: by 1919, Hoover headed up the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation.In the 1920s nd 1930s, there was a legitimate "Red Scare" in America, following the Russian Revolution, which led to the famous Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920. Far from being an unjustified case of "mass hysteria", this "Red Scare" was prompted by numerous acts of murder and bombings by Communist and Socialist factions, mostly in New York and New Jersey. By 1921, Hoover became Acting Director of the Bureau of Investigation, and its Director in 1924. (It was not called the "Federal" Bureau of Investigation until 1934.) Hoover remained Director until his death in 1972, at age 77.This is not to say, of course, that the FBI wasn't involved in actual crime-fighting; the '20s and '30s were famous for the pursuit, capture, or killing of such miscreants as Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and many more, although Hoover (contrary to publicity) did not participate in these activities, but stayed in Washington. The FBI carried the battle to both organized crime and "lone wolf" criminals, and was successful in most of its efforts. However, it had been fashioned as a domestic security agency, and it used the tools appropriate to such an agency: wiretapping, eavesdropping, interference with the mails, and other tactics, which would only become more sophisticated, and greater in number, over the years. Sometimes, these methods were ignored by presidents and Congress; often, they were explicitly ordered, so that by the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy were both authorizing taps and "dirty tricks" on Martin Luther King Jr. and many others. Sometimes, the targets of the Bureau's antics were legitimate threats, such as Soviet spies and domestic terrorists; usually, however, they were not. J. Edgar Hoover, in the popular parlance, WAS the FBI, and his "secret files" were the terror of many Washington politicians and ordinary civilians alike."Enemies" is a rare example of a truly balanced account. The author doesn't deny that Soviet agents were infiltrating the government (from Alger Hiss to Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen); if there was ever a "witch-hunt" in the 1920s or 1950s, it's because "real witches" existed. (This was proven by the disclosure of the Venona Files, following the collapse of the Soviet Union: records of Soviet agents and their correspondents in America.) Liberals who claimed that Soviet agents were the stuff of myth and paranoia learned better from the Venona Files.And yet, and yet . . . throughout the decades of anti-espionage activities and legitimate crime-fighting, Hoover's FBI used tools that were utterly inimical to American civil liberties. They still do it today: in fact, they've done it a lot more since 9/11 and the so-called "Patriot Act," although this book was published before those events.The author is also to be commended for avoiding the cheap, tawdry gossip and joking that followed Hoover throughout his career. Specifically, the author discounts the rumors that Hoover was a transvestite or a homosexual. (In fact, Hoover despised homosexuals to an almost fanatical degree.) Anyone wishing to read tales of Hoover cross-dressing or seducing pool boys will not find them in this book. If anything, it appears that Hoover was, most likely, completely asexual.The book is fascinating in many other matters, especially in hindsight. As we all watched the investigation of President Trump by Robert Mueller, how many recalled that Mueller had been Director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013? Hoover was long gone, but the power of his organization has only increased, especially since 9/11. It is, for all its crime-fighting, the American equivalent of the Soviet KGB: it is, in fact, an internal version of the CIA. What the Founding Fathers would have thought of such a "federal intelligence force" can only be imagined.Very, very highly recommended.

There's not much to see here: a one-damn-thing-after-another journalistic history, which makes no effort whatsoever to explain the events that it's relating. No doubt if you can simply accept and embrace that, you could find it vaguely interesting.

Weiner has a major advantage here, compared to his CIA history, which was so sprawling and unfocused that I sometimes wondered if he'd bothered to edit it at all: the FBI, for a long time, can be told as the story of J. Edgar. Of course, that story has been told over and again, but at least the first half of this book has some unity.

On the downside, like the CIA book, in Weiner's eyes, the FBI can't win: either it's doing unconstitutional or flat out illegal things, or it's not doing enough to prevent terrorism. More importantly, it too often turns into a history of things that happened in the world with which the FBI was, in however slight a way, connected. As with the CIA book, there's very little to suggest that this is a history of the institution, rather than a history of some stuff that happened this one time. This is made even worse by his (again, journalistic) tendency to see history through one very specific understanding of the present, to wit, battles over the strength of the executive.

You're better off reading actual histories of Al Qaeda and the Bush administration than reading this; I hope there are better books out there on the FBI.

Another excellent book by Tim Weiner. I enjoyed his book on the CIA, Legacy of Ashes and I was not disappointed by his historical look at the FBI. Highly recommend.

Since I enjoyed Legacy of Ashes, I thought I'd give this book a try. Its an enjoyable read, but not quite as good as Ashes. My main complaint is that Weiner dedicates the majority of the book to the FBI's role in international events (Soviet communism, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and the Middle East.) He does touch upon FBI infiltration of the KKK, and domestic spying on the civil rights movement (Martin Luther King) and the student anti-war groups. He completely skips the 1930's "War on Crime," and gives short narrative to the Ruby Ridge and Waco controversies. Still a good read.

“Enemies” is a history of the Bureau of Investigation from inception without a charter in 1908 as an intelligence organization through the present. Only after decades were some documents that were integral to the research of this material was finally declassified, release of some documents after thirty years of filing Freedom of Information request and interviews. It is interesting that the Bureau of Investigation, eventual called Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.), started to become an effective domestic intelligence organization once J. Edgar Hoover became the head of the Special Investigation Section and then Director of the F.B.I. The author shows both the effectiveness and the inefficiencies that that the F.B.I. went through over a century of operation. Hoover was director until his death, And at is peak performance the F.B.I. was able to perform its intelligence function though the agents had to use operations that would cross the line of legality. Though Hoover had authorization from every single President for these actions. These questionable techniques were not removed from his arsenal until the late the late fifties to early sixties when the Supreme Court ruled they could no longer perform their successful operations using an executive order instead of a warrant unless threat of emanate violence. This essentially shut down the successful intelligence organization that Hoover had set up. And set the Bureaus on the direction that most people think of it as a law Enforcement Organization. Once the F.B.I. loss the use of their investigative tools, some unconstitutional, we have a string of terrorist acts on U.S. soil up to and including the destruction World Trade Centers on 9/11. With the Patriot Act and a decent director back in office, the first since Hoover, the F.B.I. is once again being asked to become the Intelligence organization it was under Hoover. Also covered is the interactions between the F.B.I., O.S.S, C.I.A., military intelligence and foreign intelligence organizations. The book does gives us a broad view on the liberty that is surrendered (or taken) in exchange for security. It was nice to read a book that actually had information that I had not read before.

Enemies, A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner is a well researched, interesting book about the FBI, and Hoover. It's so informative, that at times it is tedious to read through the dry nature of the book. It is well written, and history buffs should like it, but I would not recommend this title for fans of non-fiction that read like fiction.

An alarming and sobering book, comparable to the same author's study on the CIA.

From the 1920s to 1972, the FBI was little more than the personal satrap of J. Edgar Hoover. From the First Red Scare, John Reed and Emma Goldman all the way up to the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement - he had almost total control over domestic intelligence. However, the FBI also acted as a foreign analysis and counterintelligence bureau, counteracting or competing with the CIA on multiple occasions.

Their record was mixed, at best. Some of their best successes were in World War II - completely destroying the German espionage network in the US for example, but they completely missed Pearl Harbor, despite having broken the Japanese code.

Eisenhower was a cooperative ally, trying to get intelligence on the Soviet Union (which was a success). Under the LBJ administration, Hoover was determined to smear Martin Luther King, whereas LBJ wanted to smash the Klan (which they did!) They did, in fact, keep tabs on the sexual liaisons of senior government officials, and Hoover did threaten Kennedy at least once with this information. Nixon was too paranoid even by their standards, demanding information on connections which did not exist. When even they balked at breaking into the Dem's headquarters, he organized the Plumbers and did it himself.

Like the CIA, the FBI had its own foreign interventions. In one instance, an FBI informant took power in the Dominican Republic.

After Hoover's decline and fall, Nixon's administration fell shortly after, and the organization had nearly destroyed itself before it could be rebuilt again. Some directors were weak, and others were openly disastrous - Louis Freeh, instead of investigating the budding Middle East terror networks like the CIA, refused to speak to Clinton at all and made the now-baffling decision of allying with the Gingrich congress and prosecuting Clinton for perjury.

Now that the NDAA and its new indefinite detention provisions have been signed into law some months ago, the organization may yet be stronger than ever. The powers which it had lost in the 1970s with Hoover's passing sprang back with the Patriot Act. It remains to be seen what will be done, and how many other executives are tempted this power, mercurial as it is.

I got this book through a goodreads giveaway; that didn't affect my opinion.

Excellent, well-sourced work of relatively (can't expect total) impartial scholarship covering the history of the FBI, focusing on the Bureau as an intelligence organization (if you're interested in crime fighting, the mob, Waco, etc., you'll be disappointed). A tale of utter incompetence, constant leaks, constitutional infringements, blackmail, political infighting and abuses, miscommunication, petty jealousies, and questionable successes. On the bright side, also a tale of many dedicated men and women working against inertia, confusion, and absurdly outdated technology, who apparently never condoned or engaged in the modern torture and humiliation tactics of the CIA and Army.

The one negative of the book is that the endnotes aren't referenced in the text; highly annoying and not acceptable for a work of history. That's the only reason I don't give the book 5 stars. Even so, I'd recommend it to anyone who thinks it might interest them; I enjoyed it so much I'm looking forward to reading Weiner's past work.

As he did in Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner takes us through history, this time as the FBI is created and evolves. The focus is on intelligence and national security; I was surprised there wasn't more content on famous criminal cases. Of course, the story of J. Edgar Hoover is a large part of the FBI's story, and I think Weiner did a good job of describing the offensive and eccentric side of Hoover, while also attempting to give the reader Hoover's perspective. It is interesting to learn how the presidents have worked (or not) with the FBI, and how the modern-day FBI continues to struggle to define itself and its mission.

It was interesting to read this story of the FBI having read one I believe called THE FBI in the 1950s. This one is a comprehensive history of the FBI as an intelligence agency. Based on extensive research in previously unavailable materials, Weiner gives us a fresh way to think about J. Edgar Hoover, the many presidents he worked with, and the FBI as a national security agency. It is well worth a detour.

I enjoyed reading this book about the "history" of the FBI. While well written, I've always been skeptical of these type of books providing a complete history of any governmental organization. Overall a good story.

Although this book was not what I was expecting, I found it interesting and worth my time. For a history of the FBI, I thought it would tell about how they solved some of the most famous crimes in U. S. history. The book begins with a note by author Tim Weiner telling us that his book will focus on the role of the FBI in the use of secret intelligence in the fight against terrorists and spies. He believes that is the most important task for the agency and has been for the last 100 years.Much of the history of the FBI, of course, includes the history of J. Edgar Hoover and how he ran the Bureau. Weiner was able to use extensive materials that were previously unavailable and he provides extensive notes on his sources. The book provides a more complete picture of Hoover than has often been presented in the past. It is particularly interesting to read about his relationships with the many presidents he served. Sometimes the presidents wanted to use the Bureau as their private agency for political warfare.The book was startling to me in its discussion of the use of wiretapping and all the various forms of surveillance used against American citizens. It seemed unbelievable how often it was used in violation of the law or bending of the law at the very least. Just call me naive. The argument was always that it was necessary to keep America safe. I only hope we have more directors like Robert Mueller who offered his resignation in protest over a request for the Bureau to carry out unlawful secret surveillance. He believes we will not win the war over terrorism if we lose our freedoms in the process.

This is a fascinating history of the FBI from its inception though the present. On the whole the author does a good job, but his politics shine through from time to time, which is a little jarring. The underlying thread throughout is the dichotomy between security and individual rights, and how our perspectives can change with the passage of time. For example, nowadays we look askance at the internments during WWII - and yet Enemies does a good job of reminding us of the fear - some justified - of fifth columnists in WWI which undoubtedly influenced Roosevelt's administration in WWII. The Establishment had an equally palpable fear of communists, and Soviet attempts to destabilize the US, from the 20's through the 50's, and yet we often times fail to look at motives and actions through the prism of the time. Another area I found of particular interest was the background to the creation of the CIA, and the scheming and maneuvering that went on. One wonders how the intelligence capabilities of the US would have developed had there been greater cooperation.On the whole, this is a fascinating look at an institution that is hugely influential.

While Enemies is incredibly informative about the history of the FBI, it was for the most part dense and dry. I worked very hard for every bit of the 200+ pages I read of this book. I will freely admit that I was reading many other books during the two and a half months that I tried to chip away at it; making it my goal to read at least twenty pages per day. It became an exercise of self-control: how much could I force myself to read each day?The irony is that once I read a few pages each time and got myself into the right frame of mind, I did find that there was a lot of interesting (if somewhat depressing) information about the history of the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover’s obsession with hunting down communists, and his perception of anything having to do with civil rights being inherently communist were not entirely surprising, but the depth of his deceptions and the lengths he went to because of them were surprising. His efforts to undermine the CIA and his attempts to set himself up as ruler of all American intelligence as well as head of a national police force, bordered on treason.In the end, despite the interesting facts, I just couldn’t force myself to push through the rest of the book in order to say that I had finished. It was quite informative, but written in such a way as to remind me of dense college textbooks – the sort that will probably only appeal to die-hard political history buffs.

This is the first time I've read about the history of the FBI. Tim Weiner had done a stunning job. The book focuses more on the intelligence side of the FBI as opposed to the crime fighting aspects. Still the story provides a fascinating look into the world's premier crime fighting organization.

Having read four books about the US' Federal Bureau of Investigation, I did not expect to learn much from this one. I could not have been more wrong. Award winning author Tim Weiner has written a truly stunning history of the agency. Much of the information is new-- having been taken from over 200 oral interviews with FBI agents, and from >70,000 pages of secret documents released (after many years of battle) through the Freedom of Information Act. The result is a detailed, comprehensive account of the history of the FBI and of J. Edgar Hoover, the man who built the agency and ran it as a private fiefdom for four decades. Taking an historical approach to its subject, Enemies begins with the anarchistic terrorism of the 1920s, the "Red Scare", and communist activity in the post- World War I period. It traces the growth of the agency in response to espionage during WW2, its activity during the Cold War, the political activism of the 1950s through 1970s, the scandals and incompetence and errors of the post- Hoover years, and the agency's reactivation in 2001. One of several overarching themes is the long- standing rivalry between the FBI and CIA, manifested by mutual suspicion and competition for power and funds, resulting in antagonism that left the nation weaker in the face of foreign threats. The history of the agency, in Weiner's analysis, is thoroughly intertwined with the life and preoccupations ("obsessions") of its long- term director. J. Edgar Hoover is presented as a Machiavellian character who routinely engaged in illegal spying, wiretapping, and "black bag" jobs against US citizens; who worked for decades to foment discord in political groups that he opposed (he had particular hatred of the civil rights movement, which he insisted was directed by the Soviet Union); and who used his knowledge to blackmail political leaders and consolidate his power. No politician dared cross him, and US presidents who sought to force his retirement (Kennedy and Nixon among them) were thwarted. Enemies is brimming with revelations. For example, consider the Watergate break-in and its aftermath, events resulting in the impeachment and resignation of US president Richard Nixon. I thought I was well informed on the issues, but this book brought a new perspective, since it is now clear that the FBI played a major role in the downfall of the Nixon presidency. First, the reason the White House was involved in spying and illegal break-ins was because the FBI refused to do so at Nixon's behest – not on moral or legal grounds (since the FBI had been doing these things illegally for decades) but because Hoover thought they'd get caught and it would tarnish the FBI's image. Second, it is now clear that the Watergate cover-up would likely have succeeded if the FBI had followed White House orders. As the White House tapes reveal, within 24 hrs of the break-in, presidential aide John Ehrlichman ordered the FBI to stay out of it, but the FBI refused. Nixon then ordered the CIA to tell the FBI to cease its investigation, but that effort failed too. Third, FBI personnel were responsible for revealing to the news media details about the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up. Mark Felt (the "Deep Throat" of Washington Post fame) and other upper- echelon agents exposed what the White House had been doing, for a combination of professional and selfish motives. (Felt was miffed at not having been chosen as director when Hoover died). In fact, Nixon and his aides knew that Felt was leaking information to the newspapers and tried unsuccessfully to get Director Patrick Gray to fire him. As for Gray, he was playing both sides of the situation, to his own advantage. On the one hand, he declined to fire Mark felt to plug the leaks to the media. On the other hand, however, he burned documents delivered by John Dan that could have incriminated the White House further. What's more, during the ensuing investigation, Gray was secretly sending information about what the Bureau had found out directly to the White House. Despite the momentous nature of its revelations, Enemies is a sober (non-sensationalistic) account. Its tone is so matter-of-fact that the reader continually must remind himself of the significance of what he is reading. While the picture of the FBI is far from positive, the book has no evident political agenda. On the contrary, the author fully acknowledges the difficulty of the FBI's mission of keeping the populace safe within the bounds of legal authority, and the inherent tension between security and freedom. Nonetheless, the overwhelming sense that the reader gets is of a renegade agency that for much of its history has operated outside of the law as a virtual "secret police," answerable to no political authority and arguably as big a threat to the republic as the foreign enemies it sought to combat. Tim Weiner's book now constitutes the definitive history of the FBI, and for the time period it covers, is unlikely ever to be superceded.

A masterful follow-on to Legacy of Ashes. This is easily Tim Weiner's finest book.

Weiner’s book has one great strength. It rests entirely on on-the-record statements and recently declassified FBI documents. There is no questionable Bob Woodward secret sourcing going on.Weiner’s book is also well-written and moves quickly – perhaps too quickly when one comes across an area where more detail is sought. However, that’s where the extensive footnotes come in with a great deal of the declassified documents to be found online. And this is, after all, a one volume history with a great deal of ground to cover: the existence of the FBI as a secret intelligence and security service. This book is not at all interested in the FBI investigating conventional crimes.The FBI came into existence in July 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation in the Justice Department – after Congress had refused to appropriate money for keeping tabs on anarchists, foreign-born radicals, and politicians and developers looting public lands. In typical fashion, Theodore Roosevelt simply waited until Congress adjourned, dipped into a Justice Department’s expense account, and created the agency anyway. It was never created by a Federal charter and still doesn’t have one to this day. From its beginnings, it was there to gather intelligence on suspected and actual subversives.J. Edgar Hoover, the man synonymous with the FBI, joined the Justice Department on July 26, 1917 at age 22. At age 23, he was overseeing the thousands of Germans interned in government camps during World War One and surveillance of hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents. On August 1, 1919, the 24 year old Hoover was made head of the Justice Department’s new Radical Division which, under the guise of the 1917 Espionage Act – still on the books but rarely enforced – spied on thousands of Americans thought to be violent anarchists or members of a “Red” communist conspiracy. It was in the time of a massive Wall Street bombing and the attempted assassination of several government officials via mailed bombs. The government responded with the famous Palmer raids, massive arrests followed, in the case of the foreign-born citizens, by occasional deportation. But those raids were actually directed and organized by Hoover. While not a biography, a large part of this book is about Hoover, how he molded the FBI until his death – still as head of the FBI because he had been exempted from a mandatory retirement provision – on May 2, 1972. To his credit, Weiner, on the first page of the book, quickly dismisses nonsense about Hoover as a transvestite or closet homosexual. (Those seem to be rumors spread by William Donovan, head of the OSS, and a political rival of Hoover’s.) What he was, says Weiner, was an “American Machiavelli”. The relationship that many presidents had with him was summed up by the one that relied on him the most, Lyndon Johnson, “a pillar of strength in a city of weak men”. What Hoover’s organization did was provide information on domestic subversion and terrorism, penetrated the link between the American Communist Party (indeed, it had an agent at its first meeting) and its Soviet masters, and, perhaps most astonishingly, provided real-time battlefield intelligence during the forgotten American invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965.But there were embarrassments that Hoover buried. These weren’t always matters of illegal activity. Hoover sincerely maintained his wiretaps and letter interceptions and buggings and “black bag” jobs (illegal break-ins) were legally ordered by presidents, and Weiner covers the ever changing legal interpretations the Bureau has operated under. They were things like losing track of one Lee Harvey Oswald – exactly the sort of Marxist agitator with Soviet ties that the Bureau was interested in or the pathetic early attempts to run its own intelligence operations in Latin American countries starting in 1940.Weiner rightly supports the notion that Hoover had a particular idea of America and regarded anyone threatening that as a subversive worth keeping an eye on. The notorious COINTELPRO program was about that – specifically not only monitoring groups regarded as subversive but destroying them through propaganda campaigns and by sowing dissension within them. While the Ku Klux Klan was targeted along with left wing groups, Weiner does establish that Hoover was far less interested in the latter.And Hoover was always interested in perpetuating the legend of the spyhunting FBI, wanted the agency to be highly regarded. It was the possible fear of exposure and the attendant public relations damage he feared, and not any legal squeamishness, that made him pull back on domestic spying operations as early as 1966 and 1967. And Weiner is quite good on the wars between the CIA and the FBI and notes the times that the FBI scooped the former with correct information. The book’s first three parts, “Spies and Saboteurs”, “World War”, and “Cold War”, cover the Hoover years. The last 142 pages of text cover the FBI’s recent efforts on fighting terrorism and its general patheticness in internal communication, intelligence analyses, cybernetic resources, and focus, and it how was penetrated by several double agents. It is here that we get the second major figure of the book, Robert Mueller, who is clearly Weiner’s ideal of an FBI director, the figure who squared the circle of reconciling security with constitutional freedoms. As someone who was an adult during most of those years, it was still good to have various news stories of recent FBI activity put in a context or, in some cases, hearing about them for the first time.For those interested in the history of American counterintelligence, this is essential as a one volume resource for the FBI. However, it is not without some questionable elements and omissions. Weiner insinuates that the Industrial Workers of the World simply practiced rhetoric against World War One. In fact, some of the organizations leaders did conspire with members of German intelligence to foment rebellion in parts of America. It is implied that Director Louis Freeh was wrongly obsessed with President Clinton’s sexual misconduct and investigating Chinese influence pedaling instead of investigating terrorism. Freeh’s tenure certainly was not good for the FBI, but you could argue that Clinton’s perjury was probably as serious a crime as Nixon’s Watergate cover-up – the scandal that continues to fascinate journalists like Weiner and makes for the only boring reading in the book. (In Weiner’s defense, Watergate did play a large role in creating disarray in the FBI and is integral to the book’s theme.) As for Chinese espionage, that country’s intelligence operations seem to use no neat division between military and political operations, government agents and private citizens seeking favor with their government. I note that no mention is made of the controversial FBI investigation of Israeli espionage in America, specifically the charging of Larry Franklin by the FBI under the 1917 Espionage Act in the so-called AIPAC spy scandal. Since Weiner makes a point of noting that Vides Casanova, the El Salvadoran National Guard general suspected of ordering the murder of four American church workers, was granted U.S. residency by President Reagan, why not also note that President Clinton gave pardons to 16 members of the FALN, the Puerto Rican terrorist group involved in over a hundred bombings as well as at least six murders and an armored car robbery and that is mentioned in the book several times?Finally, the name of Jamie Gorelick appears nowhere in the book though she is sometimes blamed for the “wall” that inhibited the sharing of intelligence between FBI agents working criminal matters and those working intelligence cases. Weiner portrays it as purely an institutional misunderstanding on the part of the FBI, not the result of a dictum from a Justice Department superior. Still, in that matter, as well as his favoring liberty and civil rights over security, Weiner’s book is also a useful counterargument to many prevailing political currents these days. Even if you don’t agree with his conclusions, his data’s validity must be acknowledged however incomplete the context is at times.

This could have been so much better than it actually turned out to be. Instead of analysis, we just get fact after fact. Instead of any attempt at historical judgement we get a book that could have been written by the PR people for the FBI. The short chapters do not help delve into any depth about what happened, why it happened, or any sort of analysis at all. This is a wasted opportunity to explore one of the most dangerous organizations against the average citizen in the United States. Instead we get a pretty bland picture, with really no critique of anyone.

A well-researched and very compelling history of the FBI. The only equal to Hoover's power that comes to mind is Robert Moses(see:The Power Broker), but of course Moses' power had nothing to do with basic American freedoms that Hoover and the FBI disregarded entirely. The saddest part of the book is the realization that even after September 11th, various agencies still withhold information from each other instead of sharing, all to protect their little fiefdoms, something seen in the smallest local government offices.

As a former state prosecutor, I fall generally in the 'law and order' camp. I am also a firm believer in the rule of law. As such, this compelling and engrossing history of the FBI had me writing out a check to the ACLU. A secret police force may be necessary for law enforcement and security. Too much power in the hands of a long-term dictator used for political ends is far too dangerous and must be tempered. The history of the FBI is marred by the trampling of basic civil rights while chasing largely non-existent bogeymen. Important lessons from the past which are fully relevent to our modern era. 'Term limits' on the tenure of the director, proper oversight nd sharing of information a ingest agencies are modern improvements, but we must ever be vigilant to protect our basic freedoms. Weiner had access to many documents released pursuant to a FOIA request and his book is indispensable to understanding the FBI.

Tim Weiner does a thorough job of investigating the investigators, presenting a very readable history of the FBI and proving that some things never change, even as the decades pass. I heard Mr. Weiner interviewed on NPR's "Fresh Air" and wanted to read the book, but after the first 100 pages, I decided that I thoroughly despised J. Edgar Hoover and wasn't so interested in the story any more.

The fascinating story of the creation and history of the FBI, Enemies is also a history of intelligence gathering in the US. In it's 100 year history the FBI has had some tremendous successes, and some equally tremendous failures. J. Edgar Hoover's commitment to national security (or what he perceived as national security) shaped every facet of the FBI. The scope of his power is actually pretty terrifying. Weiner does a good job of laying all the cards on the table (the good, the bad, and the ugly) while telling a compelling story and making us all confront an important moral dilema - Does the end justify the means when national security is at stake?

This book is both frightening and reassuring. It is frightening to know what the FBI has done it is almost 100 year history in the name of national security. The obsession, first with Communism, and then the New Left, and anti-war movements; the failures on identifying real Communists and spies within its own organization and more important, preventing the attacks on 9/11 (partly a result of aging technology, a leadership vacuum, and a long-standing feud with the CIA. But there have been success along the way - ferreting out German agents during WWII, and post 9/11 success in preventing future attacks and its "honorable" methods of interrogation of enemy combatants under tremendous pressure from the Bush-Cheney administration. Enemies recounts all of these successes and failures in this history that explains the role of the FBI as a domestic intelligence service. The FBIs mission, is of course, conflicted. They must both make us secure and ensure our liberties under the Constitution. It is easy to be a critic of the FBI but this book, written by noted national security writer Tim Weiner provides a fair balance in the "tug-of-war between national security and civil liberties..." Of course any history of the FBI needs to address J. Edgar Hoover. Weiner attempts to distill the rumors of Hoover as a "cross-dressing crank" and identifies him more as an American Machiavelli and credits him with being the architect of American intelligence. The book adds tremendously to our understanding of the workings of the FBI over the last 90 years and its current adherence to principal of maintaining at least some hope of keeping our civil liberties.

After finishing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, starting Enemies was a bit of a letdown. I went from a scintillating piece of narrative non-fiction of the can’t-put-it-down/page-turner variety to a pretty straightforward history of the FBI, written in a flat, journalistic style. But I realized almost immediately that these were two very different books and that Enemies is engaging in a totally different way.Just about every chapter brings new revelations about the FBI and its founder/long-time director, J. Edgar Hoover. I found myself saying to myself, “Wow, I didn’t know that,” over and over again. We think “enhanced interrogation” began in the recent wars … think again. The FBI is under the control of the President …not a chance. The FBI stands for the rule of law … no way. I also found the rivalry between the FBI and CIA quite interesting. I have to hand it to the author, he could have sensationalized the story – there’s plenty of material there. But he chose instead to tell the tale as a series of short essays, chronologically and without a lot of folderol. And the back notes are extensive enough to please readers who devour them, as I do.Review based on publisher-provided advanced readers’ copy of the book.