Thomas Powers
Thomas Powers is the author of The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (1979), Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (1993), Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda (2002; revised and expanded edition, 2004), and The Confirmation (2000), a novel. He won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971 and has contributed to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, Harper's, The Nation, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone.
From the Review
July 17, 2008: Iran: The Threat
May 29, 2008: Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes
Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy by Andrew Cockburn
Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon by A.J. Rossmiller
The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War by Ali Ahmad Jalali and Lester W. Grau
The Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan's Role in the Fall of the Soviet Empire by Anthony Arnold
The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan translated from the Russian and edited by Lester W. Grau
The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost by the Russian General Staff, translated from the Russian and edited by Lester W. Grau and Michael A. Gress
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America by Kenneth M. Pollack
The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran by Yossi Melman and Meir Javedanfar
September 27, 2007: The Reason Why (letter)
July 19, 2007: What Tenet Knew
At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA by George Tenet with Bill Harlow
February 23, 2006: 'The Biggest Secret'
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by James Risen
September 22, 2005: An American Tragedy
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race by Priscilla J. McMillan
Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma by Jeremy Bernstein
J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century by David C. Cassidy
May 12, 2005: Black Arts
Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping by Patrick Radden Keefe
Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism by Timothy Naftali
The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking by David Kahn
April 7, 2005: The Indians' Own Story
A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History by Peter Nabokov
Restoring a Presence: American Indians and Yellowstone National Park by Peter Nabokov and Lawrence Loendorf
Silver Horn: Master Illustrator of the Kiowas by Candace S. Greene, with a foreword by Donald Tofpi
For All to See: The Little Bighorn Battle in Plains Indian Art by Sandra L. Brizée-Bowen
December 16, 2004: Secret Intelligence and the 'War on Terror'
November 4, 2004: The Election and America's Future
September 23, 2004: How Bush Got It Wrong
Report on the US Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
April 29, 2004: The Failure
March 11, 2004: Tomorrow the World
An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror by David Frum and Richard Perle
February 12, 2004: Spy Fever
Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America by Ted Morgan
December 4, 2003: The Vanishing Case for War
November 6, 2003: Heisenberg & the Bomb: An Exchange
August 14, 2003: A Letter from Copenhagen
March 27, 2003: War and Its Consequences
The New Face of War by Bruce Berkowitz
The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military by Dana Priest
Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm by Dilip Hiro
War Without End: The Rise of Islamist Terrorism and Global Response by Dilip Hiro
December 5, 2002: 'Secrets of September 11' (letter)
October 10, 2002: Secrets of September 11
The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI by Ronald Kessler
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill
Al-Qaeda: In Search of the Terror Network that Threatens the World by Jane Corbin
The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It by John Miller and Michael Stone, with Chris Mitchell
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism by Robert Baer
Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror by Rohan Gunaratna
September 26, 2002: The Secret Intelligence Wars
Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones
The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI by Ronald Kessler
Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI’s Robert Hanssen Betrayed America by David Wise
The Spy Next Door: The Extraordinary Secret Life of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Damaging FBI Agent in US History by Elaine Shannon and Ann Blackman
The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History by David A. Vise
May 9, 2002: Copenhagen, cont'd. (letter)
April 11, 2002: 'Copenhagen': An Exchange
March 28, 2002: What Bohr Remembered
January 17, 2002: The Trouble with the CIA
Terrorism and US Foreign Policy by Paul R. Pillar
Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America by Yossef Bodansky
The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism by Simon Reeve
November 1, 2001: The Nestor of the Rockies
Kit Carson and the Indians by Tom Dunlay
Kit Carson: Indian Fighter or Indian Killer? edited by R.C. Gordon-McCutchan
Overland with Kit Carson: A Narrative of the Old Spanish Trail in '48 by George Douglas Brewerton
September 20, 2001: Heisenberg's Visit: An Exchange
June 21, 2001: Notes from Underground
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War through the Dawn of a New Century James Bamford
Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age Steven Levy
February 8, 2001: Heisenberg in Copenhagen: An Exchange
November 2, 2000: The Interesting One
Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas
October 19, 2000: Heisenberg in Copenhagen (letter)
May 25, 2000: The Unanswered Question
Copenhagen a play by Michael Frayn, directed by Michael Blakemore, opened April 11, 2000.
May 11, 2000: The Plot Thickens
The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era by Allen Weinstein, by Alexander Vassiliev
VENONA: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America by John Earl Haynes, by Harvey Klehr
The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew, by Vasili Mitrokhin
A Time for Spies: Theodore Stephanovich Mally and the Era of the Great Illegals by William E. Duff
The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives by Nigel West, by Oleg Tsarev
A Covert Life: Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster by Ted Morgan
May 20, 1999: 'Passion Play': An Exchange
March 18, 1999: Passion Play
Crazy Horse by Larry McMurtry
Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz, Introduction by Stephen B. Oates
Red Cloud: Warrior-Statesman of the Lakota Sioux by Robert W. Larson
The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull by Robert M. Utley
Plains Indian Drawings, 1865-1935: Pages from a Visual History edited by Janet Catherine Berlo
February 4, 1999: The Black Arts
Secrecy: The American Experience by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Bay of Pigs Declassified edited by Peter Kornbluh
December 18, 1997: Nothing to Hide (letter)
October 23, 1997: The Bloodless War
Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War by David E. Murphy, by Sergei A. Kondrashev, by George Bailey
March 27, 1997: Conspiring Against Hitler (letter)
January 9, 1997: The Conspiracy That Failed
Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of the German Resistance by Joachim Fest, translated by Bruce Little
The Unnecessary War: Whitehall and the German Resistance to Hitler by Patricia Meehan
Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905-1944 by Peter Hoffmann
American Intelligence and the German Resistance to Hitler: A Documentary History edited by Jürgen Heideking, edited by Christof Mauch
The Unseen War in Europe: Espionage and Conspiracy in the Second World War by John H. Waller
Changing Enemies: The Defeat and Regeneration of Germany by Noel Annan
June 20, 1996: Who Won the Cold War?
From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War by Robert M. Gates
February 15, 1996: The Last Hurrah
Bob Dole by Richard Ben Cramer
Senator for Sale: An Unauthorized Biography of Senator Bob Dole by Stanely G. Hilton
Bob Dole: The Republicans' Man For All Seasons by Jake H. Thompson
November 2, 1995: General Right
My American Journey by Colin Powell, by Joseph E. Persico
August 10, 1995: No Laughing Matter
Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million by David Wise
Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy by Tim Weiner, by David Johnston, by Neil A. Lewis
Killer Spy: The Inside Story of the FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Aldrich Ames, America's Deadliest Spy by Peter Maas
Sellout: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA by James Adams
March 23, 1995: The CIA and Vietnam (letter)
December 1, 1994: The Spook of Spooks
Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles by Peter Grose
September 22, 1994: 'Were the Atom Scientists Spies?': An Exchange
June 9, 1994: Were the Atomic Scientists Spies?
Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster by Pavel Sudoplatov, and Anatoli Sudoplatov, with L. Jerrold, and Leona P. Schecter, foreword by Robert Conquest
June 24, 1993: A Very Important Spy (letter)
May 13, 1993: The Truth About the CIA
Eclipse: The Last Days of the CIA by Mark Perry
Casey: From the OSS to the CIA by Joseph Persico
The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story by Gen. Mohammad Yousaf, by Mark Adkin
The Red Web: MI6 and the KGB Master Coup by Tom Bower
The FBI–KGB War: A Special Agent's Story by Robert J. Lamphere, by Tom Schactman
Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: The CIA's Master Spy Hunter by Tom Mangold
Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors that Shattered the CIA by David Wise
No Other Choice: The Cold War Memoirs of the Ultimate Spy by George Blake
The Cambridge Spies: The Untold Story of Maclean, Philby, and Burgess in America by Verne W. Newton
The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War by Jerrold L. Schechter, by Peter S. Deriabin
The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government, to 1950 by Arthur B. Darling
General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence, October 1950–February 1953 by Ludwell Lee Montague
Moscow Station: How the KGB Penetrated the American Embassy by Ronald Kessler
The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA by Burton Hersh
America's Secret Eyes in Space: The U.S. Spy Satellite Program by Jeffrey T. Richelson
American Espionage and the Soviet Target by Jeffrey T. Richelson
June 27, 1991: The Nazis and the Atom Bomb: An Exchange
August 17, 1989: Spook of Spooks
Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA by Edward Jay Epstein
November 19, 1987: Casey's Case
Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981–1987 by Bob Woodward
November 21, 1985: 'Counsels of War': An Exchange
January 17, 1985: How Nuclear War Could Start
The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces by Paul Bracken
May 12, 1983: The Underground Entrepreneur
The Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan by Anthony Cave Brown
Donovan: America's Master Spy by Richard Dunlop
Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency by Thomas F. Troy
The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA by Bradley F. Smith
February 3, 1983: The Ears of America
The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency by James Bamford
September 23, 1982: 'How Not to Think About Nuclear War': An Exchange
From New York Review Books
 | The Military Error Why did George W. Bush invade Iraq? Thomas Powers uses a broad perspective to examine the American tendency to respond to political crises with military force. An expert on CIA intelligence, Powers explains how the Bush administration made its case for war, using faulty intelligence to argue that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a mounting threat to the Middle East. |
 | Intelligence Wars (Revised and Expanded Edition) No one outside the intelligence services knows more about their culture than Thomas Powers. In this book he tells stories of shadowy successes, ghastly failures, and, more often, gripping uncertainties. |
 | Intelligence Wars What emerges from these essays is not just the episodes, personalities, and controversies of America's secret history, but a keen sense of what the intelligence business is like. |
Books by Thomas Powers
Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda (2002)
Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (2000)
The Confirmation (2000)