|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
For Your Spies Only
| Article
# : |
20543 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1992 |
2,952 Words |
| Author
: |
Russ Braley
Russ Braley was a U.S. Navy mine disposal officer in the
Mediterranean and Pacific theaters in World War II. For
twenty years he was a foreign correspondent for the New York
Daily News. He is the author of Bad News: the Foreign Policy
of the New York Times (Regnery Gateway, 1984). |
THE FOURTH WORLD WAR
Diplomacy and Espionage in the Age of Terrorism
Alexandre Count De Marenches and David Andelman
New York: William Morrow and Co., 1992
320 pp., $22.00
Alexandre Court de Marenches, chief of France's secret service for eleven years, broke his silence in 1986 in a memoir that was a best-seller in France. It was not published in English then, in part because the Soviet Union began to disintegrate rapidly, outdating political memoirs and blurring the future. Also, American publishers were squeamish at some revelations and proposals considered too gamy for the stomachs of Americans basking of their Cold War victory.
This newly published English version is Marenches' memoir, revised and updated with David Andelman, who was correspondent and bureau chief for the New York Times for two decades, Paris correspondent for CBS, and author of the 1973 book The Peacemakers.
Marenches believes that the leaders of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, and some poor nations are engaged in a fanatical war against Western civilization. They became adept in terrorism, with Soviet complicity, during the last two decades of the Cold War, which he calls the third world war. This fourth world war could be "of titanic proportions, using weapons of terror never even conceived in previous conflicts." The United States, especially unprepared for such a war because of overconfidence and its tendency to revert to isolationism, is likely to dismiss his warning as alarmist and his proposed remedies as outlandish. To Marenches, America is revisiting early winter 1941, only a short time before Pearl Harbor.
He brings impressive credentials as a French Resistance courier, decorated soldier, successful businessman, historian, linguist, and France's chief of spies with a tenure equal to the combined service of the six American CIA directors with whom he worked. Ranking officers of the Soviet KGB (which, incidentally, is still operating in France and in the United States) have mentioned that the Soviets gave high marks to the small French intelligence service compared with the massive CIA.
Marenches' original French tilte, Dans le Secret des Princes, (written with Christine Ockrent) might be translated "confidant of princes." He was perhaps destined to serve
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
