For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush – The Authoritative History Acclaimed by David Kahn Paperback – March 1, 1996

In this book Andrew takes on the Herculean task of describing the relationship of American presidents with the intelligence community. Two messages that came through to me from the book are (1) Most presidents don't know how to handle intelligence; and, (2) intelligence is such an elusive, cloudy essence that it's a wonder it succeeds as often as it does. In Andrew's mind there were only four U.S. presidents who adeptly used and understood the value of intelligence -- Washington, Kennedy (briefly), Eisenhower and the first George Bush. Others either ignored it, abused it, misunderstood it, damaged it, or otherwise failed to take advantage of this double-edged sword called intelligence. Andrew dwells necessarily on the role of the intelligence function during the 20th century, combining a very readable style with encyclopedic knowledge of his subject. He goes into great detail about many historic events where intelligence played an important role. This is a detailed primer on U.S. strategic intelligence. Unfortunately, having been written in 1995, the book only goes up to the end of the first Bush administration and, therefore, completely misses out on such current threats as jihadism, nuclear proliferation, the internet and other electronic breaktroughs. On the other hand, in discussing intelligence intended "for the president's eyes only", Andrew also gives us a much broader backstage view of the behavior of our presidents during times of crisis. This incredibly well-researched and annotated book is a must-read for anyone interested in presidential history and intelligence, be they scholars or laymen. Andrew has given us a formidable and eminently readable piece of work.

This work is clearly a five star account of the manner in which our past presidents valued and used intelligence and counter-intelligence operations to further U.S. interests at home and abroad. Most interesting to me was the fact that so few presidents up to Franklin Roosevelt and World War II used any intelligence organizations or operations at all. Only a handful of presidents engaged the use of an intelligence service during their administrations, and then only during a time of war. While stories about our earlier presidents are somewhat limited, they were still of great interest. The latter day presidents are explained in detail in an easy to read and hard to put down fashion. Great read for history and spy buffs!

The book gave me a rare insight as to how the President gets his classified reports each day. Book arrived very fast and was reasonably priced. I enjoyed it very much.

This was a really quick read and very fun. For those interested in history, it offers insights into the factors leaders had while making decisions that few of us common people would have known about.

Christopher Andrew gives a British scholar viewpoint on American intelligence operations and there relationship to the Executive Branch. I thought he talked down about Americans intelligence service but overall I truly enjoyed the book.

Great book! Extremely interesting and gives details of different experiences of the presidents and there intelligence situations. Very fun to learn about how every President is different. Still the most powerful job in the world!

This book is extremely well written and very informative. I picked it up as a reference for a term paper, and initially I read just the section pertaining to the term paper. Whenever I opened it to read a passage for the term paper though, I found that I just couldn't put the book down because it was so interesting. While on Christmas vacation, I went back and read the rest of the book. I rank this book right up there with Clay Blair's "Silent Victory," and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about the development of the American intelligence community at the highest levels of government.

excellent condition and received days before stated delivery date.