Goodbye Mexico

Goodbye Mexico by Jennings, Phillip. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780765316615.

Intelligence Failure Two words now joined at the hip. Remember when our alphabet agencies - CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI - were actually competent? Are you sure? Maybe they were just better at burying their mistakes. . . . Our spooks have been playing games with other governments for half a century. Allies and enemies alike have gotten tired of our grubby fingerprints all over their national interests. Gearheardts answer? Be sure to wear gloves! Gearheardt - apparently back from the dead, or maybe Laos - wants to play for all the Mexican marbles, and he insists he needs Jacks help to do it. Just like the last time in Vietnam, he claims to be working for "the Company." Jack really is in the CIA now, temporarily running the Mexico City station at the embassy, and ought to know better, but Gearheardts sexy assistant with the disdain for clothes is so darn cute and Gearheardts insane resolve is just so darn convincing. (Even though its true that the last time around they failed spectacularly in their attempt to get Ho Chi Minh to retire to Hawaii, and then they didnt even shoot him either.) But does the Agency really want the Cubans to take over Mexico? The worlds of espionage and subversion are as unpredictable and absurd as any other form of warfare. Working in the tradition of Graham Greenes Our Man in Havana and his own Nam-A-Rama, Phillip Jennings gives Goodbye Mexico riotous relevance with a clear-eyed look at how the right hand of our intelligence establishment often doesnt know what the left hand is doing. The result is laughter too loud to be covert and the haunting suspicion that truth may be stranger than fiction. If you thought the Vietnam War of Nam-A-Ramawas crazy, you aint seen nothin yet. Say hello to Goodbye Mexico and the CIA and our foreign policy will never look the same again.