A newsworthy book in an electoral cycle that promises to see plenty of foreign interference—and little resistance from...
“Never did I imagine a day when the greatest threats to our institutions would come from within our own government”: A former special agent details just what it is that Donald Trump doesn’t like about the FBI.
Now a CNN analyst, Campbell served as assistant to former FBI director James Comey, among other assignments over a 12-year career. It was in that role that he participated in the operation of his title, its name taken from the Rolling Stones song “Jumping Jack Flash.” It was early on in the 2016 presidential campaign that the Steele report emerged from a British intelligence agent “that contained unverified but explosive charges against then candidate Trump.” In those green times, even a couple of Republican senators worried that the report was worth pursuing, one of them, not coincidentally, John McCain. Comey’s unpleasant task was to report to Trump that the FBI had the information and that he was indeed under investigation for illegal ties to Russia, something Trump has vehemently denied. In the end, he fired Comey and effectively declared war on the FBI for supposedly being against him politically even though, Campbell notes, the agency is apolitical—and, he adds, “one key aspect of law enforcement in this nation that separates us from authoritarian regimes has been the norm that politicians do not interfere in the work of the FBI.” That norm has been destroyed, and even though the Mueller Report, by the author’s account, strongly suggests illegal activity, he writes that Attorney General William Barr, “describing lawfully predicated surveillance as ’spying,’ ” and Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, are actively blocking for the White House. Campbell notes that he left the agency voluntarily and has no ax to grind, though his principal person of interest is the current occupant of the White House: “I simply hope to illuminate for US citizens the current and lasting consequences of Trump’s attacks on law enforcement.” That he does.
A newsworthy book in an electoral cycle that promises to see plenty of foreign interference—and little resistance from Republicans.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61620-950-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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