Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad

John Brennan’s memoir surprised me. I thought it would be eye opening and full of stories from his time in the justice department, but his humor and writing style were wonderful complements to a story that is well told and at times edge of your seat. For fans of memoir, political history, and those interested in looking at what a life in the CIA entails. Highly recommend!!

John Brennan\’s memoir, mostly about his life as a government official doing important work, is an interesting account of a life but a flawed account of important events in American history. Brennan\’s personal biases emerge and then grow across the pages. He generally avoids discussion of the causes of the emergence of major anti-Trump political activism by current and former intelligence officers in 2016 and since, and he does not begin to discuss the important issue of whether this activism has damaged the CIA, the institution he really does seem to love, and the usefulness of intelligence in support of national decision-making. Many former and current intelligence officers believe Brennan and other outspokenly anti-Trump former intelligence professionals such as James Clapper, Michael Hayden, James Comey, Michael Morell and others have seriously damaged both the intelligence community (IC) and national decision-making. He does not address the appropriateness of his abandonment of a heretofore very useful, widely held norm that former senior officials should not enter partisan politics by criticizing the persons of sitting presidents — one long held by both CIA officers and by American military personnel. His personal accounts of work at CIA are bureaucratically interesting. Despite a less than stellar substantive reputation internally at the CIA, Brennan recounts that he established relationships with powerful mentors, enabling a successful career. HIs was a career path to dream of. An especially useful mentor was former director of central intelligence George Tenet. Young bureaucrats can learn a lot about the signs of a mentor-greased career path without learning much about how to duplicate it. Accounts of key events are often superficial but usually contain bits of personal experience that historians will find useful. Scholars of intelligence also will be able to find useful anecdotes and data. He recounts his policymaking roles and many instances of the rapid emergence of his (in)famous temper, which incomprehensibly did not derail his career. Brennan is highly inconsistent in his extensive discussion of the CIA. On the one hand, the finest people who ever walked the face of the earth allegedly work for CIA, but on the other the agency has made many mistakes and has many institutional deficiencies, including operational performance problems, a flawed culture, and the arrogance of many employees, a trait also cited by many other CIA people. Still, Brennan adopts the currently popular \”truth to power\” slogan to contrast CIA\’s alleged purpose and actual performance to Trump\’s character. This is, however, inaccurate as a description of the purpose of intelligence, which is more traditionally defined as collecting information and assessing it in ways that help improve senior-level decision-making, vent when assessments are incomplete and sometimes only partially accurate. He does so even while, like many others, noting the slow speed at which the intelligence community identified Russian meddling in 2016, a key part of the larger anti-Trump narrative. Brennan outlines five major changes he wanted to make at CIA when he became director in 2013. He accomplished at least some aspects of all of them. He does not address why and how the insurrection of some intelligence officers since 2016 developed, despite the fact that other sources assert that he himself was a major cause. Brennan injected identify politics into the CIA and he encouraged his people after November 2016 to be political activists in opposition to imagined Trump administration threats to undo the \”progress\” he had made, particularly concerning personnel management issues. But he certainly confirms his own visceral disdain for Donald Trump. It just seems to be self-evidently obvious to him that Trump is very bad, and it is equally obvious how wonderful President Obama and his team were. Brennan promises to continue to attack Trump. This attitude may gratify Trumpophobes, but it is hardly good analysis. It surely would not have survived management review in my time at CIA. He also generally avoids the issue of whether intelligence agencies and leaders inappropriately targeted the Trump campaign in 2016. While this story is sill unfolding, he addresses few of the controversies, perhaps because he himself has been accused of inappropriate actions. There is, however, useful detail about the origin and staffing of the late 2016 assessment of the extent of Russian meddling, and Brennan reveals that some IC people, including CIA officers, did not share his \”high confidence\” in the estimate. While this book will titillate some readers, serious students of international relations, American foreign policy-decision-making, and of intelligence will find useful material interspersed with gaping holes and questionable judgments. This book therefore should be used with considerable care.

In the midst of the madness that Donald Trump has unleashed on this country, there still remain voices of reason, of patriotism, of love and respect for America. John Brennan is one of those voices. Though it will surely torment Fox Viewers to have someone speak the \”truth\” (imagine that and not all of the Hanity b.s. and lies), the rest of America, those of us who actually care about this country and its future will love this book. Thank you Mr. Brennan. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your patriotism. Thank you for speaking the truth.

I loved this book. He pulls no punches and has kept his sense of humor throughout. His knowledge is wide AND deep, and despite everything that has happened to him, he remains a decent, honorable, most able person, with a blessed sense of perspective. This is SO worth your time and attention.

It takes guts….it took courage for the Director of the CIA to take solid aim at #45, the current sitting President of the United States. When I first learned that Director Brennon was going to write this book, I knew he would take some hits…but his courage, his remarkable story is what makes this book a must read and must own (since there a wonderful photographs included within its covers). I salute Director Brennon for his courage in these troubled times, a period when we have a leader who is incompetent, inept, and, above all, immoral. Congratulations, John O. Brennan (I\’s like to throw a hard fast one on the inside corner at the carrot) Additional notes: If John Brennan is part of the Deep State, then so am I and so are we all. We Americans are the Deep State because we won\’t let a man as Trump tell us how to think. A low level, knuckle-dragger as Trump could not polish Brennan\’s shoes. Sure, Brennan had a little temper, but it was never used for his own personal gain. Historians will read this book with the hindsight that we do not have in 2021. Thank you again, Director Brennan.

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