PositiveThe Morning SunBased on the book’s title, and its inclusion of the term \'political warfare\', a reader might be forgiven for expecting the book to give its attention more equally to the two sides of the East-West conflict ... That is not to say Rid reports nothing of the CIA’s activities during the time period he covers ... There is little doubt Rid is correct that the effectiveness of disinformation is difficult to measure, though some aspects of his interpretation of Cold War chronology may be more debatable ... While he mentions the CIA’s notorious MK-Ultra \'mind control\' experiments in passing, Rid does not discuss Helms’s decision in the early 1970s to destroy documents related to the controversial program, which involved a wide array of deceptive tactics. Nor does he mention Helms’s approval in the late 1960s of Operation CHAOS, which continued into the 1970s and involved what amounted to \'political warfare\' against domestic political dissidents ... Though Rid details Russian online operations aimed at sowing confusion in the runup to the election, it is unlikely that Russian internet trolls \'convinced many, if any, American voters to change their minds,\' he writes ... a well-written and engaging account, and despite some elements of the narrative retaining the potential for debate – as is almost always the case with books on anything as controversial as the history of intelligence agencies and propaganda – this may be the result of inherent ambiguities of interpreting events as much as anything. Rid has clearly done extensive research and an admirable job presenting it. His book should be required reading for anyone interested in how propaganda methods have developed over time.
