RaveSan Francisco ChronicleA Spy in Canaan is a reporter’s account filled with dramatic scenes, sharply etched characters and insights into FBI political surveillance, the civil rights movement and the journalistic process. And it is timely, given current protest movements on both the left and the right ... The author also puts Withers’ story in historical context, noting that it was the height of the Cold War, and the American Communist Party was widely seen as a threat. King’s confrontational, if nonviolent, tactics, moreover, were disturbing to many people, regardless of race. At one end of Beale Street now stands the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery that showcases his photography. Yet his role as an informant remains out of the spotlight. As A Spy in Canaan adeptly shows, history is not always so clear-cut. The book also makes a convincing case that the FOIA should be strengthened to help the public access records necessary to better understand this complex and pivotal period.
Edward Jay Epstein
MixedThe San Francisco ChronicleEpstein is a voracious researcher and presents many intriguing aspects of the Snowden case. He is especially good at tracing a series of flaws in CIA and NSA security that facilitated Snowden’s theft. But his conclusions about Snowden are largely speculative, and he undermines his mission by making much of minor discrepancies, occasionally omitting contrary evidence and narrowly defining whistle-blowing ... Defining whistle-blowing this way serves Epstein’s argument that Snowden’s motives were less than altruistic. But Snowden saw this as blowing the whistle on global surveillance, saying later, 'What’s scariest is not what the government is doing that’s unlawful, but what they’re doing that is completely lawful.' In the end, this spy story leaves us with the most obvious facts — and troubling questions.
