Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World

by Tom Engelhardt, Glenn Greenwald (Foreword)

In 1964, a book entitled The Invisible Government shocked Americans with its revelations of a growing world of intelligence agencies playing fast and loose around the planet, a secret government lodged inside the one they knew that even the president didn't fully control. Almost half a century later, everything about that "invisible government" has grown vastly larger, more disturbing, and far more visible. In his new book, Tom Engelhardt takes in something new under the what is no longer, as in the 1960s, a national security state, but a global security one, fighting secret wars that have turned the president into an assassin-in-chief. Shadow Government offers a powerful survey of a democracy of the wealthy that your grandparents wouldn't have recognized.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, War, History, Government, Conspiracy Theories, American History

192 pages, Paperback

First published March 19, 2014

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written, but a bit disappointing since Engelhardt doesn't cover new ground or report new information on the degree to which our government spies on us and has decided to take on the rest of the world in an endless war. Still, Engelhardt makes some good points: despite the untold billions of dollars the U.S. has spent on military endeavors in the past 30 years, we have yet to win a war--unless you count Panama and Grenada. Everything else has been a stalemate or has found us leaving, exhausted. In other words, we've spent obscene amounts of money on making the world less safe than it is now, by stirring up antipathies, some of which didn't exist until we went places we really had no purpose in going to. . . The NSA, CIA, FBI, etc., are amassing enormous amounts of data on *everybody*, yet they lack the skill to see the big picture an notice any trends--that is, they have singularly failed to make U.S. citizens any safer than before 9/11. And the government--regardless of Republican or Democratic administration--refuses to learn from past mistakes.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I sometimes read tomdispatch.com and respect (and virtually always agree with) Tom's well-considered opinions. The same is true for this book. I found myself thinking along the lines of "oh, yes, I've thought that myself" quite often. I did expect this to be more in-depth in terms of reading about specific behind-the-scenes accounts of what we publicly see in the media every day. That wasn't there. The book didn't really reveal anything I didn't already know. This is more of a book-length essay, and later it became clear it's an amalgam of articles over a period of years. That's definitely ok, but it often results in a skimming the surface of various issues. If I had known that this was not a work on its own I may not have read it. I tend to avoid collections of this sort since the focus seems to be at a broader overview level rather than a concise focus on the subject matter. For those who do not follow the shenanigans of the NSA, government, et. al., this is a great introduction.

[Laurel Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Secrets of people in power.

For me this book was an eye opener to the workings of how people are securing their overall wellbeing and peace of mind In an ever changing world. I have to wonder why we have to eliminate people with drones and strike forces. Anyways the book gets me thinking and wondering if it is really legal and so on and so forth.

[Anne Fox · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is another book whose balance I find questionable. It's obvious that the author has an agenda, and he often gets a bit preachy. And while the text at first focuses of the buildup of America's system of surveillance and covert actions, the last portion seems to segue away from that theme and expound upon the author's pet peeves. So, though there is some volume of information here, it seems as if that information was gathered to support an already-held view rather than examine the strict truth surrounding government organizations such as the National Security Agency.

[Piker7977 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tom Engelhardt's Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World highlights some of the main concerns of America's 21st Century foreign policy. Rather than a history about the war on terror or a treatise on new revelations, Shadow Government is a summation and retelling of topics already covered by Jeremy Scahill, Gore Vidal, Mark Mazzetti, Rachael Maddow, and others.

This short book is a good source for those seeking an understanding of the problems facing America's War of Terror or those looking for a counter to mainstream news sources. Engelhardt's work would be a good conversation piece for a discussion or seminar on the role of government in modern times. However, the lack of citations and sources make this study unoriginal for those already versed in the subject and untrustworthy for those whom are not. A narrative structure is lacking and, as many other reviewers have pointed out, the book becomes a disjointed series of rants. While some of the chapters work well, others come off as looney and snide. The high levels of sarcasm make some of the sections very annoying and are difficult to take seriously.

Shadow Government is a good source for those unacquainted with the subject. It will be a rehash for others. Engelhardt's study should be treated like a subjective Wikipedia page. Use it as a starting point and then proceed with your own research.

[Soph Nova · Rating 4 out of 5]

6 years after publishing, 2 years before the Trump era, the sense of outrage at the imperial presidency of Obama and the revelations of Edward Snowden and the ballooning security industry feels outdated - but it never should, and we should never let it be normalized, which is why a book like this is useful.

“Of course, it’s harder these days to imagine a use for such a heroically solitary statement - not in an America in which spying and surveillance are boom businesses, and our latest potential Nathan Hales are tens of thousands of corporately hires and trained private intelligence contractors who often don’t get closer to the enemy than a computer terminal.”

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very uninspiring. ..if you weren't aware of this already then you are un the dark. Not a great read a very repetitive.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very little in this book will be new to lefties (and especially not Engelhardt readers), but it's a nice overview of the current madness.

[Mike Lisanke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another shadow government book written with the author's slant; this time its politics. While I support and affirm anti-censorship there are right and wrong and traitors against the nation in which they live. Balance is important. But this author bring up a lot of liberal agenda And I'd suspect would be OK with #antifa and #BLM attacking an Oregon federal building. It' really too bad that 2 out of 2 authors can't write about the threat of our Deep State Shadow Government to our Constitutional Republic. This book, like the last, did little by rage against the things the US government did/does that they disagree with... But what about the problem that Our Elected Leaders don't/can't represent US or the fact they Don't Have Control of the Federal Government. Yes, the Deep State also violates our Constitution and written Laws (with unpublished/secret law and courts we can't Know About)... but in the process We the People no longer have a Constitutional Republic. Someone, somewhere should write a real book about our Deep State and/or Shadow Government and How they really run US.

[Voyt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong words..
POSTED AT AMAZON 2015
...of criticism flow from the pages of 'Shadow Governments' and the picture is convincing. It has been a total madness of consecutive 'think tanks', homeland security agencies, lobbyists of military industrial complex and finally US governments since collapse of Soviet Union.
This madness or mental illness called 'wetiko', manifests in constant push for 'state of war' and endless expenses on aggression while in fact, rest of the world does not present any true threat to America. The behavior of leaders in Washington and shadow people behind them, rather creates a serious danger to the world and to the country itself. This well presented short elaboration should not be missed among many others devoted to nasty 'american exceptionalism'.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of Tom Engelhardt's articles published between 2011 and 2014. However, he and his editors did an excellent job of putting them into book form. I've read some of what Engelhardt has published on his website, TomDispatch.com, but I learned a lot from this compilation, even almost ten years after the earliest included essays were first published. If you read Tom Engelhardt's work or have an interest in the subject's covered in this book, there is much discussed that you may already know. However, the book is topical and relevant even today and I highly recommend it.

[John Michaels · Rating 1 out of 5]

The agenda(s) are repetitive. Government secretes, large profits, and humans are to blame for the various issues discussed. He cites humans as the cause of global warming while blaming organizations that supply the materials used by humans in their preferred lifestyle is a poor attempt to divert attention from the root cause...humans. His argument for the truth of global warming is pinned on many peers reviewed papers on global warming. This begs the question of the source of money that developed those papers. The bias is obvious, the repetition tedious.

[Anatolikon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid and well-rounded, but also rather shallow. A bit curious, too, that Engelhardt doesn't really discuss the Snowden revelations themselves, but only their implications. Some details could have gone a long way towards expanding on the implications.

[Linda Branham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting information - but I should have read it a few years ago. Things are changing so quickly that everything seems to have changed since then... not that the surveillance is not still relevant - but newer methods and for different reasons

[Bacem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential

[Louise Sampson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't get it.

[John Ratliffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

There seems to be a lot of criticism of this book as not revealing anything not already reported, but in my view it does a service by pulling the various and disparate reports together in a readable narrative. Actually, it says right in the book that it consists of previous essays rewritten and strung together in a narrative.

One of the characters in the narrative is Edward Snowden, the well-publicized leaker of a trove of secrets held by the National Security Agency, and now a full-time resident of Russia, out of reach of US authorities. I have my own background in military intelligence (closely related to NSA) and US Army Special Forces, so I did not take kindly to Snowden's action to break his security clearance oath at the time. But, I must admit in this context it does not look as bad as I thought.

A powerful theme in the book is the tracing of the enormous, astounding growth of the US security and intelligence establishment. If you are not aware of this history this book would be a good way to get an important insight into what is happening to create the surveillance state. And related to this we need to pay attention to the spreading of the US special operation forces into hundreds of locations around the globe, whether invited or not, and to the warfare operations by remotely controlled drones, all carried out by extensive military, intelligence, and contractor groups that are by no means under citizen control.

Another interesting angle I saw here was how the US remains on a complete war footing, despite the demise of the Soviet Union, as if it is protecting us from a doomsday enemy, when in fact our enemies are mostly small bands of lightly equipped terrorists and/or tiny countries that could not carry on a war ten miles outside their own borders. Yet Americans are psychologically conditioned to regard the entire world as a fearful place. There is not much mention here about the growth of militarism in China since it much of it has occurred more recently, and in any case it is nowhere near as powerful as we are led to believe.

So, despite the many weak reviews of this book I think it is a very worthwhile read to gain better view of what our government is doing in the form of the gigantic security state embedded in many secret agencies.

[Charlie Lorentz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a lot of new information.

[Pabgo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good stuff. Not much in there that I had not seen before. More ranting than substance.

[Goatboy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short interesting summary of our growing surveillance state. A bit repetitive at times, but I suppose this can be expected as it is based on a series of articles on the same subject over many years on Engelhardt's website.