Warriors of the Night
Good Fit
- Readers with a serious interest in Cold War and World War I-era intelligence history
- Anyone who wants a critical, institutional look at American intelligence agencies, including the CIA
- Readers interested in the tension between technology and human-sourced intelligence
- Fans of journalistic, event-driven historical analysis
Not a Fit
- Readers looking for a fast-paced spy thriller with fictional tension — this book is analytical, not narrative fiction
- Anyone seeking post-1985 intelligence history (the end of the Cold War, post-9/11) — the book only covers up to 1985
- Readers expecting a simple, one-sided "heroism" narrative — Volkman focuses more on the system's failures
Volkman opens with a famous line from former CIA Deputy Director Samuel V. Wilson: American intelligence can't tell you what God will do next Tuesday, but it can tell you when He'll go crazy. This sets up the book's central thesis — that despite billions of dollars spent, American intelligence is riddled with systemic failure.
The author locates the root cause in American culture's blind faith in technology: only about 20% of intelligence is human-sourced (mostly via CIA officers attached to embassies), with the rest coming from technical sources like satellite photography and electronic eavesdropping. Volkman's argument is simple — quantity doesn't guarantee quality; raw data is meaningless without a human to interpret it.
He lines up historical examples to prove it: even the famed "Ultra" system that decrypted German radio signals in World War II failed to predict the German offensive at the Bulge; a 1972 expert warning about the OPEC nations went unheeded, turning the 1973 oil crisis into an unexpected shock; Stalin dismissed a report giving the exact date of the Nazi invasion as "English provocation."
The Introduction closes with what Volkman calls "the process of happiness derived from self-deception" — nearly every intelligence event treated as a "surprise" since 1940 was, in fact, known in advance, but decision-makers rejected information that didn't fit their own beliefs.
Chapter 1 then transposes this abstract critique into a concrete scene: on the rainy night of September 15, 1918, Xenophon Dmitrevich Kalamatiano, the head of American intelligence in Russia, is caught by a Cheka guard while scaling the rain-slicked wall of the Norwegian legation in Moscow in search of diplomatic asylum.
Kalamatiano had presented himself as a trade representative for an import-export firm called "Pankivel," but the rolled paper hidden inside his walking cane listed the names of all his Russian agents and the payments they received — one of the heaviest institutional blunders in American intelligence history, exposing the entire network in a single stroke.
- Volkman was an award-winning investigative reporter for Newsday and editor of Espionage magazine — the book is written in an investigative-journalism register, not an academic one
- The structure alternates analytical critique (the Introduction) with concrete human stories (the Kalamatiano scene) — dry institutional criticism is balanced by vivid narrative episodes
- Each chapter closes with term explanations (the Cheka, which later became the KGB) and source notes
- The 347-page book is structured as 10 chapters plus a foreword/afterword, proceeding chronologically from 1918 to the 1980s
A similar critical, institutional look at CIA failures, covering a broader and more recent period
A complementary look at American intelligence's internal culture through the lens of one man's biography (Richard Helms)
After the Introduction and the Kalamatiano episode, the book proceeds chronologically — Chapter 2 ("A Matter of Luck") examines the role of chance in intelligence, Chapters 3–4 ("A Fly in Space," "National Technical Means") trace the rise of satellite and technical intelligence.
Chapters 5–6 ("Agent Wars" I and II) cover Cold War spy-versus-spy conflicts, Chapter 7 covers major institutional crises, and Chapter 8 covers naval and air intelligence. Chapter 9 tells the story of monitoring the Soviet nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk, and the final chapter offers a summarizing synthesis — the Afterword closes with Volkman's own predictions about the future of American intelligence.
If you see a problem, write to us. Publisher, author, rights holder, or just a reader — it doesn't matter. If there's something problematic about copyright in this review, if the review's author has broken the site's rules, or if you simply have a suggestion or complaint, hey@kitabdanevar.com. We'd rather resolve this between ourselves than go to court: we review requests within 48 hours and, if needed, correct or fully remove the review.
