Review Of Tim Weiner's Enemies: A History Of The FBI

The Federal Bureau of Investigation in an intelligence agency focusing on the collection of facts and information in order to achieve national security. Opinion of the bureau often varies due to the sum of information and knowledge that one have of the bureau itself. Tim Weiner critically depicted his own view-point in Enemies: A History of The FBI where he judges the FBI’s unlawful courses of action in exchange for security. Using declassified documents from the bureau and people he knew with great knowledge of the FBI, Weiner wrote his book following the history of the FBI from the early 1900s, when the bureau was first founded, until the modern days of the 2000s in order to show the negative direction the FBI had taken. In contrast to Weiner’s view-point on the FBI, a retired hostage negotiator of the agency Gary Noesner wrote, based on his own experience as an agent, a positive connotation of the FBI;

In his memoir, Stalling For Time, Noesner begin in the mid 1900s during his childhood when he obtained his interest in the FBI until his retirement from the bureau in the early 2000s. Both books display the FBI as an anti-terrorism and counter-intelligence agency, however, how the agency act upon it’s objectives are depicted differently, Weiner shows the bureau’s use of espionage while Noesner convey the bureau’s ability to receive information through negotiating and human contact.

In the book Enemies: A History of the FBI, Weiner creates an informative book on the failures that the FBI has performed since it’s founding. The FBI began as an investigation unit, until the idea of terrorism was brought upon the American public, leading the agency to begin it’s work of spying. Throughout his book, Weiner credited J. Edgar Hoover, who led the FBI for over forty years, for laying the foundation of the FBI as a whole. However, Hoover is critically judge due to his ability of manipulating the public. Using his reasoning of