Cyanide Books

Non-chronological vignettes of a few years of a life lived in places and circumstances unusual to most of us, but universal in their resonance. A quick read that isn't so quick: and old-fashioned post-modern tale, a paradox by it's very existence. Dr. Johnson said a book should either help us enjoy life or endure life: Cerebral Cyanide does both, in a completely unsentimental style. This is definitely worth a read, and it's something you just might want to reread from time to time, like a Richard Brautigan. It has a dream-like hyper-real quality, and is alternately disturbing, comical, subtle, jolting, and philosophical. It made me realize how complicated and simple life can be.. . . oh, yeah, and what a great title!

Cerebral Cyanide to me is a disturbing read. This is not the kind of book that you can read and forget...it challenges you to think and explore with it. In a way I associate Cerebral Cyanide with a Trainspotting. The only drawback I found was that it lacked punch and was too 'inward' looking and therefore lacking universal appeal. Nevertheless I would recommend it to anyone who wants to think and explore through books rather than just read them!

If you like James Bond thrillers, you'll love Peter Hounam's OPERATION CYANIDE. It's well-written, exciting and a real page turner.

It purports to describe a gigantic conspiracy involving President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Israelis to sink an unescorted American spy ship, the USS LIBERTY off the coast of El Arish during the Six Day War in 1967. The LIBERTY was a converted merchant ship, not a warship like a destroyer.

Why would Israel take such a terrible risk? They needed US support and Johnson had provided materiel support despite US neutrality. Why would they risk an attack on a US Naval ship and a suicidal war with their most powerful prospective ally?

Mr. Hounam, a journalist, provides a wonderful answer. LBJ was in cahoots with the Israelis to make the sinking of the LIBERTY a cause for nuclear war against Egypt and its ally the USSR!

That would distract public attention from the "quagmire" in Southeast Asia, Hounam affirms. It certainly would have. I would put a nuclear war at the top of my list of things to whine about.

Hounam includes a lot of interviews with LBJ's "Hawks" but overlooks what they were Hawkish about. His Hawks wanted to maintain the US commitment against Communist expansion in Southeast Asia. NOBODY wanted a nuclear war with the Soviets even if it would have taken people's minds off Vietnam. None of LBJ's biographers, for example, allude to any interest in provoking such a war, nor do any other reputable biographers for the leadership of that period. It was his fear of just such a confrontation which led LBJ to enforce some of the most restrictive rules of engagement ever devised for US military operations in Vietnam.

Hounam also introduces his book by referring to his communication with a B-52 pilot named Jim Nanjo who indicated being on alert and ready to conduct a real mission hours before the attack on the LIBERTY. Research by a retired US Air Force vet named Michael Burke, however, indicates that Nanjo never meant to suggest an awareness of any such gigantic conspiracy as Hounam alleges. As a SAC pilot, Nanjo experienced many such alerts and he and his crew were, indeed, ready to carry out real missions over enemy territory. That's how it was in the Cold War, a fact that Mr. Hounam doesn't seem to grasp.

Hounam also fails to explain why the Israelis botched the operation. They had the assets to sink the LIBERTY in the first attack. They failed, however, to use them. If this was such a critical, well-planned covert operation, why did they mess it up so badly and then publically report their foul-up to US authorities and break off the attack just when the LIBERTY was on the verge of sinking?

The most obvious explanation for the botched, improvised nature of the Isreali attack is that there was no covert operation. This attack was a mistake just the same as their attack earlier the same day on one of their own armored columns had been a mistake.

Saying this doesn't detract from the heroism of the LIBERTY's crew. They stood their ground and got their battered ship back to Malta for repairs under terrible conditions. Their bitterness at the loss of their comrades and the series of attacks they'd sustained is completely understandable.

The attack on them was a mistake. If there'd been a covert operation planned to sink them, they'd have lost their ship in the first attack.

If you like Cold War thrillers, you'll love this book. For real history, however, look elsewhere.

Book was well researched and provided great insight regarding the attack On the USS Liberty.

Nor was the attack on the USS Liberty. The Liberty was a sacrificial lamb (or in the words of those candid few on the inside, a "guinea pig") whose sinking was to be a pretext for the US to nuke an airbase outside Cairo at which Soviet bombers were based. The IDF tried their damndest to sink her and eliminate the entire crew, but could not, and someone, thank God, put a stop to it before they eventually succeeded. Hounam's research follows on that of survivor Jim Ennes and Pearson and is quite comprehensive given the intense, massive, and on-going cover-up (an example of which is the many pans offered by others on this page). Although after one recognizes the absurdity of the "accidental friendly fire" cover story it is easily surmised that the US must have put Israel up to the attack on the Liberty for some reason, it becomes fairly speculative as to precisely what the US aims were. Hounam's research indicates that the US may have been after more than simply removing Nasser as a threat to the Saudis and thwarting the USSR from assuming control of the Suez Canal. Hounam's thesis - and it is well supported - is that the onset of WW III may have been avoided by a mere three minutes. The story is not yet complete - and may never be - but Hounam's detective work has yielded a remarkably extensive picture - the most compete thus far. King David owned up to his culpability in the murder of Uriah, but LBJ, MacNamara and their co-consipirators never did own up to their responsibility, leaving all the blame on Israel. The Liberty was not the first USN vessel intended to be sacrificed as a pretext for war; the USS Maine was precedent sixty-nine years earlier. And one can speculate as to whether the Stark and Cole may have been intended tp serve some similar purpose. But in the case of the Liberty, nukes were sent aloft with aircraft launched from the USS America. Could it happen again?

This book is so far fetched its still hard to believe that someone would publish this. The theory's are so out of space, does one even think before accepting them at face value. The author states that Lyndon Johnson had Israel attack the ship and to make it look like Egypt did it so that we could drop a nuclear weapon on Egypt. If this were so, no country in the world would have tolerated the US using a nuclear weapon as retaliation for attacking a US ship. I note that many footnotes used unnamed sources. Of course when using former intelligence authors as sources requires the lack of use of the sources name, it makes it impossible to check out the sources. Lets not kid ourselves, conspiracy theorists all have the same M.O. They believe everything in life is a conspiracy without even checking the common sense test. This so-called "Operation Cyanide" has to be the best kept secret ever. Is there any devious event that Lyndon Johnson did not take part in?

For decades, I have been comsumed with knowing how the catastrophic attack on the USS Liberty could have happenend.

Reports and investigations did nothing to satisfy my need to know. I devoured every word on the subject, watched every documentary, and intellectually sampled every theory.

But everything had a speculative nature. And many books were written with an agenda other than the whole truth.

This piece of rubbish is no exception.

Thus far, the only serious examination of the Israeli attack on this ship is J. Cristol's study, "The Liberty Incident."

Cristol's book is a delight! Extremely detailed AND a great read, a rare combination. Liberty Incident

But THIS steaming heap of hyperbole will have the reader asking himself, "Did a tree have to die for THIS?"

The following remark about Cristol's book inadvertently speaks to this book as well...

"Only those with an ulterior motive can still cling to the conspiracy theories after Judge Jay Cristol's excellent coverage documents each detail that led to the tragic mistaken attack." - Adm. Leon A. Edney, USN (Ret.), former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic; and Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Atlantic Command

That says it better than I could.

Skip this waste of paper stock and treat yourself to Cristol's riveting minute-by-minute account.

What does this writer intend exactly? Hollow charcters you would personally boot out of a dinner party, plus linguistically dubious attempts at Russian double talk. An utter bore this book: God! I'm beginning to sound like Sir Kingsley himself.

Well-written, entertaining, and a bit surprising. I've read almost all of his novels ... most are good, a few are great, a couple are marginal. This is a good one. It is not at all obvious that the hero is better off at the end than at the beginning. Thinking is required of the reader so if that isn't your thing, don't bother.

A decent novel but nothing spectacular. Amis is (wordily) witty as always, but the conflict here seems contrived and the whole thing runs out of energy near the end. Too much dialogue with the prof's various friends, most of it repetitive. After reading five Amis novels I'm beginning to think his Lucky Jim was a bit of a fluke.

Not content to limit himself to his usual playgrounds of lampooning modern English society and exacerbating the battle of the sexes, Amis shows off a scholarly appreciation of the differences, once shrouded by the iron curtain, between conservative and corrupt post-Soviet Russian society and the Western world. In a very readable yarn Amis does all this without bogging down in heavy moralization. The story of the romance between a bookish British professor of Russian and a young Russian Poet in the west for the first time is entertaining, sharp, witty, and wise. This is Amis the writer as a mature sophisticate who manages to keep his erudition in check.

The characters aren't very well drawn, but the plot is good. An Adriatic cruise, a very nasty aunt, a couple of red herrings (American); plot at a standstill two-thirds of the way through -- & then everything unravels. A pleasant reading break.