Clear and Present Danger (Published in 1989) - Fight the drug menace, authored by Tom Clancy

Most citizens of the US would not have heard of Colombia, or if they have heard of Colombia, they would have associated it wither some great coffee, or also for being the source of a large proportion of the drugs that enter the US. These drugs enter the US through many different transport sources, and it has been the long standing wish of the US enforcement agencies to detect and block such routes in order to stop the inflow of drugs into the country. And with this drug money, the powerful drug barons in Colombia grow richer and more powerful, in many ways, being able to defy the government of Colombia as well. From time to time, there would have been the thought of many of the Presidents of the US and other high-ranking officials to take the powerful US military and intelligence agencies, and use it to hunt down these drub barons and somehow stop this inflow of drugs into the USA.
Tom Clancy has written a number of novels that go into great detail into the politics, administration, intelligence agencies and military of the US and spun novels around them. These books get into great detail and are fascinating to read as well. When you get into such detail, you also realize that the powers of the US military are not that over-whelming (they are in terms of their reach and lethal powers, but following all the rules and legal regulations ensures the constraints on possible actions of the military); Tom Clancy spins a web about the use of US military force to break the powers of the drug barons, and how this is not so easy as it sounds.




The book was published in 1989, and was a bestseller on release, and was soon made into a major movie starring Harrison Ford. The book takes a single starting point, where a friend of the President had been executed by the drug barons for stealing from them, and the President, deeming the import of drugs into the country as a 'Clear and Present Danger' to the country, decides to take action against the drug barons and their vast drug producing areas. However, in a clear indicator about the President not having unquestioned powers, this action by the President is cloaked under secrecy, with Congress not aware of this, and there being no statement by the military that they would start acting against the drug lords in a covert manner (and since this is part of the geographic territory of the country of Colombia, with which the US has had friendly relations, there cannot be an overt action of invading the country to fight against the drug barons).
A plan is setup where US troops are sent into the country, sent in through the direction of the US National Security Advisor (James Cutter) and the Deputy Director of Operations in the CIA (Robert Ritter). Jack Ryan, now a senior official in the CIA and one who also talks to Congress, is out of the loop. The plan first starts out smashingly, with flights being intercepted and troops inside Colombia. But, things start to go haywire soon. Then of course there is the attack on a visiting group of officials, including the head of the FBI and Ryan, when they are visiting Colombia.
And then the ex-Cuban guy advising one of the cartel members starts investigating further, and discovers that the US military has been blowing off bombs in the area and they have boots on the ground. And in the worse possible course of action, the Cuban, Cortez decides that he could use this attack to take over the cartel, and also blackmails Cutter to abandon the US soldiers. Ryan learns of all this and flies into Colombia to save the soldiers, acting without official authority; entering a foreign country to get your own soldiers out under hostile fire without a great plan is not exactly what most people would try to do. What happens next ? It is a masterful and thrilling tale, well worth the reading.

Red Rabbit (published in 2002) - Authored by Tom Clancy, but a disappointment

When a best-selling author publishes a book that is not as good as the books that he typically writes, it can still be successful, but dedicated fans tend to be disappointed at such an effort. Red Rabbit is one such book. It was a book written far after the fall of the Soviet Union (which happened in 1991), but this book was published in 2002. So, even when you go to the Amazon page of the book, it is nowhere near being a top-seller and in fact, reviews of the book are more negative than positive.
However, overall Tom Clancy was an accomplished writer, having turned out a number of topseller books, starting with The Hunt for Red October, which was a bestseller when it came out. The level of detail of military equipment, and the storytelling of intelligence operations as if from an insider made these books great reading for his fans, and at one point of time, even the then US President had handed out praise for Tom Clancy. After this, he turned out a number of books, dealing with the military, intelligence operations and politics, dealing with conflicts of the US with the Soviet Union, with Islamic terrorists, and with China. These were thick books, with a lot of detail, but they were interesting reading. The level of detail provided of a thermonuclear weapon as it started exploding was very detailed (even if it would not be fully accurate) in the novel, The Sum of All Fears.




Red Rabbit was a novel written way past all these, but dwelt on a chapter of history which was very controversial. There was an attack by a Turk called Mehmet Ali Agca on a Polish Pope, a Pope who was seeming to challenge the Soviet Rule over Poland and the rest of East Europe. Even though the Soviets were dismissive of the Pope, many sections of East Europe were catholics, and susceptible to calls from a Pope to fight communism. At such a stage, what would happen if the Pope were to invoke an open call to defeat communism, at least in his native country, Poland. What would happen if the Pope were to say that he would step down from the papacy and come back to his country to fight against communism. This would be a battle that the Communists would find it hard to win easily, and so something to avoid at all costs.
The warped solution ? Get rid of the Pope by assassination. And how to prevent this ? A KGB agent, armed with this knowledge, defects since he wants no part of this plan, and Ryan, along with the husband and wife intelligence officer duo of Ed and Mary Pat Foley have to get involved to stop this assassination.
In reality, the pope did not resign, but he did inspire a lot of effort against the Soviet domination of East Europe. There was an assassination attempt on him, but whether the effort was inspired by the Bulgarian intelligence agency is not something that is said with 100% accuracy right now.

The Sum of all Fears (published in 1991) - Thermo-nuclear blast, authored by Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy was a bestseller author, who wrote with great authority on the military and on intelligence matters. However, even though he wrote expertly and with great detail on the matters that he wrote about, his books were not boring. Imagine a detailed description of how a hydrogen (thermonuclear) bomb works, imagine it written out in a novel, and imagine how scared you can be of the prospect that a physicist, with access to a core of plutonium, and without the support of a nation state, can construct a huge weapon that has the potential to destroy a city and also bring the major powers to war with each other. The detailed description of how a hydrogen bomb, with its fission and fusion steps, almost seems out of a physics book without the technical jargon that would be there in a textbook.
The book is the 5th in the series of books that had Jack Ryan as the character, and here he is in a senior position in the CIA, but unfortunately not on good terms with the National Security Advisor (Liz Elliott) because of some ego issues. Unfortunately for Ryan, this carries a lot of weight, because normally the NSA carries a lot of weight, but in this case, since the NSA is also having an affair with the President, it carries even more importance. By this time, Ryan is also well know within Congress since he was intimately involved with the going-ons in the previous book, Clear and Present Danger, which forced the moving aside of the then President and the coming into the Presidency of the current president, Robert Fowler.
The book starts with a new twist to the Israeli-Palestinian twist, whereby everybody normally knows of the public cycle of rock-throwing and retaliation, which can result in deaths, but don't cause any moral issues on a wide scale. However, the book takes a new tactic by the Palestinians, where they oppose the Israeli army through non-violent means, and are viciously attacked by a slightly deranged Israeli army commander. This sight, on view on TV screens, forces a changeover in the morality, since nobody can defend this action of killing peaceful protesters who were not attacking them. Israel stands on the verge of being isolated, and although this isolation has happened, a change in attitude in the US could be very significant.

A quick plan, started by Jack Ryan, goes through the various stakeholders including the Vatican, the Saudis, the Russians, and a potential peace is declared in the troubled areas of the Middle East, where a troika of different religious leaders administer the region. This causes havoc in the minds of terrorists, since the confrontation is their life blood, and they join forces with a German terrorist who was also finding safe sanctuary missing with the meltdown of the communist worlds of eastern Europe. This would not mean anything, but they have found a lost Israeli bomb in the Golan Heights, and that is seen as the basis for building a powerful bomb, that combined with other actions, will make it seem that this was done by the Russians and provoke a massive confrontation.
With the bomb having been made, it is sought to be exploded in Denver when the Super Bowl is happening, which would devastate the city and also take out senior administration officials who were there to take part in the game. Combine this with an attack supposedly by the Russians in Berlin on American forces, and a weakened and traumatized President, not getting good counsel, and the situation rapidly escalates. The Russians are blamed, and they are shocked to find that they are being blamed, with a battle happening in Berlin and some of their aircraft getting downed without warning near Libya. But if threatened, they have the potential to kill back in equal number. Ryan is getting some good intelligence, but will the President listen in time ? A gripping, although seemingly unrealistic novel.

The Cardinal of the Kremlin (published in 1988) - A spy novel authored by Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy, who died recently, was a prolific writer of fiction, but the gripping kind. His novels were long, the books thick, but they were very detailed, and for his fans (of which I am one), they were hard to put down. Unlike many other novelists who would write with the concept of the CIA being a bad force, Clancy was more of a fan of the intelligence agencies, and specifically of the CIA (but not every officer of the CIA). His favorite was a reflection of how he himself was - conservative, high on morals, and hard working, able to do the right thing when it was required rather than backing down. And this was another novel in the earlier life of Jack Ryan, the character he created, a former marine who entered the CIA as a sort of reaction to terrorists attack on his family and who was not very fond of the politics inside the agency. By reading his novels, you would feel that you know what happens inside the agency, making it seem more humane.
The Cardinal of the Kremlin was another spy story, set within the environment of non-violent conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. They would spy on each other, try their hardest to keep on evolving new technologies to outdo each other, and also when required (in an extreme case) conduct actual physical operations in each other's territory although this was limited since an all out conduct of physical operations in each other's territory that involved kidnapping or murder would become horrendous very soon, in a game of catch-up. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had already happened and the fight-back by the Mujhaideen, supported by the US and Saudi Arabia was already on to oppose this invasion. Both countries were also in the midst of using laser research to develop high-energy weapons, to also conduct anti-satellite operations. But the most important element in the book was the 'Cardinal', one of the most important Soviet military agents who was controlled by the CIA and revealed a lot of super-secret military information.



The book deals with the life of 2 men - Jack Ryan, who is in the CIA and moving up in the agency. His role in the 'The Hunt for Red October' has earned him laurels. The other person who the books deals with is Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, code name 'Cardinal', who is a decorated soldier and a war hero, and also the aide to the Soviet defense minister. In his position, he is invaluable to the CIA, but the passing on of documents is also an invitation to being revealed. Either somebody on the other side can reveal it, or counter-intelligence agents can figure out that information is being leaked, and that will meet that sooner or later the agent will be found out. In most countries, spying is deemed as treason, and is rewarded with execution, so the other country will try desperately to get their spy out. That is what happens in this case; the Cardinal is caught (but so important is his status and being a war hero, that the though of torturing him to get him to confess his crimes is fraught with danger, with the Soviet army reluctant to let their hero be tortured). And with the loss of the Red October submarine in the previous novel, and a few more cases, Ryan is able to force the hand of the KGB chief and present him no option but to defect. And then there is the case of the rival laser research and kidnapping and attack on installations ? For all this, you will have to read the book.