The $5 Billion Misunderstanding: The Collapse of the Navy's A-12 Stealth Bomber Program byJames P. StevensonReview by: Eliot A. CohenForeign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2002), pp. 210-211Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20033025 .

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Recent Books

Lords of the Harvest. Biotech, Big Money, andtheFutureofFood. BY DANIEL CHARLES. Cambridge: Perseus, 2001, 328 pp. $27.00.

Seeds of Contention: World Hunger and the Global Controversy over GM Crops. BY PER PINSTRUP-ANDERSEN AND

EBBE SCHI0LER. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, i6o pp. $12.95 (paper).

Two books on the controversial subject of genetically modified (GM) seeds. Charles, a science journalist, enthralls his readers

with an account of the struggles to develop and market new seeds that resist pests, weed-killing herbicides, or deterioration in storage and transit. As he points out, agriculture has radically changed the environment from its beginning, and people have been eating genetically modified foods for at least 7,000 years. Furthermore, many "ordinary" foods contain toxins and could not pass gov ernment safety tests if required; yet these same foods have been eaten and enjoyed for years. Today's controversy is really about not genetic modification but its method: newly available gene splicing.

Pinstrup-Andersen and Schi0ler provide a well-informed and quietly passionate plea that more genetic engi neering be directed toward products of special interest to developing countries, including subsistence products such as sweet potatoes. Increased population growth and the desire for improved diets are in a race against better and more reliable food production. Although the authors acknowledge the fine work done by the Rockefeller Foundation and other western philanthropies, they argue that much scope for improvement remains in applying new technologies that could enlarge the

food supply and thus improve the diet and health of most of humankind. Rejecting GM crops is a luxury of the privileged that should not be foisted on those worse off.

Military; Scientific, and Technological

ELIOT A. COHEN

The s Billion Misunderstanding. The Collapse of the NavysA-12 Stealth Bomber Program. BY JAMES P. STEVENSON. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2001, 512 pp. $45.00.

A decade ago, the Navy's premier air plane-development program dissolved amid recriminations and lawsuits. The airplane in question, the A-12, should have provided heavy, stealthy, long-range strike capability well into the twenty first century-a capability that is very

much in demand, as recent events have demonstrated. It ended up instead as a $5 billion plane that never dropped a bomb. The author, who has spent a lifetime around the military aviation industry, has produced a dense work that paints a dark portrait of the U.S.

Navy's abilities and its integrity in the matter of acquisition. Stevenson writes that he began his study suspecting that two contractors-General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas-had attempted to bilk the Navy. But he concluded that they were in fact the victims of a naval establishment eager to shift the blame that they deserved to the private sector. The author is also sharply critical of then Secretary of Defense

Dick Cheney and his aides, who he

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Recent Books

believes failed to exercise adequate control over the Department of the Navy. Neither easy nor cheerful reading, but an important tale.

None So Blind:A PersonalAccount of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam. BY GEORGE W. ALLEN. Chicago: Ivan R.

Dee, 2001, 296 pp. $27.50.

The Vietnam War looms over the American defense establishment to this day. This memoir by a leading intelligence analyst, who worked on

Vietnam from 1949 through 1968, contributes to the vast literature on that conflict. Not surprisingly, it vindicates positions taken by the CIA and is scathing about many U.S.

military leaders who appear here as dishonest, arrogant, and in some cases simply stupid. Citing former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's com plaint that the U.S. government lacked adequate expertise on Indochina, Allen scornfully replies that plenty of special ists did exist. Indeed, their "knowledge and comprehension of the situation

were readily available ... but they were rarely consulted, and their written as sessments were consistently dismissed or ignored." If the recollections pre sented here are indeed accurate, Allen has the better part of the argument.

Germs: Biological Weapons andAmericas Secret War. BY JUDITH MILLER,

STEPHEN ENGELBERG, AND

WILLIAM BROAD. NewYork: Simon

& Schuster, 2001, 382 pp. $27.00. A worthwhile book at any time, this volume deserves particularly close read ing after the anthrax attacks of recent

months. The book originally began as a

team effort by three top reporters of The New York Times to probe the U.S.

military's controversial anthrax vaccina tion program. It ended up as something rather different: a survey of biological

warfare programs and developments up to the first modern use of biological

weapons against the United States. There are some puzzling conclusions here. ("Is the threat of germ weapons real or exaggerated? Our answer is both.")

But Germs is a useful place to begin reading about a threat that is, alas, all too present in our minds.

TheAnser Institutefor Homeland Security. http://www.homelandsecurity.org/.

Anser, one of the less visible nonprofit research agencies, hosts this institute,

which preceded the events of Septem ber ii. Its Web site presents an array of resources, including an online journal, access to the syllabi of several courses on terrorism and homeland security, links to a wide array of Internet sources, and a large virtual library. The institute has partnership arrangements with the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and other organizations that contribute some of the material found on this site. To pick one grim topic at random, a few clicks brought this reviewer to a depress ingly lucid paper by D. A. Henderson on the danger of a deliberate release of smallpox in the United States.

Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. EDITED BY PAVEL PODVIG. Cambridge: MIT

Press, 2001, 693 pp. $4s.00. This translated volume, first published in Russia in 1998, reflects the work of a

FORE IGN AFFAI RS January/February 2002 [211]

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