The author served as chief CIA analyst for Latin America and then as Latin American specialist in the National Security Council during most of the Reagan years. He is an outspoken, crusading believer in the Soviet threat and an opponent of dealing with Central American problems by negotiation rather than through military assertiveness. This flamboyant memoir could be subtitled: "My war against George Shultz and other weaklings and appeasers in the State Department and the White House." It is also an unintentional indictment of Reagan's inability to exert sustained leadership.