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Searching... Beale Memorial Library (Kern Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Non-Fiction | 070.92 JOH | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Growing up, Scott C. Johnson always suspected that his father was different. Only as a teenager did he discover the truth: his father was a spy, one of the CIA's most trusted officers. At first the secret was thrilling. But over time Scott began to have doubts. How could a man so rigorously trained to deceive and manipulate simply turn off those skills at home? His father had been living a double life for so long that his lies were hard to separate from the truth.
When Scott embarked on a career as a foreign correspondent, he found himself returning to many of the troubled countries of his youth. In the dusty streets of Pakistan and Afghanistan, amid the cold urbanity of Yugoslavia, and down the mysterious alleys of Mexico City, he came face to face with his father's murky past--and his own complicity in it. Scott learned that his chosen profession was not so different from his father's: they both worked to gain people's trust and to uncover their secrets. The only difference was what they did with that information.
In the aftermath of 9/11, father and son found themselves on assignment in Afghanistan and the Middle East, one as a CIA contractor, the other as a reporter for Newsweek. Suddenly, an unsettled Scott was forced to keep his father's secret all over again. As their professional lives collided, Scott and his father inched toward a personal reckoning, struggling to overcome a lifetime of suspicion and deception.
The Wolf and the Watchman is a provocative, meditative account of truth and duplicity, of manipulation and loyalty. It is also a moving, intensely personal portrait of a bond between father and son that endured in the shadow of one of the world's most secretive and unforgiving institutions.
Author Notes
Scott C. Johnson was a Newsweek foreign correspondent for twelve years, often providing exclusive war reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other fronts in the Middle East. He also served as Newsweek's bureau chief in Mexico, Baghdad, and Africa; was part of the team that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for reportage of the Iraq War; and received a 2004 Overseas Press Club Honorable Mention for his reporting from Latin America. He is now a freelance journalist and writer living in Santa Monica, California.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The bitter truth of his father working for the CIA years ago still haunts Johnson, a former Newsweek foreign correspondent, and that knowledge forms the spine of this revealing book of family discord, disconnection, and reunion. He never sugarcoats the sense of betrayal his father inspired due to the years of falsely claiming to be a diplomat; a betrayal of both Johnson and his adoptive mother, who felt tricked into a marriage of convenience and dark secrets. "[W]e simply stopped trusting each other under the strain of the many lies." The consequences of this double life linger for years; even affecting his father's political ambitions as GOP smears derail a senatorial bid. Johnson despises his father's ongoing misinformation and misrepresentations, refusing to remain complicit in the necessary duplicities of espionage. Determined not to follow his father's deceptive footsteps, Johnson becomes a foreign journalist, mainly in the Middle East and Afghanistan, where he encounters an ex-al Qaeda agent and learns the arts of forgiveness and parental pride. Johnson's engrossing memoir, through the layers of subterfuge, uncovers many basic truths of familial conflict, allowing concessions and reconciliation to eventually win the day despite the years of lies and poor choices. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A former Newsweek foreign correspondent reviews his often perplexing experiences as the son of a CIA operative. Now a freelance journalist, Johnson begins in 1973, his birth year, with a story about a snake charmer in India, where his father was stationed. The snake charmer proves an apt metaphor for the mysterious elder Johnson, a sophisticated persuader whose ability to charm was his deadliest arrow as he sought to flip other agents and foreign nationals. The author does not obey a strict chronology. After 10 chapters that deliver us to 2001, Johnson returns to Mexico City in 1968, wondering if or how his father was involved in the deadly violence that occurred there just before the Olympics. Rendering the question even more wrenching is his realization that Johnson pre could have been involved in the arrest of the father of a woman Johnson fils was dating. About halfway through, the narrative arrives near the present with a summary of the author's sometimes-harrowing experiences covering the war in Iraq; he survived an IED explosion while riding in a Marine vehicle and had other brushes with death. We also hear about Sarajevo in 2004 and, in later chapters, about visits with his uneasily retired father in Spokane. They took some road trips, and en route, we learn about some of the missions and adventures of Johnson pre, though he says he resents interrogations. Nonetheless, the author kept pushing him to impart as much family and professional history as possible, trying to understand a man with such a deadly past who nonetheless both professes and demonstrates a profound love for his son. Gripping, emotional depictions of the conflicts that rage in the interior and exterior worlds of a spy--and of a journalist.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
When Johnson was a teenager living in suburban Detroit after years of living in exotic places around the world, his father revealed the secret that had guided their lives: he was a CIA agent. That revelation gave Johnson license to deceive and cover up as well, joining his father in a double life. Feelings of fear and isolation never left him, even later as he pursued a career as a journalist. As a foreign correspondent, he found astounding parallels between his father's work and his own, including source development and the sometimes clandestine nature of the work. Johnson traces his life as son and journalist from the U.S. to Mexico to the Middle East and Europe, tracking secrets and wondering about the morality and authenticity of his and his father's lives together and apart. He ponders the impact of secretiveness on his father's marriages and on his own failed relationships. An enthralling look at a complicated father-son relationship and a painful investigation of the messiness of truth in journalism, intelligence ops, and life.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist
Table of Contents
| Prologue | p. xi |
| Part I | |
| 1 New Delhi, 1973 | p. 3 |
| 2 Belgrade, 1981 | p. 12 |
| 3 Islamabad, 1983 | p. 17 |
| 4 Williamsburg, Virginia, 1984 | p. 23 |
| 5 Southfield, Michigan, 1987 | p. 46 |
| 6 Madrid, 1992 | p. 64 |
| Part II | |
| 7 Roaming, 1995 | p. 75 |
| 8 Paris, 1998 | p. 86 |
| 9 Washington State, 2001 | p. 92 |
| 10 Afghanistan, 2001 | p. 108 |
| 11 Mexico City, 1968 | p. 122 |
| 12 Mexico City, 2002 | p. 137 |
| 13 Southern Iraq, 2003 | p. 162 |
| 14 Sarajevo, 2004 | p. 178 |
| 15 Baghdad, 2006 | p. 189 |
| 16 Ramadi, 2006 | p. 199 |
| 17 Baghdad, 2006 | p. 214 |
| 18 Washington State, 2006 | p. 226 |
| Part III | |
| 19 New Hampshire, 2006 | p. 239 |
| 20 Mexico, 2006 | p. 252 |
| 21 Washington State, 2007 | p. 259 |
| 22 Baghdad and Amman, 2008 | p. 276 |
| Epilogue | p. 301 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 303 |