Robinson, Linda. Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces.

ROBINSON, Linda. Masters of chaos; the secret history of the Special Forces. Public-Affairs. 388p. maps. index, e2004. 1586483528. $14.00. SA

When President John F. Kennedy came into office, he immediately set out to develop the means to export American force, and American-style democracy,

to unsettled and beleaguered corners of the world. His first official act in office was to order a jet transport to ferry large numbers of American troops wherever needed; virtually his second action was to overhaul an obscure US Army unit, its nearly moribund Special Forces. Both initiatives were highly successful, but the Green Berets will long outlast the airplane.

Virtually adopted by their President, beefed up and togged out in distinctive headgear, the Special Forces became the best known of the world's elite military forces. Their accomplishments soon matched their public glamour. Most such units, like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force, are modern iterations of the British Commandos of WW II: tough, trained warriors designed for lightning raids against conventional enemy forces. The Green Berets do that too, but their first mission is to blend into an oppressed population and train them to attack and harass their oppressors. This demands a special kind of warrior, fluent in languages and equally at home with cultural anthropology, medicine, psychology, and social planning. Having said all that, the Berets do their share of direct fighting too. Author Linda Robinson, a skilled journalist, embedded herself with the clandestine warriors and followed them from place to place. What results are exciting, at times poignant, and always-intelligent observations of these men, their training, and their battles. Far from producing one of those mindless, hyped-up accounts of battle and death beloved by most chroniclers of war, Robinson takes the reader into the minds and mindset of several warriors from the 1960s to the present, following the corps from training camp through a succession of the world's hotspots. The only complaint about the book is the title: these professionals are not battlefield brawlers--they are superb operators. Raymond Puffer, Ph.D., Historian, Edwards AFB, Lancaster, CA