THE FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency, by Ronald Kessler, Pocket Books, 492 pages, $22.

Most books written these days don’t grab headlines. But most books written by Ronald Kessler not only make headlines they also can make or break a career. Kessler’s research for his latest book exposed the incompetence of FBI Director William S. Sessions which led to his firing by President Clinton.

The attitudes of Sessions’ wife, Alice, and his secretary, Sarah Munford, toward other FBI officials contributed to the director’s demise. Sessions gave them special privileges which in turn led to many abuses by Alice Sessions and Munford.

In “The FBI” Kessler uses the same successful formula he used in “Inside the CIA” to explain how the Central Intelligence Agency operates. Kessler examines different FBI departments and describes how each functions. The chapters on profiling criminals and processing evidence were informative and interesting.

Although Kessler examines many well-known events — the Pan Am 103 bombing, the Waco raid, the Walker spy case — the stories he tells about little-known undercover operations were far more interesting.

Kessler’s book is more than a dry look at a federal agency, it’s an examination of the people who make up the bureau and how they live. “The FBI” shows the positive side of the bureau, but also delves into embarrassing material the FBI would rather not have made public. Kessler writes about FBI employees who got into trouble for attending sex parties and also exposes several cases of discrimination and harassment.

Kessler interviewed more than 300 FBI employees and was given unprecedented access to the agency’s facilities across the country. This is without a doubt the most comprehensive examination of the day-to-day operations of the FBI and its employees.

SOLDIERS OF MISFORTUNE: Washington’s Secret Betrayal of American POWs in the Soviet Union, by James D. Sanders, Mark A. Sauter and R. Cort Kirkwood, National Press Books, 352 pages, $23.95.

If you thought the Iran-Contra affair was a scandal, you should read “Soldiers of Misfortune” and find out what a real cover-up looks like.

Although much of the book is hard to believe, if only half of the information is accurate it’s twice as bad as any scandal Americans have faced in the past.

The authors use government documents and eyewitness accounts to uncover the side of war no government wants revealed, describing how the Soviet government kept 23,500 American servicemen after World War II and why the U.S. government turned its back on the soldiers’ families. The book also examines the cases of American servicemen locked up in the Soviet Union after the Korean and Vietnam wars.

The details about Soviet prison camps and the repeated government denials will affect readers as few books can.

While “Soldiers of Misfortune” examines the tragic story of POWs from several wars, readers seeking a comprehensive examination of POWs from the Vietnam War will benefit from a more recent book by Sanders and Sauter, “The Men We Left Behind,” National Press Books, 394 pages, $23.95. The authors say this is “the book Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, the Pentagon and the U.S. Senate don’t want you to read.”

Jim Emple is the NEWS copy desk chief.