Challenging the Secret Government

Challenging the Secret Government
Author: Kathryn S. Olmsted
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 080786370X

Just four months after Richard Nixon's resignation, New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh unearthed a new case of government abuse of power: the CIA had launched a domestic spying program of Orwellian proportions against American dissidents during the Vietnam War. The country's best investigative journalists and members of Congress quickly mobilized to probe a scandal that seemed certain to rock the foundations of this secret government. Subsequent investigations disclosed that the CIA had plotted to kill foreign leaders and that the FBI had harassed civil rights and student groups. Some called the scandal 'son of Watergate.' Many observers predicted that the investigations would lead to far-reaching changes in the intelligence agencies. Yet, as Kathryn Olmsted shows, neither the media nor Congress pressed for reforms. For all of its post-Watergate zeal, the press hesitated to break its long tradition of deference in national security coverage. Congress, too, was unwilling to challenge the executive branch in national security matters. Reports of the demise of the executive branch were greatly exaggerated, and the result of the 'year of intelligence' was a return to the status quo. American History/Journalism

Wedge

Wedge
Author: Mark Riebling
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 598
Release: 2010-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1451603851

Prophetic when first published, even more relevant now, Wedge is the classic, definitive story of the secret war America has waged against itself. Based on scores of interviews with former spies and thousands of declassified documents, Wedge reveals and re-creates -- battle by battle, bungle by bungle -- the epic clash that has made America uniquely vulnerable to its enemies. For more than six decades, the opposed and overlapping missions of the FBI and CIA -- and the rival personalities of cops and spies -- have caused fistfights and turf tangles, breakdowns and cover-ups, public scandals and tragic deaths. A grand panorama of dramatic episodes, peopled by picaresque secret agents from Ian Fleming to Oliver North, Wedge is both a journey and a warning. From Pearl Harbor, McCarthyism, and the plots to kill Castro through the JFK assassination, Watergate, and Iran Contra down to the Aldrich Ames affair, Robert Hanssen's treachery, and the hunt for Al Qaeda -- Wedge shows the price America has paid for its failure to resolve the conflict between law enforcement and intelligence. Gripping and authoritative -- and updated with an important new epilogue, carrying the action through to September 11, 2001 -- Wedge is the only book about the schism that has informed nearly every major blunder in American espionage.

Real Enemies

Real Enemies
Author: Kathryn S. Olmsted
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2009-01-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 019972024X

Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii. Although paranoia has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies Kathryn Olmsted shows that it was only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories became central to American politics. In particular, she posits World War I as a critical turning point and shows that as the federal bureaucracy expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself--the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Analyzing the wide-spread suspicions surrounding such events as Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11, Olmsted sheds light on why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies--such as the infamous Northwoods plan--have fueled our paranoia about the governments we ourselves elect.

Top Secret America

Top Secret America
Author: Dana Priest
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2011-09-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0316194042

The top-secret world that the government created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks has become so enormous, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or exactly how many agencies duplicate work being done elsewhere. The result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe may be putting us in greater danger. In Top Secret America, award-winning reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin uncover the enormous size, shape, mission, and consequences of this invisible universe of over 1,300 government facilities in every state in America; nearly 2,000 outside companies used as contractors; and more than 850,000 people granted "Top Secret" security clearance. A landmark exposé of a new, secret "Fourth Branch" of American government, Top Secret America is a tour de force of investigative reporting-and a book sure to spark national and international alarm.

Challenging Authority

Challenging Authority
Author: Michael P. Hanagan
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 316
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 1452903506

As long as there have been formal governments, there has been political contention. Where political studies tend to focus on either those who rule or those who are ruled, the essays in this volume call our attention to the interaction between these forces at the very heart of contentious politics.

Nation of Secrets

Nation of Secrets
Author: Ted Gup
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2008-10-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0307472914

Award winning journalist Ted Gup exposes how and why our most important institutions increasingly keep secrets from the very people they are supposed to serve.Drawing on his decades as an investigative reporter, Ted Gup argues that a preoccupation with secrets has undermined the very values--security, patriotism, and privacy--in whose name secrecy is so often invoked. He explores the blatant exploitation of privacy and confidentiality in academia, business, and the courts, and concludes that in case after case, these principles have been twisted to allow the emergence of a shadow system of justice, unaccountable to the public. Nation of Secrets not only sounds the alarm to warn against an unethical way of life, but calls for the preservation of our democracy as we know it.

Handbook of Intelligence Studies

Handbook of Intelligence Studies
Author: Loch K. Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 588
Release: 2007-01-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135986878

This topical volume offers a comprehensive review of secret intelligence organizations and activities. Intelligence has been in the news consistently since 9/11 and the Iraqi WMD errors. Leading experts in the field approach the three major missions of intelligence: collection-and-analysis; covert action; and counterintelligence. Within each of these missions, the dynamically written essays dissect the so-called intelligence cycle to reveal the challenges of gathering and assessing information from around the world. Covert action, the most controversial intelligence activity, is explored, with special attention on the issue of military organizations moving into what was once primarily a civilian responsibility. The authors furthermore examine the problems that are associated with counterintelligence, protecting secrets from foreign spies and terrorist organizations, as well as the question of intelligence accountability, and how a nation can protect its citizens against the possible abuse of power by its own secret agencies. The Handbook of Intelligence Studies is a benchmark publication with major importance both for current research and for the future of the field. It is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and scholars of intelligence studies, international security, strategic studies and political science in general.

In the Name of National Security

In the Name of National Security
Author: Louis Fisher
Publisher:
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2006
Genre: Current Events
ISBN:

"In light of the Bush administration's continued use of Reynolds to justify its post-9/11 claims to unilateral authority, Fisher's work could not be more timely."--BOOK JACKET.

Governing America

Governing America
Author: Julian E. Zelizer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2012-03-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691150737

This book examines the study of American political history.

Projecting Paranoia

Projecting Paranoia
Author: Ray Pratt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN:

A wide-ranging and idiosyncratic look at sixty years of politics and film that uncovers how American movies have mirrored and even challenged anxieties and paranoid perceptions embedded in American society since the start of the Cold War. The first book to take a sweeping look at 60 years of film and analyze them thematically.