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Cloak and Dollar - A History of American Secret Intelligence (Paperback, 2nd ed)
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Cloak and Dollar - A History of American Secret Intelligence (Paperback, 2nd ed)
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Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a leading expert on the history of American
espionage, here offers a lively and sweeping history of American
secret intelligence from the founding of the nation through the
present day. Jeffreys-Jones chronicles the extraordinary expansion
of American secret intelligence from the 1790s, when George
Washington set aside a discretionary fund for covert operations, to
the beginning of the twenty-first century, when United States
intelligence expenditure exceeds Russia's total defense budget. How
did the American intelligence system evolve into such an enormous
and costly bureaucracy? Jeffreys-Jones argues that hyperbolic
claims and the impulse toward self-promotion have beset American
intelligence organizations almost from the outset. Allan Pinkerton,
whose nineteenth-century detective agency was the forerunner of
modern intelligence bureaus, invented assassination plots and
fomented anti-radical fears in order to demonstrate his own
usefulness. Subsequent spymasters likewise invented or exaggerated
a succession of menaces ranging from white slavery to Soviet
espionage to digital encryption in order to build their
intelligence agencies and, later, to defend their ever-expanding
budgets. While American intelligence agencies have achieved some
notable successes, Jeffreys-Jones argues, the intelligence
community as a whole has suffered from a dangerous distortion of
mission. By exaggerating threats such as Communist infiltration and
Chinese espionage at the expense of other, more intractable
problems-such as the narcotics trade and the danger of terrorist
attack-intelligence agencies have misdirected resources and
undermined their own objectivity. Since the end of the Cold War,
the aims of American secret intelligence have been unclear. Recent
events have raised serious questions about effectiveness of foreign
intelligence, and yet the CIA and other intelligence agencies are
poised for even greater expansion under the current administration.
Offering a lucid assessment of the origins and evolution of
American secret intelligence, Jeffreys-Jones asks us to think also
about the future direction of our intelligence agencies.
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