America's Secret Power

America's Secret Power PDF Author: Loch K. Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195361539
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Based on hundreds of interviews with CIA officials, national security experts, and legislators, as well as a thorough culling of the archival record, America's Secret Power offers an illuminating and up-to-date picture of the CIA, stressing the difficult balance between the genuine needs of national security and the protection of individual liberties. Loch Johnson, who has studied the workings of the CIA at first hand as a legislative overseer, presents a comprehensive examination of the Agency and its relations with other American institutions, including Congress and the White House, and looks closely at how it pursues its three major missions--intelligence analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action. At once fascinating and sobering, Johnson's book reveals how the best intelligence reports can be distorted or ignored; how covert actions can spin out of control despite extensive safeguards, as in the Iran-Contra scandal; and how the CIA has spied on American citizens in clear violation of its charter. Further, he provides a thorough review of legislative efforts to curb these abuses, and suggests several important ways to achieve the delicate balance between national security and democratic ideals.

America's Secret Power

America's Secret Power PDF Author: Loch K. Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195361539
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
Based on hundreds of interviews with CIA officials, national security experts, and legislators, as well as a thorough culling of the archival record, America's Secret Power offers an illuminating and up-to-date picture of the CIA, stressing the difficult balance between the genuine needs of national security and the protection of individual liberties. Loch Johnson, who has studied the workings of the CIA at first hand as a legislative overseer, presents a comprehensive examination of the Agency and its relations with other American institutions, including Congress and the White House, and looks closely at how it pursues its three major missions--intelligence analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action. At once fascinating and sobering, Johnson's book reveals how the best intelligence reports can be distorted or ignored; how covert actions can spin out of control despite extensive safeguards, as in the Iran-Contra scandal; and how the CIA has spied on American citizens in clear violation of its charter. Further, he provides a thorough review of legislative efforts to curb these abuses, and suggests several important ways to achieve the delicate balance between national security and democratic ideals.

In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America's "Deep State"

In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America's Author: David Rohde
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324003553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Revised and updated "One of today’s most respected journalists, David Rohde takes on one of the country’s most toxic conspiracy theories," presenting a "scrupulously reported and even-handed" account of how power and intelligence are exploited in Washington that “goes deep indeed inside America’s security state, telling a story that will surprise readers of all political persuasions” (Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money). Donald Trump blamed his 2020 defeat on Democrats and the “deep state”—a supposed secret cabal of Washington insiders that relentlessly encroaches on the individual rights of Americans—for stealing the election and undermining his presidency. Most Americans who supported him agreed. Americans on the left increasingly fear the “military-industrial complex,” a faction of generals and defense contractors who they believe routinely push the country into endless wars. But does the American “deep state” really exist? This question is fundamental to preserving the legitimacy of American democracy, as frustration with and distrust for the government continue to grow. In Deep seeks to dispel these pernicious myths through an examination of the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department scandals of the past fifty years from the Church Committee’s exposure of Cold War abuses to the claims and counterclaims of the Trump era and the relentless spread of conspiracy theories online and on air. It exposes the misconduct of Attorney General William Barr; how distrust of the “deep state” undermined the US government response to the COVID-19 pandemic; and the growing discord sowed by the explosion of false information online. It investigates Trump’s quest to discredit government experts, the legislative and judicial branches, and the results of the 2020 election and assume authoritarian power for himself. “The idea of the deep state, Rohde writes, is inextricably linked to a particular view of presidential power” (Dina Temple-Raston, Washington Post). Based on dozens of interviews with career CIA operatives and FBI agents, “In Deep is a wholly satisfying read and a necessary one for anyone wanting to understand the forces at play in our government today” (Andrea Bernstein, Peabody Award–winning cohost of the Trump, Inc. podcast and author of American Oligarchs).

Top Secret America

Top Secret America PDF Author: Dana Priest
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 9780316182201
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
After 9/11, the United States government embarked on an unprecedented effort to protect America. The result has been calamitous: after ten years of unparalleled spending and growth, the result is that a system put in place to keep America safe may in fact be putting us in even greater danger-but we don't know because it's all Top Secret. In TOP SECRET AMERICA, award-winning journalists Dana Priest and William M. Arkin lift the curtain on this clandestine universe. From the companies and agencies keeping track of American citizens and the military commanders building America's first "top secret city" to a hidden army within the U.S. military more secret than the CIA, this new national security octopus has become a self-sustaining "Fourth Branch" of government. A tour de force of investigative journalism, TOP SECRET AMERICA presents a fascinating and disturbing account of government run amok and a war on terrorism gone wrong in a post-9/11.

The Secret Powers of Naming

The Secret Powers of Naming PDF Author: Sara Littlecrow-Russell
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816525355
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
A collection of poems explore the Native American experience at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

American Secrets

American Secrets PDF Author: Eduardo Barros-Grela
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611470064
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Predicated upon the principles of political freedom, cultural openness, religious tolerance, individual self-reliance, and ethnic diversity, the United States of America has been tempted recurrently by the lures of the secret. American Secrets explores this political, historical, and cultural phenomenon from many, often surprisingly, overlapping angles in these analyses of the literary and cultural uses and abuses of secrecy within a democratic culture. Through analyses of diverse literary works andcultural manifestations-from Mark Twain's anti-imperialist prophecies to 9/11 conspiracy theories, from the traumas of the Vietnam war to the homophobia of the American military establishment, from the unresolved dilemmas of nuclear politics to the secret ecologies shunted aside by the exploitation of the environment, from the questionings of national identity on the ethnic and (trans)sexual margins to the confessional modes of poetry and the poetics of the unspeakable and unrepresentable-these essays reveal the politics within the poetics and, indissociably, the poetics fueling the politics of secrecy in its ambivalent deployment. Secrecy often seems to be a question without an answer or an answer that either seems to beg the question or to be a question itself. These essays address this paradox with their own questioning explorations. In answering such questions, the volume as a whole provides an illuminating overview of the pervasiveness of the secret and its modalities in American culture while alsodealing specifically with the poetics of the secret in its various, historically recurrent literary manifestations.

Operation Paperclip

Operation Paperclip PDF Author: Annie Jacobsen
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316221058
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
The “remarkable” story of America's secret post-WWII science programs (The Boston Globe), from the New York Times bestselling author of Area 51. In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States. Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War? Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich's ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century. In this definitive, controversial look at one of America's most strategic, and disturbing, government programs, Jacobsen shows just how dark government can get in the name of national security. "Harrowing...How Dr. Strangelove came to America and thrived, told in graphic detail." —Kirkus Reviews

America in the World

America in the World PDF Author: Michael J. Hogan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521498074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 646

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Book Description
A survey of the historical literature on intelligence and national security during the Cold War.

American-British-Canadian Intelligence Relations, 1939-2000

American-British-Canadian Intelligence Relations, 1939-2000 PDF Author: Maurizio Ferrera
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780714651033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Collection of official documents and others on the annexation of the Northern Territory to South Australia.

A Companion to American Foreign Relations

A Companion to American Foreign Relations PDF Author: Robert Schulzinger
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470999039
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
This is an authoritative volume of historiographical essays that survey the state of U.S. diplomatic history. The essays cover the entire range of the history of American foreign relations from the colonial period to the present. They discuss the major sources and analyze the most influential books and articles in the field. Includes discussions of new methodological approaches in diplomatic history.

Noble Cause Corruption, the Banality of Evil, and the Threat to American Democracy, 1950-2008

Noble Cause Corruption, the Banality of Evil, and the Threat to American Democracy, 1950-2008 PDF Author: John DiJoseph
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0761850198
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Noble Cause Corruption, the Banality of Evil, and the Threat to American Democracy, 1950-2008 is a probe of the mindset of American government officials, from presidents of the United States on down, who decided that necessity required that the American democracy had to be defended by actions and policies that were contrary to the traditional ideals of the democracy. The emphasis is on the activities of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. The probe relies for its historical data on well-recognized, previously published reports and histories. The probe is unique in that it focuses on the mindset of the individuals involved. The analysis of the mindset ranges from Aristotle, the latest research of mental health professionals, to the insights of thinkers Edmund Burke, Reinhold Niebuhr, Friedrich Meinecke, and George Kennan. The conclusions reached are disturbing: the defense of the democracy has been a failure and the mindset of the officials has continued to the present day and does not bode well for the future of the democracy. Book jacket.