The CIA & American Democracy
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This edition of the “brief, yet subtle and penetrating account” of the CIA includes a new prologue covering the agency’s more recent history (Christian Science Monitor).
Now in its third edition, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones’s comprehensive history of the Central Intelligence Agency is widely acclaimed for its thorough and even-handed analysis. A renowned U.S. intelligence expert, Jeffreys-Jones chronicles the evolution of the agency from its beginning in 1947 to the present day. With clarity and acuity, he examines the CIA’s activities during some of the most dramatic episodes in American history, from McCarthyism to the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Iran-Contra affair, and many others.
A new prologue by the author also covers the CIA’s history from the end of the Cold War to the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001. A landmark of intelligence history since its first edition in 1989, The CIA and American Democracy is “a judicious and reasonable...sophisticated study” (David P. Calleo, New York Times Book Review).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This supportive, comprehensive study of the CIA traces the changing status of the agency from its 1947 beginnings to the present. Jeffreys-Jones, history lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, reveals how the CIA and its successive directors have been enmeshed in presidential politics and foreign policy, experiencing a ``golden age'' in the Eisenhower era and relatively hard times during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. The periodic congressional crusades aimed at unveiling ``the truth'' about the CIA are closely analyzed, the author arguing that such probes not only serve to keep the agency in check but in the long run strengthen it. Good congressional relations and mutual respect are, in Jeffreys-Jones's view, crucial to the proper functioning of U.S. intelligence. President Reagan, ``a keen supporter'' of the CIA, is shown here to have been virtually deaf to its advice. Jeffreys-Jones concludes: ``The various people who say that the CIA has been the world's best postwar foreign-intelligence agency are not wide of the mark.'' History Book Club alternate.
