Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones here offers a history of American secret intelligence from the founding of the nation through the present day. Jeffreys-Jones chronicles the 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Daniel Schorr

I have read many books on the CIA,but none more searching and still dispassionate. Nor would I have believed that a book of such towering scholarship could still be so lucid and exciting to read.

David P. Calleo - New York Times Book Review

A sophisticated study that should challenge us to take a more serious view about how our democracy formulates its foreign policy.

Publishers Weekly

Jeffreys-Jones, professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh, offers an anecdotal history of American intelligence from the era of George Washington to that of George W. Bush. This history is replete with provocative characters (Allan Pinkerton, J. Edgar Hoover) and covers a multitude of incidents, many notorious in their day, from the Zimmerman telegram of WWI to the Cuban missile crisis. The author sees all these people and events as connected by a single theme: a strain of hucksterism "smooth talk, hyperbole, deception" pervading U.S. intelligence efforts. For Jeffreys-Jones (The CIA and American Democracy), a leading authority on the history of American intelligence, the leaders of American intelligence have regularly "sheltered behind the veil of secrecy so vital to the promotion of false alarms and invented menaces." One example of this "con man" mentality is a tendency to reward failure. When intelligence agencies miss an important development, the upshot is a successful pitch for more money, more technology and more agents (this should sound familiar to post-9/11 ears). For Jeffreys-Jones, U.S. intelligence has chronically hyped its accomplishments and concealed its many failures, misleading the American people more often than it has baffled foreign enemies. The author's persistent invocation of the "con man" theme may actually do the book a disservice, opening the door to accusations of unfair exclusion of evidence contrary to the book's thesis. In fact, Jeffreys-Jones cites numerous instances of unobtrusive success by U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the breaking of Japanese codes in WWII. This account is more balanced in its content than the author's rhetoric might lead you to believe. (Apr.) Forecast: This is bound to feed into current discussions of the CIA's efficacy. Look for mention of it by policy commentators. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

A sophisticated study that should challenge us to take a more serious view about how our democracy formulates its foreign policy.
(— David P. Calleo, New York Times Book Review)  — David P. Calleo