THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
AND THE PAX AMERICANA,
PART TWO

Notes

¹ Gore Vidal, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, Nation Books, 2002.

² A literature of dubious authority has arisen concerning what Roosevelt and his senior American advisers knew about a pending Japanese attack. See especially Day of Deceit by Robert B. Stinnett.

³ See an issue of The New York Review of Books in early 2003, "The Death of Lumumba," in which an American intelligence official of the time spills the beans about what really happened. See also U.S. Congress, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders [the Church committee report], 1975.

⁴ Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt is said by two sources to have been U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt's grandson, and by another to have been his cousin. He was Theodore's grandson.

⁵ See the book Witness by Mansur Rafizadeh, below.

⁶ See Steven Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Anchor Books, 1983.

⁷ United Fruit Company changed its name some years ago to Chiquita Corporation. Chiquita is the corporation's commercially successful brand of bananas.

⁸ Kwitny, Endless Enemies, 347.

Books to Read

Agee, Phillip. Inside the Company: CIA Diary. Penguin, 1976.

This was the second American book to reveal important secrets of the C.I.A. Curiously, the reporting in this book was certified "complete" and "accurate" by the C.I.A. itself in a document later made public under the Freedom of Information Act.⁶

Anonymous [Michael Scheuer?]. Imperial Hubris. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, Inc.,    2004.

Archer, Jules. The Plot to Seize the White House.

-------. The Dictators. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1967.

Baer, Robert. Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Souls for Saudi    Crude.

-------.

Baer was a C.I.A. operative in the Middle East and Central Asia for 20 years. He learned from the F.B.I. in 1995 that he was under investigation for supposedly plotting to kill Saddam Hussein. He eventually managed to clear himself.

Bainerman, Joel. The Crimes of a President: New Revelations on Conspiracy &    Cover-Up in the Bush & Reagan Administrations. New York: S.P.I.    Books/Shapolsky Publishers, Inc., 1992.

Bamford, James. The Puzzle Palace. 1974.

This was the first book to publicize the existence of the National Security Agency, the American federal body which since the early 1950s has been intercepting international electronic communications to scoop intelligence. The NSA has 38,000 employees, not counting another 25,000 people foreign and domestic, at its worldwide listening posts. Nowadays, the NSA uses parallel supercomputers to analyze its data capture. NSA snoops on and analyzes all telephone calls, satellite transmissions and other communications that cross the borders of the United States. Does it now, after the Patriot Act, also analyze the elint that is solely within the U.S.? I suppose so. NSA does its work by scanning for words (originally, a list of 7000) which trigger its more detailed attention. Through the Echelon agreement with English-speaking allies, the United States pools this information.

-------. Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-secret National Security Agency -- From     the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century. New York: Doubleday, 2001.

Fascinating and credible. A plausible history of America's little-reported electronic spy agency, including a riveting 45-page account (the best I've read) about Israel's lethal and deliberate June 8, 1967 attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, 12 miles off El Arish, Egypt, which cost the lives of 34 Americans and wounded 171 more. The attack was intended to prevent knowledge leaking out of Israel's deliberate execution of some 400 Egyptian prisoners of war nearby (plus another 600 elsewhere in the Sinai).

-------. A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence      Agencies. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

Barnet, Richard J. Intervention and Revolution: The United States in the Third      World. New York: World Publishing Company, 1968.

Barnet's book is excellent. I especially recommend his passages on Lyndon Johnson's 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic. How harebrained, arbitrary and pointless this intervention was!

-------. Roots of War. Penguin Books, 1973 (?).

Blum, William. The CIA, A Forgotten History: US Global Interventions Since World    War 2. London and Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Zed Books, 1986.

This is the best book I have yet found about the shoddier global actions of the C.I.A. It seems more respectable and knowledgeable than the Zepezauer book, for example. Still, beware it somewhat: I wished Blum had added more details about certain covert actions, in Australia and Italy, for example; and had added more context. It would have been good if Blum had dropped some of his summary remarks. So read it carefully, but read it.

-------. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II.    Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1998.

Bosch, Juan. Pentagonism. New York: Grove Press, 1960s.

Bosch was, I believe, an elected president of the Dominican Republic. (I couldn't tell you whether the election was fair.) My understanding is that he was put in by the American government under Lyndon Johnson, which then changed its mind, deciding Bosch was too leftist. So the Marines invaded in 1965 to "save the Dominican Republic from Communism." Ho-hum.

Bucchi, Kenneth C. C.I.A.: Cocaine in America. New York: S.P.I. Books/Shapolsky    Publishers, 1994.

A contract officer, a veteran of the C.I.A. drug wars, tells all.

Butler, Smedley Darlington. General Smedley Darlington Butler: The Letters of a    Leatherneck, 1898-1931.

-------. War Is A Racket. 1934.

Butler was one of the most decorated military heroes in U.S. history. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor twice -- I believe for heroic action in Haiti and at the battle of Veracruz, Mexico. He was a U.S. Marine who served in the Spanish-American War in Cuba, then later in Panama, China (Boxer Rebellion), France (World War I) and Nicaragua. He eventually became a major-general, a candidate for commandant of the Marine Corps, and the police chief of Haiti. He finished up his career as the head of the Marines' Quantico, Virginia, base, in trouble for supposed lack of patriotism. (The reason was his warning Americans never to trust fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.) Butler charged that his whole career had been spent protecting, not America, but the Caribbean interests of American financial institutions like (investment bankers) Brown Brothers. (Brown Brothers merged in the 1930s with investment banking firm Harriman.) In 1931 Butler was approached by American corporate executives who, unhappy with the Roosevelt administration, wanted to hire Butler to recruit a private army of 500,000 and take over the United States in a gradual fascist coup. Butler refused. Butler then went public, testifying before the McCormack Commission in Congress about the offer. (Companies behind the offer included several Wall Street firms, and the Dupont company.) Time magazine and the Establishment press of the day pooh-poohed Butler's story, but it was later confirmed. (The remarkable 2003 Canadian documentary The Corporation mentions this matter. See Jules Archer's book The Plot to Seize the White House.)

Casey, William.

Cave Brown, Anthony, ed. The Secret War Report of the OSS. New York: Berkley    Publishing Corporation, 1976.

This book is said by David Wise to have been written by S. Peter Karlow, an old OSS technical gadgets man, with help from Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's grandson and the chief perpetrator of the C.I.A.'s 1953 Iran caper.

-------. The Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan. New York: Random House, 1982.

Chomsky, Noam. Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World.    Montreal and Cheektowaga, New York: Black Rose Books, 1987.

Not to be missed. Chomsky explains how the United States hypocritically violates its own laws abroad to pursue its superpower goals and support dictators in power. Issued in a revised and greatly expanded edition in 2002.

Cockburn, Leslie. Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret    War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection.    New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.

-------. Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. London and New York: Verso    [imprint of New Left Books], 1998.

Colby, William and Peter Forbath. Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA. New York:    Simon & Schuster, 1978.

Copeland, Miles. Without Cloak and Dagger. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974.

Crile, Robert. Charlie Wilson's War.

DeForest, Orrin. Slow Burn: the Rise and Fall of American Intelligence in Vietnam.    New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990.

Dinges, John. The Condor Years.

See chapters 7-10 for "cautiously and carefully documented" material about Washington's knowledge of Pinochet's Condor Project, a scheme to liquidate the Chilean dictatorship's enemies abroad.

Downton, Eric. Wars Without End. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Company Limited,    1987.

Dulles, Allen. True Spy Stories.

Epstein, Edward Jay. Legend: The Secret Life of Lee Harvey Oswald. New York:    Reader's Digest Press/McGraw-Hill, 1978.

-------. Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA. New York:    Simon & Schuster, 1989.

Eveland, Wilbur Crane. Ropes of Sand. New York: W.W. Norton, 1980.

By a former U.S. intelligence officer.

Fall, Bernard B. Street Without Joy. New York: Schocken Books, 1967.

This is a history of the French intervention in Vietnam. Fall was a journalist who wrote several books about the Far East. I believe he was killed in Vietnam in the 1960s.

Felix, Christopher. A Short Course in the Secret War. New York: Dell Publishing,    1963.

A second edition was published in 1987.

Freed, Donald and Fred Landis. Death in Washington: The Murder of Orlando    Letelier. Laurence Hill, 1980.

Freemantle, Brian. CIA. New York: Stein & Day, 1986.

Garrow, David J. The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. Penguin Books, 1981.

Giap, Vo Nguyen. People's War -- People's Army. Hanoi, 1961.

Golitsyn, Anatoliy. New Lies for Old. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1984.

Greer, K.E., and Breckinridge, S.D. CIA Targets Fidel: Secret 1967 CIA Inspector    General's Report on plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. Melbourne, Australia:    Ocean Press, 1996.

Grose, Peter. Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,    1994.

-------. Operation Rollback: America's Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain. Boston:    Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

Halperin, Morton H., et al. The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Central    Intelligence Agencies. Penguin Books, 1976.

Helms, Richard with William Hood. A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central    Intelligence Agency. New York: Random House, 2003.

Richard Helms was U.S. president Lyndon Johnson's Director of Central Intelligence. He was forced to resign in 1966. Helms died in 2003, so we are now gifted with the memoir he was attempting in his last years to write.

Herch, Burton. The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the C.I.A. New    York, Scribner's, 1992.

Hitchens, Christopher. Cyprus.

-------. The Trial of Henry Kissinger. London and New York: Verso (imprint of New Left Books), 2001.

Hitchens is a British-born journalist and columnist who currently teaches at New School University in New York. He was formerly a Trotskyist. He has written quite a number of useful and revealing non-fiction books. Lately he has been a hawk for the 2003 war in Iraq. In his Cyprus book he reveals how the British tried to stir up trouble between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. When the British were supplanted by the Americans, George Ball, Lyndon Johnson's undersecretary of state, hated Archbishop Makarios and was determined to partition Cyprus. Eventually American policy got its way.

Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American    Empire. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2000.

Kalb, Madeleine G. The Congo Cables. Macmillan, 1982.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, Kalb pried loose information about the C.I.A.'s cable traffic between its African embassies and Langley in 1960.

Kessler, Ronald. Escape From the CIA: How the CIA Won and Lost the Most Important KGB Spy Ever to Defect to the U.S. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

-------. Inside the CIA. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

-------. The Spy in the Russian Club.

Kinzer, Stephen. Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in    Guatemala. New York: Anchor Books, 1983.

-------. All the Shah's Men. 2004.

In this book Kinzer retells the story of the C.I.A.s 1953 Iran caper, which he blames for continuing trouble in the Middle East.

Kirkpatrick, Lyman. The Real C.I.A.

Kornbluh, Peter. The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and    Accountability. 2004.

Kornbluh is director of the National Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project. Among other things, his book deals with the assassination of Chile's General Schroder (the C.I.A. gave his assassins guns and support) and Project Condor, Pinochet's scheme to assassinate opponents of the Chilean dictatorship abroad. Read chapter 6 for the latest on Washington's knowledge of Condor. Incidentally, William Rogers, a former Nixon secretary of state (and current vice chair of Kissinger Associates), has officially denied the accuracy of Kornbluh's account. Kenneth Maxwell, however, for some years the Council on foreign Relation's chief Latin American expert, believes the book is accurate.

Kruger, Henrik. The Great Heroin Coup. South End, 1980.

Kwitny, Jonathan. Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World. New    York: Congdon & Weed, 1984.

-------. The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA. New    York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1987.

Lamb, David. The Arabs: Journeys Beyond the Mirage. New York: Random House,    1987.

Lansdale, Edward Geary. In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to    Southeast Asia. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

Lansdale was in 1972 a retired Air Force major general, the C.I.A.'s former chief strategic planner for covert ops in Southeast Asia. He was active in Saigon in the 1960s, and, more successfully in the Philippines in the late 1940s, where he worked out the strategy that neutralized, demoralized and eventually destroyed the Hukblanalp (Huk) rebellion. Blum's book is revealing about the July 4, 1946, American transfer of sovereignty to the Philippines, the phony elections, the unfair treaties, and the picking of Philippines presidents by the Americans.

Marchetti, Victor, and Marks, John D. The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. New    York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.

One of the earliest books to spill some secrets about the C.I.A. Marchetti was a C.I.A. operative. But many of the documents he revealed were censored by the C.I.A. Marchetti published them with the omissions showing. Someone should issue a revised text of this book with what is now known about the missing pieces. Tantalizing.

Martin, David C. Wilderness of Mirrors. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.

The story of American C.I.A. counterspy James Jesus Angleton's search for elusive (and probably non-existent, at that time) Soviet moles inside the C.I.A.

McCoy, Alfred et al. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. New York: Harper &    Row, 1972.

McGarvey, Patrick J. C.I.A.: The Myth and the Madness. New York: Saturday    Review Press, 1972.

McGehee, Ralph W. Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA. New York: Sheridan    Square Publications, Inc., 1983.

Moorehead, Alan. The Atomic Traitors.

This is an account of the chief traitors who gave American and British atomic secrets to the Soviets. I read it years ago. Probably it is obsolete.

Morrow, John D. First-Hand Knowledge: How I Participated in the CIA-Mafia    Assassination of John F. Kennedy. New York: S.P.I./Skipolsky Books, 1992.

Fascinating, if true. Morrow claims to have been a naive anti-communist contract agent for the C.I.A. who worked on various nefarious covert ops, including the Bay of Pigs. He claims that Kennedy was assassinated by a joint C.I.A.-Mafia team. This would seem unlikely, if not ridiculous, except that he names a multitude of plausible names and builds a somewhat plausible story. You decide.

Newhouse, John. Imperial America: The Bush Assault on the World Order. New York:    Alfred A. Knopf (Random House), 2003.

New York Times, The. The Pentagon Papers. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1971.

Ostrovsky, Victor, and Clare Hoy. By Way of Deception: A Devastating Insider's    Portrait of the Mossad. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Limited, 1990.

Ostrovsky, Victor [solus]. The Other Side of Deception. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

Ostrovsky was an insider in Mossad, the Israeli C.I.A. He wrote two books about his agency, one with the Canadian journalist Clare Hoy.

Perry, Mark. Eclipse: The Last Days of the C.I.A. New York: William Morrow, 1982.

Persico, Joesph E. Casey: The Life and Secrets of William J. Casey. New York:    Viking, 1990.

Phillips, David Atlee. The Night Watch. New York: Random House, Inc., 1977.

Pilger, John. Heroes.

John Pilger is an Australian journalist. One of his books made me realize that the United States sought out a Vietnamese in the 1950s to make the puppet president of their artificially created new regime, South Vietnam. They found him in Ngo Dinh Diem.

-------. The New Rulers of the World. London and New York: Verso [imprint of New    Left Books], 2002.

Rafizadeh, Mansur. Witness: From the Shah to the Secret Arms Deal, an Insider's    Account of U.S. Involvement in Iran. New York: William Morrow and Company,    Inc., 1987.

Powers, Thomas. The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. New    York: Knopf, 1987.

-------. Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda. New York:    The New York Review of Books, 2004.

Prouty, L. Fletcher. The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the World.    New York: 1974.

Ranelagh, John. The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA. New York:    Touchstone, 1987.

Ransom, Henry Howe. The Intelligence Establishment.

Reed, Terry and John Cummings. Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA.    Granite Bay, California: Clandestine Publishing, 1995.

Former president Bill Clinton is sometimes accused of having something to do, while governor of Arkansas, with smuggling of illegal drugs into the United States by C.I.A. associates using the airfield of Mena, Arkansas. This book is about that matter, as well as others.

Riebling, Mark. Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and CIA. New York: Knopf,     1994.

The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. have seldom cooperated well or passed on information to each other. As the 9/11 Commission report indicates, this had serious consequences for 9/11. Perhaps 3000 American lives would not have been lost if information had passed more efficiently between the agencies. In the light of this, Wedge looks prescient.

Robbins, Christopher. Air America. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1979.

-------. The Ravens: The Men Who Flew in America's Secret War in Laos. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1987.

This is the story of the C.I.A.'s secret airlines -- so far as we know.

Roosevelt, Kermit. Countercoup: The Struggle for Control of Iran. New York:    McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979.

Schmidt, Hans. Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and Contradictions of    American Military History. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky,    1987.

Smith, Joseph B. The Unknown CIA: My Three Decades With The Agency. McLean,    Virginia: Pergamon-Brassey International Defense Publishers, Inc., 1989.

Smith, Joseph Burkholder. Portrait of a Cold Warrior.

This seems to be a portrait of Edward Lansdale, the strategist of the C.I.A.'s anti-Huk activities in the Philippines as well as later less successful actions in Viet Nam.

Snepp, Frank. Decent Interval. New York: Random House, 1977.

Snepp's book is about the hasty exit of American forces from Vietnam in 1975. I believe Snepp worked in the American embassy in Saigon.

Spivack, John L. A Man and His Times. New York: Horizon Press, 1967.

Sterling, Claire. The Terror Network. 1985[?]

In the 1980s terrorism was defined by its Western enemies in terms highly advantageous to themselves (to a lesser extent, this is still true). Sterling's book was a sort of orthodox, Reader's Digest approach to terror networks, namely, blaming them mostly on the Soviet Union's KGB spy agency. Much of the "information in this book appears slanted in favour of the Reagan administration; Joel Bainerman argues that some of the book's assertions, particularly Sterling's account of Mohammed Agca (the attempted assassin of Pope John Paul II)'s connections with Bulgarian intelligence, may have been deliberate disinformation by the American intelligence establishment.

Stockwell, John. In Search of Enemies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1978.

A veteran C.I.A. agent who served in Africa recounts events in Nkrumah's Ghana and Angola.

Szulc, Tad and Karl E. Meyer. The Cuban Invasion: The Chronicle of a Disaster.    New York[?]: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1962.

Taubman, Philip. Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of    America's Space Espionage. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.

Thomas, Gordon. Journey Into Madness: The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control    and Mind Abuse. New York: Bantam, 1989.

Trento, James J. The Secret History of the CIA. Prima Publishing: Roseville,    California, 2001.

Tully, Andrew. CIA: The Inside Story. New York: William Morrow and Company,    1962.

Turner, [Admiral] Stansfield. Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition.    Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985.

U.S. Congress. Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders [the Church Committee report]. 1975.

This 350-page U.S. Senate report was released in November 1975. It details the involvement of the C.I.A. in multiple plots to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba, as well as in successful hits on Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo and Salvador Allende of Chile.

-------. The Final Assassinations Report: Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives. New York: Bantam Books, 1979.

Valentine, Douglas. The Phoenix Program. New York: William Morrow and    Company, Inc., 1992.

This book details about all we yet know about the effort in which the C.I.A. and the South Vietnamese government were involved to pick and kill about 25,000 people in South Vietnam for alleged involvement with the Viet Cong.

Vidal, Gore. Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta. New York:    Nation Books, 2002.

American novelist Gore Vidal, a careful if controversial historian of the American Republic, states in this book that the true purpose of the American attacks on Afghanistan in October 2001 was a pipeline the younger Bush and his vice-president Cheney's oil buddies wish to build through Afghanistan. Sounds dubious to me, but you decide.

Waller, John H. The Unseen War in Europe: Espionage and Conspiracy in the Second World War.

Waller was in the O.S.S. in Cairo. Said to be the best book yet written on this subject, though incomplete.

West, Nigel. Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War. London: HarperCollins,    1999.

Wise, David, and Thomas B. Ross. The Invisible Government. New York: Bantam    Books, 1964.

This was the first important book about the C.I.A. Wise revealed that the annual budget of the C.I.A. at that time was 4 billion dollars. The budget of today's intelligence community is said to be about 40 billion dollars per year.

Wise, David [solus]. The U-2 Affair.

-------. The Espionage Establishment.

-------. The Politics of Lying: Government Deception, Secrecy, and Power. New York: Random House, 1973.

-------. Nightmover.

-------. The Spy Who Got Away: The Inside Story of the CIA Agent Who Betrayed      His Country. New York: Random House Inc., 1988.

-------. Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors That Shattered the CIA. New      York: Random House, 1992.

Woodward, Bob. Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987. New York: Simon &    Schuster, Inc., 1987.

Wright, Peter [and Paul Greengrass?]. Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a    Senior Intelligence Officer. New York: Viking, 1987.

Wright was a science officer with M.I. 5 (Military Intelligence 5, Britain's longstanding counter-intelligence outfit, equivalent to the American F.B.I.) from 1955 to 1985. He rose to Assistant Director. Then he retired to Australia and published the above memoir. The British government of prime minister Margaret Thatcher tried to suppress the book, even in Australia. (It is perhaps still suppressed in Britain.) M.I. 5 and M.I. 6 (the major British foreign intelligence agency, also known as S.I.S. the Secret Intelligence Service) of course worked with the O.S.S. and still work closely with the C.I.A.

-------. The Spycatcher's Encylopedia of Espionage. Port Melbourne, Australia:    William Heinemann Australia; Toronto, Canada: Stoddart Publishing, 1991.

The Encyclopedia confirms some of the C.I.A.'s activities listed in this essay.

Wyden, Peter. Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story. Simon & Schuster, 1989.

Yost, Graham. The CIA. New York: Facts on File, 1989.

Yost, the son of longtime Toronto TV personality Elwy Yost, is better known as the screenwriter of the successful Keanu Reeves thriller movie Speed (1995). This book seems to be written for children. It has, however, an excellent acccount of how the CIA came to be.

Zepezauer, Mark. The CIA's Greatest Hits. Tucson, Arizona: Odonian Press, 1994.

Originally, I dismissed this book as "sloppily-written sketch of the C.I.A.'s best-known crappy actions." Having reread it, I've changed my mind. I now find the book a fascinating, stimulating, somewhat sketchy account of allegations against the C.I.A., some of them plausible. But are they true? I think I have found one mistake . . . But I urge anyone interested in the C.I.A. to read The CIA's Greatest Hits and to check Zepezauer's sources. I know I will be doing so.

Other Related Material

There used to be an American journal covering covert action by American intelligence, called, appropriately enough, Covert Action or The Covert Action Information Bulletin. It was around in the 1980s. I believe it changed its name some years ago. I have only seen one issue and cannot vouch for the accuracy of anything in this periodical.

[To Be Revised]

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