The Ghosts Of Langley

Author : John Prados
Publisher : The New Press
ISBN 13 : 1620970899
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Ghosts of Langley written by John Prados and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Ghosts of Langley offers a detail-rich, often relentless litany of CIA scandals and mini-scandals. . . [and a] prayer that the CIA learn from and publicly admit its mistakes, rather than perpetuate them in an atmosphere of denial and impunity." —The Washington Post From the writer Kai Bird calls a “wonderfully accessible historian,” the first major history of the CIA in a decade, published to tie in with the seventieth anniversary of the agency’s founding During his first visit to Langley, the CIA’s Virginia headquarters, President Donald Trump told those gathered, “I am so behind you . . . there’s nobody I respect more, ” hinting that he was going to put more CIA operations officers into the field so the CIA could smite its enemies ever more forcefully. But while Trump was making these promises, behind the scenes the CIA was still reeling from blowback from the very tactics that Trump touted—including secret overseas prisons and torture—that it had resorted to a decade earlier during President George W. Bush’s war on terror. Under the latest regime it seemed that the CIA was doomed to repeat its past failures rather than put its house in order. The Ghosts of Langley is a provocative and panoramic new history of the Central Intelligence Agency that relates the agency’s current predicament to its founding and earlier years, telling the story of the agency through the eyes of key figures in CIA history, including some of its most troubling covert actions around the world. It reveals how the agency, over seven decades, has resisted government accountability, going rogue in a series of highly questionable ventures that reach their apotheosis with the secret overseas prisons and torture programs of the war on terror. Drawing on mountains of newly declassified documents, the celebrated historian of national intelligence John Prados throws fresh light on classic agency operations from Poland to Hungary, from Indonesia to Iran-Contra, and from the Bay of Pigs to Guantánamo Bay. The halls of Langley, Prados persuasively argues, echo with the footsteps of past spymasters, to the extent that it resembles a haunted house. Indeed, every day that the militarization of the CIA increases, the agency drifts further away from classic arts of espionage and intelligence analysis—and its original mission, while pushing dangerously beyond accountability. The Ghosts of Langley will be essential reading for anyone who cares about the next phase of American history—and the CIA’s evolution—as its past informs its future and a president of impulsive character prods the agency toward new scandals and failures.

Author : John Prados
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781445667928
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Ghosts of Langley written by John Prados and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ghosts of Langley is the story of spymasters, their minions, and the ways in which the Central Intelligence Agency changed the world. These were determined men and women who believed in their mission, followed White House orders ‒ and sometimes circumvented them. It is also the story of some brave reformers who attempted to change the CIA's culture but were swept under the rug, or worse, converted to the dark side. The Ghosts of Langley uses profiles of key figures in CIA history as a lens through which to examine the history of American intelligence and the ways that actions undertaken by the CIA agents helped create the situation the nation now faces, taking into account not only covert operations, but intelligence analysis, technological discoveries and more. John Prados reaches into areas that have never before been explored in books on the agency, including how its lawyers helped define the parameters of accountability for intelligence gathering and the ways in which covert operations are conducted and revealed. Along the way, he reveals the existence of US intelligence beyond White House control.

Author : E.L. Doctorow
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1588368971
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Homer & Langley written by E.L. Doctorow and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Beautiful and haunting . . . one of literature’s most unlikely picaresques, a road novel in which the rogue heroes can’t seem to leave home.”—The Boston Globe SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Kansas City Star • Booklist Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers—the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley’s proposed dateless newspaper whose reportage will be as prophecy. Yet the epic events of the century play out in the lives of the two brothers—wars, political movements, technological advances—and even though they want nothing more than to shut out the world, history seems to pass through their cluttered house in the persons of immigrants, prostitutes, society women, government agents, gangsters, jazz musicians . . . and their housebound lives are fraught with odyssean peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves. Praise for Homer & Langley “Masterly.”—The New York Times Book Review “Doctorow paints on a sweeping historical canvas, imagining the Collyer brothers as witness to the aspirations and transgressions of 20th century America; yet this book’s most powerfully moving moments are the quiet ones, when the brothers relish a breath of cool morning air, and each other’s tragically exclusive company.”— O: The Oprah Magazine “A stately, beautiful performance with great resonance . . . What makes this novel so striking is that it joins both blindness and insight, the sensual world and the world of the mind, to tell a story about the unfolding of modern American life that we have never heard in exactly this (austere and lovely) way before.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Wondrous . . . inspired . . . darkly visionary and surprisingly funny.” —The New York Review of Books “Cunningly panoramic . . . Doctorow has packed this tale with episodes of existential wonder that cpature the brothers in all their fascinating wackiness.”—Elle

Author : John Prados
Publisher : William Morrow
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Presidents' Secret Wars written by John Prados and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 1986 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an analysis of postwar covert activities by United States intelligence agencies, documenting the early days of the CIA and its operations.

Author : Steve Coll
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141935790
Total Pages : 736 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ghost Wars written by Steve Coll and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-03-03 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The news-breaking book that has sent schockwaves through the White House, Ghost Wars is the most accurate and revealing account yet of the CIA's secret involvement in al-Qaeada's evolution. Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of bn Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.

Author : Jan Langley
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 164 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Ghostly Road Tour of Michigan's Upper Peninsula written by Jan Langley and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Jefferson Morley
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1250139104
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Ghost written by Jefferson Morley and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The best book ever written about the strangest CIA chief who ever lived." - Tim Weiner, National Book Award-winning author of Legacy of Ashes A revelatory new biography of the sinister, powerful, and paranoid man at the heart of the CIA for more than three tumultuous decades. CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton was one of the most powerful unelected officials in the United States government in the mid-20th century, a ghost of American power. From World War II to the Cold War, Angleton operated beyond the view of the public, Congress, and even the president. He unwittingly shared intelligence secrets with Soviet spy Kim Philby, a member of the notorious Cambridge spy ring. He launched mass surveillance by opening the mail of hundreds of thousands of Americans. He abetted a scheme to aid Israel’s own nuclear efforts, disregarding U.S. security. He committed perjury and obstructed the JFK assassination investigation. He oversaw a massive spying operation on the antiwar and black nationalist movements and he initiated an obsessive search for communist moles that nearly destroyed the Agency. In The Ghost, investigative reporter Jefferson Morley tells Angleton’s dramatic story, from his friendship with the poet Ezra Pound through the underground gay milieu of mid-century Washington to the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate scandal. From the agency’s MKULTRA mind-control experiments to the wars of the Mideast, Angleton wielded far more power than anyone knew. Yet during his seemingly lawless reign in the CIA, he also proved himself to be a formidable adversary to our nation’s enemies, acquiring a mythic stature within the CIA that continues to this day.

Author : John Prados
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 070061690X
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book William Colby and the CIA written by John Prados and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2009-10-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is surprising that no one previous to John Prados attempted a biography of quintessential cold warrior William Colby, because his story is in many ways also the story of the CIA. From Italy to Vietnam, to the military coup in Indonesia, to Watergate, the prosecution of Richard Helms, investigations of CIA assassination plots, and the drugging and surveillance of unwitting Americans, Colby was there, on the ground or deeply involved at headquarters.—The Guardian William E. Colby was one of the most enigmatic figures of the Cold War and a central player in the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. While publicly appearing as a calm bureaucrat, behind the scenes Colby helped orchestrate some of CIA's most controversial operations. His mysterious death even added to the aura. In the wake of new questions relating to CIA activities since 9/11—which John Prados discusses in his new preface—Colby's story provides crucial lessons for a nation that still struggles to reconcile intelligence methods with democratic principles. Prados tracks Colby's life and career from early years in the OSS to his tumultuous tenure as Director of Central Intelligence in the 1970s. Reviled by many outside the CIA for his role in Vietnam-and inside it for his cooperation with probes of the agency—Colby was cast as a scapegoat by the Ford White House during the Church and Pike congressional investigations. In addition, Prados offers fresh insights and new perspectives on Colby's involvement in the notorious Phoenix program in Vietnam and in the bloody Indonesian coup of 1965 that overthrew President Sukarno and brought General Suharto to power, as well as on the CIA's role in the 1963 assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam and on the actions of high-level CIA officials during the final demise of South Vietnam in 1975. A masterful study of a master spy, William Colby and the CIA also offers a vital and timely history of the inner workings of "the Company" for which he worked. Originally published in a cloth edition under the title Lost Crusader and retitled for this first paperback edition, William Colby and the CIA explores dilemmas of intelligence that are of renewed importance today.

Author : David Corn
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Blond Ghost written by David Corn and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on once-secret government records and interviews with over 100 ex-CIA officers, Blond Ghost offers a fascinating portrait of Ted Shackley - a real-life George Smiley. It exposes the inner workings of the CIA and details the failure of the Agency's most important covert enterprises. It reveals dozens of top-secret operations: how the CIA recruited children as agents in Vietnam: how it encouraged perjury before Congress; how it paid off a suspected drug dealer; how it tried to use sex to blackmail communist officials; how it uncovered a Soviet-bloc spy in the German parliament; and more. Washington journalist David Corn discloses that for decades, the CIA's commitment to dirty tricks and secret wars compromised its ability to gather intelligence. Blond Ghost probes the CIA's Cold War record and shows that the Agency's efforts to penetrate the Iron Curtain in the 1950s were utterly unsuccessful, with an appalling and pointless loss of life: that the CIA tried to foment rebellion in Cuba, despite intelligence asserting no uprising was likely; that the CIA foisted on its Laotian allies unrealistic military operations that led to the death and displacement of tens of thousands of Laotians; that the CIA bungled miserably in Vietnam - ignoring intelligence collection for years and then suppressing information on the corruption and ineptness of the Saigon regime. Blond Ghost tells the tale of an important, decorated, and controversial spymaster, unveils the nitty-gritty of life in the Agency, and reveals the real job the CIA did in the Cold War.

Author : Gregg Herken
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 030745634X
Total Pages : 530 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Georgetown Set written by Gregg Herken and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years after World War II, Georgetown’s leafy streets were home to an unlikely group of Cold Warriors who helped shape American strategy. This coterie of affluent, well-educated, and connected civilians guided the country, for better and worse, from the Marshall Plan through McCarthyism, Watergate, and Vietnam. The Georgetown set included Phil and Kay Graham, husband-and-wife publishers of The Washington Post; Joe and Stewart Alsop, odd-couple brothers who were among the country’s premier political pundits; Frank Wisner, a driven, manic-depressive lawyer in charge of CIA covert operations; and a host of other diplomats, spies, and scholars. Gregg Herken gives us intimate portraits of these dedicated and talented, if deeply flawed, individuals, who navigated the Cold War years (often over cocktails and dinner) with very real consequences reaching into the present day. Throughout, he illuminates the drama and fascination of that noble, congenial, curious old world,” in Joe Alsop’s words, bringing this remarkable roster of men and women not only out into the open but vividly to life.