The CIA and American Democracy: Third Edition - Softcover

Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300099487 ISBN 13: 9780300099485

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2003

Synopsis

This third edition of Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones’s engrossing history of the Central Intelligence Agency includes a new prologue that discusses the history of the CIA since the end of the Cold War, focusing in particular on the intelligence dimensions of the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
Praise for the earlier editions:
“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.”—Daniel Schorr
“This is one of the best short histories of the CIA in print, up-to-date and based on a wide range of sources.”—Walter Laqueur
“Judicious and reasonable. . . . 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
A brief, yet subtle and penetrating, account of the Central Intelligence Agency."—Leonard Bushkoff, Christian Science Monitor
"Subtle and crisply written. . . . A book remarkable for its clarity and lack of bias."—William W. Powers, Jr., International Herald Tribune, Paris

About this title

About the Author:

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh and author of Peace Now! American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War (ISBN 0 300 08920 1, pb. [pound]12.50*) and Cloak and Dollar (ISBN 0 300 07474 3, [pound]22.50*), has written extensively on the subject of espionage.

From 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.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0300099487
• ISBN 13: 9780300099485
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 368