Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, We Know All About You: The Story of Surveillance in Britain and America

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, We Know All About You: The Story of Surveillance in Britain and America Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 290. ISBN: 9780191066542. Joseph Michael Gratale Reading a book on the topic of surveillance would expectantly, from the standpoint of the reader, include coverage of some key theoretical interventions from the past half-century or so. Numerous references to Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Kevin Haggerty, among others, would appear throughout the a..

Through a Glass, Darkly:The CIA and Oral History

This article broaches the thorny issue of how we may study the history of the CIA by utilizing oral history interviews. This article argues that while oral history interviews impose particular demands upon the researcher, they are particularly pronounced in relation to studying the history of intelligence services. This article, nevertheless, also argues that while intelligence history and oral history each harbour their own epistemological perils and biases, pitfalls which may in fact be pronounced when they are conjoined, the relationship between them may nevertheless be a productive one. Indeed, each field may enrich the other provided we have thought carefully about the linkages between them: this article's point of departure. The first part of this article outlines some of the problems encountered in studying the CIA by relating them to the author's own work. This involved researching the CIA's role in US foreign policy towards Afghanistan since a landmark year in the history of the late Cold War, 1979 (i.e. the year the Soviet Union invaded that country). The second part of this article then considers some of the issues historians must confront when applying oral history to the study of the CIA. To bring this within the sphere of cognition of the reader the author recounts some of his own experiences interviewing CIA officers in and around Washington DC. The third part then looks at some of the contributions oral history in particular can make towards a better understanding of the history of intelligence services and the CIA

Spycatcher’s Little Sister: The Thatcher government and the Panorama affair, 1980-81

This article investigates the Thatcher government’s attempts to suppress or censor BBC reporting on secret intelligence issues in the early 1980s. It examines official reactions to a BBC intrusion into the secret world, as the team behind the long-running Panorama documentary strand sought to examine the role and accountability of Britain’s clandestine services. It also assesses the nature and extent of any collusion between the government and the BBC’s senior management and contributes to the ongoing evaluation of how the Thatcher government’s approaches to press freedom, national security, and secrecy evolved. It is also argued that the Panorama affair was an important waypoint on the journey towards the dramatic Spycatcher episode of the mid-1980s, when Margaret Thatcher’s efforts to suppress embittered former MI5 officer Peter Wright’s memoir resulted in huge public embarrassment. The key players on the government side – Thatcher and Cabinet Secretary Robert Armstrong – failed to learn the lessons of the 1980-81 affair, that it was often more dangerous to attempt suppression than to simply let events run their course

Nixon's axe man : CIA director James R. Schlesinger

This article sheds light on the stormy few months that James Schlesinger was CIA director. Schlesinger ranks as the least popular director in CIA history; indeed, he had to install a CCTV camera opposite his official portrait at Langley headquarters because of concerns it would be vandalized by disgruntled staff. Conventional wisdom dictates that he was disliked because he commissioned the “Family Jewels,” the notorious list of CIA dirty tricks which, when leaked in the mid-1970s, led to unprecedented public scrutiny of the agency. Using interviews with retired intelligence officers, spy memoirs, and recently declassified records, including Schlesinger's private papers, this article argues that the hatred went much deeper. A Nixon loyalist, Schlesinger was unpopular because he challenged the culture of the CIA and attempted to make the agency more of an obedient instrument of presidential power and policy. The so-called “Schlesinger Purge” – the controversial decision to fire nearly 7 percent of the CIA's workforce, especially from the Directorate of Operations – underscored this cultural attack. The speed and brutality of the change programme resulted in organizational miasma, leaving staff demoralized and with no means to fight back. The article also examines the consequences of the dislike toward him

“THE LONG ARM OF THE DREADED B.I.”: THE BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION AND THE ORIGINS OF THE FEDERAL SURVEILLANCE STATE

This thesis looks to analyze and understand how U.S. government officials created the first domestic intelligence agency in the United States: the Bureau of Investigation (BOI). In so doing, this paper examines how intelligence collection functioned within the U.S. prior to the creation of the BOI, what domestic and international concerns prompted the creation of a centralized institution like the BOI, and how the press, congressmen, and public opinion constrained the creation and early years of the BOI. This paper argues that from its onset, the Bureau of Investigation dedicated significant time and resources to surveilling American citizens for threats both internal and external

The Burgeoning Fissures of Dissent: Allen Dulles and the Selling of the CIA in the Aftermath of the Bay of Pigs

This article documents the efforts of Allen Dulles, upon his forced retirement from the Central Intelligence Agency in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, to promote his former agency in the face of mounting public criticism of its activities. It argues that the first wave of critical press regarding the CIA in the early 1960s was an early indication of the breakdown of the Cold War consensus – a phenomenon usually identified as occurring later in the decade in response to the escalation of the Vietnam War. Dulles, who as head of the CIA for most of the 1950s relied upon a compliant media to maintain the CIA's anonymity in public life, was confronted by an increasingly recalcitrant American media in the following decade that were beginning to question the logics of government secrecy, CIA covert action and US foreign policy more generally. In this respect the Bay of Pigs and the media scrutiny of the CIA and US foreign policy that it inspired can be regarded as an early precursor to the later emergence of adversarial journalism and a post‐consensus American culture that contested the Vietnam War and America's conduct in the Cold War more generally.Security and Global Affair