Reading List on Intelligence Agencies & Political Repression

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Intelligence Networks & Policy Makers

Iran-Contragate

The Politics of Covert Action

Intelligence Networks & Policy Makers

• The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade. Alfred W. McCoy, 1991, Lawrence Hill Books. The author unravels the CIA's long-standing links to drug-running networks used as allies during counterinsurgency operations. McCoy's first version of this book was published during the Vietnam War and dealt only with Southeast Asia. Now McCoy traces CIA drug-tainted political operations back to post-war France where our government secretly funded anti-communist political parties and labor unions and a group of drug smugglers who helped break a dockworkers strike.
• The Terrorism Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape View of Terror. Edward Herman & Gerry O'Sullivan, 1990, Pantheon. A thorough discussion of how the concept and reality of terrorism has been packaged and manipulated for to promote authoritarian and rightist political ideology.
• The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA. Jonathan Kwitny, 1987, W. W. Norton. Wall Street Journal reporter Kwitny unravels the mystery of the Nugan Hand Bank scandal.
• The Puzzle Palace-A Report on America's Most Secret Agency. James Bamford, 1982, Houghton Mifflin. Details history, bureaucracy and scope of activities of the National Security Agency.
• Secret Contenders: The Myth of Cold War Counterintelligence. Melvin Beck, 1984, Sheriden Square Press. A devastating critique that details the waste and lunacy of some CIA clandestine operations and concludes that U.S. citizens are ultimately the real target of CIA propaganda campaigns.
• Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World. Gregory F. Treverton, Basic Books 1987. A critical reassessment of covert operations as a tool of U.S. foreign policy.
• Intelligence Requirements for the 1990's: Collection, Analysis, Counterintelligence, and Covert Action. Roy Godson, ed., Lexington Books/D.C. Heath. Edited by one of the most zealous analysts of the intelligence empire, this collection of essays provides a blueprint for creating the U.S. police state. A shopping list for the guardians of post-Constitutional America. Sequel to the popular Intelligence Requirements for the 1980's series of books.
• The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Victor Marchetti and John Marks, 1980, Dell Books. Classic overview of the CIA and intelligence operations; updated to include deletions by the CIA. (Marchetti now works in alliances with the LaRouchians and other quasi-Nazi groups.)
• Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park and the Korean Scandal. Robert Boettcher with Gordon L. Freedman, 1980, Holt, Rinehart & Wilson. Moon's links to the Korean CIA and other assorted dirty linen is hung out in this documented expose. Shows Moon as a power-hungry anti-democratic theocrat.
• Rollback: Right-wing Power in U.S. Foreign Policy. Thomas Bodenheimer & Robert Gould, 1989, South End Press. A look at the confrontational rightist political agenda that fuels U.S. militarism. In some bookstores or order it by calling 1-800-533-8478.
• The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies. Morton Halperin et al, 1978, Penguin Books. (Available from the American Civil Liberties Union/Center for National Security Studies, 122 Maryland Ave. NE, Washington, DC 20002.) Overview of efforts to spy and disrupt by the CIA, FBI, NSA, IRS and grand juries.
• The Armies of Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Empire. William R. Corson, 1977, The Dial Press. A classic study.
• A World of Secrets-the Uses and Limits of Intelligence. Walter Laquer, 1985, The 20th Century Fund. How foreign intelligence is used and misused; and what can be done as seen by mainstream critics.

Iran-Contragate

• Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection. Leslie Cockburn, 1987, Atlantic Monthly Press. This account by a CBS News correspondent is currently the best-documented expose on Iran-Contragate.
• The Culture of Terrorism. Noam Chomsky, 1978, South End Press. A brilliant polemic which argues that behind Iran-Contragate is a relentless drive for world power by the U.S. government. In some bookstores or order it by calling 1-800-533-8478.
• The Iran Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era. Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott and Jane Hunter, 1987, South End Press. Hunter's section on the Israeli intelligence connection is compelling, but some of the other material drifts into conspiracy-minded conclusions not entirely supported with facts. Still, a good overview of Iran-Contragate covert action as not an isolated incident but a logical outcome of institutionalized U.S. covert action policy. In some bookstores or order it by calling 1-800-533-8478.
• The Soft War: The Uses and Abuses of U.S. Economic Aid in Central America. Tom Barry and Deb Preusch, 1988, Grove Press. These researchers from the Albuquerque-based Resource Center have compiled a well-documented critique of the uses of so-called humanitarian aid in Central America.
• Packaging the Contras: A Case of CIA Disinformation. Edgar Chamorro, 1987, Institute for Media Analysis. ($5.00 +1.00 S/H to 145 W. 4th St., N.Y., N.Y. 10012) A former Contra leader reveals how the CIA created the image of the Contras as the "democratic alternative."

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