About this item
This is the story of surveillance in Britain and the United States, from the detective agencies of the late nineteenth century to 'wikileaks' and CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden in the twenty-first. Written by prize-winning historian and intelligence expert Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, it is the first full overview of its kind.Delving into the roles of credit agencies, private detectives, and phone-hacking journalists as well as agencies like the FBI and NSA in the USA and GCHQ and MI5 in the UK, Jeffreys-Jones highlights malpractices such as the blacklist and illegal electronic interceptions. He demonstrates that several presidents - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon - conducted various forms of political surveillance, and also how British agencies have been under a constant cloud of suspicion for similar reasons.
About the Author
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones's latest book is "The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler's Agents, the FBI, and the Case that Stirred the Nation" (Georgetown University Press, October 2020) . He was born in Carmarthen in Wales and was a postdoc at Harvard after obtaining his Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He has been an anti-apartheid campaigner and radio and TV broadcaster. President of the Scottish Association for the Study of America and the author of 16 books, he writes about US social and intelligence history. His book "The American Left: Its Impact on Politics and Society since 1900" (Edinburgh and Oxford University Presses) was the winner of the Neustadt Prize for the best UK book on US politics published in 2013.Chatham House address, "Should a Government Spy on its Citizens? ", 3 April 2017, https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/should-government-spy-its-citizens
