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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.



About the Author

Jefferson Morley

Jefferson Morley's latest book, THE GHOST: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton is "the best book ever written about the strangest CIA chief whoever lived," says New York Times best-selling author Tim Weiner.Morley is an investigative reporter and author in Washington DC who has worked as an editor and writer for the Washington Post, Salon, The New Republic, Arms Control Today, and AlterNet. His rich and provocative non-fiction narratives lay bare the inner workings of the CIA with archival research and extensive interviews. THE GHOST is a companion and sequel to Morley's first book, OUR MAN IN MEXICO: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA (University of Kansas Press, 2008) , a riveting and sympathetic biography of the Agency's top man in Mexico in the revolutionary 1960s who was close friends with Angleton.Morley's ground-breaking journalism about emerging new evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is collected in the Kindle ebook, CIA & JFK: The Last Assassination Secrets.



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