The Ghost

October 1, 2017

James Jesus Angleton (1917-87) was a controversial figure within the American intelligence community, and even has his own entry on the CIA Library website. Journalist Morely (Our Man in Mexico), who has a background of exposing government secrets, here examines how this conservative Yale University student reached the highest echelons of U.S. counterintelligence, started secret mail-opening and domestic surveillance operations against various groups, and may have helped Israel establish its nuclear weapons program. Angleton's exhaustive hunt for Soviet deep penetration agents in the CIA did real damage to the organization. What's fascinating but sad is how his intellectual personality became paranoid and obsessive, leading to isolation and loneliness--similar to what happened to Richard Nixon. Over everything hangs the CIA's knowledge of and possible involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City, before John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963. This book can be read in conjunction with the author's earlier work. Well documented with end notes. VERDICT Easy to read and understand; for those interested in U.S. intelligence history and the Kennedy assassination.--Daniel Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2017
He was famously described as a combination of Machiavelli, Svengali, and Iago, an unlikely portrayal for the thin, owlish, patrician figure more suitably found on a college campus than lurking in the smoggy, foggy depths of international clandestine operations. Yet from the moment he joined the CIA, at its inception, in 1947, James Jesus Angleton was in his element. Exceedingly intelligent, extraordinarily driven, Angleton developed an almost preternatural paranoia by the end of his counterintelligence career. While today's conservative pundits bandy about the term shadow government, Angleton embodied the concept in real life as he quietly amassed unassailable power behind the scenes of key twentieth-century events, from the creation of Israel to JFK's assassination to the 1960s antiwar protests to the Watergate scandals. Angleton's extensive intelligence operation often circumvented national laws and callously disregarded civil rights, eventually leading him to resign from the CIA in disgrace. Serving up a suitably intriguing profile of this quintessential spy, journalist Morley's (Snow-Storm in August, 2012) mosaiclike biography painstakingly pieces together the complex webs of subterfuge and deception Angleton created during his storied career.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)