This eye-opening exposé, the result of fifteen years of investigative work, uncovers the CIA's systematic efforts to suppress and censor information over several decades. An award-winning journalist, Angus Mackenzie waged and won a lawsuit against the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act and became a leading expert on questions concerning government censorship and domestic spying. In Secrets, he reveals how federal agencies--including the Department of Defense, the executive branch, and the CIA--have monitored and controlled public access to information. Mackenzie lays bare the behind-the-scenes evolution of a policy of suppression, repression, spying, and harassment.
Secrecy operations originated during the Cold War as the CIA instituted programs of domestic surveillance and agent provocateur activities. As antiwar newspapers flourished, the CIA set up an "underground newspaper" desk devoted, as Mackenzie reports, to various counterintelligence activities--from infiltrating organizations to setting up CIA-front student groups. Mackenzie also tracks the policy of requiring secrecy contracts for all federal employees who have contact with sensitive information, insuring governmental review of all their writings after leaving government employ.
Drawing from government documents and scores of interviews, many of which required intense persistence and investigative guesswork to obtain, and amassing story after story of CIA malfeasance, Mackenzie gives us the best account we have of the government's present security apparatus. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the inside secrets of government spying, censorship, and the abrogation of First Amendment rights.
Secrets The CIA's War at Home
About the Book
Reviews
"If anything is more corrupting than power, it is power exercised in secret. Angus Mackenzie's magnificently researched, lucidly written study of the CIA's outrageous threats to freedom in America over the years is a summons to vigilance to protect our democratic institutions."--Daniel Schorr"The late Angus Mackenzie has left an appropriate legacy in Secrets: The CIA's War at Home, a fitting capstone to his long career of exposing government secrecy and manipulation of public information. Secrets is a detailed, fascinating and chilling account of the agency's program of disinformation and concealment of public information against its own citizens."--Ben H. Bagdikian, author of The Media Monopoly
"Scrupulously reported, fleshed out with a fascinating cast of characters, skillfully illuminating a subject the news media seldom looked into and never got straight, Angus Mackenzie's last and best work richly deserves a posthumous Pulitzer--for nonfiction, history, or both."--Jon Swan, former senior editor, Columbia Journalism Review
"This courageous, uncompromising book belongs on the bookshelf of every serious student of journalism and the First Amendment."--Tom Goldstein, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
by David Weir
EDITORS' PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PROLOGUE: THE CIA AND THE ORIGINS OF THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT
ONE
CONSERVATIVES WORRY AND THE COVER-UP BEGINS
TWO
YOU EXPOSE US, WE SPY ON YOU
THREE
THE CIA TRIES TO CENSOR BOOKS
FOUR
BUSH PERFECTS THE COVER-UP
FIVE
CENSOR OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM CENSOR YOU
SIX
DID CONGRESS OUTLAW THIS BOOK?
SEVEN
TRYING TO HUSH THE FUSS
EIGHT
OVERCOMING THE OPPOSITION
NINE
CENSORSHIP CONFUSION
TEN
THE PENTAGON RESISTS CENSORSHIP
ELEVEN
HIDING POLITICAL SPYING
TWELVE
ONE MAN SAYS NO
THIRTEEN
CONTROL OF INFORMATION
FOURTEEN
THE CIA OPENNESS TASK FORCE
EPILOGUE: THE COLD WAR ENDS AND SECRECY SPREADS
APPENDIX: TARGETS OF DOMESTIC SPYING
NOTES
INDEX
Awards
- Best investigative journalism of 1997, Investigative Reporters and Editiors