Wise, David. The Politics of Lying: Government Deception, Secrecy, and Power. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. 615 pages.

"If information is power, the ability to distort and control information will be used more often than not to preserve and perpetuate that power." After 15 years as a Washington journalist, Wise took a detailed look at the strange world of leaks, half-truths, and outright disinformation that is still a major industry in DC. As qualified as Wise was in 1973, we now have plenty of hindsight, only to find that nothing has changed. The book ends by challenging the notion that a democratic system is possible in the context of official lying and secrecy.

With all of the literature about the CIA over the past two decades, it is easy to forget that for the first half of the Agency's history, almost nothing was in the public domain. Washington journalist David Wise changed all of that with "The Invisible Government" in 1964. CIA director John McCone called in Wise and co-author Thomas Ross to demand deletions on the basis of galleys the CIA had secretly obtained. When that didn't work, the CIA formed a special group to deal with the book and tried to secure bad reviews, even though the CIA's legal counsel had found the book "uncannily accurate." As the unofficial dean of intelligence journalists, Wise is still working on future books from his Washington office.
ISBN 0-394-71989-1

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