Wise, David and Ross, Thomas B. The Invisible Government. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. Reprint of the 1964 Random House edition. 379 pages.

With chapters on the Bay of Pigs, Burma, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, and Guatemala, as well as information on Iran, Egypt, Costa Rica, and even the Gehlen Org, this 1964 book was amazingly comprehensive about U.S. covert activities. Other chapters include the NSA, DIA, covert shortwave radio, and electronic spying. Until these revelations, literature concerning the CIA consisted only of puff-piece memoirs and anecdotes by ethically- myopic, compartmented former agents. It took too long for American journalism to discover that they didn't have the story.

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 0-394-71993-X

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