Wise, David and Ross, Thomas B. The Espionage Establishment. New York: Random House, 1967. 309 pages.

Their first book was "The U-2 Affair" in 1962, their second was the comprehensive and critical "Invisible Government" in 1964, and this was the third and last by these co-authors. It deals primarily with spying by and between the intelligence services of the USSR, China, Britain, and the U.S. While the preceding book dealt with more with U.S. interventions in the Third World, this one is concerned with tradecraft and counter- intelligence, "illegals" and surveillance.

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 unavailable

Extract the names from this source

Back to search page