Company Confessions: The CIA, Secrecy and Memoir Writing

(Hardback)

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Description

Spies are supposed to keep quiet, never betraying their agents or discussing their operations. Somehow this doesn't apply to the CIA, which is routinely asked to vet fifty or so books by former officers every month. Many of these memoirs command huge advances and attract enormous publicity. Company Confessions also reveals the steps taken by the agency to counter such leaks - including breaking into publishing houses to steal manuscripts, putting authors on trial and creating a secret programme of authorised 'memoirs' to repair the reputational damage. Based on interviews, private correspondence and secret files, Christopher Moran examines why America's spies are so happy to spill the beans on the service, and looks at the damage done when they leak America's secrets.

Reviews

'Despite frequent official disapproval, CIA staff have written more memoirs than members of any other secret intelligence agency in world history. Christopher Moran's brilliant account of their revelations and tribulations is both readable and revealing.' - Christopher Andrew; 'Moran interweaves colorful personalities, conflicting politics and inconsistent practices in narratives of what the US government has and has not permitted CIA authors to publish about their secret profession. A fascinating, readable work that explores America's never-ending efforts to balance necessary government secrecy with the public's right to know.' - Robert Wallace, co-author of Spycraft and The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception

Author Bio

Christopher Moran is Assistant Professor of US National Security at the University of Warwick and was a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, Washington DC, in 2011. His book Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain won the 2014 St Ermin's Hotel Intelligence Book of the Year.