The ghosts of Langley Into the CIA's heart of darkness

Prados (Storm Over Leyte), a prolific military historian and senior fellow of the National Security Archive, unearths the ways in which the CIA, "over seven decades, has resisted-and finally decoupled itself from-government accountability." The ghosts referred to in the title are individual CIA personalities who flashed across the firmament for a few years but whose spirits continue to inspire their successors. Their greatest collective accomplishment, Prados emphasizes, has been teaching the CIA how and why to operate free of oversight. He delivers scattershot biographies of CIA luminaries-including pioneers James Jesus Angleton, Allen Dulles, and Frank Wisner and more recent names such as Leon Panetta, David Petraeus, and George Tenet-and details the bureaucratic infighting that occurred alongside the Bay of Pigs, Iran-Contra, and Iraq War debacles. Prados admirably aims to highlight positive moments in agency history, but a primary motivation is to document the means spies have employed to "escape from criticism and accountability." The book begins and ends by discussing the most current example: the tumult over torture that produced widespread media and congressional outrage. The Bush administration announced that the U.S. didn't use torture and that torture was forbidden; CIA officials insisted that torture produces priceless information and then destroyed interrogation videos. The result supports Prados's theme: the CIA remains free to torture. The American intelligence establishment's yearning to outdo its rivals, both foreign and domestic, has produced a mixture of both genuine and comic-opera horrors that make for entertaining, if dismaying, accounts such as this one. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Many people view the CIA as an institution possessing almost supernatural powers that some believe are used for good and some for evil. Prados provides the listener with a meticulously well-documented journey through the history of this legendary agency from the early days of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and "Wild Bill" Donovan through the Trump administration. Events range from the black sites of the global war on terror and the Contras in Nicaragua to Cold War plots and intrigues and the many minute details about the actual construction of the CIA campus in Langley, VA. The narration by Charles Constant is clear, and his skillful use of inflection to convey a point only adds to the experience. VERDICT The personalities explored and the exploits of the agency are viewed in a biased and negative light that may prove distracting to the listener.-Scott R. DiMarco, Mansfield Univ. of Pennsylvania © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.