The U.S. Intelligence Community

by Jeffrey T. Richelson

Fourth Edition
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999, 526 pp. 
ISBN 0-8133-6893-6

[The U.S. Intelligence Community]  [Praise for The U.S. Intelligence Community] [About the Author]


The U.S. Intelligence Community

The United States spends over $25 billion a year assimilating and monitoring security-related information around the world. Every hour of every day reconnaissance satellites, radar bases, signals intelligence systems, aircraft, vessels, and clandestine agents are marshaled in a prodigious effort to read the pulse of global politics and foreign enterprises.

The U.S. Intelligence Community is the first comprehensive portrait of the labyrinth of U.S. intelligence-gathering organizations whose true dimensions remain shrouded in secrecy. Through the Freedom of Information Act, incisive interviews, and scrupulous research, Jeffrey Richelson has outlined the internal structure of the 30-odd organizations that comprise the U.S. Intelligence Community, and unveils a world known to most of us merely in terms of moles, spies, and spooks.

Richelson charts the evolution of the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence agencies and reveals the interrelationships between today's multifarious and awesomely sophisticated intelligence complexes. How are national security agendas born and carried out? What are the hierarchies and lines of power that shape and support U.S. intelligence network? Who manages the intelligence-collecting activities, and who hands down the orders for overt or overt involvement? More lucidly and more extensively than any single volume before, The U.S. Intelligence Community uncovers what intelligence is, who it is done by, and how it is perpetrated, interpreted, and used.


Praise for The U.S. Intelligence Community

"Fast as the CIA changes, Jeff Richelson is there, with excellent sources and a solid grasp of the official terrain. This edition of The U.S. Intelligence Community is the best yet, offering a detailed picture of the mosaic of spy agencies, which is in many respects completely different today than in 1989, when Richelson last profiled the field. The U.S. Intelligence Community will be vital for any reader who wants to understand the evolution of American Intelligence in the post-Cold War world."
--John Prados, author of The Soviet Estimate and Presidents' Secret Wars

"The U.S. Intelligence Community is essential reading for all who wish to know what lies behind the vast and complex spy world. Jeffrey Richelson does a magnificent job of fitting together the myriad pieces of the U.S. espionage puzzle."
--James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace

"Jeffrey Richelson's new edition is still the best, most comprehensive overview of U.S. intelligence. Required reading for anyone interested in what goes on behind America's cloaks and daggers."
--David Wise, author of Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million

"The authoritative survey of the American cloak-and dagger establishment."
--Washington Post Book World

"The authoritative bible on the modern American intelligence establishment."
--Bob Woodward , author of Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987

"This book should be within easy reach of anyone casually or seriously interested in American Intelligence."
--Seymour M. Hersh, author of The Target is Destroyed


About the Author

Jeffrey T. Richelson is a Senior Fellow of the National Security Archive and the author of many books on intelligence including America's Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National Security, America's Secret Eyes in Space, A Century of Spies, and Sword and Shield: The Soviet Intelligence and Security Apparatus.


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