Spymasters: Ten CIA Officers in Their Own Words

About the Book

Spymasters is a collection of interviews revealing enlightening perspectives on the covert operations of this powerful, secretive arm of the U.S. government. Here former top-ranking CIA officials shed light on some of the most sensitive issues and practices in American foreign intelligence to date. These men disclose information about:
President Harry S. Truman's demands for a centralized intelligence agency and the stubborn resistance of James F. Byrnes, J. Edgar Hoover, and the military services
the tumultuous early stages of the National Security Council
the failed Bay of Pigs invasion
the confusion surrounding the Kennedy assassination
Khrushchev's ousting
Operation MONGOOSE
the Gulf of Tonkin incident
The interviews are especially valuable for their portrayal of the relationships between the agency's directors and the presidents during the most anxious and threatening decades of the Cold War. The CIA's successes and failures are recounted and carefully evaluated by the men who were there, often times issuing the orders.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Sidney W. Souers
Chapter 2 Allen W. Dulles
Chapter 3 Richard Md. Bissell
Chapter 4 Samuel Halpern
Chapter 5 Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr.
Chapter 6 Robert Amory, Jr.
Chapter 7 Ray S. Cline
Chapter 8 John A. McCone
Chapter 9 Richard M. Helms
Chapter 10 William E. Colby

About the Author :
Ralph E. Weber is professor of history at Marquette University and a former scholar in residence at the Central Intelligence Agency as well as the National Security Agency.

Review :
To comprehend the CIA one must understand those who made it work in its formative years. Professor Weber's singular collection of engaging, entertaining, often humorous interviews of some of its most honorable men in service during that time takes a major step toward this goal. Historians, their students, and even those with reflexive animus toward the CIA will find it of enormous value. Spymasters is a powerful oral history of the realities of Agency collection operations and their analysis. Spymasters is a collection of fascinating and insightful interviews... Provides intriguing perspectives and information about American intelligence activities during the Cold War. An exciting collection of fresh, stimulating, informed, and very readable conversations with top U.S. intelligence officials. No historian understands more about the organization of American intelligence, from its beginnings during the Revolution to the present day, than Ralph E. Weber. When leading figures in the Central Intelligence Agency appraise their own work they almost necessarily throw light on dark corners. It is hardly necessary to add that during the Cold War the policy of the United States was made not merely by the Department of State but by covert CIA actions, and that any student of the years after World War II needs to know about this essential second dimension. Ralph Weber has had the brilliant idea of finding and collecting hidden interviews with leaders of the intelligence community. He thereby renders a signal contribution to intelligence historians by making available a book not only valuable, but fascinating. An outstanding collection of oral histories.