3. Bibliography

3.2. The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence

Author:  Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks

Publisher:  Dell Publishing Company

Copyright Dates: 1974

Number of Pages:  397, plus index and Appendix: Bissell Philosophy (Minutes of the 1968 "Bissell Meeting" at the Council on Foreign Relations)

Written by a former CIA senior official and an ex-State Department Intelligence expert, this is the book that the CIA and the Nixon administration did not want published. They went to court before publication to try to suppress it and partially succeeded.  The portions that the CIA wanted to delete are shown in bold and the places where information was removed are noted.

The book includes historical information about the CIA and detailed accounts of many of the CIA's post World War II covert activities.

In spite of its historic interest and potentially exciting content, this book reads much more like a history text book than a novel. Most of the secret plots revealed have been published elsewhere by now.  The only story that I found interesting was that of the CIA's training Tibetan guerrillas in Colorado in the 1950's.  The plan was that they would be returned to Tibet to lead an insurgency against the Communist Chinese.