American Spy or The Dismal Science

American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond

Author: E Howard Hunt

Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon: His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more, His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA, The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroad, The motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished, The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies, A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in, Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up. Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate.

Publishers Weekly

Career spy, Watergate conspirator and prolific suspense novelist Hunt (Guilty Knowledge) collaborated with journalist Aunapu (Without a Trace) on this breezy, unrepentant memoir. Hunt (who died recently at 88) recalls the highlights of a long career, from WWII service with the fabled Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—predecessor of the CIA—to a career with the agency itself and a stint as a consultant to the Nixon White House. As a White House operative, Hunt specialized in dirty tricks and break-ins—including the Democratic National Committee's headquarters—and served 33 months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. He claims to have been a magnet for women, especially models, and shamelessly drops the names of the rich and powerful. He also played a key role in the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation. As for his role in Watergate, he blames his "bulldog loyalty" and concedes only that he and his fellow conspirators did "the wrong things for the right reasons." In a postscript, Hunt urges reforming the beleaguered CIA in the image of the wartime OSS and its "daring amateurs." Hunt's nostalgic memoir breaks scant new ground in an already crowded field. (Apr.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Table of Contents:

Foreword   William F. Buckley Jr.     ix
Introduction     1
World War II     3
OSS     8
China Station     21
The End of War     28
The Marshall Plan     34
The CIA     44
Mexico     52
The Balkans and Operation PB/Success     68
Japan     85
"Play It Again, Sam"     97
Bay of Pigs     113
The Assassination of President Kennedy     126
The Great Propaganda Machine     148
Inside the White House     173
Gemstone     191
Colson and McCord     198
Watergate     210
Watergate Redux     227
Fallout     236
Disaster Strikes Twice     252
After the Crash     269
Sentencing     279
The Web Unweaves     294
The Memo Bites Back     311
The Problem with Langley     323
Index     333

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The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community

Author: Stephen A Marglin

See "Stephen Marglin on the Future of Capitalism" at FORA.tv.

Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous, self-interested, and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state. However, as Stephen Marglin argues, market relationships erode community. In the past, for example, when a farm family experienced a setback—say the barn burned down—neighbors pitched in. Now a farmer whose barn burns down turns, not to his neighbors, but to his insurance company. Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources than a community barn raising, but the deep social and human ties that are constitutive of community are weakened by the shift from reciprocity to market relations.

Marglin dissects the ways in which the foundational assumptions of economics justify a world in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume. Over the last four centuries, this economic ideology has become the dominant ideology in much of the world. Marglin presents an account of how this happened and an argument for righting the imbalance in our lives that this ideology has fostered.

Danny Lang - Irish Times

Marglin's demonstration of the relationship between mainstream economics and the destruction of communities is seductive, convincing, and well documented.

Tikkun

Stephen Marglin makes a powerful and convincing argument for how thinking like an economist undermines community. Suddenly, the choices of those who reject global capitalism seem far more reasonable, because the globalization of capital brings with it the economistic thinking that destroys local values, forcing us to choose between material prosperity and spiritual health. Yet this tension is made invisible by a pseudo-universal ideology about human nature. Marglin thus provides a persuasive foundation for the Politics of Meaning.