Spooks: The Haunting of America-The Private Use of Secret Agents

by Jim Hougan

Overview

“Probably the most eye-opening and engrossing exposé to date of the bizarre ‘power games’ played by multinational corporations and tycoons.” —Publishers Weekly
 
A classic of investigative reporting, Spooks is a treasure trove of who-shot-who research on the metastasis of the US intelligence community, whose practices and personnel have engulfed the larger society. Teeming with tales of wiremen, hitmen, and mobsters; crooked politicians and corrupt cops going about their business of regime-change, union-busting, wiretapping, money laundering, and industrial espionage, read about:
• Richard Nixon’s “Mission Impossible” war on Aristotle Onassis
• Not-so-deep-fake porno films starring the CIA’s enemies
• The Robert Vesco heist, targeting billions in numbered Swiss accounts
• Robert Maheu and the kidnapping of billionaire Howard Hughes
• The murder-for-hire of a Columbia University professor
• Bobby Kennedy’s archipelago of private intelligence agencies—Intertel and the “Five I’s”
• “The Friendly Ghost” and Nixon’s secret account in the offshore Castle Bank & Trust

“One of the best non-fiction books of the year, a monument of fourth-level research and fact-searching.” —Los Angeles Times

“This book will curl your hair with its revelations and the names it names. A landmark book in its field of investigative reporting.” —John Barkham Reviews

“Hougan is a superb storyteller and the pages teem with unforgettable characters. Admirable.” —The Washington Post

“Hougan is exhilarating on the mystique of spooks.” —The New York Review of Book

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504075268
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	04/26/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	426
Sales rank:	291,464
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Jim Hougan is an award-winning journalist, a former Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine, and the author of two investigative works of nonfiction: Spooks and Secret Agenda. Writing with his wife under the pseudonym John Case, he has published six thrillers, including New York Times bestsellers such as The Genesis Code and The First Horseman. Executive producer of the Emmy Award–winning Confessions of a Dangerous Man, Hougan worked with Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes and has produced investigative documentaries about the Jonestown massacre, the Russian Mafia, among other topics.

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

I Sionics, Quantum & Mac 15

II The Pulp Dossier 37

III The Paladins 46

IV "Is That You, Boinie?" 75

V Assassination, Inc. 112

VI The World of Bobby V. 125

VII "Ich Bin Ein Costa Rican!" 152

VIII Death of a Detective 199

IX The Master Spook 212

X Howard's Man 253

XI Intertel 311

XII It Started with the Prince of Phones, Perhaps 347

XIII Caviar's Locusts 363

Index 385

Acknowledgments 411

About the Author 413