من تصميم Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones
This “penetrating and remarkable history of the FBI” examines its operations and development from the Reconstruction era to the 9/11 attacks (M. J. Heale, author of McCarthy's Americans).
In The FBI, U.S. intelligence expert Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones presents the first comprehensive portrait of the vast, powerful, and sometimes bitterly criticized American institution. Setting the bureau’s story in the context of American history, he challenges conventional narratives—including the common misconception that traces the origin of the bureau to 1908. Instead, Jeffreys-Jones locates the FBI’s true beginnings in the 1870s, when Congress acted in response to the Ku Klux Klan campaign of terror against black American voters.
The FBI derives its character and significance from its original mission of combating domestic terrorism. The author traces the evolution of that mission into the twenty-first century, making a number of surprising observations along the way: that the role of J. Edgar Hoover has been exaggerated and the importance of attorneys general underestimated; that splitting counterintelligence between the FBI and the CIA in 1947 was a mistake; and that xenophobia impaired the bureau’s preemptive anti-terrorist powers before and after 9/11.
This “penetrating and remarkable history of the FBI” examines its operations and development from the Reconstruction era to the 9/11 attacks (M. J. Heale, author of McCarthy's Americans).
In The FBI, U.S. intelligence expert Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones presents the first comprehensive portrait of the vast, powerful, and sometimes bitterly criticized American institution. Setting the bureau’s story in the context of American history, he challenges conventional narratives—including the common misconception that traces the origin of the bureau to 1908. Instead, Jeffreys-Jones locates the FBI’s true beginnings in the 1870s, when Congress acted in response to the Ku Klux Klan campaign of terror against black American voters.
The FBI derives its character and significance from its original mission of combating domestic terrorism. The author traces the evolution of that mission into the twenty-first century, making a number of surprising observations along the way: that the role of J. Edgar Hoover has been exaggerated and the importance of attorneys general underestimated; that splitting counterintelligence between the FBI and the CIA in 1947 was a mistake; and that xenophobia impaired the bureau’s preemptive anti-terrorist powers before and after 9/11.
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October 15, 2007
Both a chronological narrative of major events and an examination of the important issues regarding the FBI's controversial operations and policies (e.g., its illegal harassment of organizations and its hiring of relatively few women and minorities), this book carries on a theme of Jeffreys-Jones's (American history, Edinburgh Univ.) "Cloak and Dollar" that intelligence agencies are playing confidence games on the public, exaggerating threats to get more resources and fewer restrictions. Using both secondary sources and FBI case files, the author touches on how American politics and society have affected the organization and the executive branch's efforts to control it. In contrast to other books highlighting FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's prominence, this one gives more emphasis to the efforts of the attorneys-general to guide and reform the bureau. Interest in racial problems and suspicion of African Americans are common threads throughout, making this book a good supplement to Kenneth O'Reilly's "Racial Matters: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 19601972". Suitable for academic and large public libraries.Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, ILCopyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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September 15, 2007
Atypically for FBI history, this is not structured around directors of the bureau. Jeffreys-Jones, a historian of American intelligence, instead embeds his survey in the political operating room given to a national criminal investigative force. He further roots the FBI, not in its inception in 1908, but in itsinvestigations of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. Having established his conviction of races centrality to FBI history, Jeffreys-Jones concisely explains the particular political conflict (a Theodore Roosevelt attack on congressional corruption) in which the Department of Justice acquired its Bureau of Investigation.No sooner born, the new detective agency provoked a liberal reaction against its civil rights violations in the Red Scare of 191920, etching a pattern of criticism and reform of FBI excesses that Jeffreys-Jones tracks to the present. The organizations extension into counterintelligence responsibilities also guides Jeffreys-Jones narrative, arriving at the FBIs less-than-stellar performance on9/11. Detached from conventions of praise or condemnation toward episodes and directors in FBI history, Jeffreys-Jones reliably recounts the FBIs history in social and bureaucratic contexts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)
