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

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