Bøger af Richard Gid Powers

"Who are Secret Agent Gals, Hilla Rebay and Peggy Guggenheim? Just two beautiful real-life socialite art collector ladies who later founded the Guggenheim Museum, but first answered the call of duty, joined the FBI, and pretty much won World War II all by themselves. They steal Hitler's and Stalin's mojos and use a secret weapon brewed in St. Louis to put down the Great Indian Uprising. (Of course, you remember that, right?) They save J. Edgar Hoover and his handsome sidekick Clyde Tolson from treasonous agents and The Pigeon who want to take over the FBI and run all the Post Toastiesª Junior G-Men Clubs. The Gals team up with Secret Agent X-9, Presidential Agent 103, Chief Shitting Bull, James Bonds' father Jonquil "Junk" Bond, the Bama Jamma of the Brooklyn Girls Roller Derby Team, the King and Queen of England and their corgis, and the FBI's bevy of beautiful Secret Agent Super Sluts-whew, what a list!-to uncover a secret so awful, so terrible, it shouldn't even be hinted at on the back cover of a book"--

Drawing on previously unknown personal documents, thousands of FBI files, interviews with former agents, and the presidential papers of nine administrations, Powers reveals a man of inalterable ideals and convictions who clung to a private vision of an orderly, traditional America, and who vowed to crush anyone who threatened it.

The American anticommunist movement has been viewed as a product of right-wing hysteria that deeply scarred American society and institutions. This book restores the struggle against communism to its place in American life.

The FBI that failed on 9/11 is the creation and captive of its spectacular and controversial past. Its original mission -- the investigation and prosecution of only the most serious crimes against the United States -- was forsaken almost from the beginning. This abandonment of purpose has been accompanied by a long history of political pressure, both from within and without. This sorry and scandal-ridden path culminated in a twenty-five-year run-up to 9/11 in which predictable and preventable lapses became hopelessly entrenched.In Broken, Richard Gid Powers, one of the country's leading historians of national security and law enforcement, offers a definitive and provocative study of the Bureau from its origins to the present. Combing through the archives, and interviewing more than 100 past and current agents, he unearths stories behind some of the most famous cases and characters in our history. Powers, who attended new-agent training classes at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, was granted access to restricted FBI facilities. His research included visits to the scenes of controversial FBI cases across the country, including Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Indian reservation at Pine Ridge.Powers did not set out to write a muckraking attack, and he gives the Bureau its due for many triumphs. Nonetheless, his story features an astonishing range of political abuses, misdirected investigations, skewed priorities, and sheer intelligence failures.From the Bureau's outrageous participation in the anticommunist Palmer Raids and their successors, to its abuses of civil liberties during the Cold War, to its flagrant acts of domestic political interference during the civil rights era, it has often seemed to be consumed by feuds with such opponents as Harry Truman, Martin Luther King Jr., the Kennedys, and Bill Clinton. With the discovery of turncoat spies within its own ranks, and with the severe intelligence failures of 9/11, the Bureau has finally proven itself incapable of spotting the true enemies of our country within our borders.Richard Powers's account is a searing indictment of failure, yet it is also strong evidence that the Bureau could be returned to its original mission of detecting the most serious crimes against the United States: terrorism, political corruption, corporate crime, and organized crime. Readers must decide for themselves whether America should mend it or end it.