Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2016
368 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
"A fascinating, readable work." - Robert Wallace, coauthor of Spycraft and The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
Spies are supposed to keep quiet, never betraying their agents or discussing their operations. Somehow, this doesn't apply to the CIA, whose former officers have written memoirs commanding huge advances and attracting enormous publicity. As an intelligence service dependent on its ability to protect sensitive information, however, it's no surprise that the CIA has fought back.
In Company Confessions, award-winning author Christopher Moran digs deep into this tumultuous relationship between the CIA and former agents who try to go public about their careers. He delves into the motivations of spies like CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked by the Bush White House and who reportedly received $2.5 million for her book Fair Game, and exposes the politics and practices of the CIA and its Publications Review Board, including breaking into publishing houses and secretly authorizing pro-agency "memoirs."
Drawing on interviews; the private correspondence of such legendary spies as Allen Dulles, William Colby, and Richard Helms; and declassified CIA files, Company Confessions examines why America's spies are so willing to share their stories, the damage inflicted when they leak the nation's secrets, and the fine line between censorship on the grounds of security and censorship for the sake of reputation.
"Starred Review. [A] delightful account of true spy stories and the agency's often-bizarre responses to them... In Moran's hands, the CIA's 60-year battle to rein in ex-employees becomes an irresistible niche history that mixes cruelty with tragicomic wackiness." – Publishers Weekly
"[A] lively, absorbing investigation... This scrupulously researched narrative will appeal to specialists and general readers alike, who will be fascinated by how agents' memoirs fashion public perception of national security and the CIA itself." - Library Journal
"A surprisingly cracking read. An informative historical summation of CIA memoirs with enough skulduggery to entertain casual readers." – Kirkus
"Christopher Moran does an outstanding job of capturing and defining the truth that CIA's Publications Review Board would rather you just not know." - Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (Ret.), New York Times bestselling author of Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan
"A fascinating, readable work that explores America's never-ending efforts to balance necessary government secrecy with the public's right to know." - Robert Wallace, coauthor of Spycraft and The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
"Despite frequent official disapproval, CIA staff have written more memoirs than members of any other secret intelligence agency in world history. Christopher Moran's brilliant account of their revelations and tribulations is both readable and revealing." - Christopher Andrew, author of Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5
"A tantalizing discussion of the confusion and frustrations behind CIA's prepublication review process." - Mark Zaid, United States national security attorney
This information about Company Confessions was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Christopher Moran is an associate professor of U.S. national security at the University of Warwick in England. He is the award-winning author of Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain and has held fellowships at the British Academy, the Library of Congress, and Oxford University.
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