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Jim Hougan

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Spooks: The Haunting of America—The Private Use of Secret Agents Kindle Edition

by Jim Hougan (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.9 29 ratings

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“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

Editorial Reviews

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.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09XWPXVHR
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (April 26, 2022)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 26, 2022
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4008 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 507 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #491,661 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #175 in History of Military Special Forces
- #184 in Corruption & Misconduct in Politics
- #201 in National & International Security (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4.9 29 ratings

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Jill Lanford

HIDE AND KEEP, AFTER VIEWING 2018 NEWS - REVIEW!

Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2018

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Never lend this book out! I did and find myself a three time purchaser. I would Highly recommend Mr. Hougan's eye-opener to my fellow Baby Boomer Generation. Especially if you'd like to find out how we ended up where we are in 2018. History not only repeats it's self, sorry for the cliche' but Life is a Light Bulb in my experience, so hopefully some Xer's and Millenials will enjoy reading about Watergate, Howard Huges and his Mormon Mafia (proving you can be too rich and thin) and what happens when the government teaches you how to spy and as faithful employee you put in 20-30 years and have all that experience and many more years to live........"What do you do with that particular skillset? Read this book and Find OUT

5 people found this helpful

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Eric

and the people they hated, and more

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2016

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Very interesting book on many levels... how the letter agencies work behind the scenes, who employs retired agents and what they do insights on political leaders such as Kennedy, and the people they hated, and more. Well worth the price to read this one if you have an interest in the subject.

One person found this helpful

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jon beams

A great book from the 1980s if you want to know ...

Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2017

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A great book from the 1980s if you want to know the truth about the cia, military intelligence and what lurks down the street or over your head.

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Earth that Was

Well written, solidly researched and ...entertaining

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2009

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Jim Hougan's 'Spooks' provides a well written, informative and indeed entertaining exploration of the world of "spooks". America, Hougan maintains, is "haunted" not by ethereal spooks from beyond the grave but the flesh and blood variety, from the underworld where power politics, government, big business and organised crime merge.

Hougan's subtitle addresses the 'private' use of spies. 'Private' is meant to be distinct from 'public' sector spy agencies' like the CIA, FBI etc. Of course, as Hougan demonstrates, telling 'private' from the 'public' in the spookdom is more séance than science. It is this nether region, contrary to his subtitle, that is the real focus of Hougan's book. Apart from Howard Hughes' use of detectives to tail prospective girlfriends, Hougan doesn't really spend any time on "purely private" espionage, for example, industrial espionage or marital snooping.

Hougan, who is also the author of "Secret Agenda", one of the key books of the Watergate revisionist movement, spent four years investigating and interviewing real spooks. So this is real journalism, indeed history, and not just a kennel of pet conspiracy theories.

Of course, and I am sure Hougan would agree, disentangling threads, most of which were deliberately hidden or obscured to begin with, is inherently difficult and error prone. This is perhaps the real reason why mainstream scholars reflexively reject 'conspiracy theories'. To prove or disprove them, and to have all that verified, requires too much work and there is a high probability that the investigator will return nothing more than questions. This is hardly an ideal outcome for the investigator but it is, after all, what the instigator had in mind.

Spooks, published in 197x, is constructed like a good spy novel. Hougan has since retired from nonfiction and has become a spy novelist. Each chapter is a 'case study' and each case is linked to subsequent chapters.

What emerges is a cobweb. Hougan shows how the threads of (say) Watergate link back to Howard Hughes. How the battle for the control of the Hughes empire links to the mafia, Las Vegas and the campaign to kill Castro. And thus Kennedy. The Kennedys used private spooks to expose Hoffa. And the Kennedy clan's main spook supplier was Inter-Tel, a private investigation agency staffed by enough ex-NSA, FBI and CIA personnel to fight a secret war. One of the original Watergate plumbers proposed to build a "Republican Inter-tel" to give their black bag operations the cover of 'plausible deniability'. Had this advice been taken Watergate would not even be a word in the dictionary. Inter-tel was itself owned by a Bahamas based gambling, resort and "dirty money" operations. Here Robert Vesco , IOS and the world of financial pirates converges with the world of spooks.

There are some interesting side threads too. That the CIA and mafia collaborated to get Castro is well known. I was surprised to learn that the whole operation may have been compromised with some gangsters cutting deals with Castro, whilst other hoods seem to have been motivated by genuine patriotism. (And why not?) Hougan also explores the private (or was it public?) secret war against Onassis in the late 1950s. Nixon, again was a key player.

Hougan leaves his big picture theorizing to the end. He details the crossover between oil interests and national security. Exactly who was using who is hard to say. This mutual entanglement, Hougan reasons, shaped US Middle East policy, with the exception of Israel. His analysis here is fascinating in the light of recent events, even when wrong. Hougan, writing in the 1970s, believed pro-Arab pro-oil interests in the foreign policy establishment had just decisively won out over rival pro-Israel interests. Interestingly, this is time usually given for the origin of "the neocons". Perhaps their growth was a reaction.

Whilst in "theorizing" mode, Hougan also details the history of "the prince of phones" Sosthenes Behn, founder of IT&T and the spook / dirty money connections in the 1970's Lockheed scandals. In hindsight, this scandal didn't seem to impact Lockheed's subsequent fortunes much at all. And, as any reader of 'Rolling Stone' knows, Lockheed has it's own "neocon" connections too.

Threaded through Spooks there is some of Hougan himself too. A left of center writer of the Vietnik era, elsewhere he has said he thought of Nixon, like many did at the time, as a nazi, Hougan, during his years of hack work, manages to build unlikely friendships, if only of the "drinking buddy" kind, with some of his spook subjects. I get the impression those drinking sessions may have been memorable.

It is a shame Spooks has not had a sequel to cover subsequent decades. Of course the spooks and their sponsors are still out there.

21 people found this helpful

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Illinois Golfer

Great book. Enjoyed reading the chapter on my former ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2016

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Great book. Enjoyed reading the chapter on my former company - INTERTEL.

Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2016

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An absolute necessity.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Awesome read; it's and oldie but a goodie

Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2017

Awesome read; it's and oldie but a goodie! I highly recommend it for anyone who ever wondered about the nefarious goings-on by our tax-payer-funded goon-squad government agents!

2 people found this helpful

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Laura Brose

A jaded look at the intersection of money and power in society

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2014

This is a jaded look at the misuse of government power and issues of surveillance and technology in society from the 1960s and 1970s which is just as relevant in today's climate of admitted surveillance of private citizens in America by the NSA. Many of the same issues are raised, and it is a scary and sobering thought that there has been no progress in addressing the human and societal consequences of corporate and government espionage though the technology and the means for such espionage have been greatly improved and extended.

5 people found this helpful

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