The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton

CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton was one of the most powerful unelected officials in the United States government in the mid-20th century, a ghost of American power. From World War II to the Cold War, Angleton operated beyond the view of the public, Congress, and even the president. He unwittingly shared intelligence secrets with Soviet spy Kim Philby, a member of the notorious Cambridge spy ring. He launched mass surveillance by opening the mail of hundreds of thousands of Americans. He abetted a scheme to aid Israel’s own nuclear efforts, disregarding U.S. security. He committed perjury and obstructed the JFK assassination investigation. He oversaw a massive spying operation on the antiwar and black nationalist movements and he initiated an obsessive search for communist moles that nearly destroyed the Agency.

In The Ghost, investigative reporter Jefferson Morley tells Angleton’s dramatic story, from his friendship with the poet Ezra Pound through the underground gay milieu of mid-century Washington to the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate scandal. From the agency’s MKULTRA mind-control experiments to the wars of the Mideast, Angleton wielded far more power than anyone knew. Yet during his seemingly lawless reign in the CIA, he also proved himself to be a formidable adversary to our nation’s enemies, acquiring a mythic stature within the CIA that continues to this day.

CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files
As the editor of JFKFacts.org, a website devoted to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jefferson Morley is asked, "So who killed JFK? What's your theory?"

Morley, a former reporter for the Washington Post and author of Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA, invariably disappoints. "I don't know. It's too early to tell."

Fifty-plus years after JFK's death, this answer is laughable but serious. The JFK story remains unsettled well into the 21st century, no matter what the various conspiracy and anti-conspiracy theorists may proclaim. Indeed, the complex reality of how a president of the United States came to be gunned down on a sunny day, and no one lost his liberty - or his job - continues to live and grow in popular memory.

This is a book that reveals deceit and deception on the part of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination and why the CIA should reveal to the American people what it is still keeping secret.

Morley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK Investigation

In 2003 journalist Jefferson Morley sued the Central Intelligence Agency. He sought public release of the files of a deceased undercover officer who was involved in the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In Morley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK Investigation, Morley tells the story of the epic 16-year long legal saga that followed.

With mordant humor and keen insight, Morley recounts how he and attorney Jim Lesar, a veteran litigator specializing in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), did battle with teams of high-powered Justice Department lawyers in federal court — and scored repeated victories. Yet success led them to a final fatal showdown with D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Morley's unprecedented lawsuit sought the files of George Joannides, a decorated career CIA officer, who ran psychological warfare operations out of Miami and New Orleans in 1963. Morley's on-the-record interviews revealed the CIA man had funded an anti-Castro Cuban student group that publicized the pro-Cuba politics of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who would be accused of killing JFK on November 22, 1963.

Morley v. CIA not only confirmed the agency's financial support for Oswald's Cuban antagonists in 1963. It also revealed a deeper and more disturbing story — how Joannides and the CIA shaped first-day coverage of Kennedy's assassination via a psychological warfare project known by the code name of AMSPELL. In short, Joannides had used his student agents to link Oswald to Castro's Cuba, while concealing the hidden hand of the Agency. As Morley uncovered in his lawsuit, the CIA later honored Joannides with its Career Intelligence Medal.

Scorpions' Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate

Scorpions' Dance by intelligence expert and investigative journalist Jefferson Morley reveals the Watergate scandal in a completely new light: as the culmination of a concealed, deadly power struggle between President Richard Nixon and CIA Director Richard Helms.

Nixon and Helms went back decades; both were 1950s Cold Warriors, and both knew secrets about the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba as well as off-the-books American government and CIA plots to remove Fidel Castro and other leaders in Latin America. Both had enough information on each other to ruin their careers.

After the Watergate burglary on June 17, 1972, Nixon was desperate to shut down the FBI's investigation. He sought Helms' support and asked that the CIA intervene―knowing that most of the Watergate burglars were retired CIA agents, contractors, or long-term assets with deep knowledge of the Agency's most sensitive secrets. The two now circled each other like scorpions, defending themselves with the threat of lethal attack. The loser would resign his office in disgrace; the winner, however, would face consequences for the secrets he had kept.

Rigorously researched and dramatically told, Scorpions' Dance uses long-neglected evidence to reveal a new perspective on one of America's most notorious presidential scandals.

Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA

Mexico City was the Casablanca of the Cold War-a hotbed of spies, revolutionaries, and assassins. The CIA's station there was the front line of the United States' fight against international communism, as important for Latin America as Berlin was for Europe. And its undisputed spymaster was Winston Mackinley Scott.

Chief of the Mexico City station from 1956 to 1969, Win Scott occupied a key position in the founding generation of the Central Intelligence Agency, but until now he has remained a shadowy figure. Investigative reporter Jefferson Morley traces Scott's remarkable career from his humble origins in rural Alabama to wartime G-man to OSS London operative (and close friend of the notorious Kim Philby), to right-hand man of CIA Director Allen Dulles, to his remarkable reign for more than a decade as virtual proconsul in Mexico. Morley also follows the quest of Win Scott's son Michael to confront the reality of his father's life as a spy. He reveals how Scott ran hundreds of covert espionage operations from his headquarters in the U.S. Embassy while keeping three Mexican presidents on the agency's payroll, participating in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and, most intriguingly, overseeing the surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald during his visit to the Mexican capital just weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy.