title: The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy
author:  David M. Barrett 
description: This trenchant study of congressional oversight during the CIA's formative decades sharply revises the popular image of the CIA as a rogue agency prone to running amok. Political scientist Barrett (<i>Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His Vietnam Advisers</i>) spelunks through obscure archives for insights into the agency's relations with the congressional subcommittees charged with its oversight. He finds that, while only a few key legislative leaders had detailed knowledge of CIA activities, Congress was still a firm, if not always wise, taskmaster. The CIA was repeatedly criticized for intelligence failures, harassed by budget cutters and McCarthyite witch hunts, and pressured by legislators to slant intelligence on such issues as the alleged "missile gap." And a fervently anticommunist Congress, Barrett contends, often pushed harder for covert paramilitary operations than the CIA itself; such controversial adventures as the 1954 overthrow of the Guatemalan government and the later Bay of Pigs fiasco proceeded with the prior knowledge of congressional leaders and the vocal urging of other members of Congress for action. Barrett's scholarly but very readable account clarifies an important aspect of Cold War policymaking and Congress's role as an overseer of covert foreign policy. <i>(Sept. 6)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  CONTENTS
  
   _Title Page_
  
   _Dedication_
  
  PART I. THIRD RAIL
  
  > > PROLOGUE The Search for Joe McCarthy
  
  > > CHAPTER 1 An Enemy of the People
  
  > > CHAPTER 2 The Caveman in the Sewer
  
  > > CHAPTER 3 He Had in His Hand
  
  > > CHAPTER 4 “Stale, Warmed Over Charges”
  
  > > CHAPTER 5 Unthinking the Thinkable
  
  PART II. BACK STORY
  
  > > CHAPTER 6 The Witching Hour
  
  > > CHAPTER 7 The Way It Worked
  
  > > CHAPTER 8 Chungking, 1944
  
  > > CHAPTER 9 Reds, Lies, and Audiotape
  
  > > CHAPTER 10 When Parallels Converged
  
  > > CHAPTER 11 What Hoover Told Truman
  
  > > CHAPTER 12 Inside the State Department
  
  > > CHAPTER 13 Acts of Congress
  
  PART III. BLOWUP
  
  > > CHAPTER 14 Wheeling, 1950
  
  > > CHAPTER 15 Discourse on Method
  
  > > CHAPTER 16 The Tydings Version
  
  > > CHAPTER 17 Eve of Destruction
  
  > > CHAPTER 18 A Fraud and a Hoax
  
  > > CHAPTER 19 Of Names and Numbers
  
  > > CHAPTER 20 The Four Committees
  
  > > CHAPTER 21 File and Forget It
  
  > > CHAPTER 22 All Clear in Foggy Bottom
  
  > > CHAPTER 23 