Jefferson Morley's new book is The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton. From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:Q: Why did you decide to write a biography of James Angleton?--Marshal Zeringue
A: I knew a lot about him—my first book, Our Man in Mexico, was about a top CIA officer of the same generation, Win Scott.
There were a bunch of good books written about him in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but a lot had come out since the ‘90s. The old picture of Angleton as an eccentric mole-hunter was very narrow. He was a much bigger, stranger, and more powerful character than anybody realized.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I started by going to archival material. That meant presidential libraries, especially Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, archival manuscript collections of people who knew him.
And interviewing people. There are not many around who knew him, but a very interesting source was the kids of CIA agents who knew him. They knew about his world, his personality. It was...[read on]