THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01676R001300140001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 17, 2003
• Sequence Number: 1
• Content Type: BOOK

Approved For Release 2003/11/04: CIA-RDP80BO1676R001300140001-4
Copy of this book review sent
Ted Shackley special delivery
and received per
2 July 1964.
25X1
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The Invisible Goyertiment
The authors of mfhe Invisible Government". David Via. of the
New York Rerald Tribune and Thomas B. Ross of the Chicago gun-Tines,
admit that Communist subversion and espionage pose a unique threat
to the American people and their government. They accept the
necessity under certain circumstances for secret American efforts
to prevent Moscow and Peking from gaining control of now territories.
But in this work they are not directly concerned with the nature
and extent of the Soviet and Chinese subversive apparatus. The
real villain makes a very brief appearance on the stage and then
vanishes. The authors profess to believe that our own government's
secret attempts to meet the Communist challenge constitute so real
a threat to our own freedoms and democratic processes that they
must be exposed in as detailed and dramatic a way as possible.
If the Soviets profit from these revelations, as they will, the
authors apparently think that such self-inflicted wounds must be
endured in their battle against excessive secrecy.
Broadly stated, their thesis is that the E.S. "intelligence
community" with the CIA at its heart has grown so big in men,
money, and power that it has become an invisible government threat-
ening the very freedoms it was designed to defend. The CIA, they
claim, conducts its awn clandestine foreign policy, and even the
President, to whom the Agency is nominally responsible, has been
unable to control it. The State Department, both in Washington
and in the field, is powerless to exert policy direction because
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its Mbt-asadors are kept uninformed and are habitually by-pasad
by CIA operatives. The Congress, they insist, has voluntarily
abdicated its legislative role and supinely votes huge secret
funds without any adequate knowledge of haw the money is spent.
If all this were true, American democracy would certainly
Messrs. Wise
be in serious trouble, and the alarm professed by
and Ross would be justified. But is it true? Strangely enough,
even the authors themselves provide an ambiguous answer to this
question which is so central to their major thesis. Theyconcede
the existence of certain institutional arrangements which would
appear to give the President and hi.s principal foreign policy
advisors the very kind of close policy control over secret
operations that they ought to have. Early in the book, the
authors mention the existence of a "Special Group" which makes
the major decisions regarding operations and which
is so secret that it is " unkfown outside the innermost circle of
the Invisible Government." The reader must wait with baited
breath for 255 pages before he learns that the members of this
in the White Souse, Secretary
sinister cabal are McGeorge Bundy
of Defense McNamara, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Under-
secretary of State for Political Affairs and McCone as Director
of CIA. The" are just the officials that one would expect the
President to have chosen to advise his on matters of high
~O r~ )mil fey and they are far from invisible. Having
conceded the ezistowo of such a supervisory body p
the authors - in order to prove their thesis - try to demonstrate
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+affectiveness of the special Group? 'Without reveal tug how
the in ete in
they cone to their conclusions, they "Sect the Group me
"a highly informal way without the elaborate records and pro-
cedures is no
cedures of other high Government c,mitt:~ece ? "
At another
"outside analysis" and "little detached criticism." occupied
point, the Group's members are castigated for being too
function
with their of ~.e." duties to perforX' th~_ Lr supervisory
suatel. The impression is left t'jat the President ;,putt tiie
a+dec_, Y
oY State arf not even inf(yo cd of their secr(t dccisioas.
SeCx`etfary k'11itr
One rutet .a rem a very low opinion. o the sense of rest.
3t~E"eJ.~3`1 L.;T
and coxa t,e=nre )J-, tl,!e Me ia the , . .;