| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

David M. Barrett. The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2005. Pp. x, 542. $39.95.
In this book, political scientist David M. Barrett studies congressional oversight of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) budgets, intelligence gathering, and clandestine operations from the passage of the National Security Act to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. While conceding that such monitoring was far from perfect, Barrett contends that lawmakers subjected the agency and its various directors to considerable scrutiny that grew more intense and critical as the 1950s progressed. Illuminating a range of foreign policy crises and authoritative in its command of the workings on Capitol Hill, this book fills a major gap in Cold War historiography.	1
Barrett asserts that the history of congressional oversight of the CIA has remained "untold" because of the classification, destruction, and scattering of key documents. He notes also that lawmakers and agency personnel left many of their interactions unrecorded. In piecing together this hard-to-get-at history, Barrett draws on sources at the National Archives; the Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson presidential libraries; and the private papers of more than a dozen senators and representatives.	2
Barrett admits that congressional oversight "was not comprehensive." Legislators "deferred to presidents and leaders of the CIA." On some matters Congress apparently remained completely in the dark; for example, Barrett states he could find no evidence that any member of Capitol Hill received a briefing on domestic spying or CIA drug tests on human subjects (p. 458).	. . .

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