Jefferson Morley

Jefferson Morley (2015) is an accomplished author and journalist who is completing the first biography of James Jesus Angleton, the legendary chief of counterintelligence for the CIA from 1952 to 1974. Morley has worked as the world news editor of Washington Post.com, the newspaper’s web site, and the Washington Editor of Salon, overseeing coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign, Congress and the Occupy Movement. The subject of his book is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of American intelligence – not only the chief of counterintelligence the business of catching foreign spies and uncovering “moles” inside the CIA, but also a dedicated acolyte of modern poetry and a passionate fly-fisherman. Angleton’s leadership was disastrous: he built a private empire within the CIA, organizing mind control experiments, assassination conspiracies, a ceaseless hunt for Soviet moles who did not exist, the expansion of domestic surveillance, and the subversion of dissident political movements.