Book looks at supervision of spy agencies

In Spy Watching, Loch K. Johnson explores efforts in the U.S. to maintain effective accountability over its spy agencies.

Meigs Professor of International Affairs in UGA’s School of Public and International Affairs, Johnson probes into the work of the famous Church Committee, a Senate panel that investigated America’s espionage organizations in 1975 and established the protocol for supervising the CIA and the nation’s
16 other spy services.

Johnson traces how partisanship crept into once-neutral intelligence activities, the effect of the Sept. 11 attacks on the expansion of spying, the controversies related to CIA rendition and torture programs and the Edward Snowden case.

Above all, Spy Watching seeks to find a sensible balance between the twin democratic imperatives of liberty and security. Johnson draws on scores of interviews with CIA directors and others in America’s secret agencies, making this a uniquely authoritative account.