Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton

william f. buckley jr.

James Jesus Angleton was the master-a legend in the time of spies. Founder of U.S. counterintelligence at the end of the second World War, and ruthless hunter of moles and enemies of America, his name is synonymous with skullduggery and intellectual subterfuge. Now bestselling author William F. Buckley Jr. presents a subtle and thrilling fictional account of the spymaster's life. From his early involvement in the World War II underground to the waning days of the Cold War in Washington, D.C., Angleton pursued his enemies, real and imagined, with a cool, calculating intelligence, and an unwillingness to take anything at face value. Convinced that there was a turncoat within the CIA itself, he confused his enemy through misleading acts and deceptive feints to distort his real objective-to capture and expose a traitor. The result was near-victory for American Intelligence-and defeat for himself. A brilliant re-creation of his world, which included the CIA, Soviet defectors, the infamous traitors Burgess, MacLean, and Philby, and American presidents from Truman to Carter, Spytime traces the making-and tragic unmaking-of a man without peer, and at the end, a man without a country to serve.

Genres fictionespionagepoliticsnovelswarhistorical fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2000

This edition

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover
Published: January 1, 2000 by Harcourt
ISBN: 9780151005130
ASIN: 0151005133
Language: English

About the author

william f. buckley jr.

William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American author and conservative commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing style was famed for its erudition, wit, and use of uncommon words.

Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century," according to George H. Nash, a historian of the modern American conservative movement. "For an entire generation he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure." Buckley's primary intellectual achievement was to fuse traditional American political conservatism with economic libertarianism and anti-communism, laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of US Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and US President Ronald Reagan.

Buckley came on the public scene with his critical book God and Man at Yale (1951); among over fifty further books on writing, speaking, history, politics and sailing, were a series of novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes. Buckley referred to himself "on and off" as either libertarian or conservative. He resided in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut, and often signed his name as "WFB." He was a practicing Catholic, regularly attending the traditional Latin Mass in Connecticut.