Research Annotations

Johnson, Loch K. “Congressional Supervision of America’s Secret Agencies: The Experience and Legacy of the Church Committee.” Public Administration Review 64, no. 1 (2004): 3-14.

Author and political scientist Loch Johnson analyzes the creation of the Church Committee and its dealing with United States secret agencies. He argues that the creation of these agencies was grounded in the need to protect the United States against foreign attacks, but also poses a threat to democratic society. He draws on sources such as political theory journals, as well as intelligence and counterintelligence records, to support his argument. His work provides a view of secret agencies that is less grounded in skepticism, as many works tend to be, and more grounded in professionalism that can be accredited to his editorial position for the Journal of Intelligence and National Security. Loch’s piece will be useful for me because it provides a professional view of the Church Committee and its proceedings, and provides a modern context to the activities of secret agencies during the Cold War.

Falcoff, Mark. “Head-Hunting: Assassination As a Policy.” The National Interest, no. 24 (1991): 103-05.

American scholar and policy consultant Mark Falcoff examines the role of planned assassinations in the activities of the secret service. He argues that assassination attempts were common under many presidents during the Cold War, especially in Latin American countries, such as Chile and Cuba. He uses proceedings from the Church Committee itself and pairs it with historical documents from Cuba and other countries to emphasize the role that secret agencies played in Latin America. His scholarship provides a way to see the effects of alleged misconduct by United States intelligence and counterintelligence in Latin American societies. I will be able to utilize this work to analyze the Church Committee’s proceedings and how they related to the Latin American countries whose leaders’ lives were possibly in danger through assassination attempts.

2 thoughts on “Research Annotations

  1. Katie Holt

    Concise and well written, Katie! I remember that we came up with mostly political science articles in class: let me know if you need help finding some History perspectives.
    For your second source: I looked at their “about” page, and The National Interest doesn’t meet the criteria for scholarly (double blind peer reviewed) research. https://cftni.org/about/
    I *do* think you could use the Falcoff piece as a primary source to talk about early 90s political ideas about US foreign policy.

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  2. Kobe Matesic

    Your annotations are very well written and provide some very insightful information on your articles. On top of this both annotations did a good job in peaking my interest in your topic.

    Reply

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