The practical solutions reached by the founders of the United States in creating a republic, in an era of monarchs and dictatorships, achieved for the participants in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 a reputation for thoughtfulness and creative genius that has endured for over two hundred years. Among the founders, perhaps no one superseded James Madison when it came to deep thinking about the future of the American polity. At the core of his philosophy of government was the conviction that power, “lodged as it must be in the hands of men, is ever liable to abuse.”

John Prados, the author of many fine books on US intelligence, vividly reminds us of this timeless lesson in his thoughtful history of modern-day intelligence scandals in the United States. He begins his sobering survey with revelations from the Church Committee in 1975–76 (a panel led by Senator Frank Church, D, Idaho) about domestic spying during the Cold War by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and several of its companion agencies. He continues through the next four decades, which have also been stained by intelligence controversies: CIA secret prisons abroad and the use of torture (“harsh interrogation techniques” or HITs, in CIA lingo) against suspected terrorists; the bulk collection of US phone and social-media records by the National Security Agency (NSA); and, again involving the NSA, warrantless wiretaps, despite the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 that clearly requires this procedure when employed for national security purposes. The disclosures regarding CIA domestic spying were widely known inside that agency as “the Family Jewels.” Prados adopts this term to encompass all the spy scandals endured by the United States since the days of the Church Committee inquiry.

Prados is most concerned about the attitude among some intelligence managers and officers that have allowed exuberance to trample legal and ethical boundaries. He is convinced, as am I, that this overreaching by the CIA, the NSA, and other secret agencies, coupled with their efforts to evade investigations into their wrongdoing, has inestimably harmed the reputation of the United States at home and abroad. (Among the evasions: the CIA's destruction during the second Bush administration of videotapes detailing horrific torture methods, including mock executions.) One of the glories of the United States is that we are the good guys; we don't torture, we don't have secret prisons, we don't violate wiretap laws. Those foul deeds have been attributed to communists during the Cold War and terrorists today. For a time, the Bush administration – pushed by Vice President Dick Cheney – managed to erase this important distinction.

This book performs a valuable service by chronicling the breach of democratic values committed periodically by the intelligence agencies since the creation of the CIA in 1947. By concentrating on these excesses, though, one could conclude that these agencies are unmitigated dangers to American society. In fact, though, the security of the United States depends in part on their surveillance capabilities against enemies of the United States, such as al Qaeda. Prados has written about these more positive aspects of intelligence elsewhere, but this side of the equation is largely ignored in the focus here on “Family Jewels.”

The author concludes that the “intelligence agencies operated under presidential control at all times” (319); but, in the same breath, he tells us that the operation of these agencies “was something from which presidents were frequently shielded” (319). How the CIA can be steadily under presidential control, yet Presidents sometimes don't know what the agencies are doing, strikes me as a contradiction. While the presence of White House control is generally true, there have been worrisome exceptions. Senator Church no doubt engaged in hyperbole when he accused the CIA of being “a rogue elephant on a rampage” (I was his assistant at the time and was taken aback by this statement); still, there have been too many times when the secret services seem to have stepped beyond original presidential authority. Examples include the CIA's assassination plots in the 1960s, the Iran–Contra affair in the 1980s, and the resort to torture after the 9/11 attacks. Further, Prados confuses the great intelligence scholar at Vanderbilt University, Harry Howe Ransom, with another Harry Howe Ransom who became president of the University of Texas (330). It is odd that the University of Texas Press – which published this book – failed to catch this mix-up, so close to home.

Overall, however, Prados has given us a marvelous history lesson on the importance of intelligence accountability. The Family Jewels should be required reading for those in power and all the rest of us.