Turner (political scientist and former Central Intelligence Agency analyst) explores the American intelligence world in this recent addition to the publisher's Historical Dictionaries of Intelligence and Counterintelligence series. While American agents have always engaged in intelligence gathering and counterintelligence work, the enterprise only became systematic following World War II. The volume offers a useful chronology, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, appendixes listing past US intelligence agency leaders, and a detailed, classified bibliography. Everything is covered in this volume, from people (e.g., Gerald Ford, John Brennan) to places, operations, and events—the Vietnam War's Operation Phoenix, long-term intelligence operations, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and so forth. Some of the 600-plus entries are just a few sentences, but many are a page or longer, and most are cross-referenced to other entries. This volume belongs in library collections holding similar works, e.g., Nigel West's Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers.

Choice Reviews