Born, Hans, Loch K. Johnson, and Ian Leigh, eds. Who's Watching the Spies? Establishing Intelligence Service Accountability. Dulles, VA: Potomac, 2005. Born, Hans, Loch K. Johnson, and Ian Leigh, eds. Who's Watching the Spies? Establishing Intelligence Service Accountability. Dulles, VA: Potomac, 2005.
From publisher: "The assembled authors ... bring together in one volume the rich experience of three decades of experimentation in intelligence accountability. Using a structured approach, they examine the strengths and weaknesses of the intelligence systems of Argentina, Canada, Germany, Norway, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States.... The contributors draw together the best practices into a framework for successful approaches to intelligence accountability, including a prescription for a model law."
Peake, Studies 50.2 (2006), comments that "[t]he experiences of each nation provide an interesting mosaic of desired goals and problems of implementation.... It is a timely topic and worth the attention of all those who must deal with these issues everyday as well as the general public whose civil rights are affected when oversight is too robust or inadequate."
For Winn, Parameters, Summer 2006, this "valuable contribution ... addresses the central criteria that should be taken into account by any nation or international organization that hopes to place intelligence agencies under democratic supervision.... [T]he objectives are to ensure that intelligence and security agencies are insulated from political abuse, but not isolated from executive governance."
Brown, I&NS 21.6 (Dec. 2006), finds this work to be "a disappointment. Most of the material is dry and sometimes soporific. It is also biased toward the advocates of intelligence accountability," in that the "essays all address the positives of such a program, but not the negatives.... A debate format would have been much more appropriate..., and could have easily been accomplished by excluding numerous irrelevant and tedious essays."
To Jacoby, DIJ 16.2 (2007), this work "succeeds greatly as an informative source on the workings of current intelligence oversight systems." However, "[t]he reader is left wanting recommendations and commentary on the ethics of intelligence oversight."
Bruneau, Thomas C., and Steven C. Boraz, eds. Reforming Intelligence: Obstacles to Democratic Control and Effectiveness. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007.
According to Peake, Studies 52.1 (Mar. 2008), this book's 13 chapters include "studies that discuss democratic control and effectiveness in three Western nations -- the United States, the United Kingdom, and France -- and seven new democracies -- Brazil, Taiwan, Argentina, Romania, South Africa, Russia, and the Philippines." Reforming Intelligence "is well documented, well written, and should serve as a foundation for studying this persistent problem."
Reddig, NIPQ 23.4 (Sep. 2007), calls this a "useful and thought provoking compendium of case studies," dealing with "the challenge of maintaining an intelligence establishment in a democratic framework."
McSherry, J. Patrice. "Argentina: Dismantling an Authoritarian Legacy." NACLA [North American Congress on Latin America] Report on the Americas, Mar.-Apr. 2000, 1.
"The new administration of Frenando de la Rua has taken several important steps to reduce the power of the Argentine intelligence apparatus.... In January and February, the President ordered the dismissal of hundreds of agents from two notorious intelligence structures, the army's Battalion 601 ... and the Secretariat of State Intelligence (SIDE), and said that Battalion 601 would be dissolved.... The administration also reduced SIDE's budget."
McSherry, J. Patrice. "Operation Condor: Clandestine Inter-American System." Social Justice 26, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 144-175.
This article traces "[a]nti-insurrection collusion among the intelligence services of the 'southern cone' countries of Argentina, Brazil and Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay." Swenson, IJI&C 16.1/127/fn25.
McSherry, J. Patrice. Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
From publisher: "Operation Condor was a military network created in the 1970s to eliminate political opponents of Latin American regimes. Its key members were the anticommunist dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil, later joined by Peru and Ecuador, with covert support from the U.S. government." The author draws "on a wealth of testimonies, declassified files, and Latin American primary sources." McSherry "shows how, using extralegal and terrorist methods, Operation Condor hunted down, seized, and executed political opponents across borders."
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