Cloak and Dollar: a History of American Secret Intelligence. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

My first comprehensive reading on the US intelligence world. The author's premise is fairly simple: the size of the US intelligence community is the result of generations of secret agents promoting themselves and their organisations. He starts with Pinkerton and traces self-promotion through Dulles and Casey up to the post-9/11 world.

A successful rebuttal of this work will show that the relentless increase in budget and growth of organizations has increased the number of intelligence non-events.