David Wise was co-author of the 1964 best-seller “The Invisible Government,” the first really good book ever written about the CIA.
The book, which the CIA sought to suppress, chronicled the excesses of U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA. Wise laid bare the agency’s role in orchestrated coups in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s, which had previously been airbrushed by leading newspapers and the TV networks.
Wise was, well, wise.
“We felt very strongly that there were two governments in the United States: one in the civics texts and the other in the real world,” Mr. Wise told the New York Times in 1988. “We thought the intelligence agencies were important to our security. But we were troubled about a system based on the consent of the governed when the governed didn’t know to what they have consented.”
Source: David Wise, author and CIA expert who exposed ‘invisible government,’ dies at 88
