Genevieve Lester – författare

A comparative international perspective challenges conventional narratives about unacknowledged intervention"Covert action" is generally understood as politically motivated and plausibly deniable interference by one state in the affairs of another state. It includes propaganda, political or economic subversion, paramilitary action, and assassinations. Covert action is the most consequential and controversial form of secret statecraft, and it has become a ubiquitous feature of international politics. However, it is often sensationalized or seen through a narrow, US-centric lens.Covert Action challenges this conventional narrative and redefines secret statecraft by offering a groundbreaking comparative international perspective that explores the practice of unacknowledged intervention across twenty countries and a range of eras. Bringing together leading scholars from around the world, this volume moves beyond the American, and wider, anglosphere perspectives to examine covert action practices across states, regime types, and time.This book will be important reading for historians, political scientists, and policymakers, and it provides a foundational study of the hidden mechanisms of international power. It takes a global perspective and thus transforms the understanding of how nations truly interact behind the scenes, revealing covert action as a complex form of international statecraft.

Contrary to popular assumption, the development of stronger oversight mechanisms actually leads to greater secrecy rather than the reverse. When Should State Secrets Stay Secret? examines modern trends in intelligence oversight development by focusing on how American oversight mechanisms combine to bolster an internal security system and thus increase the secrecy of the intelligence enterprise. Genevieve Lester uniquely examines how these oversight mechanisms have developed within all three branches of government, how they interact, and what types of historical pivot points have driven change among them. She disaggregates the concept of accountability into a series of specified criteria in order to grapple with these pivot points. This book concludes with a discussion of a series of normative questions, suggesting ways to improve oversight mechanisms based on the analytical criteria laid out in the analysis. It also includes a chapter on the workings of the CIA to which a number of CIA officers contributed.

Contrary to popular assumption, the development of stronger oversight mechanisms actually leads to greater secrecy rather than the reverse. When Should State Secrets Stay Secret? examines modern trends in intelligence oversight development by focusing on how American oversight mechanisms combine to bolster an internal security system and thus increase the secrecy of the intelligence enterprise. Genevieve Lester uniquely examines how these oversight mechanisms have developed within all three branches of government, how they interact, and what types of historical pivot points have driven change among them. She disaggregates the concept of accountability into a series of specified criteria in order to grapple with these pivot points. This book concludes with a discussion of a series of normative questions, suggesting ways to improve oversight mechanisms based on the analytical criteria laid out in the analysis. It also includes a chapter on the workings of the CIA to which a number of CIA officers contributed.