Joel Whitney’s book Finks is a seminal book about American intellectuals and American security agencies,  mainly because it illuminates the real story behind the CIA’s involvement with the founding of a little magazine called The Paris Review  which hit the scene in the early 1950s at the height of the Cold War. 

In Joel Whitney’s new book Flights,  he continues his historical excavations -  more stories about writers intellectuals and activists who found themselves in the cross hairs of American security agencies like the CIA and the FBI. 

Your host discusses both books with Joel Whitney and the discipline of secret history itself.