The debate about the proper function of intelligence in the US is as old as the nation. Several founding fathers, indeed, even patriarch George Washington, recognized the need for espionage to be kept secret from the Continental Congress—with all the attendant risks of abuse—to help win the war for independence. The debate then centered on whether the new country could free itself from sullying Old World intrigues and who would, or even should, oversee a secret apparatus for the new republic.

Today, intelligence is a permanent fixture in the US government. Now the debate is about the appropriate scope and reach of national security intelligence on balance with the protection of American civil liberties. This is the “constant crisis” in Jeffrey P. Rogg’s sweeping new book, The Spy and the State: The History of American Intelligence.

The book is a work of even-handed historical writing by an author with deep roots in national security studies (Rogg has taught as a member of the faculty of the US Naval War College, the Citadel, and the Joint Special Operations University). The book is also a balanced, thoughtful, and well-grounded discussion of the tumultuous growth of the national security intelligence bureaucracy, the professionalization of US intelligence, and the evolution of intelligence oversight.

The Spy and the State is a significant accomplishment of genuine scholarship. The author’s deep understanding of the US Intelligence Community (USIC) is evident in his excellent use of a wealth of primary sources, including published and archival materials ranging from government documents and period newspapers to relevant case law and the unclassified records of individual US intelligence agencies. Rogg also makes good use of secondary sources to provide insight and assessments from authors with special expertise, including the history of wartime US intelligence and of specific agencies. While The Spy and the State sometimes reads like a textbook, with some sluggish writing, Rogg is a disciplined researcher keen on offering detail. The book is well documented with more than 80 pages of notes and an outstanding bibliography. This book, then, will be welcomed by both scholars and students seeking to enhance and enlarge their understanding of the USIC.

Civil-Intelligence Relations

The Spy and the State is a history of the USIC seen “through the lens of civil-intelligence relations and the major themes of control, competition, coordination, professionalization, and politicization.” For this work, Rogg adapted the ground-breaking analog of civil-military relations advanced by Samuel P. Huntington in his book The Soldier and the State (1957). It’s a worthwhile model for Rogg to have acknowledged and adopted. Mirroring Huntington’s work, Rogg shows how the development of intelligence as a profession in the twentieth century, and attendant civil oversight, can regulate the role of intelligence in the national security state.

This work explores the USIC’s history by examining US intelligence in each of four wartime eras: the Revolutionary War to the Civil War; the Civil War to the end of World War II; the Cold War; and the present, post-Cold War era. This approach is more than a nod to the march of time. It acknowledges the dominant role military intelligence played in creating the USIC. Today, an estimated 80 percent of the nation’s classified intelligence spending is earmarked for military intelligence activities. Moreover, “each successive war,” Rogg explains, “saw the country engage in intelligence activities on an even greater scale, and each postwar period revealed the challenges that retrenchment posed.” With the era-by-era approach, the author illustrates how the changing nature of the US role in the world led to the establishment of the nation’s permanent intelligence community.

Bureaucracy and Rivalry

Rogg describes how the USIC grew by fits and starts, hamstrung as much by a failure to establish a profession of intelligence as by rivalries across government bureaus assigned various intelligence functions. For example, the author recounts episodes in the bureaucratic wrangle between the departments of State, Justice, and Treasury for control of various aspects of intelligence. For a time, Secret Service agents were “loaned” to other executive departments to pursue domestic law enforcement and counterespionage investigations, while still reporting to their managers at Treasury. That unsatisfactory arrangement spurred the Justice Department to create its own secret service, the Bureau of Investigation (BOI, later FBI).

The tangle of competing interests, Rogg observes in a telling insight, was made even more contentious because executive departments unilaterally formed their own intelligence services. Congress had no say in the creation, organization, and mission of the Secret Service, and the BOI, much less a say in the War Department’s Military Information Section (eventually the Military Intelligence Division of the Army General Staff in WWI), or the Navy Department’s Office of Naval Intelligence. Ultimately, only two of the current eighteen US intelligence agencies—the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—would be chartered by Congress.

Rogg contends that before the onset of the Cold War era, every intelligence service in government was “straddling a fault-line in American civil-intelligence relations,” a blurry area between acceptable foreign collection and detested domestic surveillance. Various agencies, and their respective executive departments, all attempted to collect foreign intelligence, conduct domestic law enforcement investigations, surveil American citizens, and launch counter-espionage operations in the US. This, Rogg explains, was an outgrowth not only of the lack of coordination between executive departments, but of “mission creep.” He gives the example that when Secret Service agents uncovered a threat to President Cleveland, the Service simply expanded its role beyond investigations of counterfeiting and financial crimes to include protection of the president. Rogg argues that unbridled expansion and duplication were also the result of the failure of Congress to exercise any effective oversight of the growing intelligence community as the nation entered the twentieth century.

Permanence and Oversight

The Spy and the State offers readers an illuminating record of the spotty, ineffectual, and often politicized nature of oversight of the intelligence community. Rogg makes the case that the USIC in its first historical era remained “discretionary, disorganized, uncoordinated and unprofessional.” The author also describes how the intelligence community expanded in times of war and contracted in times of peace. He then neatly traces the robust growth of the nation’s intelligence capabilities in World War II and shows how that growth and the onset of the Cold War marked the end of another historical era.

At this pivotal point in the history of the USIC, Rogg ascribes an outsized influence to William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The author contends Donovan “permanently transformed the American intelligence system,” and “set the conditions for an independent intelligence organization and, at long last, [a] profession.” It is more likely that while the influential and well-connected Donovan was then in the right place at the right time, the exigencies of the Cold War, the catastrophic intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor, and growing Congressional discomfort with the power of the executive branch spurred legislation that created the CIA in 1947. Rogg points out that legislation created two specific statutory missions for the CIA: to coordinate the activities of the USIC and furnish intelligence analysis to inform policymaking.

The fledgling CIA, however, attracted OSS veterans to its ranks who were intent on “seizing covert action” as part of its mission set. In so doing, the agency “absorbed an organization and culture that undermined its original statutory missions.” Rogg charts the uneven course of the CIA’s early covert actions. He acknowledges that policymakers steered the agency towards misguided forays and outright interference, for example, with the internal affairs of Burma, Guatemala, and Iran. By hewing to historical records, the author easily dispels any lingering notion that these were activities of rogue elements of the CIA; covert action was an integral part of Cold War strategy.

The Spy and the State recounts the covert missions of the 1950s and the agency’s soiled record in the 1960s and 1970s. The CIA’s mind-control experiments, surveillance of journalists and students, assassination plots, and other domestic intelligence operations did not escape public exposure. Media accounts spurred Congressional inquiry, and the Church and Pike Committee hearings were at the forefront to establish permanent legislative oversight. In the most telling part of his book, Rogg makes a clear-eyed account of how abuses and blatantly illegal actions by the USIC eroded public trust in government and fostered suspicion of the power of the administrative state.

Despite the growing professionalization of the intelligence community, and more vigorous oversight, the author shows that some of the most egregious abuses of the reach and power of the USIC occurred in the post-Cold War era. Rogg argues that “during the Global War on Terror, the government unleashed its powerful intelligence apparatus, undermining civil liberties and eroding constitutional rights in the process.” Enabled by the PATRIOT and Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Acts, new guidance issued by then Attorney General Michael Mukasey, for example, blurred the line between law enforcement and domestic intelligence. As a result, the FBI was able to gain access to NSA’s powerful surveillance tools. The agency’s PRISM program collected information from private companies and automatically sucked up data from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Apple, and others. The Bureau then expanded its use of National Security Letters (NSL)—administrative rather than judicial subpoenas—to collect information from tens of thousands of individuals each year. Because the NSLs also contain non-disclosure provisions, the FBI now had “the power both to investigate and to silence.”

The Spy and the State is as much of a historical account as it is a work of keen contemporary observation and incisive commentary. Informed by the judgements of history, the author in his conclusions argues that the combination of the national security state, its attendant administrative state, omnipresent surveillance technology, Big Data and AI, and a massive intelligence apparatus looms as an authoritarian threat in American civil-intelligence affairs. While Americans have often been able to reset civil-intelligence relations after a threat has passed or egregious abuses have been checked, Rogg is far less sanguine about future relations.

“The American people,” Rogg warns readers, “must assert their role in the US intelligence system more directly in the future than they have in the past—their liberty and security depend on it.”

ISTANBUL (AP) — Delegations from Russia and Ukraine were to meet in Turkey on Monday for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, although expectations were low for any significant progress on ending the three-year war after a string of stunning attacks over the weekend.

Ukraine said Sunday it launched a spectacular surprise attack on four Russian airbases thousands of kilometers (miles) apart, destroying more than 40 warplanes. The raid was unprecedented in its scope and geographic reach, targeting bases in Russia’s Arctic, Siberia and Far East more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) from Ukraine.

The head of the Ukrainian security service, Vasyl Maliuk, who led the planning of the operation, said its success was “a major slap in the face for Russia’s military power.” He said the drones struck simultaneously in three time zones and the complex logistics took over a year and a half to prepare.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a “brilliant operation.”

Meanwhile, Russia on Sunday fired the biggest number of drones — 472 — at Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s air force said, in an apparent effort to overwhelm air defenses. That was part of a recently escalating campaign of strikes in civilian areas of Ukraine.

Hopes not high for Istanbul talks

Amid the escalation in fighting, the talks in Istanbul appeared unlikely to make much progress.

U.S.-led efforts to push the two sides into accepting a ceasefire have so far failed. Ukraine accepted that step, but the Kremlin effectively rejected it.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Sunday that “Russia is attempting to delay negotiations and prolong the war in order to make additional battlefield gains.”

The relentless fighting has frustrated U.S. President Donald Trump’s goal of bringing about a quick end to the war. A week ago, he expressed impatience with Russian President Vladimir Putin as Moscow pounded Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles for a third straight night. Trump said on social media that Putin “has gone absolutely CRAZY!”

Senior officials in both countries have indicated the two sides remain far apart on the key conditions for stopping the war.

The first round of talks, held on May 16, also in Istanbul, ended after less than two hours. While both sides agreed on a large prisoner swap, there was no breakthrough.

Ukraine upbeat after strikes on air bases

Ukraine was triumphant after targeting distant Russian air bases. The official Russian response was muted, with the attack getting little coverage on the state-controlled television. Russia-1 TV channel on Sunday evening spent for a little over a minute on it with a brief Ministry of Defense’ statement read out before images shifted to Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian positions.

Zelenskyy said the setbacks for the Kremlin would help force it to the negotiating table, even as its pursues a summer offensive on the battlefield.

“Russia must feel what its losses mean. That is what will push it toward diplomacy,” he said at a summit Monday in Vilnius, Lithuania with leaders from the Nordic nations and countries on NATO’s eastern flank.

Ukraine has occasionally struck air bases hosting Russia’s nuclear capable strategic bombers since early in the war, prompting the Russian air force to redeploy most of them to the regions farther from the front line.

Because Sunday’s drones were launched from trucks close to the bases targeted in five Russian regions, military defenses had virtually no time to prepare for them.

Many Russian military bloggers chided the military for its failure to build protective shields for the bombers despite previous attacks, but the large size of the planes makes that a challenging task.

The attacks were “a big blow to Russian strategic airpower” and exposed significant vulnerabilities in Moscow’s military capabilities, according to Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

“This is hard to underestimate,” O’Brien wrote in an analysis.

Once again, eyes turn to Istanbul

Zelenskyy said that “if the Istanbul meeting brings nothing, that clearly means strong new sanctions are urgently, urgently needed” against Russia.

The Ukrainian delegation led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov was in place, Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said in a message posted on the Ukrainian Embassy WhatsApp group.

The Russian delegation, headed by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, arrived the previous evening, Russian state media reported.

Officials said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan would chair the talks, with officials from the Turkish intelligence agency also present.

International concerns about the war’s consequences, as well as trade tensions, drove Asian share prices lower Monday while oil prices surged.

Front-line fighting and shelling grinds on

Fierce fighting has continued along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, and both sides have hit each other’s territory with deep strikes.

Russian forces shelled Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, killing three people and injuring 19 others, including two children, regional officials said Monday.

Also, a missile strike and shelling around the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, killing five people and injured nine others, officials said.

Russian air defenses downed 162 Ukrainian drones over eight Russian regions overnight, as well as over the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday.

Ukrainian air defenses damaged 52 out of 80 drones launched by Russia overnight, the Ukrainian air force said.

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An earlier version of this story was corrected to show that the first round of talks took place on May 16, not May 17.

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Associated Press writers Suzan Frazer in Ankara, Turkey; Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Ukrainian forces have wiped out dozens of Russian military aircraft, including nuclear bombers, in a massive drone attack on President Vladimir Putin’s air bases deep inside the country, Kyiv sources are claiming.

The mission carried out by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) using first-person-view (FPV) drones hit 41 Russian heavy bombers at four separate airfields thousands of miles from Ukraine, a security source told the Kyiv Independent on Sunday.

The drones were reportedly smuggled into the country hidden in trucks.

TU-95 “Bear” nuclear bombers, TU-22 “Backfire” fast-attack strike bombers and A-50 “Mainstay” command-and-control jets were among the aircraft that were destroyed in the strike, according to reports.

One of the bases hit was in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, almost 2,500 miles from Ukraine.

Others targeted were in Murmansk in the Arctic Circle, Ryazan southeast of Moscow, and Ivanovo, to the northeast of the Russian capital.

The operation, codenamed “Web,” took some 18 months of planning and, if the details are confirmed, will deal a huge blow to Moscow’s efforts to launch long-range missile attacks on Ukrainian cities.

“The SBU first transported FPV drones to Russia, and later on the territory of the Russian Federation, the drones were hidden under the roofs of mobile wooden cabins, already placed on trucks,” the source claimed.

“At the right moment, the roofs of the cabins were opened remotely, and the drones flew to hit Russian bombers.”

Служба безопасности Украины организовала атаку на российские аэродромы сразу в нескольких регионах, расположенных далеко от российско-украинской границы. Об этом пишут «Украинская правда», «Бабель», «РБК-Украина» и другие издания со ссылкой на «источники в спецслужбах».

По словам источников изданий, операцией, которая получила название «Паутина», лично руководит глава СБУ Василий Малюк. Как утверждается, в результате атаки повреждения получили более 40 самолетов, среди них — А-50, Ту-95 и Ту-22 М3. Действия СБУ нанесли российской армии ущерб примерно в два миллиарда долларов, утверждают собеседники изданий.

По данным украинских СМИ, под атаку попали как минимум четыре аэродрома — Дягилево в Рязанской области, Оленья в Мурманской области, Белая в Иркутской области и Иваново в Ивановской области.

Губернатор Иркутской области Игорь Кобзев подтвердил информацию о налете дронов, отметив, что это первая атака на территории Сибири с начала войны. Он официально сообщил, что ее целью стала военная часть в поселке Средний и что «угрозы жизни и здоровью мирных жителей нет».

Губернатор Мурманской области Андрей Чибис тоже подтвердил факт налета дронов на регион, но не уточнил, что стало их целью. Губернатор Рязанской области Павел Малков отчитался лишь о факте инцидента с БПЛА, но, по его словам, повреждения получила лишь крыша одного из частных домов.

Телеграм-каналы Baza и Mash сообщили, что дроны в Мурманской и Иркутской областях вылетали из фур, припаркованных на трассах неподалеку. Водитель фуры в Мурманской области задержан, Baza пишет, что он, вероятно, не знал о том, что находится в его автомобиле.

Губернатор Кобзев подтвердил, что дрон действительно вылетел из фуры. «Источник, откуда были выпущены дроны, уже блокирован. Это фура. Главное — не нужно поддаваться панике», — написал он в телеграм-канале.

Провоенный телеграм-канал «Рыбарь» сообщил, что в результате атаки российская армия потеряла несколько самолетов Ту-95М. «Как мы уже ранее говорили, борты стратегической авиации Ту-95 и Ту-22 давно сняты с производства и восстановить их нечем. Соотвественно, данные потери не восстановить. Это без преуменьшения очень серьезный урон стратегической составляющей, вызванный как серьезными просчетами в работе спецслужб, так и наплевательским отношением к авиатехнике, которая даже после всех атак стояла на открытом поле без укрытий», — пишет «Рыбарь».

В свою очередь канал Fighterbomber пишет: «Сегодняшний день позже назовут черным днем дальней авиации России. А день еще не закончился».

Как утверждают источники украинских СМИ, Служба безопасности Украины готовила спецоперацию «Паутина» более полутора лет, ход подготовки контролировал лично Владимир Зеленский.

Операцию называют сверхсложной с логистической точки зрения. Сначала якобы в Россию переправили FPV-дроны, а затем — мобильные деревянные ящики. В них были спрятаны дроны, после их разместили в грузовиках. В нужный момент беспилотники дистанционно активировали. Источники в украинской спецслужбе заявляют, что участники этой спецоперации уже давно находятся в Украине.

В общей сложности в ходе операции поражен 41 самолет стратегической авиации РФ, утверждают в СБУ.

Официально в Киеве операцию не комментировали.

На понедельник, 2 июня, запланирован новый раунд переговоров России и Украины в Стамбуле. Предполагается, что на нем стороны обменяются меморандумами, содержащими условия прекращения огня с каждой стороны.

Vasily Nebenzya, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, has stated that Russia is "in principle" ready to consider a ceasefire with Ukraine, but only if the other side takes reciprocal steps.

Source: Russian media, citing Nebenzya in a speech

Quote: "In principle, we are ready to consider the possibility of establishing a ceasefire regime, which could subsequently allow us to move towards a sustainable resolution of the root causes of the conflict. But for this, we must see reciprocal steps from the other side.

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For the duration of the ceasefire, at the very least, Western countries must stop supplying weapons to the Kyiv regime and Ukraine must halt mobilisation."

Details: Nebenzya said that Russia is not satisfied with a scenario that would allow Ukraine to "catch its breath, lick its wounds and stop the collapse of the eastern front".

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Russia is prepared to consider a ceasefire in its war against Ukraine, but only if Kyiv stops receiving Western weapons and halts mobilization, Vasily Nebenzya, Russia's envoy to the United Nations, said on May 30, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.

"In principle, we are ready to consider the possibility of establishing a ceasefire, which would subsequently allow for a sustainable resolution of the root causes of the conflict," Nebenzya said at a U.N. Security Council meeting.

Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, convened the meeting to accuse European nations of undermining peace efforts. The Russian ambassador said that any ceasefire would require Western governments to end their support for Ukraine's armed forces.

"During the ceasefire, it is essential that Western countries stop supplying weapons to the Kyiv regime (the Ukrainian government) and that Ukraine halt its mobilization," Nebenzya said.

The statement comes just days ahead of the next round of peace talks in Istanbul on June 2. Despite the stated offer, Nebenzya also pledged that Moscow would "continue and intensify military operations for as long as necessary."

Ukraine swiftly rejected the demand as disingenuous.

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the remarks a "slap in the face to all who advocate for peace," including countries like China and Brazil, which have pressed both sides to end the war.

"When the entire world insists that it is time to stop the killing immediately and engage in meaningful diplomacy, Russia uses the highest fora to spew such belligerent rhetoric," Sybiha wrote on X.

"We insist that the pressure on Moscow be increased already now. They do not understand normal attitude or diplomatic language; it is time to speak to them in the language of sanctions and increased support for Ukraine."

Despite growing global calls for a truce, Russia has so far rejected Ukraine's U.S.-backed proposal for a full and unconditional ceasefire. The Kremlin has instead escalated its aerial assaults across Ukrainian territory and is reportedly preparing a new summer offensive.

Moscow is expected to present a draft "ceasefire memorandum" at the June 2 talks in Istanbul. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on May 29 that the proposal would be delivered by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who led Russia's delegation at the previous round of talks.

President Volodymyr Zelensky's Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak said on May 29 that Kyiv is open to the talks but insists that Russia share the memorandum ahead of the meeting.

According to Reuters, Moscow's demands for ending the war include Ukraine's withdrawal from four partially occupied regions, a pledge to abandon NATO ambitions, and the lifting of key Western sanctions — conditions Kyiv and its allies have categorically rejected.