Jeffrey Talbot Richelson (31 December 1949 – 11 November 2017) was an American author and academic researcher who studied the process of
intelligence gathering and national security.
He authored at least thirteen books and many articles about intelligence, and directed the publication of several of the National Security Archive's collections of source documents.
Richelson was notable for his relentless
Freedom of Information requests in order to further scholarship in intelligence and espionage.
According to
Bruce D. Berkowitz, Richelson was once avoided by the intelligence community as an outsider and a security risk, but gradually became trusted to the extent that he was invited to
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
sponsored conferences.
Richelson grew up in the Bronx and earned his BA from the
City University of New York
The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...
.
He completed a PhD in political science at the
University of Rochester in 1975 and went on to teach at the
University of Texas, Austin and
American University
The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was charte ...
.
Richelson was a senior fellow with the
National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy. The Nat ...
.
[Jeffrey Richelson and Desmond Ball. ''The ties that bind: intelligence cooperation between the UKUSA countries'' Allen & Unwin. 1985, frontispiece]
Books
* ''Social choice theory and Soviet national security decisionmaking.'' Center for International and Strategic Affairs UCLA. 1982.
* ''United States strategic reconnaissance: photographic/imaging satellites.'' Center for International and Strategic Affairs UCLA. 1983. .
* Jeffrey Richelson and Desmond Ball. ''The ties that bind: intelligence cooperation between the UKUSA countries''. Allen & Unwin. 1985. .
* ''Sword and shield: the Soviet intelligence and security apparatus''. Ballinger Publishing Company. 1986. .
* ''American espionage and the Soviet target''. William Morrow. 1987. .
* ''Foreign intelligence organizations.'' Ballinger Publishing Company. 1988. .
* ''America's secret eyes in space: the U.S. Keyhole spy satellite program.'' Harper & Row. 1990. .
* ''A century of spies: intelligence in the twentieth century.'' Oxford University Press. 1995. , (paperback).
* ''The U.S. intelligence community.'' First edition. Ballinger Publishing Company. 1985. .
** Second edition. Ballinger Publishing Company. 1989. .
** Third edition. Westview Press. 1995. .
** Fourth edition. Westview Press. 1999. .
** Fifth edition. Westview Press. 2007. .
*
Sixth edition Westview Press. 2012. . .
Seventh edition Westview Press. 2016. .
* ''America's space sentinels: DSP satellites and national security''. University of Kansas Press. 1999. .
* ''The Wizards of Langley: inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology.'' Westview Press. 2001. .
* ''Spying on the bomb: American nuclear intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea.'' Norton. 2006. .
*
References
External links
Teachinghistory.org review of ''China and the United States: From Hostility to Engagement, 1960–1998,'' a web resource edited by Richelson*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Richelson, Jeffrey T.
1949 births
2017 deaths
University of Rochester alumni
American non-fiction writers
City University of New York alumni