Customer Reviews

Spy Capitalism: ITEK and the CIA

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Spy Capitalism is a valuable contribution for those of us who follow the history of technology and the development of overhead photo reconnaissance, as well as to the history of the Corona project. Until now, the cameras on Corona were described as designed by Itek, with no details about the company or its relationship to the CIA. This book fleshes out that company's very colorful history and its relationship with the intelligence communnity.

While the book fills an important gap in history, it does read at times like a Harvard Business School case study. The author sketches an intriguing outline of Richard Leghorn the founder of Itek, but never quite makes the leap to nailing his personality or his weaknesses - that of a visionary entrepreneur in a venture backed startup who was a terrible operating executive - other than just describing them in a narrative. Given 40 years of entrepreneurial hindsight, setting Richard Leghorn in the context of other entrepreneurs and their failure modes would have been helpful.

Minor quibbles aside, all in all, a very worthwhile book for those interested in an important part of overhead photo reconnaissance history.

The story of ITEK and the Corona Project is a classic story of American ingenuity. The distractions of the executives fortunately did not prevent the Corona Program from achieving vast amounts of photographic information of the Soviet Union and other potential enemies of the USA.

Its only short coming is the lack of description of the many engineers who worked tirelessly to fulfill the needs of the Corona project. I now have a much better picture of the work my father and his friends did that they could never talk about.

A great read.

Very interesting and intriguing. I personally worked for Itek Corporation since 1964 until the were sold to AB Dick Comapnay. I was amazed at the poeplwho started the company as was unaware I had the priviledge to dring with and former CIA agent and never knew it. That wa sin 1971.

Itek and AB Dick were my whole life so the book was very interesting for me.