I spy with one little eye.

SPIES; ESPIONAGE; NATIONAL security; SCHOLARS; JOURNALISM; ARCHIVES

This article focuses on the disturbing nexus of scholarship, journalism and cold war fanaticism, which based on either a careless or a deliberately malicious reading of declassified national security documents, threatens one's ability to make sense of the past half century of history. Hitherto secret documents or ex-spy confessions, often backed up by a major publishing campaign, reveal that so-and-so was a spy all along. Journalists trumpet the charge, calling on "respected" academics to either endorse or debunk the charges. Depending on the usually predictable political orientation of the academic in question, a person's reputation is either destroyed or merely damaged.