Biography
Jeffreys-Jones was born in Carmarthen and grew up speaking Welsh in Harlech. Having moved to Harlech at a young age, he attended Ysgol Ardudwy, the local comprehensive school. He attended the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth University), taking a B.A. in 1963. During 1964-65 he pursued graduate study at the University of Michigan and, during 1965–66, at Harvard University. In 1967 Jeffreys-Jones took his PhD in American history at Cambridge University in England. He stated in 2020:I originally approached American history after following a left wing trajectory that billed the United States as arch-conservative, arch-capitalist, and hostile to democratic socialism and world peace.He taught as a tutor of history at Harvard's Kirkland House, at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, and for the Transport and General Workers Union before becoming a lecturer in history at the University of Edinburgh in 1967. After rising through the academic ranks as a lecturer and reader, in 1997 he became the university's second professor of American history, or its first exclusive professor of American history, given that in 1965 George "Sam" Shepperson had become "Professor of Commonwealth and American History." During his career, Jeffreys-Jones held visiting appointments, including: a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Charles Warren Center for the Study of American History at Harvard (1971–72); a Stipendiary at the JFK Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Berlin, Germany; and a Canadian Commonwealth Fellowship and visiting professor at the University of Toronto.''Contemporary Authors Online''. Thomson Gale (2006) Jeffreys-Jones has directed postgraduate students, master's and doctoral. Jeffreys-Jones was one of the founders of the Scottish Association for the Study of America.
Research and publications
Jeffreys-Jones began his scholarly pursuits examining the issue of violence in American industry during the Progressive Era, including the use of private detective agencies in labor disputes. Building on his work involving private detectives who collected intelligence for big business, Jeffreys-Jones then shifted his focus during the late 1970s to examine American secret intelligence, a time when the field began to blossom with the release of historical records and revelations of American intelligence agencies' activities. Jeffreys-Jones published an historical survey examining the development of American intelligence from the establishment of the Secret Service in the 19th Century to the CIA in the 20th. This was followed by one of the first academic histories of the CIA at a time when most studies were undocumented, a book examining American intelligence and exaggeration, and a history of the FBI in which Jeffreys-Jones traced its origins to the 19th century and the federal government's pursuit of the Ku Klux Klan. More recent books by Jeffreys-Jones traced the history of British-American intelligence cooperation and the recent rise of European Union intelligence, and analyzed the achievements of the American left since 1900. The latter book was the winner of the Neustadt Prize for the best British book on American politics published in 2013. His next two books were about the history of surveillance in the US and the UK, and about the 1938 Nazi spy ring in America. His latest work, ''A Question of Standing'', brings the history of the CIA up to 2022, making a case for the importance of analysts. According to Mark White in ''BBC History Magazine'' (1 September 2022), it has ‘a perspective that is both balanced and compelling’.Published works
Books
* ''American Espionage: From Secret Service to CIA'' (New York: Free Press, 1977) * ''Violence and Reform in American History'' (New York: New Viewpoints, 1978) * ''The CIA and American Democracy'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) * ''Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917-1994'' (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995) * ''Peace Now! American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) * ''Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002) * ''The FBI: A History'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) * ''In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) * ''The American Left: Its Impact on Politics and Society since 1900'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013) * ''We Know All About You: The Story of Surveillance in Britain and America'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) * ''Ring of Spies: How MI5 and the FBI Brought Down the Nazis in America'' (Cheltenham: The History Press, 2020) * ''The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI, and the Case that Stirred a Nation'' (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2020) * ''A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022)Books (edited)
* ''The Growth of Federal Power in American History''. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1983) * ''North American Spies: New Revisionist Essays'' (Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1991)Book contributions
* "What Burleson and Orwell Overlooked: Private Security Provision in the United States and the United Kingdom." In: ''Private Security and Modern States: Historical and Comparative Perspectives,'' edited by David Churchill, Dolores Janiewski and Pieter Leloup (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 214–31. * “J. Edgar Hoover.” In: ''The Federal Bureau of Investigation: History, Powers, and Controversies of the FBI'', edited by Douglas M. Charles (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2022), pp. 221-28.Articles (since 2015)
* "The Death of a Myth: How Socialism and the Left Succeeded in America." ''Reviews in American History'', vol. 43 (June 2015), pp. 281–87. * "Inter-Allied Commando Intelligence and Security Training in Gwynedd: The Coates Memoir," ''Intelligence and National Security'', vol. 30, no. 4 (August 2015), pp. 545–59. * "State Surveillance is More Ethical than Private-Sector Intrusions," ''Wired'' (January/February 2016), p. 97. * "Antecedents and Memory as Factors in the Creation of the CIA," '' Diplomatic History'', vol. 40, no. 1 (January 2016), pp. 140–54.Notes
Further reading
* Daskal, Jennifer. "Public and Private Eyes" '' Foreign Affairs''. (Nov/Dec 2017), 96#6, pp 139–143; review of '' We Know All About You''. * Morello, John, "We Know All About You: The Story of Surveillance in Britain and America. By Rhodri Jeffreys‐Jones, " '' History'' (Jan 2020) 105#364, pp 173–175. * O'Reilly, Kenneth. review of ''The FBI: A History,'' in ''American Historical Review'' (June, 2008), p. 865. * "Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones." ''Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors'' (Gale, 2018)External links
* History of CIA interview, 2022: https://app.talkshoe.com/episode/20124243