Day: June 4, 2025

The placement of a new, 12-foot-high bronze statue in Times Square, New York City’s most famous tourist and entertainment district, by the Times Square Alliance, a nonprofit organization financed by local businesses, raises the question of just what public art is for. (The statue, made by London-based sculptor Thomas J. Price, will stand in place until June 17, as part of a system of rotating displays of contemporary art.) What is remarkable about the statue is its sheer ordinariness. It depicts an anonymous black woman, overweight and casually dressed, hands on hips, looking more or less straight ahead with a somewhat dour expression, despite the ambiguous title the sculptor gave it, “Grounded in the Stars.”

In a “guide” to the statue posted on its website, Times Square Arts (a division of the Alliance) explains that Price’s “multidisciplinary” work “confronts preconceived notions of identity and representation.” Elsewhere, the New York Times has described Price’s overall work in recent years as “directly critiqu[ing] the traditions of public monuments and portraiture.” According to a release by a Los Angeles gallery, Hauser & Wirth, which is currently hosting an exhibit of “related works” by Price at another New York location, people who have criticized “Grounded in the Stars” have misunderstood it as a “traditional monument,” when it is actually “an artwork about monuments,” which in conjunction with Price’s other works, “amplif[ies] traditionally marginalized bodies and redress[es] structures of hierarchy, inviting questions about who we choose to celebrate in art.”

According to Price himself, the intent of “Grounded in the Stars” and an accompanying set of stop-motion animations scheduled to be posted on Times Square billboards is to highlight “the intrinsic value of the individual and amplif[y] traditionally marginalized bodies on a monumental scale” so as to “instigate meaningful connections and bind intimate emotional states that allow for deeper reflection around the human condition and greater cultural diversity.” Indeed (quoting again from the Times Square Alliance), while “the young woman depicted in ’Grounded in the Stars’ carries familiar qualities, from her stance and countenance to her everyday clothing,” in her depiction “one recognizes a shared humanity,” while her pose and “the ease of her stance” constitute “a subtle nod to Michelangelo’s David.” Thus, the statue “disrupts traditional ideas around what defines a triumphant figure and challenges who should be rendered immortal through monumentalization.”

The foregoing selections of what is, to be frank, academic and political gobbledygook from the art world exemplify the point that the late, great novelist and social and cultural critic Tom Wolfe skewered in his book-length essay The Painted Word: a painting or other artistic work that needs a couple of paragraphs or more (when posted in a museum) to explain what the artist was “trying to say” isn’t really art at all. We commonly gaze at paintings by artists ranging from Rembrandt and Franz Hals to, say, the French Impressionists or the Hudson River School with a view to appreciating their beauty, or the emotions their subjects inspire, without needing a guide to tell us what the painter’s aim was. (Commonly, with the occasional exception of a work like Picasso’s “Guernica,” we have no interest in the artist’s political views either, any more than we would look to a politician to provide us with insight into art.)

Going further, however, what can it mean to say that a sculpture isn’t really a “monument” but rather “an artwork about monuments”? If the sculptor’s complaint was that not enough monuments portray people he believes have been “marginalized,” why not just publish an essay making his argument?

As a Fox News columnist quoted by the Times points out, the celebration by art “professionals” of Price’s sculpture of an anonymous, unimpressive figure whose sole “distinguishing” feature is that she happens to be black stands in marked contrast to the official removal in 2022, following the George Floyd riots, of a statue of Theodore Roosevelt that had stood in front of New York’s Museum of Natural History for 80 years. While Roosevelt was a man of multiple achievements in and out of politics, the particular reason for honoring him in front of the museum is that he was an avid and accomplished naturalist. Nonetheless, the museum administrators proclaimed in explaining their decision, his statue—which depicted T. R. on horseback, accompanied by standing American Indian and African male figures (chosen, it is said, to represent some of the diverse areas of the world where he went hunting and exploring)—needed to be removed because it “communicat[ed] a racial hierarchy that the Museum and members of the public have long found disturbing.” (It was “hierarchical” simply because Roosevelt was the only member of the trio on horseback.)

Having grown up in the New York City area, periodically visiting the Museum on school trips as well as with my parents, and later bringing my daughters there, I actually found the statue of Roosevelt the most memorable part of the museum (surpassed only by the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton inside). As a student of politics, I have found much to disagree with in the Progressive political thinking that Roosevelt turned to during the last decade of his career, as he sought to regain the presidency. But like anyone with the least familiarity with his life, I cannot avoid being inspired, even awed, by his many achievements—from overcoming debilitating asthma by “roughing it” (a model he recommended to all Americans in “The Strenuous Life”), to the charge up San Juan Hill, and eventually as president. And for the record, as president he not only issued Executive Order 8802, creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee, the most important Federal move in support of the rights of African Americans since Reconstruction, but named black officials to significant federal positions, even in the South, and was the first occupant of the White House to invite a black leader (Booker T. Washington) to dine there with him.

For those wondering about the fate of the Roosevelt statue: following its removal, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation announced it would accept the item as a long-term loan from New York City for display at the library, scheduled to open in Medora, North Dakota, in 2026. At the time, Theodore Roosevelt IV remarked, in language more appropriate for one of those New York art critics than of his ancestor, that it was “fitting that the statue is being relocated to a place where its composition can be recontextualized to facilitate difficult, complex and inclusive discussions.” In fact, the library’s remote location—admittedly the site where the young T. R. went to build up his physical constitution—makes it unlikely that it will facilitate many discussions, inclusive or otherwise. And in any event, not only is the statue currently in storage, but no plans have been announced for it to be displayed even when the library opens. Sic transit gloria.

In this context, it is worth recalling an observation the great French analyst Alexis de Tocqueville made in Democracy in America. The general equality of condition among Americans (of course, excluding slaves), in contrast to the relatively fixed social and political hierarchy that characterized European nations like France, suggested to us “the idea of the indefinite perfectibility of man.” That is, seeing how far many of his compatriots (and likely, he himself) have already advanced beyond the attainments of previous generations inspires the American to strive to surpass them. Tocqueville even quotes the explanation an American sailor gave him of why Americans build their vessels to last only a short time: since “the art of navigation makes such rapid progress daily” because “the most beautiful ship would soon become almost useless if its existence were prolonged beyond a few years.” Tocqueville portrays these words of a man of low social condition as exemplifying “the general and systematic idea according to which a great people conducts all things.”

Few of us possess the potential to rival in our lives the achievements of a Teddy Roosevelt. But one of the proper functions of great statues and other forms of art (including music and literature) is surely to encourage us to make the effort. Had the sculptor of “Grounded in the Stars” wanted to contribute to the inspiration and elevation of black Americans, there are plenty of real achievers—in statesmanship, education, literature, sports, music, the military, for starters—he could have chosen to memorialize. Instead, in a 2020 essay for Time magazine, he explained that his work aimed to show that “if you’re a black person being represented in sculpture, you don’t have to be an athlete, or strike a pose, or fulfil an expectation.”

Of course, the greatest artists did not limit their portrayals to persons of high achievement. But do most African-Americans really want to be “represented,” in one of the world’s most public spaces, by an anonymous statue of a perfectly ordinary-looking woman? In what way, in the words of the Times Square Alliance, does “Grounded in the Stars” “disrupt” our understanding of which figures deserve to be “monumentalized,” other than to say that mediocrity is good enough, and any endeavor to surpass it is inherently “hierarchical” and therefore racist? Not only Tocqueville and T. R., but Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and Martin Luther King Jr. would be appalled.

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.”