How is it possible for an agency of the United States government to be exempt from providing what the US Constitution's Appropriations Clause describes as "a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money"?In The Hidden Cost of Freedom, author Brad Fisher presents a comprehensive narrative of the origin and early development of the CIA's clandestine financial system, beginning with the establishment of the Office of Strategic Services' Special Funds Branch during World War II. Fisher documents the controversial legislative history of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 from the standpoint of the CIA, the General Accounting Office, and congressional insiders, and describes the act's role in the transformation of the CIA's financial administration into a global enterprise for financing its foreign intelligence activities. Finally, he brings to light the story of his grandfather, Edwin Lyle Fisher, who had a major role in the postwar establishment of the CIA's funding system as the GAO's legal liaison to the CIA.

While the existence of the CIA's clandestine funding is no secret, Fisher's book is the first to trace its development and to show how the CIA's covert financial system was allowed to develop in a democracy devoted to checks and balances.