Kathryn Olmsted is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (University of North Carolina Press, 1996), Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), and Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11 (Oxford University Press, 2009).