April 1, 2024
A new look at America's primary intelligence agency. For a supposedly secret agency, the CIA looms large in American public life, an institution that is both admired and reviled. Wilford, a professor of history who has written several books about intelligence services, including The Mighty Wurlitzer and America's Great Game, delves into the history of the agency using as a framework the idea that the CIA created and has maintained a de facto American "empire." He also examines the "boomerang effect" that CIA activities initiated in the 1970s and after, with the agency becoming the target of savage criticism. Wilford builds each section around a particular individual, noting that the CIA was originally established in 1947 as an office for intelligence gathering and analysis. Soon after its creation, however, it became a vehicle for Cold War adventurism, especially by instigating regime changes through coups. In many cases, this meant supporting brutal and corrupt governments, as long as they espoused strict anti-communist rhetoric. The collapse of the Soviet Union caught many analysts by surprise, although a new generation of enemies gave the CIA plenty to do. Wilford is a knowledgeable guide to the history of the CIA, but his argument for its role as an empire builder is not fully convincing. The narrative arc is often unclear, and the author takes a number of detours--e.g., a lengthy debunking of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories--that are more distracting than informative. Another problem is that this territory has been well covered by such authors as Tim Weiner, David Talbot, Annie Jacobsen, Steve Coll, and Tom O'Neill. It's difficult to see how this book adds materially to an already crowded genre, in which Weiner's Legacy of Ashes remains the standard. Wilford capably draws many historical threads together but doesn't make a strong enough case for the CIA's "imperial" nature.
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Starred review from May 15, 2024
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has proved a lightning rod for any and all parties in the nation's politics. The CIA's fundamental aim for secrecy runs counter to America's professed drive for government transparency. Wilford (America's Great Game, 2017) charts the inexorable growth of today's CIA from its birth in 1947, and its role in shaping America's vision of itself and the world's perception of America. A cadre of nascent Cold Warriors, the founders were exclusively white, male, and mostly trained in the Ivy League. A few "mish kids," missionaries' sons, also made the cut. Simultaneously admiring British intelligence efforts and repelled by that nation's imperial bent, the CIA was conflicted from its start. Agents soon turned to covert actions to advance America's perceived interests, promoting anti-communism or defending U.S. corporations' business ventures. Wilford profiles the intense personalities of CIA founders Kermit Roosevelt, Edward Landsdale, James Angleton, and Cord Meyer, men who were equally romantic visionaries, socially adept politicos, and ruthless spymasters. Their roles in U.S. involvement in Cuba, Chile, Vietnam, and the Middle East resulted in both triumphs and debacles. Wilford's text brims with acronyms, and his table of all those mutating capital letters proves invaluable.
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Starred review from June 3, 2024
Historian Wilford (America’s Great Game) argues in this vibrant account that the CIA came into being as a continuation of European imperial ambition. The CIA’s early, Ivy League–educated leadership “shared British values,” Wilford writes, and fancied themselves adventurers in the mold of T.E. Lawrence and Kim, Rudyard Kipling’s romantic portrait of the British Raj. (A bizarre number of early CIA agents were nicknamed “Kim.”) Founded in 1947 and freed from the wartime goals of its predecessor the OSS, the CIA latched onto fighting communism as its raison d’être—a so-called anti-imperialist effort that was carried out with supreme imperialist flair, Wilford contends, as the agency sought to prove America was “the rightful heir to European modernity.” Wilford structures his argument around profiles of prominent agents, including Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, architect of the CIA’s 1953 Iranian coup, who constantly played “Luck Be a Lady Tonight” from Guys and Dolls in the lead-up to the operation, and James Angleton, an obsessive orchid-growing loner and modernist literary scholar who went nearly insane trying to shake out the agency’s communist moles. The book is full of such striking character portraits, as Wilford evocatively suggests that the CIA’s tendency to overthrow foreign governments emerged from paranoia and personality defects among its leadership. This eye-opening slice of American history should not be missed.