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The CIA: An Imperial History
A celebrated historian of US intelligence explores how the CIA was born in anti-imperialist idealism but swiftly became an instrument of a new covert empire both overseas and at home in America
As World War II ended, the United States stood as the dominant power on the world stage. In 1947, to support its new global status, it created the CIA to analyze foreign intelligence. But within a few years, the Agency was engaged in other operations: bolstering pro-American governments, overthrowing nationalist leaders, and surveilling anti-imperial dissenters at home.
The Cold War was an obvious reason for this transformation—but not the only one. In The CIA, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford draws on decades of research to show the Agency as part of a larger picture, the history of Western empire. While young CIA officers imagined themselves as British imperial agents like T. E. Lawrence, successive US presidents used the covert powers of the Agency to hide overseas interventions from postcolonial foreigners and anti-imperial Americans alike. Even the CIA’s post-9/11 global hunt for terrorists was haunted by the ghosts of empires past.
Comprehensive, original, and gripping, The CIA is the story of the birth of a new imperial order in the shadows. It offers the most complete account yet of how America adopted unaccountable power and secrecy abroad and at home.
Read less
As World War II ended, the United States stood as the dominant power on the world stage. In 1947, to support its new global status, it created the CIA to analyze foreign intelligence. But within a few years, the Agency was engaged in other operations: bolstering pro-American governments, overthrowing nationalist leaders, and surveilling anti-imperial dissenters at home.
The Cold War was an obvious reason for this transformation—but not the only one. In The CIA, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford draws on decades of research to show the Agency as part of a larger picture, the history of Western empire. While young CIA officers imagined themselves as British imperial agents like T. E. Lawrence, successive US presidents used the covert powers of the Agency to hide overseas interventions from postcolonial foreigners and anti-imperial Americans alike. Even the CIA’s post-9/11 global hunt for terrorists was haunted by the ghosts of empires past.
Comprehensive, original, and gripping, The CIA is the story of the birth of a new imperial order in the shadows. It offers the most complete account yet of how America adopted unaccountable power and secrecy abroad and at home.
Read less
368 pages, Hardcover
First published June 4, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 20, 2024
Hugh Wilford's The CIA: An Imperial History ably shows the continuities between European imperial intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency. Through a series of overlapping biographies of some of the CIA's most famous personalities, Wilford demonstrates how the CIA deployed tried and true imperial techniques - ranging from covert operations to overthrow governments to torturing suspected enemy operatives - to impose American values and ideas upon foreign nations. These similarities happened despite American rejection of the European imperial project, the personal support of decolonization by many CIA leaders, and the narrative of American exceptionalism that the US does not have imperial ambitions (a lie which Daniel Immerwahr dismantles in How to Hide an Empire). Making matters worse, many of the worst aspects of the CIA's imperial ideology boomeranged back to the United States harming American citizens and endangering democracy.
Wilford's history is clearly and concisely written. It is peppered with interesting details and compelling personalities (James Angelton, in particular, shines in Wilford's telling). The book is also a showcase of all the wonderful research that has been done on the history of intelligence gathering in the United States over the past two decades. The bibliography is worth exploring for anyone wow'ed by Wilford's account.
The only real flaw is that - by design- there really isn't anything new here. This is a synthesis in its clearest form. Even the arguments are not new - the CIA as an imperial brotherhood has been explored elsewhere as has the boomerang concept. Still, this history is a valuable entry point for those looking to learn more about the CIA and American foreign relations in the 20th century. Its combination of thorough research (albeit into secondary sources), fun details, and clear argumentation could also make this a useful book to teach at the undergraduate level to provide an overview of American Cold War foreign relations.
Wilford's history is clearly and concisely written. It is peppered with interesting details and compelling personalities (James Angelton, in particular, shines in Wilford's telling). The book is also a showcase of all the wonderful research that has been done on the history of intelligence gathering in the United States over the past two decades. The bibliography is worth exploring for anyone wow'ed by Wilford's account.
The only real flaw is that - by design- there really isn't anything new here. This is a synthesis in its clearest form. Even the arguments are not new - the CIA as an imperial brotherhood has been explored elsewhere as has the boomerang concept. Still, this history is a valuable entry point for those looking to learn more about the CIA and American foreign relations in the 20th century. Its combination of thorough research (albeit into secondary sources), fun details, and clear argumentation could also make this a useful book to teach at the undergraduate level to provide an overview of American Cold War foreign relations.
June 9, 2024
*Thanks to NetGalley for an eARC of this book*
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The writing style is engaging and the material is fascinating.
Wilford looks at the history of the CIA through several of its notable founders and explores how the backgrounds of these (mostly) men dictated how the CIA developed and interacted with the world. As someone who is very fond of calling the American empire exactly what it is, this history of the CIA shows just how imperial the US has acted around the world since World War II.
Wilford does an excellent job of not only telling the story of the CIA, but also highlighting the people that made the CIA what it is. His reconstructions of the characters are vivid and easy to read in a way that feels unique. Most histories of this kind get bogged down in the terminology and the historical facts, but this is a true work of narrative history that highlights human agency in a compelling way.
At times infuriating and fascinating, The CIA: An Imperial History, is a testament to the writing skills of its author while also providing a new and interesting method of examining the history and impact of the CIA in the modern era. This is a must read for anyone interested in how American became and maintains its empire both at home and abroad.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The writing style is engaging and the material is fascinating.
Wilford looks at the history of the CIA through several of its notable founders and explores how the backgrounds of these (mostly) men dictated how the CIA developed and interacted with the world. As someone who is very fond of calling the American empire exactly what it is, this history of the CIA shows just how imperial the US has acted around the world since World War II.
Wilford does an excellent job of not only telling the story of the CIA, but also highlighting the people that made the CIA what it is. His reconstructions of the characters are vivid and easy to read in a way that feels unique. Most histories of this kind get bogged down in the terminology and the historical facts, but this is a true work of narrative history that highlights human agency in a compelling way.
At times infuriating and fascinating, The CIA: An Imperial History, is a testament to the writing skills of its author while also providing a new and interesting method of examining the history and impact of the CIA in the modern era. This is a must read for anyone interested in how American became and maintains its empire both at home and abroad.
July 17, 2024
THE CIA AND THE "AMERICAN EMPIRE"
A century ago the United States government shut down the fledgling spy service the Wilson Administration had established to help wage the Great War. And America was out of the espionage business until 1942, when FDR authorized the formation of the OSS. Today, the American intelligence community consists of eighteen separate agencies which boast a total annual budget of more than $100 billion. That’s one million dollars 100,000 times over. But those eighteen agencies are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
3,000 ORGANIZATIONS MOST CALL “THE CIA”
As The Washington Post reported in 2010, there were 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in 10,000 locations in the United States that were working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence. The intelligence community as a whole, the Post noted, would include 854,000 people holding top-secret clearances. Surely now, fourteen years later, the whole operation is even larger. Thus, what Dwight Eisenhower famously called the military-industrial complex is now often termed the military-industrial-intelligence complex. But for most Americans, it all rolls up into a single, three-letter agency: the CIA. Which is the focus, although not the exclusive territory, explored in Hugh Wilford’s The CIA: An Imperial History.
PROTECTING THE “AMERICAN EMPIRE”
Wilford’s central thesis is that the CIA continued the practices of the colonial intelligence services of the British and French (though mostly the British). That the agency simply represented the face of a new empire. And that, despite the fact that many of the men who held key positions in the early years of the American intelligence community considered themselves to be anti-imperialist. Clearly, the thesis holds water. The CIA did inherit a set of attitudes, beliefs, and techniques from the Europeans. Fair enough. But that emphasis misses the point. Because the central question is whether today’s “American Empire”—assuming the term applies—is simply a continuation of the British and French colonial empires of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are many who think so. And many who don’t. The point is debatable.
For example, Wilford goes into considerable detail about the CIA’s illegal domestic operations in the 1960s and 70s. During those years, the Agency collaborated closely with the FBI in efforts to undermine the New Left and Black Nationalists. And the author notes that this activity, which was extensive and stretched over several years, resembled that of MI5’s campaign against the Left in Britain during and between the two world wars. But so what? The comparison proves little more than that intelligence agencies in every nation are prone to meddling in domestic affairs even if doing so is illegal. It’s easy to find excuses to do so. Mission creep is common in the world of bureaucracy.
FOUR ICONIC FIGURES IN THE AGENCY’S HISTORY
Wilford draws a straight line from the conduct of British intelligence in the colonies to the later efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Third World after decolonization. In his view, the CIA inherited not just a set of common techniques and practices but the ideology and culture of the British Empire. He may exaggerate for effect. But there’s no denying that Rudyard Kipling’s novels of imperial derring-do, especially his iconic story, Kim, inspired many adventurous young men to enlist in the OSS and, later, the CIA. So did the story of Lawrence of Arabia.
RUDYARD KIPLING
He won the Nobel Prize for Literature. But for the men who were instrumental in establishing the CIA Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was best known for a single novel, Kim. That book, which is invariably listed among the greatest spy novels, captured the imagination of many in the American intelligence community when they read it as children. Some cited it as a reason they sought out careers in intelligence.
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935) is best known to posterity as “Lawrence of Arabia.” An army colonel who operated among the Bedouin tribes of the Middle East during World War I, he helped the British drive the Ottoman Turks out of the region. Many members of the American intelligence establishment cited Lawrence as an early influence in their lives and careers.
KIM ROOSEVELT
Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt Jr. (1916-2000) was an adventurer despite his scholarly image. He led the joint US-British operation to overthrow the Iranian government in 1953. The exploit made him an iconic figure in CIA history. And he spoke of what he had learned from the British colonial intelligence community as pivotal in his education.
EDWARD LANSDALE
Edward Lansdale (1908-87) was a pioneer in counterinsurgency and psychological warfare. Working on behalf of the CIA most of the time, Lansdale famously crafted the techniques that defeated the Huk guerrilla rebellion in the Philippines following World War II. Believing he had a magic touch, the Eisenhower Administration assigned him to do the same in South Vietnam for President Ngo Dinh Diem. He failed. But Lansdale is still widely regarded as one of the key figures in the Agency’s history.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hugh Wilford has been a professor of History at California State University, Long Beach since 2006. He previously taught at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, where he trained as an intellectual historian. Wilford holds a BA from Bristol University and a PhD from Exeter University. He specializes in the history of the CIA, having published five major books on the subject. He was born in 1965.
A century ago the United States government shut down the fledgling spy service the Wilson Administration had established to help wage the Great War. And America was out of the espionage business until 1942, when FDR authorized the formation of the OSS. Today, the American intelligence community consists of eighteen separate agencies which boast a total annual budget of more than $100 billion. That’s one million dollars 100,000 times over. But those eighteen agencies are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
3,000 ORGANIZATIONS MOST CALL “THE CIA”
As The Washington Post reported in 2010, there were 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in 10,000 locations in the United States that were working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence. The intelligence community as a whole, the Post noted, would include 854,000 people holding top-secret clearances. Surely now, fourteen years later, the whole operation is even larger. Thus, what Dwight Eisenhower famously called the military-industrial complex is now often termed the military-industrial-intelligence complex. But for most Americans, it all rolls up into a single, three-letter agency: the CIA. Which is the focus, although not the exclusive territory, explored in Hugh Wilford’s The CIA: An Imperial History.
PROTECTING THE “AMERICAN EMPIRE”
Wilford’s central thesis is that the CIA continued the practices of the colonial intelligence services of the British and French (though mostly the British). That the agency simply represented the face of a new empire. And that, despite the fact that many of the men who held key positions in the early years of the American intelligence community considered themselves to be anti-imperialist. Clearly, the thesis holds water. The CIA did inherit a set of attitudes, beliefs, and techniques from the Europeans. Fair enough. But that emphasis misses the point. Because the central question is whether today’s “American Empire”—assuming the term applies—is simply a continuation of the British and French colonial empires of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are many who think so. And many who don’t. The point is debatable.
For example, Wilford goes into considerable detail about the CIA’s illegal domestic operations in the 1960s and 70s. During those years, the Agency collaborated closely with the FBI in efforts to undermine the New Left and Black Nationalists. And the author notes that this activity, which was extensive and stretched over several years, resembled that of MI5’s campaign against the Left in Britain during and between the two world wars. But so what? The comparison proves little more than that intelligence agencies in every nation are prone to meddling in domestic affairs even if doing so is illegal. It’s easy to find excuses to do so. Mission creep is common in the world of bureaucracy.
FOUR ICONIC FIGURES IN THE AGENCY’S HISTORY
Wilford draws a straight line from the conduct of British intelligence in the colonies to the later efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Third World after decolonization. In his view, the CIA inherited not just a set of common techniques and practices but the ideology and culture of the British Empire. He may exaggerate for effect. But there’s no denying that Rudyard Kipling’s novels of imperial derring-do, especially his iconic story, Kim, inspired many adventurous young men to enlist in the OSS and, later, the CIA. So did the story of Lawrence of Arabia.
RUDYARD KIPLING
He won the Nobel Prize for Literature. But for the men who were instrumental in establishing the CIA Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was best known for a single novel, Kim. That book, which is invariably listed among the greatest spy novels, captured the imagination of many in the American intelligence community when they read it as children. Some cited it as a reason they sought out careers in intelligence.
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935) is best known to posterity as “Lawrence of Arabia.” An army colonel who operated among the Bedouin tribes of the Middle East during World War I, he helped the British drive the Ottoman Turks out of the region. Many members of the American intelligence establishment cited Lawrence as an early influence in their lives and careers.
KIM ROOSEVELT
Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt Jr. (1916-2000) was an adventurer despite his scholarly image. He led the joint US-British operation to overthrow the Iranian government in 1953. The exploit made him an iconic figure in CIA history. And he spoke of what he had learned from the British colonial intelligence community as pivotal in his education.
EDWARD LANSDALE
Edward Lansdale (1908-87) was a pioneer in counterinsurgency and psychological warfare. Working on behalf of the CIA most of the time, Lansdale famously crafted the techniques that defeated the Huk guerrilla rebellion in the Philippines following World War II. Believing he had a magic touch, the Eisenhower Administration assigned him to do the same in South Vietnam for President Ngo Dinh Diem. He failed. But Lansdale is still widely regarded as one of the key figures in the Agency’s history.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hugh Wilford has been a professor of History at California State University, Long Beach since 2006. He previously taught at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, where he trained as an intellectual historian. Wilford holds a BA from Bristol University and a PhD from Exeter University. He specializes in the history of the CIA, having published five major books on the subject. He was born in 1965.
May 27, 2024
Mr. Wilford does an impressive job of linking the beginning of the CIA with the OSS. However, important areas of concern seem rushed or ignored altogether. The CIA's relationships in Taiwan and Pakistan especially. Also, Mr. Wilford acknowledges the failures of the CIA's intelligence gathering concerning September 11 but brushes over the failure regarding the Ukrainian invasion. Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the advance reader copy.
April 20, 2024
My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Basic Books for an advanced copy of this history of the Central Intelligence Agency that is told through the careers of some of its most famous and sometimes infamous players highlighting the mindset and attitudes that colored many of the actions and activities, activities that are still reverberating today.
There is a phrase that started appearing in American media during the 90's probably said by military sources to friendly journalists, a phrase that was used to describe why certain actions seemed to be getting bigger and bigger. Mission creep. Where a certain program or military operations seems to just get larger, a six month operation becomes a year, than a decade, more forces are needed, more, more and more. Mission creep is a good phrase for the history of the Central Intelligence Agency. Formed after the war as a organization to gather and analyze intelligence, soon the Agency was arming various groups, working to overthrow or prop up governments, and spying on people inside America for dangerous thinking. The Red Scare and the paranoia of the era explains some of it, but much of the mission creep can be explained on the people brought into the Agency, and their attitudes and thoughts about the world. Even people who once thought that the idea of a one world government was the only solution, soon began to see the threat of communism in everything, and these lofty ideas went to the wayside. Hugh Wilford, a Professor at California State University, Long Beach and writer of many books on espionage has in The CIA: An Imperial History, written about the ideas, attitudes, mistakes and even a few successes that the agency has had, while furthering the dreams of an American empire, dreams that are still haunting us today.
The book is broken into six chapters, with one person being the focus and explaining different actions that the Central Intelligence Agency has undertaken. Many of the names. James Jesus Angelton, Kermit Roosevelt, and even recent former Director Gina Haspel will be familiar, some are a little deeper cut, but their actions might be known. Wilford looks at these people and there backgrounds, the Eastern aristocracy, clubs and schools they shared, with a mix of Old World we know better than most ideas. In the case of Edward Lansdale the missionary zeal he took in bringing people into line with the American ideal. Each chapter has a theme Regime change, or bolstering, publicity of propaganda, counter intelligence, and even the gathering of intelligence. Wilford uses this to show how the simple act of gathering intelligence as planned led to targeted assassinations, an industrial complex based on keeping secrets, failures and blow backs and much more.
I have read a lot of books on espionage, fiction, fictional histories, and nonfiction, but this one of the better ones that I have read as Wilford, is not afraid to point out internal logic problems in people's thinking, and why certain actions were allowed. One can see the world changing as Wilford writes, leading to the rise of conspiracies, Kennedy and the all-powerful threat of the CIA, and even the rise of the police state that is modern America. Wilford is a very good writer who knows his stuff, and though a lot of what is presented is not new, Wilford uses this information to back up his claims of America making a world not in our image, but as one that America could lord over.
Recommended for history fans, especially espionage fans. I can see a lot of people being upset by the conclusions that Wilford comes to, but it is very hard to argue with facts, and one only has to look out the window at the world right now and see that maybe if these guys with their great ideas hadn't been able to muck about the world, things might not be as bad.
There is a phrase that started appearing in American media during the 90's probably said by military sources to friendly journalists, a phrase that was used to describe why certain actions seemed to be getting bigger and bigger. Mission creep. Where a certain program or military operations seems to just get larger, a six month operation becomes a year, than a decade, more forces are needed, more, more and more. Mission creep is a good phrase for the history of the Central Intelligence Agency. Formed after the war as a organization to gather and analyze intelligence, soon the Agency was arming various groups, working to overthrow or prop up governments, and spying on people inside America for dangerous thinking. The Red Scare and the paranoia of the era explains some of it, but much of the mission creep can be explained on the people brought into the Agency, and their attitudes and thoughts about the world. Even people who once thought that the idea of a one world government was the only solution, soon began to see the threat of communism in everything, and these lofty ideas went to the wayside. Hugh Wilford, a Professor at California State University, Long Beach and writer of many books on espionage has in The CIA: An Imperial History, written about the ideas, attitudes, mistakes and even a few successes that the agency has had, while furthering the dreams of an American empire, dreams that are still haunting us today.
The book is broken into six chapters, with one person being the focus and explaining different actions that the Central Intelligence Agency has undertaken. Many of the names. James Jesus Angelton, Kermit Roosevelt, and even recent former Director Gina Haspel will be familiar, some are a little deeper cut, but their actions might be known. Wilford looks at these people and there backgrounds, the Eastern aristocracy, clubs and schools they shared, with a mix of Old World we know better than most ideas. In the case of Edward Lansdale the missionary zeal he took in bringing people into line with the American ideal. Each chapter has a theme Regime change, or bolstering, publicity of propaganda, counter intelligence, and even the gathering of intelligence. Wilford uses this to show how the simple act of gathering intelligence as planned led to targeted assassinations, an industrial complex based on keeping secrets, failures and blow backs and much more.
I have read a lot of books on espionage, fiction, fictional histories, and nonfiction, but this one of the better ones that I have read as Wilford, is not afraid to point out internal logic problems in people's thinking, and why certain actions were allowed. One can see the world changing as Wilford writes, leading to the rise of conspiracies, Kennedy and the all-powerful threat of the CIA, and even the rise of the police state that is modern America. Wilford is a very good writer who knows his stuff, and though a lot of what is presented is not new, Wilford uses this information to back up his claims of America making a world not in our image, but as one that America could lord over.
Recommended for history fans, especially espionage fans. I can see a lot of people being upset by the conclusions that Wilford comes to, but it is very hard to argue with facts, and one only has to look out the window at the world right now and see that maybe if these guys with their great ideas hadn't been able to muck about the world, things might not be as bad.
August 20, 2024
Different take on CIA history. Using the British imperial mindset as a basis, book compares CIA actions with similar British activities. Well worth the read.
July 17, 2024
Inside story of the CIA which concentrates on individual CIA officers and the roles they played in major historical events.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews