The CIA and “American Empire”
BOOK REVIEW: THE CIA: AN IMPERIAL HISTORY
By Hugh Wilford / Basic Books
Reviewed by: Michael Sulick
The Reviewer — Michael Sulick is a consultant on counterintelligence and global risk. He served as Chief of Counterintelligence and Director of the Clandestine Service at CIA and is the author of Spying in America: Espionage From the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War and American Spies: Espionage Against the United States from the Cold War to the Present.
REVIEW — Hugh Wilford’s The CIA: An Imperial History is based on the premise that the anti-imperialist United States evolved into an imperial power itself after World II, and that the CIA became the primary defender of the American empire. Given the inherently secret nature of its operations, Wilford argues that the Agency was ideally suited for the role to circumvent the attention of the media and generally anti-imperialist public by plausibly denying its imperialist ventures.
According to the author, the CIA warmed to the task. The Agency’s founding generation, despite sharing an anti-imperialist mindset, was motivated by public service, a thirst for adventure, and, most importantly for the author’s thesis, these views were heavily reinforced by their fascination with the spy history and literature of European colonial powers, especially the British. And, while serving overseas, the officers also lived the lifestyles and adopted the habits of their European imperialist counterparts.
Wilford illustrates this imperialist influence by examining various CIA operations through the careers of individual officers. While their names are largely unknown to the general public, they are familiar to students and scholars of the Agency’s early history: Sherman Kent, founder of CIA intelligence analysis; James Angleton, longtime counterintelligence czar obsessed with Soviet penetration of the West; Cord Meyer, driving force behind front operations to build popular support of Cold War interventions; and two leaders of major covert action operations, Kermit Roosevelt in the Iran coup to restore the Shah to the throne, and Edward Lansdale, counterinsurgency guru during the Vietnam conflict.
While these officers figured in the early days of the CIA, Wilford maintains the imperialist mindset continued at the Agency through ensuing decades up to the war on terror and the present. He not only details the blowback of these covert action operations on the direction of US foreign policy but also the “unintended consequences” of the ventures, the “boomerang effect” on the Agency’s reputation and other areas, among them: domestic surveillance programs, attempted influencing of US media and CIA conspiracy theories. On the last issue, Wilford reviews in perhaps too much detail many of the bizarre connections heralded for decades between the CIA and JFK assassination. In fairness, though, he treats them objectively for what little they are worth.
Although entitled “an imperial history,” the book focuses almost exclusively on covert action and ignores the primary functions of the CIA. The author does note “the legitimacy and value of the CIA’s other main function… the analysis of foreign intelligence.” Unfortunately, he misses the other half of the CIA mission: the main roles are the collection as well as the analysis of intelligence.
A complete history of the CIA would include collection efforts —-the blind spots and deceptions by adversaries in some cases, but also the key role of intelligence from Penkovskiy on the Cuban missile crisis, Tolkachev and Polyakov on Soviet strategic weaponry and military thinking, Polish Colonel Kuklinski during martial law and scores of other Russian and Soviet East Bloc sources. These are hardly examples of imperialism but traditional espionage to better inform analysis on the threat posed by the US primary adversary during the Cold War.
Despite this omission, Wilford’s book is a new and provocative twist on the history of CIA covert action, if not an entire history of the Agency. The book, of course, is about the CIA and makes little mention of the ultimate target of the operations, the Soviet Union and its own imperialist intelligence service, the KGB.
The Soviet Union, supposedly a classless society, conducted a foreign policy much like its predecessor, Imperial Russia, though on a global scale. The KGB implemented that policy employing the same tactics as its Tsarist forebears, including far more “active measures” (the service’s equivalent of covert actions) than the CIA to manipulate and bend foreign governments to its communist will. And, like its American counterpart, the KGB experienced its own unintended consequences — its overthrow of the Afghan government ultimately ended in a humiliating withdrawal (aided by CIA covert action) that contributed to the collapse of the oppressive regime. Perhaps “The KGB: An Imperial History” may someday be written as a worthy companion to the Wilford study.
The CIA: An Imperial History earns a solid 3 out of 4 trench coats
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