Safe for Democracy : The Secret Wars of the CIA

The gamut of secret operations -- The Cold War crucible -- The secret warriors -- "The kind of experience we need" -- The covert legions -- Bitter fruits -- Adventures in Asia -- "Acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply" -- Archipelago -- The war for the roof of the world -- "Another black hole of Calcutta" -- The Bay of Pigs: failure at Playa Girón -- Cold War and counterrevolution -- The secret war against Castro -- War in Southeast Asia -- Global reach -- The southern cone -- From "rogue elephant" to resurrection -- The mountains of Allah -- The Reagan revolution -- Bill Casey's war -- Project democracy -- Full circle -- The struggle for control -- Safe for democracy.;From its founding in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency has been discovered in the midst of some of the most crucial?and most embarrassing?episodes in United States relations with the world. Richard Nixon's 1969 presidential order that declared CIA covert operations necessary to the attainment of American foreign policy goals was an acknowledgment that secret warfare tools had a much wider application than just the cold war conflict with the Soviet Union. The question of what, exactly, these operations have contributed to U.S. policy has long been neglected in the rush to accuse the CIA of being a "rogue elephant" or merely listing its nefarious deeds. Safe for Democracy for the first time places the story of the CIA's covert operations squarely in the context of America's global quest for democratic values and institutions. National security historian John Prados offers a comprehensive history of the CIA's secret wars that is as close to a definitive account as is possible today. He draws on three decades of research to illuminate the men and women of the intelligence establishment, their resources and techniques, their triumphs and failures. In a dramatic and revealing narrative, Safe for Democracy not only relates the inside stories of covert operations but examines in meticulous detail the efforts of presidents and Congress to control the CIA and the specific choices made in the agency's secret wars. Along the way Mr. Prados offers eye-opening accounts of the covert actions themselves, from radically revised interpretations of classic operations like Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and the Bay of Pigs; to lesser-known projects like Tibet and Angola; to virtually unknown tales of the CIA in Guyana and Ghana. He supplies full accounts of Reagan-era operations in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, and brings the story up to date with accounts of more recent activities in Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq, all the while keeping American foreign policy goals in view. CISAC READING LIST. "From its founding in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency has been discovered in the midst of some of the most crucial--and most embarrassing--episodes in United States relations with the world. Richard Nixon's 1969 presidential order that declared CIA covert operations necessary to the attainment of American foreign policy goals was an acknowledgment that secret warfare tools had a much wider application than just the cold war conflict with the Soviet Union. The question of what, exactly, these operations have contributed to U.S. policy has long been neglected in the rush to accuse the CIA of being a "rogue elephant" or merely listing its nefarious deeds. Safe for Democracy for the first time places the story of the CIA's covert operations squarely in the context of America's global quest for democratic values and institutions. National security historian John Prados offers a comprehensive history of the CIA's secret wars that is as close to a definitive account as is possible today. He draws on three decades of research to illuminate the men and women of the intelligence establishment, their resources and techniques, their triumphs and failures. In a dramatic and revealing narrative, Safe for Democrac not only relates the inside stories of covert operations but examines in meticulous detail the efforts of presidents and Congress to control the CIA and the specific choices made in the agency's secret wars. Along the way Mr. Prados offers eye-opening accounts of the covert actions themselves, from radically revised interpretations of classic operations like Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and the Bay of Pigs; to lesser-known projects like Tibet and Angola; to virtually unknown tales of the CIA in Guyana and Ghana. He supplies full accounts of Reagan-era operations in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, and brings the story up to date with accounts of more recent activities in Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq, all the while keeping American foreign policy goals in view"--Publisher's website From its founding in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency has been discovered in the midst of some of the most crucial—and most embarrassing—-episodes in United States relations with the world. Richard Nixon's 1969 presidential order that declared CIA covert operations necessary to the attainment of American foreign policy goals was an acknowledgment that secret warfare tools had a much wider application than just the cold war conflict with the Soviet Union. The question of what, exactly, these operations have contributed to U.S. policy has long been neglected in the rush to accuse the CIA of being a "rogue elephant" or merely listing its nefarious deeds. Safe for Democracy for the first time places the story of the CIA's covert operations squarely in the context of America's global quest for democratic values and institutions. National security historian John Prados offers a comprehensive history of the CIA's secret wars that is as close to a definitive account as is possible today. He draws on three decades of research to illuminate the men and women of the intelligence establishment, their resources and techniques, their triumphs and failures. In a dramatic and revealing narrative, Safe for Democracy not only relates the inside stories of covert operations but examines in meticulous detail the efforts of presidents and Congress to control the CIA and the specific choices made in the agency's secret wars. Along the way Mr. Prados offers eye-opening accounts of the covert actions themselves, from radically revised interpretations of classic operations like Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and the Bay of Pigs; to lesser-known projects like Tibet and Angola; to virtually unknown tales of the CIA in Guyana and Ghana. He supplies full accounts of Reagan-era operations in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, and brings the story up to date with accounts of more recent activities in Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq, all the while keeping American foreign policy goals in view. Safe for Democracy PUBLIC OPINION POLLS in many countries today portray the United States as the greatest threat to world peace on the globe, worse than terrorism or any other nation. This is an unfamiliar role for a country that has consciously articulated—and advanced—over many decades the notion that democratic values are the solution for many of the world’s ills. How strange it is that Americans, fond of the vision of the nation’s exceptionalism as seen in the image of the City on a Hill, their democracy the admiration of the world, should find themselves an object of the world’s fears. The City is supposed to be a place of wonder and delight, even a state of grace. Its values are worth emulating, its freedom an example of achievement for all.The Founding Fathers articulated the vision well, and at some point American leaders translated that ideal into a mission to bring its values to the world. President Woodrow Wilson enshrined the mission into a policy to implant democracy and self-determination among peoples everywhere. His successors in the presidency, every one, have continued and enlarged that quest—which has led America into a variety of foreign adventures, with widely varying motives, accomplishments, and failures. Those who fear America worry that the adventures themselves have supplanted the quest for democracy as the real content of United States policy.Critics of this policy argue that American presidents have pursued their proximate goals, defined in terms of U.S. power, while cloaking them in the language and trappings of universalist desire. This is not a new argument—and, one may hope, not a correct one. But at the moment millions of people in many lands believe it, or something very like it. Their fears, and the extent of them, bode ill for American purpose in the world as well as for the feelings of Americans about their country and their government. Offers a history of the CIA's secret wars. This book places the story of the CIA's covert operations squarely in the context of America's global quest for democratic values and institutions.