Since World War II, no single western governmental organisation has proven as pivotal in crucial world events, nor as controversial on the world stage, as the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA was founded in 1947 as part of a comprehensive reorganisation of the US national security apparatus designed to fight the new Cold War. Since that time, CIA has had responsibility for gathering, analyzing, and coordinating intelligence from around the world for the benefit of the United States and her allies (especially the United Kingdom as part of the ‘special intelligence relationship’), as well as taking on covert/paramilitary actions during times of war.
This course considers the history of CIA as a case study in assessing the historical importance of intelligence during the Cold War (1945-91). Lectures will not relate the history of the Agency chronologically, but instead will present a series of thematic problems in American intelligence history. The first lecture will concern the problem of ‘success and failure’ in an intelligence context. Many, both within and outside of the professional intelligence community (IC), have praised CIA’s integral role in Cold War successes (such as the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis), while critics (among them journalists and members of the US Congress) have accused CIA of sometimes playing the role of 'rogue elephant' in US and international affairs. We will examine this question from a number of perspectives, including what constitutes a ‘political’ versus an ‘intelligence’ failure (or success).
The second lecture will examine controversies over the proper roles of intelligence-gathering agencies in a democratic society as illuminated by the CIA’s experiences during the Cold War, including issues of Congressional oversight, law, and the often divisive public perceptions of the Agency. The next two lectures will take up historical assessments of CIA within the conduct of American foreign policy and warfare from the Truman to the George H W Bush administrations. These lectures will directly address the importance of CIA to presidential decision-making during the Cold War as well as the relationships between CIA and other US and UK intelligence agencies. Case studies from Korea, Guatemala, Iran, Vietnam, Chile, China and especially the Soviet Union will be considered from a number of competing angles.
The final lecture will be devoted to the function of CIA as an institutional entity, covering the careers of some of CIA’s most important chiefs and officers such as Allen Dulles, James Jesus Angleton, Kermit ‘Kim’ Roosevelt, Ray Cline, Richard Helms, William E Colby and William Casey. We will also examine the careers of some of those who betrayed CIA, such as Aldrich Ames and others, in the context of our larger discussion of counter-intelligence, counter-espionage, and the ongoing Cold War rivalry between CIA and the Soviet KGB/GRU.
