Spies, lies and empires
In the twilight of empire, the CIA waged the Cold War in many of the same locales and with many of the same strategies as its imperial forebears.
The CIA: An Imperial History, Hugh Wilford, Basic Books, £25.
High in the rugged, snowcapped peaks of Central Asia, two groups of intelligence officers navigated the treacherous terrain. Some rode on horseback, others were disguised in traditional Afghan clothes or turbans, and sometimes they even travelled alongside local tribesmen. Both groups were in Afghanistan on the same mission; sent on the orders of distant capitals, these spies sought to make contact with their allies in the region and serve as spearheads for the larger military interventions that were to follow. Both would be initially successful, helping to install new leaders sympathetic to their imperial causes. Nevertheless, despite all their similarities, these two groups were actually operating in High Asia over 150 years apart, each on the service of two very different empires.
Painting the British Empire’s Great Game ventures into Afghanistan and the United States’ engagement in the same country after the 9/11 terror attacks with the same imperial brush will not come without contention. The CIA officers of Operation Jawbreaker were, after all, paving the way for the fall of the Taliban and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, while their 19th-century British counterparts were seeking to carve out new Asian lands to add to an already bloated global empire. Connecting the two would mean not only a reconsideration of the CIA’s practices during the Global War on Terror, but also perhaps a deeper reappraisal of Langley’s links to imperialism over the course of its now 77-year history. It is this very reappraisal that Hugh Wilford conducts in his new book The CIA: An Imperial History.
For close readers of United States foreign relations histories, the argument that Washington is a modern imperial power is not a new one. Though there is still debate over the nature of its imperialism, linking the old European colonial powers to American foreign policy is no longer a particularly new exercise for historians of ‘the United States in the world’. For scholars of the CIA, however, this link is still a relatively novel one. Yet there are few historians better placed to begin connecting the CIA to imperialism than Wilford. The UK-born, California-based professor of intelligence and covert action has already produced numerous highly acclaimed books on the CIA’s secret operations in Britain and the Middle East, as well as in the American homeland. This new work may be his most intriguing and provocative.
In lively and engaging prose, The CIA: An Imperial History re-examines the history of Langley in an attempt to compare, contrast, and connect American intelligence to the former Old World empires. Rather than being a sweeping survey, the book focuses on a small ensemble of notorious characters and interrogates them under a bright new light. This method is not only absorbing but also skilful in the way it puts the human factor of the agency into big historical moments. For Wilford, ‘CIA officers were not insensate tools of US foreign policy; they were human beings shaped by personal histories of culture, identity, and emotion’.
To the benefit of readers, the CIA has not been short on colourful individuals involved in exotic locations in the far-flung corners of the American imperium. In Wilford’s book, the familiar names of Edward Lansdale, Kermit Roosevelt, and James Jesus Angleton make appearances, as do well-known scenes such as the dense jungles of the Philippines, the dusty streets of Tehran, and the dark, smoky offices of Langley. Deception, upheaval and chaos abounded as the agency went from continent to continent, attempting to redraw the Cold War map. Still, the book is no predictable retelling of old spy stories, and Wilford’s imperial angle reveals genuinely new insights into the CIA’s past.
We learn that many spies in the early days of the Cold War lived in the same villas, and ran the same agents, as the former French colonial officers of Indochina; we come to know how influential British strategies of counterintelligence during the Second World War were over a young Angleton; and it is even revealed how many of the CIA’s founders loved to read Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, with Allen Dulles even passing away with a copy on his bedside table. The impact these imperial legacies had on the agency’s foreign exploits during the Cold War and the Global War on Terror is clear. Though many at the CIA espoused ideals of decolonisation and liberty, contradictorily they still roamed the world toppling and maintaining regimes at Uncle Sam’s command, all the while believing in many of the stereotypes former colonisers had about those in the ‘global South’.
The CIA’s escapades often found their way back to the United States. A line can be drawn between the overseas deeds of the CIA and the domestic implications which resulted from them. Cord Meyer’s attempts to wrestle disapproval of covert action programmes through public relations campaigns and Langley’s wiretapping of political opponents are two such examples. Much of this meddling unintentionally helped to fuel bizarre conspiracy theories that the CIA has been engaged in all sorts of skullduggery at home, from the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the supplying of LSD to Charles Manson, right up to the contemporary populist notions of the ‘deep state’.
But why did all of this happen? Why did an intelligence service that included officers determined not to repeat the imperial past of men like T.E. Lawrence end up doing exactly that? It was arguably about the historical forces of the time, but it was also about the key actors, their personalities, and their upbringings. Often they were WASP-ish members of the ‘Georgetown set’, who had read Kipling and John Buchan novels while at their small North Eastern prep schools; occasionally they saw themselves propelled to do missionary-style good in the world; or sometimes they just had a deep sense of boyish adventurism that pulled them around the globe. Either way, though they believed in self-determination and claimed to love their Third World ‘brothers’, their own biographies merely replicated the very colonial officers they revered and criticised in equal measure.
Though it is thoughtful, fair-minded, and well supported with a wealth of documents, memoirs, and oral histories, some of Wilford’s thesis will no doubt create dispute. The CIA’s hand in the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran, their attempts to prop up the Saigon regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, or their placement of Hamid Karzai into the Afghan presidency are well-established examples of agency excesses, and are easier to place in an imperial category. Other cases – the argument that Langley analysts viewed the world through imperial, racialised eyes, for example – are more raw, and, as interesting as they may be, will perhaps need further research to help enhance the strength of the debate moving forward.
It is also important to note that, in the Cold War portion of the book, the CIA is only one half of the secret imperial story. Though some still cling dearly to the idea that the Kremlin was the defender of the ‘global South’ against the encroaching American empire, those with a more erudite reading of history know this to be false. For every agency operation, there was almost always an equal and opposite Soviet active measure of similarly devious proportions. Wilford’s book does not aim to show both sides of the Cold War struggle, but one cannot help feel that there is a much larger imperial narrative still left to be written.
That being said, even if readers do not necessarily agree with all of Wilford’s arguments – a fact he himself acknowledges is likely in the introduction – there is still real benefit to be found in beginning a debate among historians of the CIA which is now long since overdue. All the typical espionage thriller tropes of sex, bloody assassinations, and bags brimming with cash feature. And yet, aside from all the drama and intrigue, the deeper value Wilford’s new work will provide will be for intelligence studies as an academic field.
Historians of American espionage have often imagined themselves akin to the very figures they study, remaining in the shadowy margins, obsessing over the intricacies of spycraft, and unable to articulate why their topic is central to international history. For intelligence history to continue blossoming, they will have to begin exploring new ways to join the broader conversations, and whether it is empire or gender, finance or food, there are fresh angles aplenty to consider. Wilford’s latest book does this superbly, and, having already received wide acclaim from fellow scholars, should serve as a guiding example of how to use a new theme to reveal insights that can transform our understanding of the CIA, all the while ensuring that intelligence studies can have its place at the table.