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Luca Trenta, The CIA: an imperial history, International Affairs, Volume 101, Issue 1, January 2025, Pages 372–374, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae292
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What are the origins of the CIA? Many have pointed to the Second World War, the Office of Strategic Services and the Anglo-American relationship. Others have traced a longer history, going back to George Washington as the first United States president and the first spymaster. Hugh Wilford's answer is different: the origins and the conduct of the CIA can be traced back to the colonial and imperial experiences of European great powers. CIA operatives found themselves operating alongside, and often in collaboration with, imperial powers. They adopted similar practices and policies. Perhaps more importantly, the cultural pull of colonial powers and their heroes influenced the colonial attitudes of the CIA and its operatives.
This argument permits Wilford to tell the story of the agency from its origins to the Donal Trump era, through a somewhat unconventional cast of characters. Among the precursors, we encounter Ralph H. Van Deman who established a system of colonial surveillance in the Philippines and later turned it against US citizens (pp. 29–30). Wilford also looks at the aptly named spy ‘Kim’ Roosevelt to guide readers through the early CIA's efforts at regime change. In these early years, the colonial attitude was—at times—a matter of expediency. CIA officials were ignorant of local cultures and environments and ended up relying on their more experienced European contacts (p. 49). This influenced their judgement and the local population's view of the CIA, as a perhaps well-intentioned but ultimately imperial actor. This is clear in the analysis of what Wilford calls ‘regime maintenance’ (see chapter three). Here, we encounter Edward Lansdale and his successful and occasionally brutal efforts to build a government in the Philippines. This experience convinced Lansdale that there was a blueprint that could be applied to any country. Indeed, Lansdale prepared a memorandum for South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem on how to be prime minister of Vietnam, without speaking Vietnamese or understanding the local culture. The same techniques of regime maintenance and the repression of dissent featured throughout the history of the agency and its collaboration with brutal regimes (p. 140). Through James J. Angleton and Cord Meyer, Wilford tells the respective stories of the CIA's counter-intelligence activity and its propaganda machinery.
