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Abstract
This article explores a number of issues in the contemporary study of intelligence. These issues are methodological (relating to engagement with ‘primary’ sources), epistemological (concerned with notions of ‘bias’ and objectivity), and presentational (dealing with how scholars locate their work within existing debates). The article will contend that the study of intelligence, largely because of its ambiguous positioning on the borderland between political science and history, has been somewhat isolated from the debates over theory and method that have flourished in the wider historical discipline in recent decades, and that an engagement with such literature will yield commensurate benefits. Finally, the article will explore the place of intelligence history within the wider discourse of ‘popular’ history. Given its potentially sensational content, some intelligence literature is targeted at a ‘popular’ readership, but many of the claims made in authoring, promoting and reviewing such books are highly problematic. Since this is inimical to scholarly rigour, and is unlikely to facilitate wider public understanding of major historical issues, such matters need to be addressed.
Notes
The author would like to thank Patrick Finney, Peter Lambert and Rachel J. Owen for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
1 G.M. Trevelyan, History and the Reader, The Third Annual Lecture of the National Book League, Conway Hall, Holborn, London, 30 May 1945 (London: Cambridge University Press 1945) p.22.
2 G.M. Trevelyan, Clio: A Muse and Other Essays Literary and Pedestrian (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1913) pp.198–9.
3 Donald Watt observed the rise of a number of British (and Commonwealth) historians engaged in the writing of serious intelligence history. Donald Cameron Watt, ‘Intelligence Studies: The Emergence of a British School’, Intelligence and National Security 3/2 (1988) pp.338–42. See also, idem, ‘Intelligence and the Historian’, Diplomatic History 14/2 (1990) pp.199–205.
4 Michael G. Fry and Miles Hochstein, ‘Epistemic Communities: Intelligence Studies and International Relations’ in Wesley K. Wark (ed.) Espionage: Past, Present and Future (London: Frank Cass 1994) p.14. International history, which enjoys an intimate relationship with intelligence studies, has similarly demonstrated cross-disciplinary approaches from certain of its academic practitioners. Patrick Finney, ‘Introduction: What is International History?’ in Patrick Finney (ed.) Palgrave Advances in International History (London: Palgrave 2005) p.3.
5 John Ferris, ‘Coming In from the Cold War: The Historiography of American Intelligence, 1945–1990’, Diplomatic History 19/1 (1995) pp.87–115. On the growth of intelligence history in the United States, see the review article by Gerald K. Haines, ‘An Emerging New Field of Study: U.S. Intelligence’, Diplomatic History 28/3 (2004) pp.441–9.
6 For example: Fry and Hochstein were right when they pointed out that the political scientists engaged in the study of intelligence write a form of contemporary history both in terms of theme and method (‘Epistemic Communities’, p.15). For an exposition on the emergence of a ‘theory’ of intelligence, see David Kahn, ‘An Historical Theory of Intelligence’, Intelligence and National Security 16/3 (2001) pp.79–92.
7 For example, a recent volume noted that the study of intelligence could usefully benefit from the integration of certain fields of enquiry in psychology. ‘Editor's Preface’ in Sven Max Litzcke, Helmut Müller-Enbergs and Dietrich Ungerer (eds.) Intelligence-Service Psychology (Frankfurt: Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft 2008) p.7.
8 John Ferris, ‘The Road to Bletchley Park: The British Experience with Signals Intelligence, 1892–1945’, Intelligence and National Security 17/1 (2002) p.56.
9 ‘History is not the rival of classics or of modern literature, or of the political sciences. It is rather the house in which they all dwell. It is the cement that holds together all the studies relating to the nature and achievements of man’. George Macaulay Trevelyan, lecture of 30 May 1945, History and the Reader, p.27.
10 Peter Jackson and Len Scott, ‘Intelligence’ in Finney (ed.) Palgrave Advances in International History, pp.173–5.
11 See, for example, Peter Gill, Stephen Marrin and Mark Phythian (eds.) Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates (London: Routledge 2009).
12 George G. Iggers has demonstrated that archive-based ‘micro-history’ (also a major component in the development of intelligence studies) has played a very significant role in the evolution of historical method over the last 100 years. This approach, far from entrenching statist or conservative methodologies, has led to a huge increase in the diversity of approach and of scholarly sophistication. George G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press 1997).
13 Ian Clark, Review Article: ‘International Relations: Divided by a Common Language?’, Government and Opposition 37/2 (2003) p.273. Book reviewed: Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman (eds.), Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Study of lnternational Relations (London: The MIT Press 2001). For a brilliant indictment of the abuse of the written word, see George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language' in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 4, In Front of Your Nose, Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.) (London: Penguin 1970) pp.156–70. This piece was originally published in Horizon, April 1946.
14 Richard Aldrich has argued that the publication of a large number of British official histories after 1945 resulted partly from public pressure for access to official secrets. Richard J. Aldrich, ‘Policing the Past: Official History, Secrecy and British Intelligence since 1945’, English Historical Review 119/483 (2004) pp.922–53.
15 On this, see R. Gerald Hughes and Len Scott, ‘“Knowledge is never too dear”: Exploring Intelligence Archives’ in R. Gerald Hughes, Peter Jackson and Len Scott (eds.), Exploring Intelligence Archives: Enquiries into the Secret State (London: Routledge 2008) pp.18–21. For the benefits accrued from the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), see Raymond M. Lee, ‘Research Uses of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act’, Field Methods, 13/4 (2001) pp.370–91. On a related theme, see J.X. Dempsey, ‘The CIA and Secrecy’ in Athan G. Theoharis (ed.) A Culture of Secrecy: The Government Versus the People's Right to Know (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas, 1998) pp.37–59. On the early phase of this process in the UK, see Wesley K. Wark, ‘In Never-Never Land? The British Archives on Intelligence’, The Historical Journal 35/1 (1992) pp.195–203. On the implications of the British Freedom of Information Act of 2000, which became law in 2005, see Raymond M. Lee, ‘The UK Freedom of Information Act as a Research Tool’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology 8/1 (2005) pp.1–18. For the state of archival release policy in France, see Sebastien Laurent (ed.), Archives“secretes”, secrets d'archives? Historiens et archivists face aux archives sensibles (Paris: CNRS Editions 2003). In Germany, a Freedom of Information Act (Informationsfreiheitsgesetz) came into force on 1 January 2006. This act creates a legal right of access to official information held by Federal authorities (subject to the usual caveats regarding national security). For full text of the act, see ‘Gesetz zur Regelung des Zugangs zu Informationen des Bundes (Informationsfreiheitsgesetz - IFG)’, 5 September 2005 (BGBl. I S. 2722), <http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bundesrecht/ifg/gesamt.pdf>. On the historical and constitutional origins of this law, see Harald L. Weber, ‘Historische und verfassungsrechtliche Grundlagen eines öffentlichen Informationszugangsrechts’, Recht der Datenverarbeitung 21 (2005) pp.243–51. In the EU as a whole the London-based voluntary group Statewatch monitors the progress of FOI across the continent. See ‘Statewatch Observatory on EU FOI Case Law: The EU Court System and Freedom of Information’, compiled by Steve Peers, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, <http://www.statewatch.org/caselawobs.htm>.
16 Peter Jackson ‘Introduction: enquiries into the secret state’ in Hughes, Jackson and Scott (eds.) Exploring Intelligence Archives, p.2.
17 Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday 2007). In the tone of righteous indignation towards the CIA, one could certainly detect something of the air of self-righteousness of Lord Macaulay's British public in many of the reviews and commentaries on Legacy of Ashes: ‘We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality’. Lord [Thomas Babington] Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays contributed to the Edinburgh Review (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts 1861 [1843]) p.140. The quote is taken from the essay entitled ‘Moore's Life of Lord Byron’.
18 G.M. Trevelyan, A Shortened History of England (Harmondsworth: Pelican 1959 [1942]) p.256.
19 Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, pp.ix–x.
20 John Richard King, (ed.), The Philippic Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1868) p.28.
21 Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, pp.417–8.
22 Bagley quoted in Tim Shipman, ‘CIA blunders outlined in new book’, Daily Telegraph, 30 July 2007, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/29/wcia129.xml>. On the CIA and the demise of the Soviet Union, see Bruce D. Berkowitz and Jeffrey T. Richelson, ‘The CIA Vindicated: The Soviet Collapse Was Predicted’, National Interest (Fall 1995) pp.36–47; Douglas J. MacEachin, CIA Assessments of the Soviet Union: The Record Versus the Charges (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence 1996); Benjamin B. Fischer (ed.), At Cold War's End: US Intelligence on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1989–1991 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence 1999). For Begley's memoirs, see Tennent H. Bagley, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2007).
23 National Book Foundation, <http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2007_nf_weiner.html>.
24 Steve Weinberg, ‘Bad behavior: “Folly and misfortune” describe history of CIA’, Houston Chronicle, 6 July 2007, <http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/books/reviews/4946453.html>.
25 Evan Thomas, ‘Counter Intelligence: A Chronicle of Failure at the CIA, From the Iron Curtain to Iraq’, New York Times, 22 July 2007, < http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/books/review/Thomas-t.html>.
26 Chris Petit, ‘The Secret Policemen's Fall’, The Guardian, 11 August 2007, <http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2146060,00.html>.
27 Michael Kerrigan, ‘Revolution and True Romance’, The Scotsman, 8 December 2007, <http://www.scotsman.com/books/Revolution-and-true-romance.3588164.jp>.
28 Peter Watts, Time Out, 20 August 2007, <http://www.timeout.com/london/books/review/book/414/tim_weiner_legacy_of_ashes-the_history_of_the_cia.html>.
29 Carolyn O'Hara, ‘Comedy of Errors’, New Statesman, 9 August 2007, <http://www.newstatesman.com/200708090040>.
30 Frances Stonor Saunders, ‘Central, Yes, But Where's the Intelligence?’, Daily Telegraph, 16 August 2007, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/08/16/bowei112.xml>; Dominic Sandbrook, ‘Consistent absence of intelligence’, Sunday Telegraph, 18 August 2007, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/08/18/bowei118.xml>. ‘The CIA: On Top of Everything Else, Not Very Good at its Job’, The Economist, 16 August 2007, <http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9644588>.
31 Beverly Southgate, What is History For? (London: Routledge 2005) pp.40–9.
33 Watts, <http://www.timeout.com/london/books/review/book/414/tim_weiner_legacy_of_ashes-the_history_of_the_cia.html>.
34 O'Hara, ‘Comedy of Errors’.
35 Michael Beschloss, ‘The C.I.A.'s Missteps’, New York Times, 12 July 2007, <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/books/12besc.html>.
36 ‘The CIA’, The Economist.
37 Geoffrey Elton warned against accepting the notions underlying this complex – i.e. viewing statesmen as brilliant men engaged in a highly complex game of risk – when seeking to write history. See, G.R. Elton, Political History: Principles and Practice (London: Allen Lane 1970) p.20.
38 Arthur M. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Wilmington, MA: Mariner Books 2002 [1965]) p.258; Michael R. Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991) p.133; Michael O'Brien, John F. Kennedy: A Biography (New York: St. Martin's 2005) p.537; Christopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: HarperCollins, 1995) p.265.
39 Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan 1957) p.176.
40 A rare recent example of the CIA enjoying good publicity being the film Charlie Wilson's War (Dir: Mike Nichols, Universal Studios 2007). This film is based on George Crile's My Enemy's Enemy: The Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History: The Arming of the Mujahideen by the CIA (London: Atlantic Books 2003).
41 See, for example, Neu's review article on the CIA: Charles E. Neu, ‘Understanding the CIA’, Reviews in American History 19/1 (1991) pp.128–35. Books reviewed: John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster 1986); Trumbull Higgins, The Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs (New York: W.W. Norton 1987); Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press 1989); Loch K. Johnson, America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society (New York: Oxford University Press 1989).
42 Weiner is seen to have ‘debunk[ed] any notion that things became uniquely bad under George W. Bush’ and ‘undermines … the belief that the CIA is [historically] … an extremely well-organized and practically omniscient entity – one sinister in its methods, perhaps, but certainly quite efficient’. Scott McLemee, ‘Review of Legacy of Ashes’, Newsday, 15 July 2007, <http://www.mclemee.com/id198.html>. The review in the Houston Chronicle similarly asserts that ‘Weiner punctures claims by the spymasters at the CIA that they have stopped enemy threats and otherwise served their nation well’. Weinberg, ‘Bad behavior’, Houston Chronicle, <http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/books/reviews/4946453.html>.
43 In any case, Weiner is by no means the first author to assert a desire to strip away the layers of myth from the agency. John Ranelagh's 1986 history of the CIA, for example, was specifically designed to get away from what the author termed ‘contemporary demonology’. John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster 1986) p.11.
44 ‘The CIA’, The Economist.
45 Another reviewer writes: ‘As a New York Times journalist who has covered espionage for many years, Mr Weiner knows what he is talking about. He does not play down the seamier side – for example, the opening of letters, snooping on critics, trying out drugs on Russian prisoners, plotting to kill foreign leaders and so on’. ‘The CIA’, The Economist.
46 That is not in any way to suggest that Weiner has anything like the sinister and manipulative agenda that Irving has. On Irving's initial success in establishing himself as a historical researcher, see Richard J. Evans, Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial (London: Verso 2002) esp. pp.14–6, 20, 22.
47 David Wise, ‘Covert Action: Has the CIA ever been good at intelligence gathering?’, Washington Post, 22 July 2007, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902217.html>.
48 ‘The Pritzker Military Library Presents LEGACY OF ASHES: The History of the CIA Tim Weiner’, <http://www.pritzkermilitarylibrary.org/events/2007-09-20-TimWeiner.jsp>. Evan Thomas (‘Counter Intelligence’) and Carolyn O' Hara (‘Comedy of Errors’) both concurred with this view.
49 Ann Blackman, ‘Artificial Intelligence: The CIA Often has Shaped Information to Meet White House Expectations, Says a New History’, Boston Globe, 15 July 2007, <http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/07/15/artificial_intelligence/>. The Woodward reference is presumably aimed at books such as Bob Woodward's Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster 2002), Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster 2004) and State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon & Schuster 2007).
50 ‘This book is on the record – no anonymous sources, no blind quotations, [and] no hearsay. It is the first history of the CIA compiled entirely from firsthand reporting and primary documents’, Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p.xiii.
51 Nicholas Dujmovic, ‘Review of “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA”’, Studies in Intelligence 51/3 (2007), <https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi- studies/studies/vol51no3/legacy-of-ashes-the-history-of-cia.html>.
52 The furore over Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1996) is one of the more notable examples here. The controversial subject matter of the book made Hitler's Willing Executioners a bestseller and debates about the book inhabited both the popular and academic spheres. One reviewer remarked that, ‘Although … popular with the general public, and … awarded the distinction of “best dissertation of the year” by the American Political Science Association, it has failed to win accolades from its most important audience – professional historians and Holocaust scholars, most of whom regard the book as deeply flawed’. Roland Wagner: Review of Hitler's Willing Executioners, 23 June 1996, <http://www.h-net.org/∼german/discuss/goldhagen/wagner.html>. On the Goldhagen affair, see Dieter Pohl, ‘Die Holocaust-Forschung und Goldhagens Thesen’, Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte, 45/1 (1997) pp.1–48; Geoff Eley (ed.) The ‘Goldhagen Effect’: History, Memory, Nazism – Facing The German past (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press 2000). The historian Eberhard Jäckel simply entitled his review of Goldhagen's book, ‘Simply Put, A Bad Book’ (‘Einfach ein schlechtes Buch’) Die Zeit, 17 May 1996.
53 Nicholas Vincent, ‘Do you know?’ Review of Huw Pryce and John Watts (eds.), Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in memory of Rees Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007), Alison Weir, Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and His Scandalous Duchess (London: Jonathan Cape 2007); Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV (London: Jonathan Cape 2007), Times Literary Supplement, 15 February 2008, <http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3364033.ece>.
54 Here we might usefully recall Dean Acheson's observation that nobody ever looked second best in his own record of a conversation. Michael R. Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (New York: Touchstone 1997) p.553 (fn). I am grateful to Thomas Robb for drawing my attention to this.
55 E.H. Carr, ‘Lewis Namier’[1971], in E.H. Carr, From Napoleon to Stalin and Other Essays, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2003) p.190.
56 On this, see Hughes and Scott, “Knowledge is never too dear” in Hughes, Jackson and Scott (eds.) Exploring Intelligence Archives, pp.13–4.
57 Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (London: Granta 1997) p.127.
58 As Anthony Grafton notes, ‘the … footnote offers the only guarantee we have that statements about the past derive from identifiable sources. And that is the only ground we have to trust them’. Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1997) p.233 (emphasis in the original). Footnotes are not a mere ‘rhetorical device’ (Evans, In Defence of History, p.242) and if only the author has access to the source, the grounds for trust evaporate. The real meaning of the anonymous source could be conveyed roughly as follows: ‘I assure you that I have this on good authority, but I cannot possibly divulge that authority’.
59 Geoffrey Wheatcroft, ‘Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA: A Salutary Story and a Good Case for Old-Fashioned Isolationism’, The Times, 5 August 2007, <http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2185359.ece>. Frederic William Maitland (1850–1906) was a British jurist and historian. On Maitland, see G.R. Elton, F.W. Maitland (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1985).
60 See, for example, Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p.374.
61 The British historian Stephen Dorril similarly asserts that the role of MI6 in the 1953 coup in Iran helped facilitate the 1979 revolution by destroying the centre ground in Iranian politics. Stephen Dorril, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations (London: Fourth Estate 2000) p.745. Although less dramatic, the argument that the coup actually caused the United States to be associated with the Shah's regime long after the latter's real power had eroded has a far greater historical validity. On this, see Thomas Powers, ‘Saving the Shah' in his Intelligence Wars: American Secret Intelligence from Hitler to Al-Qaeda (New York: New York Review Books, revised and expanded edition 2004) pp.159–68. Note: ‘Saving the Shah' was first published in The Nation, 12 April 1980.
62 As Lord Melbourne caustically observed of Lord Macaulay, ‘I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything’. Quote from Earl Cowper, ‘Preface’, Lord Melbourne's Papers, (ed.) L.C. Sanders (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1889) p.xii.
63 Tim Rutten, ‘Weiner, A Reporter who Covered the CIA for the New York Times in the 1990s, Takes a No-Holds-Barred Look at the Agency and What He Contends is its Culture of Incompetence’, Los Angeles Times, 29 June 2007, <http://www.latimes.com/la-bk-rutten29jun29,0,7056785.story>.
64 E.H. Carr, What is History? The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, January–March 1961 (London: Macmillan 1961) p.30; R.G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978 [1939]) p.98.
65 Gordon A. Craig, ‘The Devil in the Details’, New York Review of Books, 43/14, 19 September 1996 (a review of David Irving, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (London: Focal Point 1996)). Quoted in Evans, Telling Lies About Hitler, p.15.
66 That is, the postmodernist assertion that historians believe ‘that properly footnoted historical statements are analogous to proofs in the natural sciences’. Patrick Karl O'Brien, ‘An Engagement with Postmodern Foes, Literary Theorists and Friends on the Borders with History’, What is History, No. 2, <http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Whatishistory/obrien.html>. For an effective refutation of postmodern critiques of history generally, see Bethan McCullagh, The Truth of History (London: Routledge 1998). Advocates of using postmodern theory to study intelligence rarely progress beyond making vague statements lauding ‘innovatory’ method. See, for instance, Andrew Rathmell, ‘Towards Postmodern intelligence’, Intelligence and National Security 17/3 (2002) pp.87–104.
67 Pierre Bourdieu, Science de la Science et Reflexivite (Paris: Editions Raisons d'Agir 2001) p.6. I am grateful to Peter Jackson for drawing my attention to this. On the utility of Bourdieu to the historian, see Peter Jackson, ‘Pierre Bourdieu, the “Cultural Turn” and the Practice of International History’, Review of International Studies 34/1 (2008) pp.155–81.
68 ‘Anyone tempted to write this book off as an anti-C.I.A. screed had better look at Mr. Weiner's sources. The author has impressively studied the archival record … Some of the most damning criticism of the C.I.A.'s past performance in this book comes not from gadflies or ideologues but from ex-officials and long-secret authorized accounts by C.I.A. historians’. Beschloss, ‘The C.I.A.'s Missteps’, <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/books/12besc.html>.
69 On these, see Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (eds.), The Oral History Reader, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge 2006).
70 Noam Chomsky: informal e-mail conversation with the author, 14 April 2008.
71 Weinberg, ‘Bad behavior’, <http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/books/reviews/4946453.html>.
72 Robert Harrison, Aled Jones and Peter Lambert, ‘Methodology: “Scientific” history and the problem of objectivity’, in Peter Lambert and Phillipp Schofield (eds.), Making History: An Introduction to the History and Practices of a Discipline (London: Routledge) pp.33–6.
73 Bernadotte Schmidt quoted in Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) pp.223–4.
74 On this, see Eric Hobsbawn, ‘Partisanship' in his On History (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1997) pp.124–40.
75 Allan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2007) pp.113, 36.
76 Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life (London: Abacus 2003) p.294. Hobsbawm describes postmodernist thinking as ‘uninteresting, incomprehensible, and … not much use to historians.' For Hobsbawn, ‘[e]ven their puns failed to grip’ (p.334).
77 The fact that postmodernists now have jobs at many universities is usually held up as evidencing this. Yet, in fact, they have created their own hermetically sealed, self-referential sub-discipline of the social sciences. To claim, as they do, that advances in historical method are down to their presence is akin to a lecturer in a European languages department claiming his or her positive effect on French and German studies whilst they themselves write about, and teach on, the evolution of the Klingon language.
78 Of the evolution of critical method in history, Marc Bloch notes that ‘it has been many a day since men took it into their heads not to accept all historical evidence blindly'. Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1992 [1954]) p.54. See also Evans, In Defence of History, pp.80–6, 104.
79 As an essential prerequisite of this, rank source-positivism was rejected as a feasible option as long ago as the late nineteenth century. Robert Harrison, Aled Jones and Peter Lambert, ‘The institutionalisation and organisation of history’ in Lambert and Schofield (eds.), Making History, p.16. On hermeneutics, see: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzuge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik 6th ed. (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1990); Hans Köchler, ‘Zum Gegenstandsbereich der Hermeneutik’, Perspektiven der Philosophie 9 (1983) pp.331–41; Joel C. Weinsheimer, Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1985).
80 Deborah L. Rhode, In Pursuit of Knowledge: Scholars, Status and Academic Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2006) p.58.
81 Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993) p.2.
82 Jeffrey T. Richelson notes that ‘claims that Weiner lacks bias cannot withstand a close reading of the book. The numerous errors of omission and commission … make [this] a profoundly tendentious and unreliable … history of the CIA’. Jeffrey T. Richelson, ‘Sins of Omission and Commission’, Washington Decoded, 11 September 2007, <http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2007/09/sins-of-omissio.html>. Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), believes the book ‘lacks subtlety of interpretation or analysis and risks losing what merit it has on account of its uncompromising bias’. Sir Richard Dearlove, ‘The Plot Thickens’, Financial Times, 22 September 2007, <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/90272f80-6659-11dc-9fbb-0000779fd2ac.html>. Christopher Andrew concludes that the flaws in the book will be exposed by ‘a new generation of less polemical intelligence historians with a greater capacity for balanced interpretation of the CIA's record’. Christopher Andrew, review of Legacy of Ashes, The Times, 1 September 2007, <http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2361517.ece>.
83 For a positive view of Weiner's book by an academic historian, see Wesley Wark, ‘Truth, Power and the CIA’, The Globe and Mail, 21 July 2007.
84 Dujmovic, ‘Review of “Legacy of Ashes: The History of CIA”’. Dujmovic is not, however, unremittingly negative and Weiner is seen to get better in his coverage of the period when he was actually reporting on the CIA and his recounting of the 1990s represent ‘accurate and useful summaries’ of events. Weiner certainly echoes the agency's own dissatisfaction with aspects of the Clinton presidency here (although, of course, responsibility for this would be seen to lie less with the CIA than Weiner might suggest). As Wesley Wark remarks in his review of Weiner's book: ‘Bill Clinton had no interest in intelligence (a weakness of smart men in power). When a private plane crashed on the lawn of the White House, the joke went around that it was [DCI] Jim Woolsey, desperate to get a meeting with the president’, Wark, ‘Truth, Power and the CIA’. Woolsey is quoted as saying that ‘It wasn't that I had a bad relationship with the president. It just didn't exist’, Kathryn Jean Lopez, ‘Clinton's Loss? How the Previous Administration Fumbled on Bin Laden’, National Review Online, 11 September 2003, <http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/interrogatory091103b.asp>.
85 Evan Thomas, ‘The Myth of Objectivity’, Newsweek, 10 March 2008. Emphasis in original.
86 Quoted in Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London: Collins 1951) p.175.
87 Roy Porter, Edward Gibbon: Making History (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1988) p.163.
88 G.R. Elton, The Practice of History, 2nd edn. (London: Blackwell 2002) pp.95–6.
89 ‘CIA Releases Two Collections of Historical Documents’, 26 June 2007, <https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/press-release-archive-2007/cia-releases-two-collections-of-historical-documents.html>.
90 Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p.xiii. Emphasis added.
91 Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘Hitler: Does History Offer a Defence?’, Sunday Times, 12 June 1977. This was a review of David Irving, Hitler's War (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1977) quoted in Evans, Telling Lies About Hitler, p.16. Hugh Trevor-Roper himself was embarrassed in 1983 when he erroneously pronounced the so-called ‘Hitler diaries’ genuine in 1983 (he believed such a large-scale forgery would be ‘heroic and unnecessary’). Brian MacArthur, ‘Hitler diaries scandal: “We'd Printed the Scoop of the Century, then it Turned to Dust”', Daily Telegraph, 25 April 2008, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2008/04/25/fthitler125.xml>.
92 Thomas G. Otte, ‘Neo-Revisionism or the Emperor's New Clothes: Some Reflections on Niall Ferguson on the Origins of the First World War’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 11/1 (2000) p.272.
93 Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1968) p.120.
94 A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1976) p.603.
95 Richard Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray 2001) p.6.
96 Vincent, ‘Do you know?’.
97 National Security Archive, ‘The CIA's Family Jewels: Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years, Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents’, 21 June 2007, <http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm>. The entirety of the ‘family jewels’ were released, and posted on-line, on 26 June 2007: <http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_full.pdf>.
98 See, for example, Simon Tisdall, ‘CIA Conspired with Mafia to Kill Castro’, 27 June 2007, The Guardian, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/27/usa.cuba>.
99 The New Statesman magazine dismissed the whole affair as being an exercise in public relations designed to demonstrate that ‘the modern-day CIA has learned from its mistakes’, O'Hara, ‘Comedy of Errors’. The Wall Street Journal dismissed what it saw as hyperbole surrounding the ‘CIA's new “openness”’, believing that it was Weiner's volume that would fill ‘the gaps’. Edward Jay Epstein, ‘Opening Up the CIA: Espionage, Covert Action and the Trouble with “Dangles”’, Wall Street Journal, 14 July 2007, <http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB118436115647966211.html>. Ann Blackman, writing in the Boston Globe, believed that ‘Weiner's book adds depth, detail, and perspective to the supposed “jewels” and reports that the patterns identified in them more than 30 years ago only previewed what was yet to come’, Blackman, ‘Artificial Intelligence’.
100 The release of the ‘family jewels’ actually caused Weiner's publishers to bring the book's publication forward by two months. Richelson, ‘Sins of Omission and Commission’.
101 ‘CIA Releases Two Collections of Historical Documents’, 26 June 2007.
102 For example: ‘The thesis in my books and my writing is that anti-American terrorism arises from … U.S. foreign policy’. Blum quoted in David Montgomery, ‘The Author Who Got A Big Boost From bin Laden: Historian “Glad” of Mention As Sales of Book Skyrocket’, Washington Post, 21 January 2006, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012001971.html>. Blum's books include Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (London: Zed Books 2003) and Rogue State: A Guide to the Worlds Only Superpower, 3rd ed. (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press 2005).
103 William Blum, ‘A Pullet Surprise for “Legacy of Ashes” by Tim Weiner’, 11 September 2007, <http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer49.htm>.
104 Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) quoted in James M. Olson, Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying (Washington, DC: Potomac Books 2006) p.18.
105 The Doolittle Report of 1954 signalled the adoption of an uncompromising anti-Soviet strategy for the duration. The report, presented by General James H. Doolittle to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954, was partially declassified in 1976 and released in full in 2001. It is available at the CIA web page at: <http://cryptome.org/cia-doolittle/cia-doolittle.htm>. The Report stated that: ‘It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply’. The fact that the report has been public knowledge for over 30 years means that there is, of course, considerable literature on the Doolittle's impact. Weiner's commentary on the report (pp.108–9) typically omits any discussion of Doolittle's report in secondary sources (for instance, Stephen E. Ambrose and Richard H. Immerman, Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi 1999), especially pp.187–8).
106 The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum were certainly happy to host an evening with Tim Weiner in Texas in November 2007, <http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/events.hom/evening_with_tim_weiner.shtm>.
107 John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee 2006) p.xiii.
108 Walter F. Mondale in William E. Colby, Walter F. Mondale, Peter Szanton and Graham Allison, ‘Reorganizing the CIA: Who and How’, Foreign Policy 23 (1976) pp.57–62. Quote taken from p.58.
109 Taken from Gerald Reitlinger, The SS: Alibi of a Nation (London: Heinemann 1956).
110 On this, see Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, Why Do People Hate America? (London: Icon Books 2002); Philippe Roger, L'Ennemi américain: Généalogie de l'antiaméricanisme français (Paris: Seuil 2002); and Julia Sweig, Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century (New York: Public Affairs 2007).
111 Noam Chomsky defines it thus: ‘if something goes wrong, we don't want it to look like we did it, those guys in the C.I.A. did it, and we can throw some of them to the wolves if we need to’. He adds ‘That's basically the role of the C.I.A., along with mostly just collection of information’. Noam Chomsky, ‘Conspiracy Theories’ in Understanding Chomsky: The Indispensible Chomsky (London: Vintage 2003) p.349.
112 Powers, ‘Preface', Intelligence Wars, p.xiv. In any case, as Peter Jackson notes, ‘Intelligence, not even very good intelligence, cannot rescue bad policy’. Peter Jackson, ‘Historical Reflections on the Uses and Limits of Intelligence’ in Peter Jackson and Jennifer Siegel (eds.) Intelligence and Statecraft: The Use and Limitations of Intelligence in International Society (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2005) p.51.
113 Noam Chomsky: informal e-mail conversation with the author, 14 April 2008.
114 Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p.351.
115 For a summary of these debates, see Kathy Olmsted, ‘Lapdog or Rogue Elephant? CIA Controversies from 1947 to 2004’ in Athan Theoharis (ed.) The Central Intelligence Agency: Security Under Scrutiny (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2006) pp.189–229. Also on this theme, see Todd Stiefler, ‘CIA's Leadership and Major Covert Operations: Rogue Elephant or Risk-Averse Bureaucrats?’, Intelligence and National Security 19/4 (2004) pp.632–54.
116 Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p.351.
117 Some engagement with the literature on the interface between American intelligence and policymaking would have served Weiner well. For example, Michael I. Handel, ‘The Politics of Intelligence’, Intelligence and National Security 2/4 (1987) pp.5–46; Christopher Andrew, ‘American Presidents and Their Intelligence Communities’, Intelligence and National Security 10/4 (1995) pp.95–112.
118 United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Senate, 20 November 1975, II. Section B ‘Covert Action as a Vehicle for Foreign Policy Implementation’, p.11.
119 On this, see Russell A. Miller (ed.), US National Security, Intelligence and Democracy: From the Church Committee to the War on Terror (London: Routledge 2008) – especially Loch K. Johnson, ‘Establishment of modern intelligence accountability’, pp.37–56. See also, Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: Congress and Intelligence (Chicago: Dorsey Press 1988); Johnson, America's Secret Power; and Frank J. Smist, Jr., Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, 1947–1989 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press 1990).
120 The CIA ‘put so much of its energy and resources into bungled covert operations that it failed in its core mission of collecting and analyzing information’, Wise, ‘Covert Action’.
121 Richelson, ‘Sins of Omission and Commission’.
122 Andrew, review of Legacy of Ashes.
123 Wheatcroft, ‘Legacy of Ashes’.
124 Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke, 5 February 1676. Robert E. Krebs, Scientific Development and Misconceptions through the Ages: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1999) p.4.
125 Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (London: Viking 2002). Roger Moorhouse, review published in BBC History Magazine, July 2002.
126 Charles S. Maier, ‘Review of The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945– 1949 by Norman M. Naimark’, The Journal of Modern History 71/1 (March 1999) p.266.
127 Norman M. Naimark, The Russians In Germany: The History Of The Soviet Zone Of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press 1995).
128 Maier, ‘Review of The Russians in Germany’, p.267. In another example of a dubious claim to revelatory history, the publicity issued by publishers John Murray for Giles MacDonagh's After the Reich, highlights how the book ‘exposes new unpleasant material’ such as the ‘Czech slaughter of Sudeten Germans’. Giles MacDonagh, After the Reich: From the Liberation of Vienna to the Berlin Airlift (London: John Murray 2007). Is this really so ‘new’ to those who will have read Alfred M. de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans (London: Victor Gollancz 1977) or Niklas Perzi, Die Beneš-Dekrete: Eine Europäische Tragödie (Vienna: Niederosterreichisches Pressehaus, St Pölten 2003). To be fair, MacDonagh himself makes no such grandiose claims to his book's originality.
129 Ibid., pp.268–9.
130 As Richard Evans notes of archival research: ‘Historians have always been obliged to get their hands dirty’, Evans, Telling Lies About Hitler, p.23.
131 Maier, ‘Review of The Russians in Germany', p.24.
132 Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p.xiii. My emphasis.
133 The literature on CIA covert action is truly enormous. See, for example, Emanuel Adler, ‘Executive Command and Control in Foreign Policy: The CIA's Covert Activities’, Orbis 23/3 (1979) pp.671–96; Les Aspin, ‘Covert Action: Questions to Consider’, First Principles 6 (May 1981) pp.10–2; James A. Barry, ‘Covert Action Can Be Just’, Orbis 37/3 (1993) pp.375–90; Richard A. Best, Jr., Covert Action: An Effective Instrument of U.S. Policy? (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 1996); Don Bohning, The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations in Cuba, 1959–1965 (Washington DC: Potomac Books 2005); John J. Carter, Covert Operations as a Tool of Presidential Foreign Policy: From the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen 2006); William J. Daugherty, ‘Approval and Review of Covert Action Programs since Reagan’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 17/1 (2004) pp.62–80; idem, Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky 2004); Roy Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: U.S. Covert Action and Counterintelligence (Washington, DC: Brassey's 1995); Harold M. Greenberg, ‘Research Note: The Doolittle Commission of 1954’, Intelligence and National Security 20/4 (2005) pp.687–94; D. Bruce Hicks, ‘Lifting the Arms Embargo on the Bosnian Muslims: Secret Diplomacy or Covert Action?’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 18/2 (2005) pp.246–61; Arthur S. Hulnick, ‘U.S. Covert Action: Does It Have a Future?’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 9/2 (1996) pp.145–57; Aiyaz Husain, ‘Covert Action and US Cold War Strategy in Cuba, 1961–62’, Cold War History, 5/1 (2005) pp.23–53; Loch K. Johnson, ‘Covert Action and Accountability: Decision-Making for America's Secret Foreign Policy’, International Studies Quarterly 33 (1989) pp.81–109; idem, ‘On Drawing a Bright Line for Covert Operations’, American Journal of International Law, 89 (1992) pp.284–309; Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books 2006); Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996); W. Scott Lucas, ‘Beyond Freedom, Beyond Control: Approaches to Culture and the State-Private Network in the Cold War’, Intelligence and National Security 18/2 (2003) pp.53–72; John Jacob Nutter, The CIA's Black Ops: Covert Action, Foreign Policy and Democracy (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books 1999); Curtis Peebles, Twilight Warriors: Covert Air Operations against the USSR (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 2005); John Prados, President's Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II (New York: W. Morrow 1986); W. Michael Reisman and James E. Baker, Regulating Covert Action: Practices, Contexts, and Policies of Covert Coercion Abroad in International and American Law (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1992); David F. Rudgers, ‘The Origins of Covert Action’, Journal of Contemporary History 35/2 (2000) pp.249–62; Len Scott, ‘Secret Intelligence, Covert Action and Clandestine Diplomacy’, Intelligence and National Security 19/2 (2004) pp.162–79; James E. Steiner, ‘Restoring the Red Line Between Intelligence and Policy on Covert Action’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 19/1 (2006) pp.156–65; Gregory F. Treverton, Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World (New York: Basic Books 1987); Bob Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981–1987 (New York: Simon & Schuster 1987).
134 For example, Eugene Poteat, ‘The Use and Abuse of Intelligence: An Intelligence Provider's Perspective’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 11/2 (2000) pp.1–16.
135 Weiner also uses published documents. For example: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976 (FRUS), Volume XII, Soviet Union, January 1969–October 1970 (Washington, DC: GPO 2006) contains five documents on covert action against the USSR (these are available at the ‘Federation of American Scientists’ web page at: <http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/frus1969.pdf>). This information was taken from the covert action bibliography (<http://intellit.muskingum.edu/covertaction_folder/catoc.html>) that is available as part of J. Ransom Clark's impressive web page, ‘The Literature of Intelligence: A Bibliography of Materials, with Essays, Reviews, and Comments’, <http://intellit.muskingum.edu/index.html>.
136 A.J.P. Taylor, Beaverbrook: A Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton 1972) p.585. Beaverbrook is referring to the Daily Express.
137 Max Hastings, ‘Hacks and Scholars: Allies of a Kind’ in David Cannadine (ed.) History and the Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2004) pp.103–4.
138 Jeffrey Richelson, a fellow at the National Security Archive, thus confessed his disappointment that the reviews of Legacy of Ashes in the New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal‘were the kind one might expect from gullible writers who lack independent knowledge of the agency’, Richelson, ‘Sins of Omission and Commission’.
139 Hoover's associates were known as ‘F.O.B.s’–‘Friends of the Bureau’.
140 Evan Thomas, ‘The Myth of Objectivity', Newsweek, 10 March 2008.
141 Ibid. On Watergate and journalism, see Pnina Lahav,‘History in Journalism and Journalism in History: Anthony Lewis and the Watergate Crisis’, Journal of Supreme Court History 29/2 (2004) pp.163–76. On Watergate generally, see Fred Emery, Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon (New York, NY: Times Books 1994).
142 On Hersh's articles in the New York Times, see Cynthia M. Nolan, ‘Seymour Hersh's Impact on the CIA’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 12/1 (1999) pp.18–34.
143 Sherman Kent, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1966 [1949]) p.199.
144 Wise, ‘Covert Action’.
145 Weinberg, ‘Bad behavior’. The book referred to here is Tim Weiner, Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget (New York: Grand Central Publishing 1990). In a similar vein, a book review of Christopher Bellamy's Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War: A Modern History (London: Macmillan 2007) concluded that ‘Bellamy's background as a journalist … ensures that his narrative contains all the excitement of reportage’, Virginia Rounding, ‘Heroism – and Humour – in Hell’, The Independent, 24 August 2007, <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/absolute-war-by-chris-bellamy-462704.html>.
146 Elton, Political History, p.117.
147 Aside from sources at various archives, for an insight into the wealth of declassified documentation available online, see the CIA ‘FOIA Electronic Reading Room’ at <http://www.foia.cia.gov>.
148 Richelson, ‘Sins of Omission and Commission’.
149 The work of Gar Alperovitz is a case in point. The debate began when Alperovitz's Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (New York: Simon and Schuster 1965) charged that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 were primarily intended to intimidate the USSR. Robert Maddox, a particularly fierce critic of Alperovitz, wrote: ‘That a trained scholar should have resorted to such [bad] practices in a book purporting to be a scholarly study is lamentable, but relatively unimportant. That such a work, its methodology unchallenged, could have come to be considered a contribution to the historical literature on the period is far more serious. Scholars, students, and lay readers alike have been poorly served by what can only be regarded as a striking failure of the critical mechanisms within the historical profession’ (p.934). Robert James Maddox, ‘Atomic Diplomacy: A Study on Creative Writing’, The Journal of American History 59/4 (1973) pp.925–34. Despite such criticisms, thirty years later Alperovitz published his The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1995). Maddox's attack on Alperovitz was part of his sustained assault on so-called ‘revisionist’ Cold War historians (on this, see Robert James Maddox, The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1973)). Despite their ferocity, many of Maddox's charges were, to say the least, over-stated (Novick, That Noble Dream, pp.451–2). For a summary of the critiques of the ‘revisionist' school, see John Lewis Gaddis, ‘The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War', Diplomatic History 7/3 (1983) pp.171–90. The case of Fritz Fischer provides us with another case of a scholar coming under sustained attack by professional historians. In 1961 Fischer, a professor at the University of Hamburg, published his Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegzielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914–1918 (Düsseldorf: Droste 1961). Fierce debate was ignited by Fischer's thesis that Germany had deliberately instigated the First World War (he repeated this charge in Krieg der Illusionen: Die deutsche Politik von 1911 bis 1914 (Düsseldorf: Droste 1969)). For a particularly sharp critique of Fischer, see Gerhard Ritter, ‘Eine neue Kriegsschuldthese? Zu Fritz Fischers Buch ‘‘Griff nach der Weltmacht''', Historische Zeitschrift 194 (1962) pp.646–68. On the debates and the divisions that Fischer provoked, see James Joll, ‘The 1914 Debate Continues: Fritz Fischer and His Critics', Past and Present 34 (1966) pp.100–13; John A. Moses, The Politics of Illusion: The Fischer Controversy in German Historiography (London: Prior 1975); and H.W. Koch (ed.), The Origins of the First World War: Great Power Rivalry and German War Aims, 2nd edn. (London: Macmillan 1984).
150 For example: ‘But these screw-ups [since 2001] are the tip of the iceberg, and they all stem from a handful of organizational deficiencies that have plagued U.S. intelligence agencies for decades – and, despite intelligence “reform”, still do’, Amy Zegart, ‘Our Clueless Intelligence System’, Washington Post, 8 July 2007, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/06/AR2007070602004_pf.html>.
151 In attacking the CIA for 9/11, many critics overlooked the fact that the failure of various US agencies (including the CIA) to cooperate was a major contributory factor to the failure. On this, see Athan Theoharis, The Quest for Absolute Security: The Failed Relations among U.S. Intelligence Agencies (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee 2007); Amy B. Zegart, Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2007). American public disillusion with the agency has been heightened by press reports that the CIA impeded the work of the 9/11 Commission. See, for example, Mark Mazzetti, ‘Panel Study Finds That C.I.A. Withheld Tapes’, New York Times, 22 December 2007, <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/washington/22intel.html>.
152 Stansfield Turner, Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors and Secret Intelligence (New York: Hyperion 2005) p.258. Admiral Stansfield Turner was DCI under President Carter (1977–81) – for his memoirs, see Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin 1985).
153 Typical of books attacking the CIA in recent years is Richard L. Russell, Sharpening Strategic Intelligence: Why the CIA Gets It Wrong and What Needs to Be Done to Get It Right (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007). Russell asserts that ‘The American public mistakenly believes that our intelligence problems have been fixed, when the reality is that we have created even more problems with the reforms that have been implemented’ (p.2).
154 Wise, ‘Covert Action’.
155 Beschloss, ‘The C.I.A.'s Missteps’.
156 Bob Hoover, ‘Journalist's History of CIA Calls Agency to Task’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2 September 2007, <http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07245/813506-148.stm>.
157 Some commentators noted that George Tenet (DCI, 1997–2004) did little to restore public faith in the CIA. ‘In his just-released book [At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (London: HarperPress 2007)], and while hawking it on television, Tenet presents himself as a pathetic victim and scapegoat of an administration that was hell-bent on going to war’. Charles Krauthammer, ‘Rewriting History’, Washington Post, 4 May 2007, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050301551.html>.
158 On this, see Nick Davies, Flat Earth News (London: Chatto & Windus 2008).
159 Robert A. Goldberg, Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2001); Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (Berkely, CA: University of California Press 2003). On 11 September 2001 itself, see Robert A. Goldberg, ‘Who Profited from the Crime? Intelligence Failure, Conspiracy Theories, and the Case of September 11’ in L.V. Scott and Peter Jackson (eds.), Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century: Journeys in Shadows (London: Routledge 2004) pp.99–110. For a book supporting a number of conspiracy theories about 9/11, see James H. Fetzer (ed.) The 9/11 Conspiracy: The Scamming of America (Chicago, IL: Open Court 2007). The historian Robert Service recently observed that modern Russia is also very prone to conspiracy theories: ‘We Provoke Russian Paranoia at Our Peril’, The Observer, 6 April 2008, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/06/russia.usa>.
160 For example: Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary (1997–2001) stated that, ‘Throughout the 80s [Bin Laden] was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan … Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west’. Robin Cook, ‘The Struggle Against Terrorism Cannot be Won by Military Means’. The Guardian, 8 July 2005, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development>.
161 ‘Did the U.S. “Create” Osama bin Laden? Allegations that the U.S. Provided Funding for bin Laden Proved Inaccurate’, International Information Programs, State Department, 14 January 2005, <http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24-318760.html>. The CIA answers the question ‘Has the CIA ever provided funding, training, or other support to Usama Bin Laden[sic]?’ by stating, ‘No. Numerous comments in the media recently have reiterated a widely circulated but incorrect notion that the CIA once had a relationship with Usama Bin Laden[sic]. For the record, you should know that the CIA never employed, paid, or maintained any relationship whatsoever with Bin Laden’. (Emphasis in the original). CIA web page, ‘Terrorism FAQs’, 6 April 2007, <https://www.cia.gov/news-information/cia-the-war-on-terrorism/terrorism-faqs.html>.
162 Evan Thomas, ‘The Myth of Objectivity’.
163 ‘CIA Statement on “Legacy of Ashes”’, 6 August 2007, <https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/press-release-archive-2007/legacy-of-ashes.html>. On the agency and the press, see Loch K. Johnson, ‘The CIA and the media’, Intelligence and National Security 1/2 (1986) pp.143–69.
164 Brenda Maddox, ‘Hatchet job or horror story?’, The Times, 6 January 2007. For a negative academic review of the Mao book see, for example, Stuart Schram's review of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Jonathan Cape 2005) in The China Quarterly, 189 (March 2007) pp.205–08.
165 This puts one in mind of Professor Welch's telephone greeting –‘History speaking’– from Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim (London: Victor Gollancz 1954).
166 Frank McLynn, ‘Too Much Hate, Too Little Understanding’, The Independent, 5 June 2005, <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/mao-the-unknown-story-by-jung-chang-amp-jon-halliday-493138.html>.
167 Typically: ‘[my] differences of opinion [with the author] in no way diminish my admiration for what Mr. Weiner has done’. Epstein, ‘Opening Up the CIA’, <http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB118436115647966211.html>.
168 Vincent, ‘Do you know?’.
169 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books 1999) pp.xx, 544–5.
170 Porter, Edward Gibbon, p.163. For a fascinating study of the relationship between professional historians and the American public, see Ian Tyrell, Historians in Public: The Practice of American History, 1890–1970 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2005).
171 David Cannadine, Trevelyan: A Life in History (London: Fontana Press 1993) p.226. See also David Cannadine, ‘Making History Now’ (Inaugural lecture as Director of the Institute of Historical Research, 1999), <http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Whatishistory/cannadine.html>.
172 Rhode, In Pursuit of Knowledge, esp. pp.6–16, 29–62. Quote taken from the inside of the front dust jacket.
173 In 2006 only four of the top 25 US universities offered undergraduate courses on intelligence; between 2001 and 2006 the three most highly regarded academic journals in political science published only one article on the subject (out of a total of 750). ‘For political scientists, the benefits of studying intelligence are low: Abstract theory, not relevance to the real world, is what makes careers. Degrees are awarded, grants are secured, tenure is achieved, and reputations are made by contributing to raging theoretical debates in cloistered fields, not addressing practical matters of broad public concern. In most top research universities, “policy” is a four-letter word’. Amy B. Zegart, ‘Universities Must Not Ignore Intelligence Research’, Chronicle of Higher Education 53/45, July 2007.
174 Ibid.
175 Trevelyan, History and the Reader, p.22.