The CIA and the invention of tradition

Abstract

This article argues for a need to rethink the history of intelligence, and the history of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in particular, in order to account for the public relations activities of those intelligence agencies alongside the existing concerns about the suppression of the historical record through government secrecy. It traces some of the uses the CIA has made of its past in order to shape contemporary debates about the morality and efficacy of its actions, particularly during moments of public outcry regarding its activities. This article thus focuses on four distinct moments when CIA (and Office of Strategic Services (OSS)) public relations were deemed necessary to respond to public criticism: the immediate aftermath of the Second World War following the dissolution of the OSS, the years following the Bay of Pigs debacle, the period of congressional and media scrutiny of the CIA in the mid-1970s, and finally the post-Cold War era. The ways in which the CIA has attempted to articulate its past in these moments of crisis for its public reputation demonstrate the contested and highly politicised manner in which intelligence history is narrated.

Keywords:

• intelligence studies
• historiography
• Hollywood
• international security
• international relations
• public relations

Notes

¹ Christopher Andrew, For The President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), 1.

² Other scholars who have linked the CIA to the Founding Fathers include: Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Edward Sayle, “The Historical Underpinnings of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 1, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 1–27; Ray S. Cline, “Covert Action as Presidential Prerogative,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 12, no. 2 (1989): 357–70.

³ The first account was perhaps Gordon Stewart, The Cloak and Dollar War (London, 1953), published only six years after the CIA was created.

⁴ Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence. 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 23.

⁵ See for example Phillip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century (New York: Andre Deutsch, 1987); Bernard Porter, Plots and Paranoia: A History of Political Espionage in Britain, 1790–1988 (London: Routledge, 1992); Frank S. Russell, Information Gathering in Classical Greece (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence: America’s Legendary Spy Master on the Fundamentals of Intelligence Gathering for a Free World (Guildford: Lyons Press, 2006; repr.), 1–38.

⁶ Porter, op. cit., 1.

⁷ See Richard J. Aldrich, “Policing the Past: Official History, Secrecy and British Intelligence since 1945,” English Historical Review CXIX, no. 483 (2004): 922–53; Wesley K. Wark, “In Never-Never Land? The British Archives of Intelligence,” The Historical Journal 35, no. 1 (1992): 195–203.

⁸ Christopher Andrew, “Secret Intelligence and British Foreign Policy 1900–1939,” in Intelligence and International Relations 1900–1945, eds. Andrew and Jeremy Noakes (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1987), 9.

⁹ Christopher Lee, “Archives Kept a Secrecy Secret: Agencies Removed Declassified Papers From Public Access,” Washington Post, April 12, 2006.

¹⁰ William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” The Journal of American History 78, no. 4 (1992): 1376.

¹¹ Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1987), ix.

¹² Cronon, op. cit., 1350.

¹³ This point has been made by a number of studies of OSS operations, see for example Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, “The Role of British Intelligence in the Mythologies Underpinning the OSS and Early CIA,” Intelligence and National Security 15, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 10; David Walker, “OSS and Operation Torch,” Journal of Contemporary History 22, no. 4 (October 1987): 667–79; Richard B. Laidlaw, “The OSS and the Burma Road 1942–45,” in North American Spies: New Revisionist Essays, eds. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Andrew Lownie (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), 102–22; Bradley Smith, The Shadow Warriors: O.S.S. and the Origins of the C.I.A. (London: Andre Deutsch, 1983).

¹⁴ Smith, op. cit., 414.

¹⁵ Ibid., 400.

¹⁶ Ibid., 403.

¹⁷ For a more detailed discussion of Donovan’s publicity campaign see Larry Valero, “’We Need Our New OSS, Our New General Donovan, Now …’: The Public Discourse Over American Intelligence, 1944–53,” Intelligence and National Securtiy 18, no. 1 (2003): 91–118; Wesley K. Wark, “‘Great Investigations’: The Public Debate on Intelligence in the US after 1945,” Defence Analysis 3, no. 2 (1987): 119–32; Smith, op. cit., 390–420; Thomas Troy, Donovan and the CIA (Frederick, MD: University Press of America, 1981), 255–60.

¹⁸ See “Secret History of Surrender,” Saturday Evening Post, September 22 and 29, 1945; John Chamberlain, “OSS,” Life, November 19, 1945, 130.

¹⁹ Bradley Smith makes this point in Smith, op. cit., 419.

²⁰ Ibid., 409.

²¹ James Deutsch, “‘I Was a Hollywood Agent’: Cinematic Representations of the Office of Strategic Services in 1946,” Intelligence and National Security 13, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 85–99.

²² American Heritage Center, Laramie, Wyoming, Louis De Rochemont papers, Box 7, folder 5, “Motion Pictures of OSS Activities,” October 19, 1945.

²³ Colonel John Shaheen was offered three times the normal rate of pay for a technical advisor by Twentieth Century Fox who were outbid by Paramount: Louis De Rochemont papers, Box 7 folder 5, “Memo to Lew Schreiber from Louis De Rochemont,” November 5, 1945.

²⁴ Louis De Rochemont Papers, Box 7, Folder 5, “Letter to Louis De Rochemont from Captain Richard Phenix,” December 12, 1945.

²⁵ O.S.S. Directed by Irving Pichel. Produced by Richard Maibaum, Screenplay by Richard Maibaum. Hollywood, CA:, Paramount Pictures, 1946.

²⁶ 13 Rue Madeleine, Directed by Henry Hathaway, Produced by Louis De Rochemont, Screenplay by John Monks and Sy Bartlett. Hollywood, CA: Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp., 1946.

²⁷ Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy. 3rd rev. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 117.

²⁸ Smith, op. cit., 413.

²⁹ National Archives, College Park, MD, CIA Records Search Tool (hereafter CREST), CIA-RDP70-00058R000200090034-3, “Memo for the DCI,” July 11, 1963.

³⁰ CREST, CIA-RDP86B00985R000100030010-8, “Public Affairs Advisory Group Fact Sheet”.

³¹ Andrew Tully, CIA, The Inside Story (New York: William and Morrow, 1962), 243–56.

³² S. Peckham, “Reader’s Roundup,” Denver Post, June 28, 1964.

³³ David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (London: Jonathon Cape, 1965).

³⁴ Dulles, op. cit., 258.

³⁵ CREST, CIA-RDP70-00058R000200090034-3, “Memorandum for the DCI,” July 11, 1963.

³⁶ Dulles, op. cit., 1–17.

³⁷ Smith, op. cit., 411.

³⁸ L. Rovinsky, “American Cassandra,” New Times, no. 3, 1964.

³⁹ Dulles, op. cit., 186–7.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ James E. Bryan, “Letter to the Editor,” Washington Post, December 11, 1975, cited in Kathryn Olmsted, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 90.

⁴² Ibid., 82.

⁴³ George Bush Snr, CREST, CIA-RDP79-00498A000700040003-7, “DCI Speech to CIA: Today and Tomorrow, Headquarters Auditorium,” March 4, 1976.

⁴⁴ William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honourable Men: My Life in the CIA (London: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 397.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 402.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 455.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 466.

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ In 1976 future DCI William J. Casey also published a history of the American Revolution, which specifically emphasized Washington’s use of intelligence. According to Casey’s biographer John Persico, Casey had been encouraged by William Donovan to write the book as far back as 1958 in an effort to promote the longstanding historical legacy of American intelligence. See William J. Casey, Where and How the War Was Fought: An Armchair Tour of the American Revolution (New York: Morrow, 1976); John E. Persico, The Lives and Secrets of William J. Casey: From OSS to the CIA (New York: Morrow, 1990), 99.

⁵⁰ Loch K. Johnson, “Review of Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency,” The American Political Science Review 91, no. 1 (1997): 191–2.

⁵¹ Olmsted, op. cit., 91.

⁵² CREST, CIA-RDP86B00985R000100030010-8, “Public Affairs Advisory Group Fact Sheet”.

⁵³ National Archives, College Park, MD, CIA Records Search Tool (hereafter CREST), CIA-RDP99-00498R0003000300040012-5, “Good Morning America Transcript,” September 19, 1977.

⁵⁴ Allen Dulles Collection MSS, Princeton, Frank Wisner correspondence 1947–1968, Box 59, Folder 6, ‘Copy of Memorandum to Mr John McCone, Director of Central Intelligence from Frank G. Wisner, re: ‘Proposed NBC Television Program Concerning CIA’.

⁵⁵ John Hollister-Hedley, “Twenty Years of Officers in Residence: CIA in the Classroom,” Studies in Intelligence 49, no. 4 (2005), https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol49no4/Officers_in_Residence_3.htm

⁵⁶ Sayle, op. cit., 2.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 5–6.

⁵⁸ Knott, op. cit.

⁵⁹ Review article in Foreign Affairs, September/October 1996, 141–2, and Johnson, “Review of Stephen F Knott, Secret and Sanctioned,” 191–2.

⁶⁰ Johnson, op. cit., 191–2.

⁶¹ Perhaps the most vociferous critic of the CIA in this period was Senator Daniel Moynihan, see Daniel P. Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).

⁶² For an excellent compendium of many of the most significant articles in response to the film see Oliver Stone, ed. JFK: The Book of the Film: The Documented Screenplay (New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 1992).

⁶³ Zachary Karabell and Timothy Naftali, “History Declassified: The Perils and Promise of CIA Documents,” Diplomatic History 18, no. 4 (2004): 615–26.

⁶⁴ Memo to DCI Robert M. Gates, “Task Force on Greater CIA Openness,” December 20, 1991, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ciacase/EXB.pdf (accessed March 17, 2011).

⁶⁵ Lawrence H. Suid, Guts and Glory: Great American War Movies (London: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1978).

⁶⁶ Central Intelligence Agency Website, https://www.cia.gov/index.html (accessed March 17, 2011).

⁶⁷ https://www.cia.gov/open/cia-open-government-plan.html (March 17, 2011).

⁶⁸ Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rainbow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 78–9.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simon Willmetts

Dr Simon Willmetts is a lecturer in American Studies at the University of Hull. His research falls broadly within the fields of film history, cultural theory and US foreign policy. Before joining Hull, he worked on the AHRC project at Warwick University entitled ‘The Landscapes of Secrecy: The CIA and the Contested Record of US Foreign Policy’. The project explored the formation and development of public perceptions of the CIA in various cultural mediums. Simon’s work for the project examined filmic representations of the Agency. He has published articles on spy cinema and the public perceptions of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Journal of American Studies, Journal of British Cinema and Television and International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. His forthcoming book with Edinburgh University Press is a history of the OSS and CIA in Hollywood cinema.