Where to start reading about the history of the CIA?

by theytookthemall

I recently watched the 2019 film The Report, and also listened to a brief podcast series on Operation: Midnight Climax, and I'm interested in learning more about the history of the CIA, and, essentially, how we got from "intelligence and spycraft during WWII" to "an agency which has undeniably committed numerous severe human rights violations over decades both at home and abroad". My knowledge of the agency is currently limited to "they did MKUltra, which was a grotesque violation of human rights," "they have facilitated the overthrow of democratically elected governments in a bunch of different countries," and "they tortured a bunch of people as part of our 'War on Terror'."

Obviously I'm bringing my own biases, and I'm not exactly looking for a defense of the agency, but I would like to read some things that at least attempt a neutral perspective. Most of my normal reading tends to skew very heavily left, where the narrative is (perhaps rightly) that the CIA is deeply, deeply troubling as an agency. I'm interested in a more nuanced look at the agency, from it's inception. What books and articles would you recommend?

Hi, this is a few days old but I can only see your two automated responses (though the comments ticker below your post says its five)- maybe the CIA is limiting this too? ha ha ha ha Just kidding. I came across this searching for stuff on Midnight Climax, so if you wouldn't mind telling me which podcast series you listened to, I'd appreciate it.

As for your question, I'm currently researching a lot of this. Here are a few I can think of.

Steven Coll's Ghost Wars is about the CIA in Afghanistan including the US, Pakistani and Saudi role in the development, training and funding/arming of radical sunni terrorists (what a big oopsie that turned out to be!) Coll's a mainstream pulitzer prize winning journalist and the book is well-sourced.

Bitter Fruit is a multi-authored book about the CIA's overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala. Schlesinger, one of the authors, is a well regarded academic historian and journalist. AFAIK, this book is considered one of the definitive works on US foreign policy of overthrowing govts and manipulating the media.

The Imagineers of War is about DARPA. This is the development of tech that the CIA eventually uses in all its operations. I mention it because the two are often linked and you seem to want context for why the CIA is doing all this crazy stuff, and I think this book provides some of that- at the very least it shows you how the CIA is involved in all sorts of stuff and gives you an idea of the scale of the military-industrial complex. There's another book on this topic called The Department of Mad Scientists which is in my queue but I haven't read it yet.

Acid Dreams is a popular readable book about the history of LSD and includes stuff about the CIA's testing as a part of MK Ultra (which the Operation Midnight Climax was a part). McGowan's Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon is likewise about the seedy side of the 60s/70s hippie scene and includes CIA agents and FBI spies etc but that's not the sole focus of the book.

Trento's Secret History of the CIA is a pretty good objective overview of the history / management of the organization itself. Though I personally think it's too focused on the American perspective, it sounds like what you are looking for.

Peter Kross's Secret History of the United States is fun, a sort of overview of all the "unexplaineds" and "conspiracy theories" in US history. It's probably not what you are looking for, but he does have ten or so chapters that deal with various CIA operations that I found very useful to start further research.

Susan Williams' White Malice is about the CIA in Africa, especially the Congo. She does a lot of research into declassified documents. William Blum's Killing Hope is also in my queue but I haven't read it yet. A history of US foreign policy in the realm of coups, etc.

Ganser's NATO's Secret Armies is one of the books I discovered while researching stuff I learned from Kross. It's about Operation Gladio, weird scary stuff!

Annie Jacobsen is a very readable history author (pulitzer prize winner) who's made a career of this: Operation Paperclip, Pentagon's Brain, Surprise Kill Vanish, First Platoon and Phenomena are all about CIA and DOD operations more generally. She does a lot of FOIA requests herself so some of this is stuff she writes about for the first time, but most of it is declassified stuff and prior investigative reporting that she puts together in narrative format. The only caution I'd give is that she seems to let linger the question of whether or not paranormal stuff is possible when she's describing the CIA investigation into these things whereas I personally prefer to total skeptic's view of it. (What I mean is, I'm interested in the CIA's experiments around the paranormal, but I'm not interested in the paranormal itself whereas Jacobsen provides information for people with both interests). But setting that aside, everything she says is well researched and true, primary-source reliant. She's a historian first, but she's a very entertaining writer and does the sort of historical writing that tells the events as if they are a story unfolding so it's really easy to read. Again, I've found her to be extremely useful to discover operations that I did not know about.