The Agency: A History of the CIA

Why did the United States create a secret foreign intelligence service in the first place? For the answer, examine three key periods of U.S. government intelligence before the birth of the CIA: the American Revolution to the late 1930s, World War II, and the postwar years from 1945 to 1947.

Professor Wilford reveals how the CIA transformed from an intelligence agency to housing the United States’ premier covert-action unit in the space of just two years. Central to this conversion is George F. Kennan, who declared “political warfare” against the Soviet Union through his policies of both containment and “rollback.”

Discover how the CIA, with its attention drawn to Asia, failed to rein in the growing emphasis on covert operations and restore its focus on intelligence gathering and analysis. Two factors you’ll focus on: the lack of public scrutiny of the CIA’s actions and the arrival of future CIA director Allen Dulles.

More than any other operation, the 1953 Iran Coup created a culture of covert action that would shape the CIA’s future. First, study the shifting political attitudes toward Iranian nationalism. Then, learn about the Iran operation itself (TP-AJAX). Finally, ponder who was most responsible for Mohammad Mosaddeq’s fall from power.

In this episode, explore the CIA’s role in the Guatemalan coup (the operation codenamed PB-SUCCESS) that brought about a new era of murderous dictatorship to the country and a surge of anti-American sentiment across Central and South America that has haunted U.S. relations with the region to this day.

One of the CIA’s first major setbacks was the tragic failure of the Hungarian uprising, despite the agency’s attempts to liberate the Eastern Bloc countries during the early 1950s. Here, investigate CIA efforts to organize anti-communist Eastern European emigres to liberate their homelands and the creation of Radio Free Europe to counteract communist-controlled media.