Safe For Democracy The Secret Wars Of The Cia John Prados by John Prados 9781566638234, 9781615780112, 1566638232, 1615780114 instant download after payment.

One way to look at the world’s fears of America is to review U.S. actions on the world stage, where a major policy tool has been the secret operations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), created after World War II. The agency quickly became the locus of open and covert efforts that have engaged many nations across the globe. Because of the secrecy of most CIA activities, it has been exceedingly difficult for historians and observers to evaluate them. Even today information about the CIA remains scattered, shrouded in misinformation, is poorly understood, or has remained inaccessible to researchers. The “need to know” has been used by government bureaucrats to restrict knowledge to a few, even in the case of events long past. Nevertheless an appraisal has become possible and is long overdue.

In the sixty years since the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency, presidents have continually harnessed the agency in service of their foreign policy goals. Three decades ago the “problem” of the CIA appeared to be the agency’s status as a “rogue elephant”—unsupervised, tearing about the globe, acting at whim. By now it is evident that the agency and its cohorts were in fact responding to presidential orders. This seems to make it much more urgent to attempt to tell the story of exactly what the CIA has accomplished. What has the agency contributed toward the success of larger U.S. policy goals, and the global quest for democracy?

Perhaps the problem is more one of the “rogue” president than it is about an out-of-control Central Intelligence Agency. The control and oversight of United States intelligence needs to be examined in specific contexts where the overseers concern themselves with covert operations. In the past the question of oversight has been viewed as one of congressional supervision of the intelligence community, but we can now see this is an inadequate approach.