The CIA

<p><b>'Gripping history that also informs the present' <i>Sunday Times</i></b><br><br><b><i>'</i>Fascinating . . . Wilford writes engagingly with a telling eye for colourful detail' <i>The Spectator</i></b><br><br><b><i>'</i>A spectacular achievement . . . I loved it' Dominic Sandbrook<br></b> <b><br> How the CIA became an instrument of a new covert empire both in America and overseas.</b><br><br> In 1947, the United States created the CIA to analyse foreign intelligence, but within a few years the Agency was engaged in other operations - bolstering pro-American governments, overthrowing nationalist leaders, and surveilling domestic dissent - before transforming during the Cold War. <br><br>Drawing on decades of research, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford shows how the Agency created a new Western empire, as successive US presidents used the covert powers of the Agency to hide overseas interventions from postcolonial foreigners and anti-imperial Americans alike. Even the CIA's post-9/11 global hunt for terrorists was haunted by the ghosts of empires past.<br><br> Original, and gripping, <i>The CIA</i> tells how America adopted unaccountable power and created a new imperial order.</p>