Journal of Intelligence History

ISSN: 1616-1262 (Print) 2169-5601 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjih20

The CIA and the invention of tradition

Simon Willmetts

To cite this article: Simon Willmetts (2015) The CIA and the invention of tradition, Journal of
Intelligence History, 14:2, 112-128, DOI: 10.1080/16161262.2015.1032499

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 Journal of Intelligence History, 2015
Vol. 14, No. 2, 112128, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16161262.2015.1032499

The CIA and the invention of tradition

Simon Willmetts*

School of Languages Linguistics and Cultures, University of Hull, Hull, UK

(Received 8 March 2015; accepted 19 March 2015)

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
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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

In 1983, CIA chief William Casey told a Senate Committee, I claim that my first
predecessor as Director of Central Intelligence was George Washington Caseys
statement may seem at odds with the popular conception of the CIA as a distinctly modern
bureaucratic institution created in the context of the early Cold War. Indeed, for its critics,
the CIAs more controversial activities have represented an affront to the intentions of the
Founding Fathers.
However, the history books are on Caseys side. Indeed, perhaps the most authorita-
tive history of American Intelligence, Christopher Andrews For the Presidents Eyes
Only, begins its narrative by quoting Caseys very same words. Caseys point which
Andrew reinforces is that American intelligence is as old as the United States is young
and that the historical legacy of the CIA can be traced to the founding of the Republic.1
By rooting the CIA within the traditions of the nations past, Casey was responding to a
decade of media revelation and congressional clampdown that characterised the growing

*Email: S.Willmetts@Hull.ac.uk
The title of this article is inspired by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Rangers classic work of
historiography, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 2012). Whilst the argument herein is in
keeping with the spirit of Hobsbawm and Rangers text, this is not intended as a direct application of
their arguments to the history of the CIA.
1
Christopher Andrew, For The Presidents Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American
Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), 1.

2015 Journal of Intelligence History

 Journal of Intelligence History 113

public ire towards an institution which had come to be regarded as antithetical to the
idealised notions of American democracy, transparency and freedom.2
The history of the CIA has long constituted a political battleground.3 Its origins represent a
struggle for meaning over the nations past and whether secrecy, intelligence and covert action
are commensurate with an idealised notion of the American creed. History for both the
CIAs defenders and detractors has been consistently mobilised for the politics of the
present. Often in the midst of scandal, the CIA has positioned itself for the purposes of public
relations within a national legacy of intelligence dating back to the American Revolution and
even before. To draw such direct parallels between George Washingtons ad hoc employment
of espionage and the modern institutional bureaucracy of the CIA is to conceive a teleological
narrative in which the Agency is the direct heir to the legacy of the American Revolution.
Such a narrative is unavoidably political in its manifestation and imbues the CIA with the
power and meaning that the founding myths impart upon American political life. As historian
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones has argued, this approach is both presentist, allowing contemporary
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concerns to overshadow the different agendas of Washington and his successors and
originalist, in that they give the Founding Fathers an iconic status and imply that
Washington, slave owner, could do no wrong.4
The history of American intelligence has thus played a vital role in legitimating the
contemporary practices of the CIA. It has not merely explained the past, but shaped the
politics of the present. Recognising this, the CIA itself has long sought to construct, shape and
articulate their narrative of American intelligence history in order to weave their institution
and their practices into the fabric of the Nations past. Moreover, in seeking to promote and
authenticate this narrative, the CIA has enlisted academia, the media and even Hollywood
filmmakers. By attempting to integrate their story into these powerful cultural institutions, the
CIA has sought to overturn an atmosphere of public scepticism towards their institution.
Intelligence historians and practitioners alike have exhibited a tendency to locate their
subject in the ancient and the mythical. Sweeping historical narratives, often written by
former practitioners, have located evidence of intelligence activities as far back as the
Book of Genesis and studies have shown that spies were a part of ancient Egyptian and
Classical Greek civilisation.5 This aetiology of intelligence may at first sight appear
unproblematic. The facts, it would seem, speak for themselves. But as Bernard Porter
has argued, this long and continuous narrative of intelligence, which claims that Every
state and every government has resorted to it, since the dawn of time, implicitly supposes

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): 127; Ray S. Cline, Covert
Action as Presidential Prerogative, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 12, no. 2 (1989):
35770.
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, 17901988 (London: Routledge, 1992); Frank S.
Russell, Information Gathering in Classical Greece (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2000); Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence: Americas Legendary Spy Master on the
Fundamentals of Intelligence Gathering for a Free World (Guildford: Lyons Press, 2006; repr.),
138.
 114 S. Willmetts

that espionage is both necessary and natural. This deliberate propagation of the
naturalistic fallacy seeks both to excuse and to explain the secret state.6
Given the limitations imposed by the security classification of records, historians of intelli-
gence are especially sensitive to the relationship between the writing of history and the politics of
the nation-state.7 In the context of British secrecy and classification, Richard J. Aldrich has argued
that the state has engaged in policing the past in order to pre-empt alternative voices. Wesley
Wark has suggested that much of Britains intelligence archive exists in a Never-Never Land of
secrecy and Christopher Andrew has described the British public archives as being laundered.8
At first glance, this suggests a discipline that is admirably self-conscious of the potential pitfalls
and even the prospective politicisation of state-censored history.
Yet the arguments made by Aldrich and Wark, among others, contain two significant
shortcomings. Firstly, the argument about the impact of state-censorship upon the history
of intelligence is almost invariably made in the British context. The United States, by
contrast, is generally regarded as being far more open with their intelligence records and
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less draconian in their implementation of classification and secrecy. However, this does
not mean that secrecy is not an issue in America, or that American intelligence historians
are not constrained by a heavy burden of redactions and classification. Indeed, in 2006,
the Matthew Aid sparked a public controversy by revealing a programme of secret
reclassification at the US National Archives at College Park, in which more than
55,000 previously available documents were withdrawn from public access.9 As far as
we know, there has never been anything comparable to this in the UK.
Secondly, by limiting their focus to the archive, to the raw material of history, Aldrich
and Wark neglect the role of the historian in shaping and producing meaning from the
mass of evidence they are presented with. According to their arguments, the question of
state influence upon the history of intelligence extends merely to the documents them-
selves. If the government were simply to make more materials available, or if the shrewd
historian was able to circumvent state-censorship through the use of private papers,
memoirs, interviews and so forth, then a thoroughly independent account, apolitical and
untainted by the influence of the state, would be made possible.
This naive empiricist view has much in common with old-style diplomatic history. It
neglects the vital function of narrative and its ability to impose meaning, often political
meaning, upon the past. To try to escape the value judgments that accompany story-
telling, wrote William Cronon, is to miss the point of history itself. For the stories we
tell, like the questions we ask, are all finally about value.10 The stories which the CIA has
sought to tell contain values which are unavoidably political. To ignore this political
function of the narratives of American intelligence is to ignore not only their implications,
but also their intent. The CIA has quite deliberately promoted the discipline of intelligence
history and propagated value-laden narratives of the past to defend and promote their
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): 92253; Wesley K. Wark, In Never-
Never Land? The British Archives of Intelligence, The Historical Journal 35, no. 1 (1992):
195203.
8
Christopher Andrew, Secret Intelligence and British Foreign Policy 19001939, in Intelligence
and International Relations 19001945, 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.
 Journal of Intelligence History 115

contemporary practices. As the historical theorist Hayden White wrote in the preface to
The Content of the Form:

This relation (between narrative and historical representation) becomes a problem for histor-
ical theory with the realization that narrative is not merely a neutral discursive form that may
or may not be used to represent real events in their aspect as developmental processes but
rather entails ontological and epistemic choices with distinct ideological and even specifically
political implications.11

In this sense, the states management of the past includes not merely what can be written
about intelligence agencies, but how it is written. Almost invariably, CIA commitment to
greater openness and declassification programmes has been accompanied by an extension
of the activities of their Public Affairs Office. In other words, the CIA has sought not
merely to make more documentation available to provide the raw material of history
but to write that history themselves and frame the documents within their own progressive
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narrative of the long legacy of American intelligence.

The questions of how and why the CIA has mobilised the past is a vital one not just
for intelligence historians, but also for the discipline of history as a whole. To understand
both the overt and the latent political functions of history writing is to recognise the
intrinsic power of historical narratives to legitimate contemporary institutions, policies
and practices. As Cronon argued, whatever the overt purpose of historical narrative, it
cannot avoid a covert exercise of power: it inevitably sanctions some voices while
silencing others. A powerful narrative reconstructs common sense to make the contingent
seem determined and the artificial seem natural.12
The irony of the CIA is that whilst much of its history remains hidden, it is at the same
time one of the most publicly prominent and contested of all American institutions. In this
instance, the silencing and the sanctioning of certain voices are products not merely of
what should remain classified and what should not, but of how we seek to emphasise and
frame what little we do know within the wider historical terrain. This article seeks to
explore how the making of American intelligence history helped constitute the CIA
themselves and how that past has since been utilised by the Agency to defend their
ontological position as an essential organ of Americas foreign policy apparatus.

Making OSS history making the CIA

The CIA was not Americas first foreign intelligence organisation. General William
Donovans wartime intelligence organisation, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),
was effectively the CIAs predecessor. According to historian Bradley Smith, OSS con-
stituted a relatively insignificant ingredient in the context of the combined military
operations that secured allied victory in the war.13 Yet, in the immediate aftermath of
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): 66779; Richard
B. Laidlaw, The OSS and the Burma Road 194245, in North American Spies: New Revisionist
Essays, eds. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Andrew Lownie (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
 116 S. Willmetts

the war following the dissolution of OSS, Donovan and his former colleagues constructed
and promoted a heroic narrative of their former organisation that cast their operations as a
vital component in the defeat of Nazi Germany. By commemorating OSS, Donovan
helped convince an initially suspicious American public of the need for a permanent
peacetime foreign intelligence organisation. The result of this campaign was the creation
of the CIA in 1947. As such, Donovans OSS was, as Smith argued, more influential in
its impact on peoples ideas and imagination than in its practical wartime achievements.14
By making OSS history, Donovan helped make the CIA.
Donovans initial proposals for the post-war continuance of the OSS were thwarted by
a conviction that powerful secret bureaucracies were the very things that America was
fighting against. In early 1945, Donovan had secured the broad approval from President
Roosevelt for his plan for a centralised post-war foreign intelligence service. But in
February 1945, when the proposals were leaked to the newspapers, a press campaign
undermined Donovans planned future organisation by labelling it a super Gestapo
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Agency and the OSS were subsequently given the unfortunate tag of Donovans
Gestapo Boys.15 Influenced by the press response, the new President, Harry Truman,
enunciated his fears of an American Gestapo in his objection to the peacetime continuance
of OSS operations.16 By conflating US intelligence with the reviled German secret police,
the press tapped into the long-held notion that secret intelligence was not consistent with
the values of American democracy.
Donovan understood that the key to changing this impression was to demonstrate the
necessity of American intelligence via a commemoration of OSS wartime achievements.
As such, he embarked on a major publicity campaign enlisting the support of the print
media, radio and Hollywood.17 As America celebrated and memorialised its victory over
the unambiguous terror of Nazi Germany, Donovan helped ensure that the OSS gained
pride of place in the history books of Americas good war. Stories of OSS operations in
Nazi-occupied Europe including an influential article in Life magazine and an account by
future CIA chief, Allen Dulles, filled column inches.18 This airbrushed history of the OSS
gave the impression not only that American espionage activities were vital to the success
of allied operations, but also that covert action was an effective substitute for conventional
military operations a myth that would later come back to haunt the CIA at the Bay of
Pigs.19
Although the OSS had been officially disbanded, Donovan fought to ensure that its
memory continued to reinforce his agenda for the creation of its permanent peacetime
successor. To this end, the vestige components of OSS that had been split between the
State Department and the War Department echoed Donovans narrative of OSS wartime

1991), 10222; 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 Donovans publicity campaign see Larry Valero, We Need Our
New OSS, Our New General Donovan, Now : The Public Discourse Over American Intelligence,
194453, Intelligence and National Securtiy 18, no. 1 (2003): 91118; Wesley K. Wark, Great
Investigations: The Public Debate on Intelligence in the US after 1945, Defence Analysis 3, no. 2
(1987): 11932; Smith, op. cit., 390420; Thomas Troy, Donovan and the CIA (Frederick, MD:
University Press of America, 1981), 25560.
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.
 Journal of Intelligence History 117

operations in support of their independent existence. In July 1946, for example, their
members began writing a classified history of OSS activities, which as Bradley Smith
argued, played a subtle role inside the government, providing O.S.S. advocates with a
basic handbook to support their claims to past accomplishments and their right to seize
new shadow warfare opportunities.20
If any medium could successfully popularise OSS history in the public mind, it was
the American motion picture. Almost immediately after the dissolution of OSS, Donovan
set up a committee of former senior OSS officers to liaise with filmmakers and provide
technical guidance in order to ensure the accuracy of Hollywoods historical representa-
tion of OSS.21 The committee was comprised of luminaries such as the former head of
OSS Special Projects Office and the past director of Republican Party publicity, Colonel
John M. Shaheen, former Assistant Director of OSS, Edward Buxton, head of OSS
operations in Europe, Colonel J. Russell Forgan, the chief of OSS in London, David
Bruce and the future Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles.22
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Through liaison with Donovans committee, the major studios were provided unprece-
dented access to the wartime record of American intelligence activities. Donovan made
available classified documents pertaining to their successful operations behind enemy lines,
film footage shot by the OSS Field Photographic Unit alongside personal narratives of their
most notable achievements. Furthermore, a number of former OSS officers were
employed by the major studios as technical advisors and were lucratively rewarded for
their expertise.23 In addition to external advice provided by OSS technical advisors, studios
received in-house guidance from a number of former OSS officers working within the
industry including notables such as the director John Ford and the producer George
Skouras.
Although money and the glamour of Hollywood were obvious attractions for former
OSS officers working with the studios, many were equally motivated by a genuine desire
to make their story of key OSS operations known to the American public and in doing so
help write the nascent history of American intelligence. As one OSS veteran offering his
guidance on the production of 13 Rue Madeleine wrote, my major reason, I think, is that I
am so intensely enthusiastic about the work OSS has done, and feel so strongly that such
an agency should be maintained along the same lines as the 400 year old British
Intelligence .24
As a consequence of this substantial coordinated effort, OSS history was immortalised
in celluloid. The year 1946 saw the arrival of three major Hollywood feature films:
Paramounts OSS, Warner Brothers Cloak and Dagger and Twentieth-Century Foxs 13
Rue Madeleine. All of these films sought to remedy the charges against the creation of an
American Gestapo by celebrating the invaluable role OSS had played during the Second
World War and all were made with the assistance of General Donovan and a number of
technical advisors. Paramounts OSS even came with a signed endorsement by General

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): 8599.
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.
 118 S. Willmetts

Donovan in the films title sequence extolling the brave, resourceful men and women,
living and dead, to whom the film pays tribute.25
The studios access to previously classified material alongside the guidance of the
former OSS officers provided an unprecedented popular window onto the world of
Americas secret operations. Indeed, the brief interregnum between the dissolution of
the OSS and the creation of the CIA could be regarded as the most open period of
American intelligence history. However, the stories these films told, like the meanings
they carried, all reflected the intentions of their source. Unsurprisingly, the character
types, plot scenarios and narrative arc of all three were remarkably similar.
All three featured a young nave American, initiated into the shadowy and initially
suspect world of espionage, sent to occupied Europe in the courageous pursuit of an
objective that would pave the way for allied victory and prove the vital necessity of OSS
operations in this effort. All three films sought to allay public fears over the un-American
nature of espionage by celebrating the pivotal role OSS played in overcoming the Nazi
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enemy and all three utilised this history to present a case for a permanent peacetime
foreign intelligence agency. By flaunting their privileged access to OSS files and former
OSS operatives, they represented themselves not merely as entertainment, but as accurate
history, and in doing so demonstrated the historical precedent for American intelligence
and the need for a permanent peacetime central intelligence agency.
In 13 Rue Madeleine, this burden of history upon the politics of the present is made
explicit at the films opening. The film begins with an establishing shot peering down the
Pennsylvania Avenue towards the capitol building, panning right, it reveals the neo-
classical splendour of the National Archives the depository of the nations history
where the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are housed. Slowly surveying
the grandiose building from top to bottom, the sequence emphasises the significance of its
centrality to national memory. Finally, the camera comes to rest upon future one of the
statues in the forecourt of the archive whats past is prologue its inscription reads. At
this moment we hear the mantra read out by the voice of a narrator echoing the newsreels
of the time:

Yes, here in the National Archives in Washington DC, past is prologue. For this is the final
resting place of the histories and records of tens of thousands of illustrious Americans. World
War II has come to a victorious conclusion. And now new names and new records are being
added to the list. For the nation and the world are for the first time learning of silent and
significant deeds performed in foreign lands by a legion of anonymous men and women, the
Army of Secret Intelligence.26

This opening sequence provides a visual manifestation of Donovans utilisation of history

for the politics of the present. Like the producers of 13 Rue Madeleine, Donovan under-
stood that what is past is indeed prologue. But, by tailoring the history of the OSS in order
to legitimise his calls for a CIA, Donovan had quite purposefully overstated the record of
OSS achievements. Furthermore, he had crafted a narrative that tied the extraordinary
circumstances of the Second World War and the often-haphazard nature of OSS operations
to the quite distinct requirements of a modern institutionalised CIA.

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.
 Journal of Intelligence History 119

Less than a year after these films were released, the CIA was created by the 1947
National Security Act. The main driver in the creation of the CIA was accelerating Cold
War rivalries. However, by making OSS history, by constructing a narrative that empha-
sised the importance of American intelligence to the victory of the free world over the
forces of fascism, Donovan helped shift the public and political debate on intelligence
away from a position of scepticism towards one of necessity.

Allen Dulles the American Cassandra

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones has argued that perhaps Allen Dulles most significant achievement
as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), was that until April 1961 he kept America
on his side.27 Yet, in reality Dulles had rarely felt the need to promote the CIA to a
broadly deferential media during much of his tenure as DCI, and even reversed Donovans
policy of promoting Americas intelligence history. In 1955, for example, Dulles denied a
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request by Donovan that OSS memoirist Peter Tompkins be allowed assistance and access
to wartime files.28 Similarly, when Polish defector Pawel Monat attempted to publish his
memoir, Dulles had its publication delayed for a year for non-security reasons.29
Although the CIA had used public spokesmen since May 1951, engagement with the
media had been limited. Indeed often as much time was spent deflecting media enquiries
with the standard no comment, as answering them,30 The debates that had waged over
secrecy and American espionage in the interim between the OSSs dissolution and the
CIAs creation had been muted by the pressing demands of the Cold War. Consequently,
the Agencys public relations activities were minimal and the public commemoration of
intelligence history was no longer necessary.
On 17 April 1961, the CIAs calamitous Bay of Pigs operation changed all this.
Almost immediately after the failed Cuban invasion, the CIAs name was plastered all
over the American press in connection with the attempted coup. Perhaps more concerning
for the CIAs long-term historical identity, several unofficial accounts of the incident as
well as more comprehensive histories of the Agency began to be published. In 1962,
journalist Andrew Tully published CIA: The Inside Story, with a chapter entitled
Catastrophe in Cuba.31 The most significant was the bestselling book The Invisible
Government by journalists David Wise and Thomas Ross. Indeed, so concerned were the
CIA about this unauthorised history that they considered buying up all 20,000 copies of
its first run.32 As the first substantive account of the CIA, The Invisible Governments
central premise was that the unchecked excesses of CIA covert action constituted an
affront to the traditions of American democracy and openness.33
Recognising the damage inflicted by such unauthorised narratives, recently retired
Allen Dulles was already at work on the task of reaffirming the place of intelligence
within the American tradition. Published in 1963, Dulles book, The Craft of Intelligence,
sought to respond to the CIAs mounting body of critics by placing intelligence, as he put
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), 24356.
32
S. Peckham, Readers Roundup, Denver Post, June 28, 1964.
33
David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (London: Jonathon Cape, 1965).
 120 S. Willmetts

it, in its proper perspective.34 Part memoir, part instructional-guide, The Craft of
Intelligence sought to provide public understanding of the role and function of intelli-
gence in America from an insiders perspective. In reality, however, the book was not of
Dulles making alone, but ghost-written by a team of current and former CIA officers led
by Howard Roman. Indeed, Dulles received assistance with the manuscript from several
senior key officials at the Agency, including one employee who took unpaid leave for an
entire year to work on the book.35
In attempting to define the proper perspective of American intelligence, Dulles took
on the now-familiar mantle of the intelligence historian/practitioner whose role is to
debunk the myths and public misconceptions construed by the media. It is Dulles subtle
use of the past that reveals his aptitude for public relations and the legacy of Donovans
construction of a public history of American intelligence. Both Dulles and Donovan
understood the value of history as a potent political tool. In the opening pages of the
book, Dulles provides a sweeping historical narrative dating the origins of intelligence as
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far back as Sun Tzus fifth century BC text, The Art of War. Dulles highlights the biblical
references to intelligence such as Moses failure to effectively spy out the land of Canaan.
In a tenuous historical parallel, Dulles linked the dangers of contemporary policy makers
ignoring their intelligence officials with the ancient Greek mythology of Troy. Had the
prophecies (read intelligence) of Cassandra been heeded, then the fall of Troy might have
been avoided.36
Dulles was also the first to deploy the narrative of General Washingtons use of
espionage in the Revolutionary War. The idea of promoting direct parallels between
Washingtons use of irregular means of warfare and the contemporary activities of the
CIA was given to Dulles in July 1946 amidst Donovans campaign for a permanent
peacetime foreign intelligence outfit.37 This approach provoked the mocking ire of Soviet
journalist L. Rovinsky who dismissed Dulles for providing a new interpretation of
practically all the major events of history.38
A further bone of contention for Rovinsky was the books failure to explore the CIAs
widespread engagement in covert action. The format of The Craft of Intelligence is that of
a handbook or popular public affairs text designed to provide an introduction to the
principle functions of the CIA. Thus, the book covers all functional aspects of intelligence
including: collection, analysis, dissemination, counterintelligence and deception, before
dwelling at length on the mendacious activities of the KGB. Yet remarkably, in this survey
of CIA activities, Dulles completely ignores covert action, a fundamentally misleading
omission. Furthermore, The Craft of Intelligence conveniently ignores Dulles role in the
Bay of Pigs, a role which brought about his resignation as the head of the CIA. Indeed,
The Craft of Intelligence contains only a single reference to the failed Cuban expedition
that alludes to the myths put about by the medias coverage of the event.39
Had Dulles and his ghost writers had their way, however, it is likely that The Craft of
Intelligence would have contained far more references to modern espionage activities than
was eventually allowed by a wary CIA overseeing the publication of the first major CIA
memoir. In a memorandum to DCI John McCone regarding the manuscript of The Craft, it
was stated that Dulles public discussion of recent CIA activities shreds the veil of
34
Dulles, op. cit., 258.
35
CREST, CIA-RDP70-00058R000200090034-3, Memorandum for the DCI, July 11, 1963.
36
Dulles, op. cit., 117.
37
Smith, op. cit., 411.
38
L. Rovinsky, American Cassandra, New Times, no. 3, 1964.
39
Dulles, op. cit., 1867.
 Journal of Intelligence History 121

anonymity behind which employees of the CIA work for the good of our Country. As a
consequence, a number of anecdotal references to recent CIA activities were removed
from the final manuscript. Thus, the conspicuous abrogation of any in-depth discussion of
contemporary CIA activities with the broad historical overview offered in the published
book was in-part a consequence of the censorship. Nevertheless, The Craft, which sold
over 100,000 copies, offered an important historical justification of the latter-day CIA and
an insiders rebuttal of journalistic misconceptions of the place of intelligence within
American society.
Dulles, through his own desire to counteract the negative publicity surrounding the
Agency in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, was pushing the CIAs relationship with the public
away from official denial and towards official history. The CIAs reaction to his manu-
script offers an insight into an organisation on the cusp of this divide. On the one hand,
Dulles and his supporters within the Agency believed it judicious to tell their story, whilst
others within the Agency sought to preserve the veil of secrecy. With The Craft of
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Intelligence, the CIA feared that Dulles was opening a Pandoras Box: The question
arises if Mr. Dulles is authorized to make the revelations he does, why cant every
employee of CIA down to the lowest rated individual write of his experiences. The
Agency was dubious of Dulles ability to achieve his stated objective of placing intelli-
gence in its proper perspective, and rather than stemming the criticisms of the CIA,
would open up the flood gates to all CIA employees to write or speak of their
experiences to the same degree and in the same manner as does Mr. Dulles, some with
their eye on a Hollywood series on espionage, which will bring them a pot of Gold
(emphasis in original).40 In reality, however, the Bay of Pigs had already opened the
floodgates. As a series of revelations over CIA activities unfurled over the coming decade,
the CIA could no longer afford to ignore the publics framing of their history. With the
publication of The Craft of Intelligence, Dulles had resurrected Donovans promotion of
American intelligence history for the purposes of public relations. Moreover, as the noose
of congressional enquiry slowly tightened in the mid-1970s, the CIA realised that they
would have to respond in kind to the negative public narratives of their activities.

Recontextualising the family jewels

As America prepared to commemorate its bicentenary, the celebration of their historic
ideals was being thwarted by the murky media revelations and congressional enquiries
into the activities of the secret state. The CIA abroad and the FBI at home are an affront
to the heritage we expect to celebrate in 1976, stated one angry letter writer to the
Washington Post.41 The mid-1970s witnessed the height of anti-CIA sentiment amidst a
period of introspection in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. It was a moment in which
public opinion, shaped by popular culture, the mainstream media and congressional
enquirers began to question whether the CIA had broken with the Nations idealised
past. The Congressional enquirers, Kathryn Olmsted argued would need to examine their
beliefs about Americas historic ideals. Were these ideals myths or realities? If they
were more than myths, why had they been abandoned?42
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.
 122 S. Willmetts

In late 1974, New York Times investigative journalist Seymour Hersh leaked the so-
called Family Jewels document, an in-house CIA catalogue of their worst excesses. The
revelations culminated in 1975 with a series of Presidential and Congressional enquiries,
most notably the Senate Church Committee and the House Pike Committee, which sought
to investigate the charges of illegality made against the CIA.
The CIAs response to the series of revelations was not to hide behind a veil of
secrecy, but to open up. DCI George H. W. Bush and his predecessor William Colby
recognised that the CIA had a fundamental public relations problem43 and that the
CIAs previous commitment to unmitigated secrecy was no longer possible and
would only serve to fuel further public suspicion. In consequence, the CIA once
again sought to redress public criticism with a public relations campaign designed to
educate the American public and place the Family-Jewels revelations within their
proper historical context. Like Donovan and Dulles before them, Colby and Bush
sought to mobilise a legitimating historical narrative in response to the existential
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threat posed by widespread cynicism towards their institution. As Colby wrote in his
memoir I believed that the Agency would survive if it could just get its story
across.44
Colby believed that the Family-Jewels had been taken out of context. By focussing
on isolated instances of illegality, they had projected a misleading depiction of the reality
of the vast majority of Agency activities. The key to restoring the CIAs tarnished
reputation was to provide a wider understanding of the CIA, placing the Family-
Jewels within a more representative frame of reference. By previously refusing to engage
with the public, Colby argued that the CIA had failed to sufficiently educate the public
about their past and had allowed a false frame of reference rooted in spy fiction and
popular culture through which the public narratavised the recent revelations: The years of
total secrecy, Colby wrote, had made the CIA extremely vulnerable to suspicion and
sensation. Public ignorance of modern intelligence, the false popular picture provided of it
gleaned from spy novels, and the twisted romanticism of people like Howard Hunt and
Gordon Libby provided a poor framework in which to understand the disclosures.45 Their
former passion for secrecy and classification, Colby argued, had distanced the CIA from
its own past which had served to conceal its virtues as well as, or better than, its
vices .46
The CIAs future survival, he asserted, required a new commitment to declassification.
This would not only place the Family-Jewels within their proper perspective but equally
serve to provide a better public understanding of the role and value of modern intelli-
gence 47 Moreover, Colby hoped that this commitment to the full historical context of
contemporary CIA activities would provide a better appreciation that the real secrets of
American intelligence need protection and that secrecy was consistent with the nations
history. As he wrote in his conclusion:

George Washington once wrote that upon secrecy, success depends in most enterprises
of intelligence. While his statement reflects the old tradition of total secrecy about
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.
 Journal of Intelligence History 123

intelligence, it also shows that secrets about intelligence are fully compatible with
American tradition.48

Colby worked to ensure that the CIAs compatibility with American traditions was
brought to the attention of the Congressmen investigating their activities.49 Senator
John Tower (R-Texas), the Church Committees vice-chair, for example, was provided
with stories by the CIA of covert action carried out by George Washington and his
successors, which he enthusiastically shared with the rest of the committee. Moreover, a
slickly printed history of covert action was provided for every member of the enquiry
committee by the CIA.50 Demonstrating the long historical legacy of American intelli-
gence to the committee served two quite specific political purposes. Firstly, it responded
to the notion that the CIA was somehow unconstitutional or antithetical to the ideals of
America. Secondly, it answered Senator Churchs claim that the CIA was a Rogue
Elephant that carried out controversial activities without the will of consent or the
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executive.
Republican members of the Church committee accused Churchs use of the Rogue
Elephant thesis as being motivated by partisanship. Church, they argued, unwilling to
indict the liberal presidencies of Johnson and Kennedy for their forays into covert action,
deployed the Rogue Elephant narrative to avoid discrediting the policies of two
Democratic presidents.51 The CIA had an obvious political interest in overturning
Senator Churchs own ideologically convenient narrative. If they could demonstrate to
the committee and to the wider American public that intelligence operations were utilised
by American Presidents as far back as George Washington, they could both overturn the
ideological narrative that cast them as antithetical to the founding ideals of the Nation
whilst simultaneously signifying American intelligence as a faithful servant and function
of the executive.
Like many of his predecessors, Colby had reached into the nations past in order to
demonstrate the historical underpinnings of his Agency and legitimise their existence in
the present. Colby may be heralded for opening up the activities of the CIA to a sceptical
American public, but alongside the programme of declassification came an intensified
commitment to public relations. This new approach to secrecy was developed and
institutionalised by George H. W. Bushs successor as the Director of Central
Intelligence Admiral Stansfield Turner. Upon taking office in 1977, Turners first appoint-
ment as DCI was naming the former special assistant for public affairs to the Secretary of
the Navy, Herbert Hetu as the head of a new CIA Public Affairs Office with a mandate to
inform the American public about the role of the intelligence process.52 Under Hetus
leadership, the Public Affairs Office forged an unprecedented opening up of CIA
activities to the media. Briefings were provided to press correspondents, film crews
48
Ibid.
49
In 1976 future DCI William J. Casey also published a history of the American Revolution, which
specifically emphasized Washingtons use of intelligence. According to Caseys 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): 1912.
51
Olmsted, op. cit., 91.
52
CREST, CIA-RDP86B00985R000100030010-8, Public Affairs Advisory Group Fact Sheet.
 124 S. Willmetts

were allowed into their Langley headquarters for the first time and documents detailing
successful CIA operations were declassified.
On 19 September 1977, for example, American Broadcasting Company (ABC) ran a
two-hour Good Morning America special, which commemorated the CIAs 30th
anniversary and addressed many of the principle complaints that had emerged from
the 1975 so-called year of intelligence. ABC cameras were allowed into Langley for
the first time and Stansfield Turner acted as the shows guide to the past and contem-
porary activities of the Agency. The show emphasised the CIAs assistance in relief
efforts during the Guatemalan earthquakes of February 1976, conveniently forgetting
their past involvement in overthrowing that countrys democratically elected President
Jacobo rbenz. Additionally, the U-2 photographs taken during the Cuban Missile
Crisis were declassified, so that they could be shown for the first time on the pro-
gramme. Similarly, Turner emphasised the positive role the CIA had played in monitor-
ing Soviet arms reductions as part of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty agreements.
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While the show opened with a report on the revelations which led up to the Church
enquiry, Turner was afforded ample time to respond to the charges and frame the events
within a redemptive narrative of lessons learned from the exaggerated mistakes of the
past.
Turner explained to his ABC interviewers that he was instigating a new American model
of intelligence, which, on the one hand, shares all that we can with the public But on the
other hand, involved some very Draconian rules about tightening security, to stop the
leakage of CIA secrets. In other words, the CIA had shifted from a policy of blanket secrecy to
one of information management allowing and even encouraging the release of certain
information whilst tightly controlling the most sensitive documents. Such a process of
selective opening up allowed the Agency greater control over the shape and framework of
their historical narrative. The ABC show itself typified this new approach. By emphasising
certain moments from their past and deemphasising others, the television show managed to
frame the CIAs past indiscretions within a wider narrative, which emphasised the role the
Agency had played in protecting Americas national security.53
Access to the inner-workings of the CIA by a major television network was unprece-
dented. Indeed in 1965, the CIA had attempted to censor the National Broadcasting
Network documentary on the CIAs past activities that took David Wise and Thomas
Ross The Invisible Government as its inspiration.54 Now, as a consequence of the
suspicion generated by the revelations of the mid-1970s, the Agency had learned that
by sharing its version of the past with the media, it could begin to address public
scepticism and educate the public about the functions of American intelligence in
protecting national security. Moreover, by engaging with the media, the CIA could
claim to have developed greater transparency thereby addressing one of the principal
concerns of the 1975 Church enquiry. But, as they began releasing thousands of pre-
viously classified documents, they also realised that the inner meaning of this material
would require interpretation.
The emergence of Intelligence Studies as an academic discipline in the 1980s provided
a new forum through which the CIA could educate the American public. As such, the CIA

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 19471968, 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.
 Journal of Intelligence History 125

sought to promote the study of intelligence in American universities. In 1985, for

example, the CIA founded its Officer in Residence programme, which placed senior
officers in selected universities in order to encourage the study of the intelligence
profession whilst also assisting the CIA in recruitment efforts by helping to identify
promising students.55
The founding of academic journals devoted to intelligence in the 1980s also presented a
respectable forum for former CIA officers to relay the rich and broadly positive history of
the Agency. The very first article written in the International Journal of Intelligence and
Counterintelligence, for example, was penned by the former CIA historical curator Edward
Sayle. Entitled The Historical Underpinnings of the U.S. Intelligence Community, Sayles
article revisited the now familiar CIA narrative that American intelligence has deeply-
rooted traditions and precedents dating back to George Washington himself.56 The
crusading oversight bodies of the 1970s , Sayle contended, would have been appalled
at the activities authorized by the Congresss founders.57
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Sayles article influenced Stephen F. Knotts history of covert operations, which was
written in response to the intensification of Congressional oversight in the wake of the
Iran-Contra affair. Like Sayle, Knott argued that covert action had always been the sole
preserve of the President.58 Loch K. Johnson, who had been part of the Congressional
enquiry team in the 1970s, retorted that if George Washington accepted bribes, it would
not make bribery a virtue, nor would it be grounds for overlooking such acts by his
successors.59 Johnson added that there is an essential difference between secret opera-
tions conducted during much of the Republics history, which were small and peripheral
and the vast intelligence establishment of the present day.60

The past as present: the post-cold war story

The end of the Cold War represented an existential challenge for the CIA. Without the
threat of the Soviet Union, the CIAs role was no longer assured and certain sections of the
press and even congress began calling for their dissolution.61 Moreover, in 1991, Oliver
Stones JFK caused a media furore by implicating the CIA along with a number of other
shady benefactors of the military-industrial-complex in the assassination of the
President.62 The significance of JFK, however, was not its far-fetched conclusions, but
its claim that the US government and specifically the CIA had systematically hidden and
distorted the real history of the assassination. Stone utilised the same proverb What is
Past is Prologue that had opened 13 Rue Madeleines representation of OSS 45 years
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., 56.
58
Knott, op. cit.
59
Review article in Foreign Affairs, September/October 1996, 1412, and Johnson, Review of
Stephen F Knott, Secret and Sanctioned, 1912.
60
Johnson, op. cit., 1912.
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).
 126 S. Willmetts

previously. However, in contrast to the latter, Stones film literally placed the official
record of the nations past on trial. In the final courtroom scene, Jim Garrison, played by a
teary-eyed Kevin Costner, passionately condemns the classification of CIA documents
pertaining to the assassination, insinuating that the CIA had kept the true history of the
Presidents death from the American public.
On the same day of JFKs cinematic release, the Agency produced a Task Force
Report on Greater CIA Openness. This recommended a far-reaching extension of their
existing engagement with the media and academia, along with a renewed commitment to
declassification in order to make available portions of its historical archives, especially
regarding CIA successes 63 The report also recommended the importance of releasing
further materials on specific events such as the 1948 Italian elections, the 1953 Iranian
coup and the Cuban Missile Crisis which are repeatedly the subject of false allegations.
Significantly, greater openness entailed not merely a review of such classified materials
alone, but a simultaneous extension and coordination of their Public Affairs Office. As the
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report stated:

We have an important story to tell, a story that bears repeating. We are the most open
intelligence agency in the world That said, many Americans do not understand intelli-
gence Many still operate with a romanticized or erroneous view of intelligence from the
movies, TV, books and newspapers. These views often damage our reputation and make it
harder for us to fulfil our mission To increase CIA openness we need to take
initiatives to share our history explain our mission and functions in a changing
world and develop a strategy for expanding our work with the media as a means of
reaching an even broader audience.64

Reviewing the CIAs current engagement with the media, the report stated that the PAO
[Public Affairs Office] now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service,
newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation (emphasis in original). It
recommended the continuance and supplementation of these arrangements which has
helped us turn some intelligence failure stories into intelligence success stories. It
was this all-important framing of events, not merely the events themselves which pre-
occupied the activities of the CIAs new openness initiative.
Despite the hullaballo caused by Stones JFK, the Task Force made few recommenda-
tions about how the film could be used to the Agencys advantage.65 In 1995, however,
the CIA established for the first time an Entertainment Liaison Office (ELO), which
sought to advise filmmakers and television producers on the historical accuracy of their
scripts. Along with feature films such as The Recruit and The Sum of All Fears, the ELO
worked alongside the producers of TV miniseries The Agency in an effort to provide an
accurate depiction of the inner-workings of the CIA. On the CIAs website, the ELO
provided stories from the Agencys past as a possible script material for prospective
filmmakers, emphasising their operational successes and thereby seeking not merely to
provide technical guidance on specific script details, but to propagate selected narratives
which support a more positive perspective on the CIA.

63
Zachary Karabell and Timothy Naftali, History Declassified: The Perils and Promise of CIA
Documents, Diplomatic History 18, no. 4 (2004): 61526.
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).
 Journal of Intelligence History 127

Perhaps the most far-reaching implication of the Task Force for greater openness was
the substantial extension of the CIAs relationship with academia. The report noted the
profound impact that this relationship, particularly with intelligence historians, had made
in their efforts to educate the public with an accurate presentation of their history. The
report recommended the extension of their Officer-in-Residence programme. Efforts were
to be made to host and sponsor conferences on the history and craft of intelligence in
cooperation with academic institutions whilst increasing the approximate 250 annual
speaking appearances by personnel from the Public Affairs Office to academic audiences.
Additionally, the establishment of intelligence studies programs at academic institutions
was to be encouraged. By liaising with universities and by blurring their public affairs
activities with historical scholarship, the CIA have sought to enlist academias reputation
for integrity and rigour, imbuing their story with greater credibility.
Today, the CIAs attempts to shape their past are more visible and concerted than ever.
CIA staff historians attend academic conferences, provide advice and assistance to
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scholars (including this one), give visiting lectures at leading Universities, write reviews
of books and films concerning CIA history and contribute to independent academic
publications. On the CIAs website, selected reading-lists are provided on all aspects of
American intelligence history, from George Washington to the present day. The website
also has a section dedicated to educating school children from the 5th-grade onwards
about CIA history, beginning, unsurprisingly, with George Washington. Resources are
provided for parents and teachers including suggested lesson plans.66
Almost immediately after taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama announced
his proposed Open Government Initiative. Following another period of public controversy
following allegations of CIA involvement in torture, their highly controversial renditions
program and the questionable intelligence that contributed to the US invasion of Iraq,
greater openness has once again been prescribed as the remedy. Detailing their enthusias-
tic compliance with Obamas initiative the CIA stated on their website that:

Secret intelligence has been a part of the fabric of our country since George Washington
utilized a spy network to help win the Revolutionary War. Nevertheless, there always has
been a concern about how a secret agency with special authorities fits within an open and
democratic society The CIA is not an independent actor. It responds to the direction of the
President The Agency strongly supports the Presidents Open Government Initiative
because it also is mindful that continued public support for CIA is very much dependent
upon public understanding of its mission and activities.67

Following the familiar format of the CIAs response to the Bay of Pigs, the Congressional
enquiries of 1975, and the end of the Cold War, this commitment to greater openness
seeks to legitimate the CIA by demonstrating that the traditions of American intelligence
are firmly grounded in the nations past.

Conclusion
Debates over the state censorship and classification of intelligence history have often
focused on the closed nature of the CIA archive. Such an emphasis on the documentation,
however, overlooks one of the fundamental tools of the Historians craft narrative. It is
narrative that connects the disembodied mass of declassified documentation into a
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).
 128 S. Willmetts

continuous causal chain from which contemporary meaning can be deduced. It is narrative
that casts the CIA as heirs to the American Revolution as the inheritors of George
Washingtons legacy of espionage. Yet equally, it is narrative that has challenged this
assumption, placing US intelligence at odds with American democratic traditions and the
CIA as somehow antithetical to the intentions of the Founding Fathers. How we relate
distinct pieces of evidence, establish causality, cast our characters and frame our institu-
tions within the tapestry of the past is, as Hayden White argued, an intrinsically ideolo-
gical and often distinctly political act. In this sense, the states management of the past
should be regarded not merely in terms of the destructive processes of the censorship and
classification, but the equally important constructive role that the state has played in
projecting and shaping its own narrative. Nevertheless, their ability to control the archive,
what is released and when, offers the CIA a strategic advantage in telling their story and
places the academic historian in the position of a supplicant.
To ignore the powerful legitimising function of history is to constitute a discipline in
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denial. We cannot avoid producing meaning from the past. Indeed without it, our stories
would be impoverished. And yet, whilst history produces political and ideological values,
it can also undermine them. If we listen to history, argued Michel Foucault, then we find
that there is something altogether different: behind things: not a timeless and essential
secret, but the secret that they have no essence or that their essence was fabricated in a
piecemeal fashion from alien forms. History, he concluded, is capable of undoing every
infatuation.68 As historians, we must guard against these infatuations. We must be wary
of the idea that espionage and covert action are unproblematically endowed by history. We
must question the provenance of our sources and wonder why we have access to them,
and for what purpose. Perhaps most of all, we must understand that intelligence history
has been shaped as much by publicity as it has by secrecy.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
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. Simons 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.

68
Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rainbow
(New York: Pantheon, 1984), 789.