A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA

by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

Overview

A Question of Standing deals with recognizable events that have shaped the history of the first 75 years of the CIA. Unsparing in its accounts of dirty tricks and their consequences, it values the agency's intelligence and analysis work to offer balanced judgements that avoid both celebration and condemnation of the CIA. The mission of the CIA, derived from U-1 in World War I more than from World War II's OSS, has always been intelligence. Seventy-five years ago, in the year of its creation, the National Security Act gave the agency, uniquely in world history up to that point, a democratic mandate to pursue that mission of intelligence. It gave the CIA a special standing in the conduct of US foreign relations. That standing diminished when successive American presidents ordered the CIA to exceed its original mission. When they tasked the agency secretly to overthrow democratic governments, the United States lost its international standing, and its command of a majority in the United Nations General Assembly. Such dubious operations, even the government's embrace of assassination and torture, did not diminish the standing of the CIA in US public opinion. However, domestic interventions did. CIA spying on domestic protesters led to tighter congressional oversight from the 1970s on. The chapters in A Question of Standing offer a balanced narrative and perspective on recognizable episodes in the CIA's history. They include the Bay of Pigs invasion, the War on Terror, 9/11, the weapons of mass destruction deception, the Iran estimate of 2007, the assassination of Osama bin Laden, and Fake News. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 diminished the CIA and is construed as having been the right solution undertaken for the wrong reasons, reasons that grew out of political opportunism. The book also defends the CIA's exposure of foreign meddling in US elections.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192663924
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	07/28/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	628 KB

About the Author

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones is an Emeritus Professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh. He studied at the Universities of Wales, Michigan, Harvard, and Cambridge, and is the honorary president of the Scottish Association for the Study of America. He has held visiting fellowships and professorships in Harvard, Berlin, and Toronto. He is the author of a prize-winning book on the American left, and of sixteen other books published in eleven languages, mainly on US intelligence history, including The CIA and American Democracy (1989), The FBI: A History (2007), In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence (2012), and We Know All About You (2017).

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements1. The Road to U-12. The OSS Model3. The Founding of the CIA, 19474. Covert Action in the 1950s5. Intelligence in the 1950s6. Bay of Pigs, 19617. Vietnam: The Roles of the CIA8. From Reformation to Counter Reformation in the 1970s9. The Collapse of Soviet Communism in the 1980s10. Iran and Iran-Contra11. Existential Issues, 1990-9712. Fateful Terror and 9/1113. The Great Diminishing Reform Act of 200414. Estimating Anew and a Military Turn15. Battling Al Qaeda with Assassination and Torture16. Obama's CIA and the Death of bin Laden17. Fake News Comes Home18. Back to Work19. ConclusionAppendix: CIA Directors 1947-2022Abbreviations in NotesBibliography

Editorial Reviews

"A Question of Standing is an engaging, fluently narrated book." — Scott Lucas, Times Literary Supplement

"This book joins a long list of histories of the CIA...A Question of Standing makes a compelling argument about the CIA's relationship with other US institutions and can serve as a good introduction to the history of the agency." — Choice

"An engaging, fluently narrated book." — Times Literary Supplement

"Jeffreys-Jones, who has been studying the trials and tribulations of the CIA for many years, provides a concise, informed, and thoughtful history of the agency." — Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs

"The literature on the history of the CIA is vast and will only continue to grow as newer interpretations emerge. Jeffreys-Jones has produced an interesting book on the early origins, development and future of the CIA. Telling the history of an agency that has a global reach is always going to be a tall order, and this book offers an accessible introduction to the CIA." — Dan Lomas, Brunel University London, UK, International Affairs

"This concise history of the Central Intelligence Agency manages to include nearly all of the agency's biggest hits and greatest catastrophes. He [Jeffreys-Jones] brings a depth of knowledge that provides innumerable fascinating anecdotes" — The Guardian

"An excellent primer on the history of the CIA." — Jamie Gaskarth, Engelsberg Ideas

"[A] terrific new history ... This book is the best kind of constructively critical history, told with a refreshingly wry and dry sense of humour—qualities that are all too rare in extant accounts." — Timothy J. Lynch, Australian Book Review

"A masterful but concise sweep of analysis; all done in just over 200 pages. ... [The] final chapters are a graceful illustration of why professional historians matter so very much." — Richard Lofthouse

"This is a deep dive into often dark and troubling history. No punches are pulled and if you're interested in foreign policy and the rise of American power, this is well worth a read." — All About History

"well-researched...has salient points to make about President Obama's overuse of drone strikes, and how books were cooked to cover the "absurdly low" casualty figures of innocent people who were killed because of inaccurate strikes and false intelligence." — Martin Chilton, The Independent

"an excellent history of the CIA - erudite but fluent and accessible. It engages with important issues of interpretation while at the same time driving forward a compelling narrative of events. It is concise yet wide-ranging, tracing the history of US intelligence from its beginnings to the Biden presidency. ... both balanced and compelling." — Mark White, BBC History Magazine

"An insightful and disturbing history of an American institution." — Kirkus Reviews

"A comprehensive and thoroughly researched history of the CIA ... engaging, fair and thoughtful." — Catherine Yardley, Frost Magazine

"A pleasure to read...a simultaneously authoritative and accessible account." — Hugh Wilford, Journal of Military History

"Who better to write about the CIA than a Welsh-born Scottish academic who began his career steeped in standard anti-Americanism of the European left? In a clutch of books over nearly a half century, Jeffreys-Jones has answered "no one." Here, his perspective is standing: how does the CIA stand with, above all, the President but also Congress, the American public and even, on occasion, people abroad. That perspective - plus his own standing as a foreigner both detached from and deeply immersed in things American - lets him provide fresh insights on episodes from the Bay of Pigs to the creation of the director of national intelligence, to the dissing of intelligence by Trump. This book is a pleasure." — Greg Treverton, former chair of the US National Intelligence Council under President Obama

"Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones has written a thorough, engaging history of the CIA. In this wide-ranging, thoughtful narrative, he takes us from the pre-history of the agency up through the controversies of the twenty-first century. Anyone interested in intelligence history or the current role of the CIA in American politics should read this book." — Kathryn Olmsted, author of Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11

"A Question of Standing is an accessible and well-written book, which makes a persuasive case that covert actions loom large in perceptions of the CIA - perhaps to the detriment of intelligence work." — Rory Cormac, War in History 31

From the Publisher

2022-05-31
An organization whose histories would fill a library gets another, but it’s a good one.

Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes remains the standard history of the CIA, but it could use an update. In this critical account, Jeffreys-Jones provides just that. The author notes that the CIA was not founded solely in response to threats from the Soviet Union. Overwhelmingly, Congress and other government officials emphasized preventing another disaster like Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, the CIA has been unable to predict numerous significant international events, from the Soviet atomic test in 1949 to the Vietnam Tet Offensive to 9/11 and beyond. Although CIA founders proclaimed its purpose was gathering intelligence, they were obsessed with covert actions, a policy beloved of most presidents down to the present day. Jeffreys-Jones devotes much of the book to painful accounts of a wide variety of fiascos, including the Bay of Pigs, the futile search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the proliferation of a torture program, and the frequent attempts to overthrow purportedly communist or terrorist-sympathizing governments, often accompanied by the murders of their leaders. As the author shows, the CIA has always “embraced the principle of ‘intelligence to please’ and showed itself vulnerable to manipulation.” Out of loyalty, the CIA helped Presidents Johnson and Nixon—and, later, both Bushes—prosecute wars in which it did not believe. Intelligence evaluations of the progress in the Vietnam and Iraq wars were consistently skeptical, but little was done to change courses. In the end, Jeffreys-Jones lets the CIA partly off the hook by spreading blame to the presidents. Thus, CIA intelligence quickly detected Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections, but since it benefited the winner, investigations were sidelined as the incoming administration denied the veracity of the intelligence and “turned on the agency.”

An insightful and disturbing history of an American institution with a mixed track record.

Kirkus Reviews