DEE WILSON CONSULTING
Book Review:
Inside CIA Foreign Interference
Everything in Hand
Daniel Immerwahr in The New Yorker
For anyone interested in U.S. interference in the politics of other countries and in C.I.A. covert operations that have toppled governments I highly recommend an article by Daniel Immerwahr, "Everything in Hand," in the June 17, The New Yorker. Immerwahr is the author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States , an entertaining and informative book about how the U.S. acquired and structured an empire. I sent out a review of this book a few years ago.
Immerwahr's New Yorker article discusses three books: The Achilles Trap (2024) by Steven Coll, The CIA: An Imperial History by Hugh Wilford and Covert Regime Change (2018) by Lindsey O'Rourke. The theme that stands out in these books and in Immerwahr's discussion is how poorly informed the C.I.A. has been about countries in which it has sought regime change and consequently how poorly informed U.S. policy makers have been about the goals of leaders and countries regarded as enemies of the U.S.
Regarding the run up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Immerwahr states: "Few would accuse U.S. intelligence officers of possessing deep knowledge when it came to Iraq. The C.I.A. had no sources close to Saddam, no Lawrence (of Arabia) in Baghdad. The agency's best asset was King Hussein of Jordan, who had assured Bush that an invasion of Kuwait was "impossible." ... "The Achilles Heel" Steve Coll's chastening new book about the events leading up to the Iraq War ... shows that the agency was flying blind." Prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein believed an all knowing C.I.A. knew of his plans and yet said nothing, which Saddam viewed as U.S. green lighting of Iraq's invasion.
Immerwahr asserts that for its covert ops in Third World countries, the C..I.A. lacked what colonial empires such as Britain and France had for centuries: "The U.S. lacked the generations- deep, place-based knowledge that Britain and France had. ... Wilford notes how U.S. intelligence initially clung to more experienced Europeans. Stationed in unfamiliar environments , they tended to adopt the life styles of the departing colonizers: educating their children at European schools, staffing their colonial villas with native servants, playing polo. To European eyes, such men were less puppet masters than naifs. Immerwahr mocks Edward Lansdale, often viewed as the model for the American officer in Graham Greene's novel, "The Quiet American," and who was viewed by the Kennedy Administration as a leading expert on counter insurgency. Immerwahr comments: "He hadn't been on assignment in Vietnam a month before arriving uninvited at the governmental palace ..." with advice for Prime Minister Ngo Ding Diem for how to govern Vietnam. Here was a man who, though he spoke little French and no Vietnamese, was happy to American-splain South Vietnam to its Prime Minister. "
Immwerwahr explains that the U.S. security establishment in general (and the C.I.A. specifically) has had difficulty managing its global interests and asserting its global dominance because a) it has lacked enough persons on the ground who speak the languages of the country b) unlike the British and French, have lacked military officers and governmental officials willing to live in foreign countries for decades, c) has had difficulty acquiring foreign assets and so has relied for information on leaders educated in the US who have had their own agendas.
It is difficult to manage an empire when highly educated Americans are unwilling to live for years in poor, politically unstable foreign countries. As a result, the affairs of other countries have been viewed through a narrow projective prism shaped by current U.S. concerns, e.g. Communism or terrorism. One of the strange features of the American empire is the insularity of the elites charged with its management, their fundamental lack of interest in other societies.
In "Covert Regime Change," Lindsey O'Rourke conservatively tallies fifty- four Cold War campaigns to oust a government or tilt an election outside Europe, twenty- four of which succeeded.. One might ask whether the C.I.A. deserved credit or merely backed the side that would have won regardless." However one views the C.I.A. batting average for regime change, the blowback has often been immense, as in decades of enmity with Iran, not to mention the role of the Bay of Pigs in the Soviet Union's decision to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, a decision that came close to igniting a nuclear war.in 1962.
Immwerwahr asserts that "half the leaders covertly installed ( by the C.I.A.) were subsequently either assassinated or ousted in a revolution or coup. A regime change attempt ... raised the odds that the targeted state would clash with the U.S. experience a civil war or stage a mass killing."
Immerwahr echoes Wilford's theme: "The C.I.A.'s trail of havoc ... stems not from the ineptitude of its officers but from the audacity of its mission. Superintending global politics is vast undertaking, requiring both a deep understanding of many places and the sort of hubris that makes that deep understanding difficult. And because Washington has been insulated from the worst consequences of its mistakes, it has rarely been forced to learn from them. In the end, the C.I.A. has the power to break things, but not the skill to build them."
-- Dee Wilson