‘Gripping history that also informs the present’ Sunday Times



‘Fascinating . . . Wilford writes engagingly with a telling eye for colourful detail’ The Spectator



‘A spectacular achievement . . . I loved it’ Dominic Sandbrook



How the CIA became an instrument of a new covert empire both in America and overseas.



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.



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.



Original, and gripping, The CIA tells how America adopted unaccountable power and created a new imperial order.

ISBN: 9781399816861
Author: WILFORD, HUGH
Available stock: 1
Price: $29.99
Title: CIA An Imperial History