Abstract

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 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.

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