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Full Description
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.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements 1: The Road to U-1 2: The OSS Model 3: The Founding of the CIA, 1947 4: Covert Action in the 1950s 5: Intelligence in the 1950s 6: Bay of Pigs, 1961 7: Vietnam: The Roles of the CIA 8: From Reformation to Counter Reformation in the 1970s 9: The Collapse of Soviet Communism in the 1980s 10: Iran and Iran-Contra 11: Existential Issues, 1990-97 12: Fateful Terror and 9/11 13: The Great Diminishing Reform Act of 2004 14: Estimating Anew and a Military Turn 15: Battling Al Qaeda with Assassination and Torture 16: Obama's CIA and the Death of bin Laden 17: Fake News Comes Home 18: Back to Work 19: Conclusion Appendix: CIA Directors 1947-2022 Abbreviations in Notes Bibliography
