CIA, a story under influences

The survey on the functioning and practices of the secret service, long ignored in France with the exception of some works written by investigative journalists, has been the subject since September 11, 2001 of a literary vogue, on both sides of the Atlantic. The current situation of the United States, characterized by a “ hyper-power »Paradoxical, since it fails to win victories in the” war against terrorism And gets bogged down in Iraq, leads to the question of the quality of its intelligence bodies, in particular the most prestigious of them, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). It is in this context that journalist Franck Daninos embarked on the project, ambitious, to write a story of the CIA Since 1947, date of its creation. The author had written last year an interesting, well informed book, based essentially on some parliamentary documents and on press articles, about the American intelligence situation since September 11, 2001 (The double defeat of American intelligenceEllipses, 2006). In the delicate genre of historical synthesis, Daninos had a predecessor in the person of the British academic Christopher Andrew who, the first, had written a history of American intelligence, essentially devoted to the period after 1947. The project of Franck Daninos wants to be different, by proposing a story “ policy »From the American intelligence agency.

History – political – American intelligence did not start in 1947 with the creation of the CIA. From this point of view, Franck Daninos is perfectly right to evoke the role of William J. Donovan at the head of theOffice of Strategic Services (Oss), created during the war in 1942. But curiously, he ignores the role of military intelligence agencies, created at the very beginning of XX^e century, which practiced political intelligence and surveillance of American society from that time, in parallel with FBI. So the Military Intelligence Department or theOffice of Naval Intelligence Long before the MacCarthisms, took advantage of the Red Scare of the 1920s to collect and transmit political information. In this regard, recent and innovative work by Alexandre Rios-Bordes or Cyrille Gosme on American intelligence in the 1930s and 1940s considerably put the novelty of the surveillance of the company by the American intelligence services.

The story then gives pride of place to well -known spy stories in the time of the Cold War. The author returns to the episode of MAGNIFICENT FIVEthis group of five English diplomats trained in Cambridge, who delivered the Soviet Union confidential information on foreign and military policy of England and the United States, before the attitude of Kim Philby, double agent in Washington, notes the suspicions of the CIA in the early 1950s. The involvement of CIA In the Manhattan project, in the Cuban missile crisis, or even during the reversals of Mossadegh in Iran and Allende in Chile, shows how the agency was a major player in the Cold War. On the other hand, in an organization where the share of technical intelligence (Sign) did not stop growing, it would have to be discussed at the very least the role of the agency specializing in interceptions, the National Security Agency of which James Bamford has written an excellent story. The two agencies are certainly independent, but it is difficult to conceive to write a history of the CIA Without evoking, in large lines, theCommunity intelligence Composed of about fifteen agencies in total. Likewise, the author devotes only a few, confused lines to cooperation between Anglo-Saxon countries in terms of intelligence (agreements Brusa from 1943, then Ukusa from 1947). However, these agreements, still valid, were decisive when the CIA At the very beginning of the Cold War, when she needed the technical and human contribution of her allies.

The last part of the book, on intelligence at the end of XX^e century, is perhaps the most interesting, especially when it describes the work of remobilization of the CIA Burned by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, in a new approach of confrontation with the East. Likewise, the analysis of the identity crisis (1991-2001) after the Cold War and prior to the “ war against terrorism “Is quite suggestive and highlights the difficulty of CIA to adapt to the strategic universe of the cold war.

The subtitle of the work (a story “ policy »), Editorially skillful, attracts attention, but strangely the author is never explained on the meaning he gives to this chest of drawers but wide, too wide, expression. It is all the more regrettable as a political history of CIAin which no American author dared to get started, was fully justified and necessary. The book is actually built on the succession of agency’s directors and presidents. Certainly the political history of CIA Parts in part to their characters and their personal relationships, but one cannot reduce the history of this organization to that of its leaders, by disregarding the institutional system in which it is registered. It is to ignore, for example, the role of National Security Counciland even more that of the those around the protagonists and even of the agency as a whole, which is itself subject to very varied manifestations of politicization. Relations with parliamentarians in the second half of the 1970s are not forgotten, but they are treated too superficially, while the subject has been abundantly studied, in particular due to the publication of official reports. Likewise, it would have been necessary to evoke the major role, that the director of CIA plays with the dozen other American intelligence agencies, before the post of Director of National Intelligence Is not created in 2005 by George W. Bush, following the report submitted by the Congress Inquiry Commission on the Dysfunctions of the Intelligence Services revealed by the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the end, it is a work, dependent, on the agency’s tortuous failures and manipulations. This form of writing launched in the United States dates back to the terrible decade of the 1970s which saw, under the combination of the American press, parliamentary investigation commissions and some leaks, a very deep questioning of the agency’s methods. Franck Daninos, who also evokes, paraphrasing Queen Élisabeth, “ L’Annus Horriber “What was 1975 for American services, may not take enough distance from the multiple committed books, denunciators, written by journalists or former disillusioned members of the services (Philip Agee, Robert Baer). The book is also felt in terms of style, to say the least, sometimes oral, indicating that the work was published quickly. Writing, from investigation journalism, sometimes surprises, especially when it is a half-century later, actors in direct style, even lends them thoughts. We can also regret the complete absence of reference to the archive funds from which a certain number of documents cited by the author would have drawn, in particular elements of the correspondence between directors of the agency and the American presidents. The critical apparatus of the historian in the pages notes nevertheless validates in the eyes of the reader the originality or even the extent of a research. As the author recalls himself, a large number of archive documents have been declassified under the presidency Clinton and, curiously, one does not really manage to understand if he could take advantage of this evolution.

In doing so, the author, under the influence of this militant historiography, and this is the most regrettable, reduces the history of CIA to that of COVERT Actionsclandestine actions. There is no doubt that it was a privileged means of action of the CIA in the time of the Cold War, but it is to forget that the agency was an intelligence organization (hence the regular delivery of National Intelligence Estimates for twenty years). In this non -political history of CIAcounter-espionage and intelligence activities are forgotten. Partial, the book is as partial.