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The CIA and the Cold War: A Memoir

by Scott D. Breckinridge

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An insider account of CIA decision-making during the Cold War

$116.69 USD
$116.69 USD $116.69 USD

Hardcover New English

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AlbakiReads Editorial

An insider account of CIA decision-making during the Cold War

Drawing on a CIA career that spanned 1953 to 1979, Scott D. Breckinridge recounts the agency’s involvement in major Cold War-era controversies, including the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Chile, Watergate, Laos, and congressional investigations by the Church and Pike committees. The memoir also addresses the Warren Commission Report, the Ramparts controversy, and plots against foreign leaders. Alongside these episodes, Breckinridge describes the CIA’s internal workings and advances his view that the agency operated under high-level policy direction rather than independently of it. The book therefore combines personal institutional perspective with an argument about accountability, policy, and intelligence operations.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in Cold War intelligence history
  • Those seeking a memoir from a former CIA official
  • Readers exploring U.S. foreign policy controversies of the mid-to-late twentieth century

Themes

CIA operationsCold WarU.S. foreign policyGovernment oversightInstitutional accountability

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

This book gives the true inside picture of the CIA during the Cold War and how the agency saw the events in which it was involved. Breckinridge started his career with the CIA as a briefing officer (and within a year had become White House Briefing Officer) in 1953 and concluded it as Deputy Inspector General in 1979. The issues Breckinridge reports on--the Bay of Pigs, the Warren Commission Report, Vietnam, Watergate, Chile, plots against foreign leaders, the Ramparts controversy, Laos, the Church and Pike committees--are among the most controversial in the lives of Americans since the mid-twentieth century. Breckinridge demostrates that the CIA was not a rogue elephant but an agency acting under high level policy directives, and he reveals a great deal about the internal life of the CIA.
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