View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by IDS OpenDocs Book Reviews American countries, thus shaping their foreign PH ILl PAGEE policies, the patterns of their economic growth and their social structures.2 It falls into three sections. The first (1956-60) is INSIDE THE COMPANY an account of the recruitment and training of a CIA agent, which brings out the attractions of this career, especially for someone liable to be conscriptedforVietnam,anditsunderlying political philosophy. The reader is struck by how much the original and legal purpose, information gathering and analysis, has been supplemented by a new and illegal one, covert intervention in the politics of foreign countries, using advanced technology. The second, taking up the bulk of the book, is about the operations of CIA 'stations' in the years 1960-68 in Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. This is an important primary source on both US policy in Latin America and the internal politics of these three countries. Thelastsectionincludestheauthor'sown appraisal of the agency and describes his efforts from 1968-74, mostly in Paris and London, to writethisexposure,"helped"byvarious "friends", some of whom turned out to be CIA agents trying to stop the book being published and to silence the author. ÇI'his section would make an exciting film.) The emphasis on the work the author had to do before writing the book raises some questions about its value as a primary source. The diary formatis,astheintroduction acknowledges, simply an ex post artifice:"intensive research" The CIA and the social sciences: the contribution was needed to "reinforce my own recollections." of Mr Agee. This device (seemingly unnecessary) might be Inside the Company: CIA Diary.' taken to justify the lack of professional notice. Philip Agee, Penguin, 1975, £1.00. But although no doubt there are minor errors, Dudley Seers and perhaps the author's perceptions were less This book has not been getting adequate pro- naive at the time than he now remembers, there fessional notice, especially in the journals. Many isnot much reasontoquestion the general social scientists have read it with varying degrees picture that emerges. The known framework of of approval but as far as I know very few, if any, US Latin American policy in the l960s is as treat it as relevant to their models. Yet it is no depicted here. Subsequent Congressional hearings longer professionallydefensible to ignore the have provided evidence quite consistent with what CIA. What the book describes is outside inter- 2 An earlier exposure, The CIA and ehe Cuir ofIntel- ventionsufficiently powerfultoinfluencethe lsgence by victor Marchetti and John D. Marks (UK editicn:Jonathan Cape, 1974) was marred by numerous balanceofpoliticalforcesinseveralLatin deletionsto meet the requirementsof US government censorship. In anycase,itdoes not contain nearly so much field materialMarchetti worked forthe CIA in I This was written before the recent deportation crder against Washington and Marks wasintheStateDepartment. theauthor.Ibenefited from the comments ofseveral However, its interesting data on general CIA policies and colleagues at IDS. practices are brcadly consistent with Agee's book. 53 Agee describes.3 Naming dozens of CIA officials, Social scientists are, one would like to think, not agents, cover organisations and operations add immune from moral revulsion either, despite the conviction. inroads of positivism, but we have another con- cern as well: how the material in this book affects For the general reader this is a repugnant story. our models, in the sense of broad theoretical Ministers are bribed, arrests arranged of radical and reformist leaders, enemy agents provided frameworks. with girl-friends and blackmailed, rumours manu- Scholars in many disciplines (and virtuallyall facturedandspread,journalistsandeditors international civil servants) treat governments, if bought, generals and admirals induced to commit only implicitly, as sovereign and genuine spokes- treason,terroristssubsidised,workers paid to men for their nation's interest. Others, especially form breakawayunions,studentassociations but not only Marxists, also see them as repre- destroyed and new ones established, police forces sentative, although only of a dominant class or equipped with the latest electrical gadgetry.4 at least social coalition. The assumption that they speak for any national interest, however narrowly In the early years of his CIA career, Mr Agee defined, has already been partially undermined believed that these means were justified by the by the growing work of 'dependence' theorists ends, a combination of democracy and social on how economic, political and military pressures reform, asoutlinedin the documents of the constrain a government's room to manoeuvre, Alliance for Progress. Thwarting Communism, and even more by recent work on cultural de- especially Cuban and Soviet foreign policy, was pendence, the moulding of the minds of decision- apre-conditionforachieving them.But he makers by imported theories and attitudes. The noticed that it was this condition which was in sovereignty of a government becomes scarcely fact treated as the real objective. Much effort, for credibleatall when we learn that numerous example, was spent buying support throughout cabinet ministers and senior civil and military the hemisphere for the CIA-organised Bay of officialsaresalaried employees of an agency Pigs invasion in 1961, and financing parties and of another government (notallof them,of politicians who favoured breaking off diplomatic course, conscious of the true source of funds).6 relations with Cuba. On the other hand, the What exactly is 'the State' in such a case? An agency devoted no resources at all to arranging electrode has been implanted in the cortex and for the exile or imprisonment of powerful land- thisasalways throws doubt on the subject's owners:itdid not even bother to invent any identity. rumours or pay any journalists to discredit them. Another fundamental question is raised about the Indeed, it was so keen to prevent hostile or even very substance of international relations. Accord- non-aligned governments from taking power that ing to material presented in this book, US foreign it backed those who were most corrupt and reac- policy in many key fields is decided and imple- tionary. especially in the armed forces, and used mented by the CIA, leaving ambassadors in the any means, however sordid, to support them. The countries concerned largely ritual functions. (One author wasintheendsickened.Itwasa ambassador preferred not to know about the traumatic experience to hear the groans of a man activitiesoftheagency.)7 To studytreaties, being tortured by the Uruguayan secret police speeches and otherofficial documents may be and realise it was someone he had himself de- dangerously misleading, when the most important nounced. Another was the massacre of students elementsininternationalbehaviour are clan- in Mexico City (just before the 1968 Olympic destineactivitiesinthis'informalsector'of games)bya governmentwhosePresident, diplomacy. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, was a "close collaborator of the Mexico City station."5 Questions are also raised about analyses on a nationalplane.Itisclearthatastudyof 3 CIA operations in Chile are described in detail in Hearings Ecuadorian politics would hardly be scientifically before the Select Committee to study Government Opera- defensible unless it took acount of the CIA as a tions with RespecttoIntelligenceActivities of the US Senate, Vol. 7 Covert Action especially Appendix Covert causal factor, whatever the model used. This Action in Chile 1963-1973: Staff Report, US Government Printing Office, 1976. applies to micro-level research too. If a political 4 Of course, as became revealed in the closing months of the Nixon regime, CIA techniques began to seep back into 6 A President must often look around the Cabinet room and the USA itself,ashas happened elsewhere(cf. OAS wonder which of his colleagues is also on the payroll. To operationsinFrance).Indeedtheagencybecamean paraphraseStanley Baldwin, who once claimed that he accomplice in some of President Nixon's illegalactivities, had formed a Cabinet of which Harrow could be proud, b-eh directly and through former agents such as Howard Ecuador at this time had a Cabinet which was a credit to Hunt. the CIA. 5 The author contrasts the agency's activities pointedly with 7 On the other hand, Ambassador Korry knew of and sup- the public pleaofitsformer director, Richard Helms: ported most of thecovert CIA actionsagainstAllende. "You've got to trust us. We are honourable men." Select Committee Hearings op cit. 54 historian wanted toexplain why (say) bombs Once in power, the new military governments were placed in churches in Cuenca (9/i/62) or havetorelyheavilyonimportedcapital, Guayaquil (20/1/62), research should start by especiallyprivatecapital,althoughsubstantial an interview with the then chief of the CTA aid also suddenly becomes available. This is also station on his objectives, how he expected bomb- true of governments which have corne to power ing to help achieve them, how he evaluated the with less evident CIA support, but which use its results,etc. Since even identifying him will not helpsubsequentlyinruthlesssuppressionof normally be possible, much research inevitably egalitarian political forcesas in most of Latin misses the main factorsand CIA officials must America now. The reader of this book would oftenbe amusedatthenaivetyofsocial