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Portrait of a Cold Warrior: Second Thoughts of a Top CIA Agent

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This book covers mainly the fifties and sixties of last century, when the author was an important CIA agent in Indonesia, the Philippines and Central and South America.
It clearly shows how the CIA (the author) tried to influence directly the political situation in those countries. It supported financially the political party, that it thought would best represent the anti-communist and /or business interests of the US / transnational companies, and it tried to intervene in the composition of govenments.
Contrary to other sources, the author denies vehemently that the CIA was behind or committed assassinations.

The author explains distinctly the real seasons behind the Vietnam War or the Bay of Pigs disaster and reveals some famous names as CIA creatures: Nasser (Egypt) and Frei (Chile).
We meet some very well known people at the beginning of their (in)famous career: Ferdinand Marcos, Sukarno, Lee Kuan Yew, Howard Hunt, Han Suyin.

At the end, disillusioned, Joseph Smith turns his back on the Agency; firstly, for personal reasons (people got promotion for their incompetence), and secondly, because of the Vietnam disaster, Watergate, the bureaucratisation of the CIA (at one point drifting to a Gestapo status) and its spying on US citizens (the CHAOS program).

This work contains also some comic scenes of how the CIA tried to lure KGB agents in their nets.
Fundamentally, it confirms the statement of an old Englishman in Malay:'There are struggles for money, for power, for lust, for greed, because of just plain meanness. But there is no such thing as the ideological struggle...'.

A must read in order to understand the ploys of a secret agency.