Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA [Hardcover]

John Prados (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 2006

Safe for Democracy for the first time places the story of the CIA's covert operations squarely in the context of America's global quest for democratic values and institutions. National security historian John Prados offers a comprehensive history of the CIA's secret wars that is as close to a definitive account as is possible today. He draws on three decades of research to illuminate the men and women of the intelligence establishment, their resources and techniques, their triumphs and failures. In a dramatic and revealing narrative, Safe for Democracy not only relates the inside stories of covert operations but examines in meticulous detail the efforts of presidents and Congress to control the CIA and the specific choices made in the agency's secret wars. Safe for Democracy is the most authoritative and complete book on the CIA's secret wars ever published.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Most Americans know that the CIA is the agency primarily responsible for the gathering of foreign intelligence data. Some Americans are aware (to varying degrees) of the role the agency played in the overthrow of governments in Iran and Guatemala. So Prados, a historian who has written extensively on national-security affairs, has performed a valuable service by revealing the massive extent of CIA covert activities over the past 60 years. This is a comprehensive and superbly researched effort that is both engrossing and disturbing. Some of the topics covered are familiar ground, including clandestine efforts in Iran, Guatemala, and Cuba. But Prados also details lesser-known CIA activities in Guyana, Eastern Europe, and even Western Europe in the aftermath of World War II. In addition to organizing military coups, these activities included infiltration of labor unions, subsidizing publishing firms, and funding of anti-Soviet partisan groups. Prados is no rigid leftist engaged in America bashing. He accepts that U.S. foreign policy genuinely hoped to spread democracy while opposing the spread of Communism. But, as he convincingly illustrates, CIA covert efforts often produced the opposite result, and also produced an enduring legacy of hatred and mistrust toward our nation. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

This definitive history of covert action is both timely and necessary. (James Bamford )

Prados brings together in one colorful narrative a sweeping history of America’s covert wars. (Kai Bird )

Safe for Democracy is history for adults—not White House spin but what really happened and why. (Thomas Powers )

Highly readable, this is intelligence history, and intelligent history at its best. (Lloyd Gardner, foreign policy specialist and author )

A comprehensive and up-to-date account. (Norman Polmar )

Prados... constructs factual narratives of events based on thorough research with minimal analytic interpretation interspersed. (Bruce Miller Blue Voice )

Prados has performed a valuable service....A comprehensive and superbly researched effort that is both engrossing and disturbing. (Booklist )

If you're studying the CIA's operations and routines you can't be without Safe for Democracy. (Midwest Book Review )

This is the most detailed single volume on the modern history of US covert operations. (Choice )

Prados is an extraordinarily tenacious researcher....[This book is] an impressive achievement. (Lawrence D. Freedman Foreign Affairs )

A rare degree of success....His coverage is unusually comprehensive and objective....An authoritative, original work....Prados demonstrates his virtuosity. (Journal Of American History )

A well-researched, detailed, and vivid account....Prados proves a master of his subject. (Dimitris Keridas Poliltical Science Quarterly )

Factual and capacious...if anyone writes hereafter about CIA's covert actions without consulting Prados, the result will be woefully deficient. (Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. )

The book has many strengths…[Prados] introduces a mountain of newly declassified documents and information from memoirs and interviews. The book thus contains much new detail about individuals involved in covert operations and project costs. (Historian )

Safe for Democracy argues its author's case very well, and it opens some very serious questions for scholarly military historians. (Military History )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 752 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee; 1St Edition edition (September 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566635748
• ISBN-13: 978-1566635745
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #962,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very comprehenive and valuable history of the CIA, May 21, 2007

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Hardcover)

The CIA has been a symbol for the mysterious and given almost omnipotent power in the imaginations of those predisposed to paranoia. This very good book should set a number of these notions to rest. John Prados gives us a very detailed of the CIA from its founding out of the WWII OSS.

He shows us its role in engaging in alternative warfare and in undermining regimes that were hostile to America, its allies, and their mutual interests. Prados is not pro-CIA. Nor is he nakedly anti-CIA. It is pretty good reporting. I can't imagine how much digging he had to do to provide the information that is here. I enjoyed one footnote that after he got some information from some declassified files in a Presidential library that planes and agents were sent to collect those documents and others after he published his findings.

Prados points up the embarrassing failures that have become public knowledge. And when there are successes, he points up the transitory nature of such clandestine efforts. He is plainly unconvinced that the long term problems created by those efforts are worth the various kinds of costs incurred in pulling them off. In his concluding chapter he points out that the CIA and intelligence gathering should not be viewed only by the ends they claim to support, but evaluated as to whether their means are compatible with our Democracy and its professed ideals. I will leave this for each reader to judge.

I will say that Prados does not go out of his way, this is already a long book, to set the chessboard up and discuss what the Soviets were doing. In doing so, he makes the United States to out to be the aggressor, instigator, and fumbler of so many global events. In my view, this is a distortion. It isn't that Prados is wrong (he may well be, but I am not competent to say so), it is that he is only showing us one part of the stage. The actors that he show us look quite silly at times, however, if we saw what they were reacting to, with, or against on the unlit art of the stage, our perception of the story might well be different.

Still, this is a very valuable and comprehensive telling of this history and until we get something even more complete or authoritative or more information is declassified, this is a must have text for those interested in the history of the CIA.

27 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The sordid history of the CIA's covert ops, January 10, 2007

By 

Steven E. Neiner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Hardcover)

These days I find myself taking the side of the CIA more and more in their wars with the Bush Administration, such the Valerie Plame affair, and the administrations manipulation of intelligence leading to the Iraq war. Amongst those scandals I was starting to forget about past misdeeds of the CIA. Thankfully, John Prados has written a history of the CIA's secret wars, some familiar, such as Cuba, Iran, and Laos, and others more obscure and in danger of being almost forgotten, such as Guyana and Tibet. It is a history of the CIA told from the perspective of its covert operations. And from this perspective we get a further glimpse of the familiar spooks and their deeds, like Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner, Ted Shackley, Richard Helms, Desmond Fitzgerald, William Harvey, and Bill Casey.

Multiple conclusions can be drawn from each of the operations. A recurring theme in of these operations is that the CIA is not the "rogue" agency that does whatever it wishes without the knowledge of the president. In each of these secret wars the president often provided the initiative for the operation, was aware what was occurring, and had the full capability of stopping it at least some point in the operation. A prime example given is Kissinger and Nixon pursuing a more aggressive meddling in Chilean politics against Allende.

Another recurring theme in the operations is often the targeted administrations plotted against were often moderate, independent regimes, who neither wanted to be in the Soviet camp or in the U.S. camp. But, dare they nationalize industries, and suddenly, with our obsessive paranoia of communism, the president and CIA would plot their overthrow, support the shadiest paramilitary insurgents and turn a blind eye to their misdeeds, including drug dealing. Often this led left leaning politicians of the targeted countries straight into the arms of the Soviets.

In Cuba, the rebels created a "disposal" problem. What do you do with armed and trained rebels eager to dispose of Castro, and knowledge of assassination plots? Apparently some believed the answer was to keep the pot boiling. The plots against Castro continued well after Bay of Pigs. In Tibet, Hungary, and Indonesia, the CIA stirred things up and promised support, but for various reasons, such as the need for secrecy or fear of full confrontation, full support to finish the job never arrived. That left rebels dangling, and caused bitterness towards the U.S. Often these operations were fueled by bad, incomplete or ignored intelligence.

Safe for Democracy is an important addition to any CIA history bookshelf. It is a well documented, objective and balanced history of CIA clandestine operations. Our foreign policy hubris is not new, something recently invented by Bush Jr. Though covert operations weren't as brazen as invading and toppling a regime by brute force, the results were destructive for the targeted nations, and did not make the world safe for democracy. The CIA, though it may not be the sole impetus for these operations, was the cat's paw for bad policy, and often a careless one too.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Flawed Overview, January 29, 2011

By 

Ted (Rogers, AR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Paperback)

This is a broad and lengthy review of CIA covert operations from the earliest days to the impacts of the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act; essentially an update of a similar book Prados wrote in the mid-'80s.

The book is fatally flawed by the author's clear determination to put all forms of covert ops in a negative perspective, and the narrative reflects his strong bias as he relates different operations throughout the decades. Not that all he relates was in reality sunshine and butterflies, but even considering harsh realities there are key parts missing in many stories, and others are consciously worded in the most negative manner possible.

A narrative already weakened by bias is further undercut by the author's ignorance of military SOF, which is evident in the several areas where he discusses military SOF support to Agency operations. The book is also weakly sourced, with the notes section poorly structured and only partially covering the discussion in each chapter.

However, I don't know of any other book as comprehensive in its attempted scope that deals with this subject matter. But, due the issues I've mentioned with this book, I'd recommend reading a number of other books focused on specific operations rather than this fatally flawed broad overview.