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John Prados

Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA Paperback – February 16, 2009

by John Prados (Author)

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From its founding in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency has been discovered in the midst of some of the most crucial―and most embarrassing―-episodes in United States relations with the world. Richard Nixon's 1969 presidential order that declared CIA covert operations necessary to the attainment of American foreign policy goals was an acknowledgment that secret warfare tools had a much wider application than just the cold war conflict with the Soviet Union. The question of what, exactly, these operations have contributed to U.S. policy has long been neglected in the rush to accuse the CIA of being a "rogue elephant" or merely listing its nefarious deeds. 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. Along the way Mr. Prados offers eye-opening accounts of the covert actions themselves, from radically revised interpretations of classic operations like Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and the Bay of Pigs; to lesser-known projects like Tibet and Angola; to virtually unknown tales of the CIA in Guyana and Ghana. He supplies full accounts of Reagan-era operations in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, and brings the story up to date with accounts of more recent activities in Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq, all the while keeping American foreign policy goals in view. Safe for Democracy<

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This definitive history of covert action is both timely and necessary. (James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets, and A Pretext for War)

Prados brings together in one colorful narrative a sweeping history of America's covert wars. (Kai Bird, coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer)

Safe for Democracy is history for adults―not White House spin but what really happened and why. (Thomas Powers, Pulitzer Prize winner for national reporting and author of Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda)

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, co-author of Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage)

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)

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About the Author

John Prados is widely recognized as one of the foremost historians of national security affairs. A Columbia University Ph.D., his major books include Presidents' Secret Wars, Pentagon Games, Keepers of the Keys, Inside the Pentagon Papers, The Blood Road, Valley of Decision, The Hidden History of the Vietnam War, and Combined Fleet Decoded. Mr. Prados is a senior fellow at the National Security Archives and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

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Product details

Paperback: 736 pages

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee (February 16, 2009)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1566638232

ISBN-13: 978-1566638234

Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.2 x 9.4 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Customer Reviews: 9 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #350,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

#648 in Democracy (Books)

#613 in National & International Security (Books)

#348 in Political Freedom (Books)

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Tex Out West
College text
May 5, 2014
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Yep, another college text...not necessarily a page-turner, but not a bore either. Beat the price of the University Bookstore by A BUNCH, and came in quickly to aid my studies.
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chunyukuo
Follows a common pattern
February 14, 2010
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
This book betrays a problem common to CIA literature: It focuses heavily on the administrative and bureaucratic side of the CIA, made possible by the various freedoms afforded to any American researcher. There are plenty of books written by former CIA operatives that explains their work in depth, and they are more interesting.

For politics junkies and fellow Washingtonians who charge through nevertheless, I'd recommend skipping the last few chapters altogether and reading Steve Coll's Ghost Wars instead. It's more intelligent and better researched.
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8 people found this helpful

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Prole Center
Safe for Tyranny
November 19, 2012
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Why don't they teach this stuff in high school? Oh yeah, I know why. This is part of the real history of U.S. "foreign policy" (a fancy term for imperialism). Teaching the real, sordid history of the United States would contradict all those cute values we profess to hold dear. It would get in the way of indoctrinating people with patriotism - a horribly asinine concept. War is the health of the state, whether overt or covert. There always has to be an enemy "out there", to draw attention away from the enemy "right here". Have the courage to read this book!
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Craig Matteson

HALL OF FAME

A very comprehenive and valuable history of the CIA
May 21, 2007
Format: 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.
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Steven E. Neiner
The sordid history of the CIA's covert ops
January 10, 2007
Format: 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.
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Mystery Booker
like a caste system and never say a word
December 13, 2017
Format: Paperback
I havent read this yet, but will. Covert operations are so nefarious by nature. They lock citizens in to a trap at birth lasting their whole life, like a caste system and never say a word. Citizens are denied legal help from police, lawyers, defense, protection, autonomy, independence, protected intellectual property, safety, sexual privacy. The are denied the entire system our constitution was laid out for, and all independent actions for the individual, like human remote control.
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