# The CIA

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/hugh-wilford/the-cia/9781399816878

![The CIA](https://quivercdn.com/covers/basic-books-uk-jmp/hugh-wilford/the-cia_978-13-9981-687-8.jpg?v=2026-05-01%2023%3A35%3A42)

- Book: [The CIA](https://www.bookquiver.com/hugh-wilford/the-cia) ([The CIA.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/hugh-wilford/the-cia.md))
- Authors: [Hugh Wilford](https://www.bookquiver.com/hugh-wilford)
- Publisher: basic_books_uk_jmp
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-13-9981-687-8
- Published: 2024-06-06
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

'Gripping history that also informs the present' Sunday Times 'Fascinating . . . Wilford writes engagingly with a telling eye for colourful detail' The Spectator 'A spectacular achievement . . . I loved it' Dominic Sandbrook How the CIA became an instrument of a new covert empire both in America and overseas. In 1947, the United States created the CIA to analyse foreign intelligence, but within a few years the Agency was engaged in other operations - bolstering pro-American governments, overthrowing nationalist leaders, and surveilling domestic dissent - before transforming during the Cold War. Drawing on decades of research, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford shows how the Agency created a new Western empire, as successive US presidents used the covert powers of the Agency to hide overseas interventions from postcolonial foreigners and anti-imperial Americans alike. Even the CIA's post-9/11 global hunt for terrorists was haunted by the ghosts of empires past. Original, and gripping, The CIA tells how America adopted unaccountable power and created a new imperial order.