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Secret history : the CIA's classified account of its operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954

Author: Nick Cullather; Piero Gleijeses
Publisher: Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1999.
Edition/Format:   Book : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
"In 1992, the Central Intelligence Agency hired the young historian Nick Cullather to write a history (classified "secret" and for internal distribution only) of the Agency's Operation PBSUCCESS, which overthrew the lawful government of Guatemala in 1954. Given full access to the Agency's archives, he produced a vivid insider's account, intended as a training manual for cover operators, detailing how the CIA chose  Read more...
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Details

Named Person: Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán
Material Type: Internet resource
Document Type: Book, Internet Resource
All Authors / Contributors: Nick Cullather; Piero Gleijeses
ISBN: 0804733104 9780804733106 0804733112 9780804733113
OCLC Number: 40926605
Description: xl, 142 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Contents: Introduction: a culture of destruction --
Foreword to the CIA edition --
America's backyard --
Reversing the trend --
Sufficient means --
The sweet smell of success --
Appendices --
Afterword: the culture of fear Piero Gleijeses --
Index.
Responsibility: Nick Cullather ; with a new introduction by the author and an Afterword by Piero Gleijeses.
More information:

Abstract:

"In 1992, the Central Intelligence Agency hired the young historian Nick Cullather to write a history (classified "secret" and for internal distribution only) of the Agency's Operation PBSUCCESS, which overthrew the lawful government of Guatemala in 1954. Given full access to the Agency's archives, he produced a vivid insider's account, intended as a training manual for cover operators, detailing how the CIA chose targets, planned strategies, and organized the mechanics of waging a secret war. In 1997, during a brief period of open disclosure, the CIA declassified the history with remarkably few substantive deletions. The New York Times called it "an astonishingly frank account ... which may be a high-water mark in the agency's openness." Here is that account, with new notes by the author which clarify points in the history and add newly available information." "This book reveals how the legend of PBSUCCESS grew, and why attempts to imitate it failed so disastrously at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and in the Contra war in the 1980's. The Afterword traces the effects of the coup of 1954 on the subsequent unstable politics and often violent history of Guatemala."--Jacket.

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