The Quiet Americans

Starred review from June 15, 2020
A probing history of the CIA's evolving role from the outset of the Cold War into the 1960s, viewed through the exploits of four American spies. On the heels of Germany's defeat in World War II, European leaders and intelligence agents were shifting focus to the Soviet Union's dominance over Eastern Europe and threatening pursuit of influence in Asia. Under a recently sworn-in President Harry Truman, the American government was slower to gauge early signals but eventually responded with often disastrous covert tactics. Anderson delivers a complex, massively scaled narrative, balancing prodigious research with riveting storytelling skills. He tracks the careers of four agents. In the Philippines, Edward Lansdale was instrumental in combatting the Hukbalahap uprising, lining up Ramon Magsaysay, the secretary of defense, to become president in 1954. Peter Sichel, a German Jew whose family escaped the Nazis, ran the CIA's Berlin office for more than a decade. Former naval officer Michael Burke headed the paramilitary operations in Albania and elsewhere. Frank Wisner, the CIA's deputy director of plans, had key roles in the Office of Policy Coordination until its full merging with the CIA in 1950. Though all four men began their careers with the strong desire to defend American freedom, the author engagingly demonstrates how their efforts were undermined by politically motivated power grabs within the U.S. government; poorly planned covert operations; and duplicitous scheming by the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who were espousing anti-communist rhetoric to advance their own careers. "By the end of Eisenhower's second term," writes Anderson, "the geographical spread of governments that his administration had undertaken to overthrow or otherwise subvert suggested an almost purposeful design, as if it sought to alienate the citizenry of most every region and subregion of the globe." Over the course of the narrative, the author amply shows how the CIA was increasingly pushed to function as an instrument of politically charged ambitions. An engrossing history of the early days of the CIA.

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Starred review from July 27, 2020
The roots of America’s decline in international reputation since WWII lie in the government’s confused and hypocritical actions during the first decade of the Cold War, according to this fascinating history by journalist Anderson (Fractured Lands). Tracking the careers of CIA agents Michael Burke, Edward Lansdale, Peter Sichel, and Frank Wisner from the late 1940s through the 1950s, as the focus of their work shifted from Europe to Asia and Central America, Anderson documents clandestine operations in Albania and the Vietnamese jungle; meetings with increasingly hawkish American officials, in particular Secretary of State John Foster Dulles; and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s meddling in CIA affairs. Anderson notes the harrowing emotional cost on his subjects (Wisner committed suicide; Burke and Sichel ultimately left the CIA “in despair”) as the U.S. threw its support behind autocratic leaders and missed opportunities to aid legitimate liberation movements such as the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Such blunders, Anderson writes, recast the U.S. from WWII savior to “one more empire in the mold of all those that had come before.” Laced with vivid character sketches and vital insights into 20th-century geopolitics, this stand-out chronicle helps to make sense of the world today. Agent: Sloan Harris, ICM Partners.

Starred review from September 1, 2020
Anderson, longtime contributing reporter to the New York Times Magazine and author of the much-lauded Lawrence in Arabia (2013), tracks the career paths of four early, consequential CIA spies?Michael Burke, Frank Wisner, Edward Lansdale, and Peter Sichel. The resulting narrative is a copiously detailed, utterly damning account of how a spy agency created with all apparent good intentions could overthrow democratically elected governments in Iran and Guatemala, flinch as Soviet troops invaded the streets of Budapest to quell the pro-democracy Hungarian Uprising of 1956, and misread North Korean, Vietnamese, and Soviet intentions at a cost of millions of lives and trillions of dollars, the overarching victim, as Anderson points out, being the cause of anti-communism itself. Blame doesn't fall so much on these four spies themselves, however compelling their stories and heavy their responsibilities, but rather on interagency politics (the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover, for one, bitterly opposed the CIA), hubris, ignorance, and even a lack of national political will?traits still seen as overall cause for America's diminished standing in the world today. A disturbing origin story for anyone listening.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2020

With this latest work, Anderson (Lawrence in Arabia) brings together the lives of four different yet remarkably similar men, who each shared a dissatisfaction with everyday life and had a taste for action. They found an appropriate outlet in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, later to become the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the late 1940s. In a manner reminiscent of Douglas Waller's Disciples, Anderson weaves his narrative among the lives of his subjects, highlighting aspects of their livelihoods as American spies that were at times equally frustrating, ridiculous, and chillingly dangerous. Through the lives of four unassuming spies, readers have an opportunity to learn about the complex challenges and unique characteristics of spying and living during World War II and the Cold War era later on. An impression of the CIA emerges as well, depicting an agency that was creative, frequently desperate, yet perpetually confident. Even more, readers can sense what life as a spy can do to those whose job is to carry out these missions; how some find a level of comfort and achieve success in their chosen profession, and how others reach a point where continuing on is no longer sustainable. VERDICT A fascinating and compulsively readable account of warime spying.--Philip Shackelford, South Arkansas Community Coll., El Dorado

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