Since 1947, American espionage and covert operations have enjoyed a uniquely high profile. This is partly because of a taste for 'covert' interventions that were often impossible to keep hidden from public view; for example, the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Frequent revelations also reflected a written constitution that guaranteed investigative journalists relative immunity. Throughout this period, the history of the CIA has constituted something of a battleground with conflicting official and unofficial accounts. CIA activity has often been redolent of wider issues in American foreign policy. These include a long-standing oscillation between interventionism and isolationism, between presidential leadership and democratic foreign policy, and also between exceptionalism and univeralist approaches to human rights. Public moves by both the President and Congress after 1975 to restrict - and then unleash - the CIA underline its symbolic importance. The project, which is funded by the AHRC, is organised into three main 'strands'. The first strand focuses on the struggle over the appearance of the CIA in the State Department's respected series of published historical documents. A high profile battle between academics, the State Department and the CIA prompted legislative intervention by Congress in 1991. The second strand constitutes an analysis of the production and role of CIA memoirs by retired CIA officers. More than ninety CIA memoirs have been published. Because of the uneven nature of primary historical documentation concerning the intelligence, memoirs have exercised a disproportionate influence upon the construction of CIA history. Controversially, some retirees published 'renegade' memoirs that were uncensored. The third strand explores the realm of 'spy-faction', or lightly fictionalized accounts of real events. This popular form of CIA 'history' has achieved a wide reception as the result of transfer to the cinema screen. Retirees and even governments often work with film companies to enhance their 'reality' and recently assisted with the film 'The Good Shepherd'. These three strands have been selected for their importance within the overall construction of American foreign policy. They have also been chosen because pilot projects have identified excellent, and hitherto unused, archival material at the US National Archives as well at other repositories at Texas and Stanford. The project team represents a multi-disciplinary collaboration between the Universities of Warwick and Nottingham. It comprises academics experienced in the fields of the American studies, diplomatic history and the history of intelligence, together with Cold War literature and film. We hope that the project will interest not only scholars of American foreign policy, but also policy-makers and the general public. Presented by Professor Richard Aldrich and Simon Willmetts.

• published: 23 Nov 2011
• views: 1260