US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA, 1945-53

Based on recently declassified documents, this book provides the first examination of the Truman Administration’s decision to employ covert operations in the Cold War.

Although covert operations were an integral part of America’s arsenal during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the majority of these operations were ill conceived, unrealistic and ultimately doomed to failure. In this volume, the author looks at three central questions: Why were these types of operations adopted? Why were they conducted in such a haphazard manner? And, why, once it became clear that they were not working, did the administration fail to abandon them?

The book argues that the Truman Administration was unable to reconcile policy, strategy and operations successfully, and to agree on a consistent course of action for waging the Cold War. This ensured that they wasted time and effort, money and manpower on covert operations designed to challenge Soviet hegemony, which had little or no real chance of success.

US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy will be of great interest to students of US foreign policy, Cold War history, intelligence and international history in general.

Sarah-Jane Corke is Assistant Professor, Department of History, Dalhousie University, and has a PhD from the University of New Brunswick [2000].