ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to understand the intelligence establishment better in the context of George F. Kennan's works and life. It begins with the destabilization of the anti-imperialistic regime of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953 and, joint with that, the 1979 Iranian revolution leading to the globally generalized Islamic resistance to the West. In the early 1970s the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) more successfully assisted the conservative overthrow of a pro-Soviet government of Chile. The CIA leadership, given its extraordinarily problematic mission, was troubled throughout its life. The CIA, aware of presidential ambitions, however, "never paid much attention to what was actually happening on the island". If the United States and its CIA had been dangerously adventurous in Cuba, they had been matched by the Soviets in both Cuba and Chile. In Chile the CIA was less aggressive, operating defensively against the Soviet thrust. Inevitably the CIA history is a wildly variegated drama of great heroism and shuddering bureaucratic cowardice.