Though it might be hard to believe, the Americans did not have a covert operations organization when they joined World War II, and like the British, it took them some time to realize it could be a powerful tool. As a result, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was not established until June 13, 1942, six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, during World War II, all the hard work in the United States led to the growth of the OSS into an organization with over 13,000 staff and 40 offices scattered across the world. Its purposes were initially similar to that of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, including espionage, sabotage, and intelligence assessments, but with time and experience, it expanded to include economic, psychological, and guerrilla warfare, as well as counter-intelligence work. And of course, it would all chart a path for the early days of America’s most famous intelligence agency, the CIA.

The agency has done some good things, and it has inarguably done some bad things. Naturally, people tend to remember the most controversial operations, from CIA-funded revolutions to the Bay of Pigs and domestic experiments such as the mysterious Project MK-Ultra. Many decisions were made, either by the agency or by those elected to give the agency direction, in the raw emotions of the Cold War, and this also colored many of the decisions. Regardless, well after Allen Dulles’ tenure as the CIA’s director, investigations uncovered the facts that the CIA did not merely operate overseas, but also conducted several operations against American citizens, which Dulles both knew about and approved.

This book looks at the operations that continue to fascinate, confuse, and disgust modern society, from the people who managed the operations to the results.