Flag of the Central Intelligence Agency
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(Note to reader: I had to write a brief essay in my Master's program at KSU on the following question. "Describe, analyze, and assess the Central Intelligence Agency as an instrument of US foreign policy from its inception through the mid-1960s." I used the William Chafe historical book The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II as my source. It was an interesting topic to research and write about. What was difficult was that it had to be so brief!)
The Central Intelligence Agency was used as an instrument of American foreign policy from its beginning to the mid-1960s. Many incidents occurred conducted by the CIA since its founding in 1947 by President Harry Truman, who signed into law the National Security Act. This is a brief overview of some of the policies that were carried out, including the Guatemalan and Iranian governmental changes backed by the CIA, as well as elements of the Vietnam era and the Bay of Pigs invasion.
In the early days of the CIA’s inception, it seemed that the United States was somewhat successful when it came to using the CIA to dictate foreign policy. Examples of this was the successful sponsorship of a coup d’état that would topple Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. The reason for this coup was the act of Arbenz threatening to nationalize United Fruit landholdings. Another example was the CIA-led overthrow of the nationalist government in Iran in 1953, which restored the Shah as ruler.
Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz
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The CIA was used in 1954 “to maintain a friendly non-communist South Vietnam and to prevent a communist victory through all Vietnam elections.” The CIA was instructed to use whatever means that were necessary to subvert the Vietminh government in Hanoi and to strengthen South Vietnam so it would be “the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia.”
The United States believed that it would not make the same mistakes that the French made with its own foreign policy in Vietnam. The United States saw France as a colonial power, unlike the United States, and believed that American generals knew how to fight better militarily, unlike the French, who lost at Dien Bien Phu and were driven out of the country.
Allan Dulles created the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization for the United States to counteract “subversive activities directed from without” and to proceed to strengthen the government of South Vietnam. The CIA provided American policy locally in South Vietnam by installing Ngo Dinh Diem, who was a Catholic and a staunch nationalist. This was a failure from the beginning as the country of South Vietnam was primarily Buddhist. The early 1960s saw Buddhist monks in Vietnam burning themselves to death on street corners to protest the persecution of Buddhists by Diem’s government. This incident and many other reasons caused the CIA to back a coup in which Diem was assassinated in early November of 1963.
South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem
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During the Kennedy administration, the president used the CIA to attempt to remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba. This plan had been conceived during Eisenhower’s administration and Kennedy felt the need to continue this plan into his administration. According to circles of thinking during this period, Kennedy became more “skeptical of the advice given him by military and intelligence officials” because of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April of 1961.
U.S. President John F. Kennedy
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Even though this way of thinking existed during the early 1960s, more current evidence suggests that Kennedy highly approved of this plan. With the help of CIA officer Richard Bissell, who devised the plan to overthrow Castro, Kennedy approved of using the CIA instead of the military and the State Department. Bissell and Kennedy were able to cut through “bureaucratic channels” and use a guerrilla-type operation “using clandestine radio transmitters to mobilize a popular revolt against Castro in Cuba itself” that would involve training Cuban exiles to carry out an invasion that would meet up with anti-Castro “freedom fighters” once the exiles landed in Cuba.
CIA officer Richard Bissell
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Thanks for learning!
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