“In the late 1950s, CIA agent and Romanian émigré George Minden realized that a book smuggling program could have the potential to destabilize the Soviet regime and fuel the resistance in satellite states,” Johannes Lichtman wrote this month. “Over the coming decades, this ‘Marshall Plan for the Mind’ would smuggle nearly 10 million items, along with printing presses and materials, into the Eastern Bloc.”
That books program, in the words of journalist Tim Weiner, was “among the most important CIA operations of the Cold War”—and it’s also one that relatively few people have heard of.
Lichtman’s review of a new book on that operation is just one of the CIA deep dives we’ve published that offer insight into the secret history of the agency. Below, you’ll find his piece and some of our other favorites on this subject, including an essay by ex-spy Valerie Plame on the plight of women in the agency and historian Hugh Wilford’s take on why CIA conspiracy theories just won’t go away.
Young people in a cafe in Poland in 1961. Ernst Haas/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The Most Successful CIA Operation You’ve Never Heard of
Johannes Lichtman reviews a new book on how the agency’s program to circulate banned books helped take down the Iron Curtain.
Workers walk across the entry hall at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, on Feb. 1, 1993. Larry Downing/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images
What It’s Actually Like Being a Woman in the CIA
Ex-spy Valerie Plame on the “secret history” of women in the agency.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe at the White House in Washington on May 1.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
When the Threat Is Inside the White House
What CIA insiders make of the MAGA moles and toadies now in charge of U.S. national security, according to Tim Weiner.
Political activist Dick Gregory holds a news conference to present evidence involving the CIA in possible illegal activity surrounding the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, and his brother, Robert in 1975.Bettmann Archive/via Getty Images
Why CIA Conspiracy Theories Won’t Go Away
As long as the agency carries out needlessly covert operations, the public will suspect the worst, Hugh Wilford writes.
Protesters demonstrate against U.S. imperialism in front of the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi on Dec. 18, 1971. Keystone/Getty Images
How the Cold War Forged India’s Intelligence Setup
A new book depicts a period of spy history—and U.S.-India cooperation—that bears some resemblance to our own, Sushant Singh writes.