TELEVISION

Agency: A History of the CIA

Series: Agency: A History of the CIA
4.6
(22)
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Episodes
24
Rating
TVPG
Year
2019
Language
English
Publisher
The Great Courses

About

CIA expert Hugh Wilford transforms decades of research into a 24-episode series that helps you better understand the roles the CIA has played in recent American history, from the eve of the Cold War to the 21st-century War on Terror. You'll explore the CIA's successful (and disastrous) operations, its technological innovations, and its complex relationship with presidents and pop culture.

Related Subjects

Episodes

1 to 3 of 24

1. Secrecy, Democracy, and the Birth of the CIA

29m

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Why did the United States create a secret foreign intelligence service in the first place? For the answer, examine three key periods of U.S. government intelligence before the birth of the CIA: the American Revolution to the late 1930s, World War II, and the postwar years from 1945 to 1947.

2. George Kennan and the Rise of Covert Ops

30m

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Professor Wilford reveals how the CIA transformed from an intelligence agency to housing the United States' premier covert-action unit in the space of just two years. Central to this conversion is George F. Kennan, who declared "political warfare" against the Soviet Union through his policies of both containment and "rollback."

3. The CIA, China, and the Korean War

29m

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Discover how the CIA, with its attention drawn to Asia, failed to rein in the growing emphasis on covert operations and restore its focus on intelligence gathering and analysis. Two factors you'll focus on: the lack of public scrutiny of the CIA's actions and the arrival of future CIA director Allen Dulles.

Extended Details

  • Closed CaptionsEnglish

Artists

The Great Coursesdirector
The Great Coursesproducer
Hugh Wilfordactor