American History Hit What If There Were No CIA?
Oct 16, 2025
Jeffrey Rogg, a Senior Research Fellow at the Global and National Security Institute and author of The Spy and the State, explores the intriguing thought of a world without the CIA. He discusses its origins following WWII and how its absence might have shaped global events like the coups in Guatemala and Iran. Rogg delves into the CIA's covert actions, the ethical dilemmas of programs like MKUltra, and how its secrecy has influenced public conspiracy theories. He warns that covert operations can lead to long-term instability and blowback.
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Pearl Harbor Prompted Centralization
- Pearl Harbor exposed the U.S. intelligence fragmentation and spurred calls for centralized warning systems.
- Before the CIA, intelligence was decentralised across Navy, Army, and FBI with poor foreign espionage capability.
Origins Of MKUltra
- MKUltra emerged from wartime and Korean War concerns about interrogation and resisting enemy manipulation.
- Rogg stresses many controversial programs were already being explored by other services.
Covert Action Was Built In
- Covert action was integral to early CIA structure via the Office of Policy Coordination.
- State and Defense wanted plausible deniability by using the CIA to run covert operations.
