Reviews
The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America
by Hugh Wilford
Harvard University Press; 342 pages; $27.95
In 1967 the magazine Ramparts ran an exposé revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency had been secretly funding and managing a wide range of citizen front groups intended to counter communist influence around the world. In addition to embarrassing prominent individuals caught up, wittingly or unwittingly, in the secret superpower struggle for hearts and minds, the revelations of 1967 were one of the worst operational disasters in the history of American intelligence and presaged a series of public scandals from which the CIA’s reputation has arguably never recovered.
“[T]he myriad links between the CIA and various citizen front groups attempting to counter communist influence….Coming forty years after the magazine Ramparts exposed the CIA propaganda program, this book is sure to be relevant to our own era of “hearts and minds” campaigning.”—Bookforum
“[O]utstanding…lively, engaging, thoroughly researched and beautifully written. It provides a clear view of the many activities of the CIA to gain the support of Americans during the Cold War, and raises important questions about the place of such secret efforts to mobilize popular opinion in a democracy.”—Allan M. Winkler, Miami University
“[R]emarkably researched and detailed…there is a great deal to be learned from this book.”—Nathan Glazer, The New York Times Book Review