Chile, the CIA and the Cold War: A Transatlantic Perspective(Intelligence, Surveillance and Secret Warfare)

James Lockhart blends Chilean, inter-American and transatlantic national, regional and world-historical trends into a century-long Cold War narrative. He argues that Chileans made their own history as highly engaged internationalists while reassessing American and other foreign-directed intelligence, surveillance and secret warfare operations in Chile and southern South America.The book transcends a well-known, US-centred historiography while offering a more equitable and global interpretation of Chile's Cold War experience than previously possible. This advances research that has progressively expanded the framework of Chile's Cold War experience since the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in the UK for human rights violations more than 20 years ago.

Table of Contents:
Introduction The England of South America Chilean Anticommunism Gabriel González Videla and the Transatlantic Origins of the Cold War La Ley Maldita: The Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy The Frei Administration The Viaux Movement Plan Alfa Cool and Correct Jefe de la Plaza: The Rise of Augusto Pinochet Conclusion Select BibliographyIndex

About the Author :
James Lockhart is Assistant Professor of History at Zayed University (ZU), in the United Arab Emirates. He specialises in the history of American foreign relations, security and intelligence, and Latin American (particularly southern South American) politics during the Cold War. He has published on the CIA, Cuban intelligence, and the effectiveness of covert operations. He is a member of the Cambridge, MA-based Scholars Strategy Network, has written for War on the Rocks, and has been interviewed by American, British, Brazilian and Australian journalists. He earned his PhD at the University of Arizona and has lectured at the Embry-Riddle College of Security and Intelligence and the American University in Dubai. He is currently researching Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina.

Review :
Lockhart’s well-written book uses an impressive array of multilingual sources from a number of countries. He does a fine job of situating US-Chilean relations not only chronologically (in the broad sweep of the twentieth century) but in a transatlantic fashion as well. Chile, the CIA and the Cold War successfully contributes to the literature about the Cold War, United States–Chile relations and intelligence in Latin America. The book shows how Chileans shaped their own history, were ‘engaged internationalists’ within a multitude of different contexts and that foreign intelligence services were active in the country but were not the ‘deciders’ of Chilean Cold War experience. This book is an excellent case study for historians of Latin America, the Cold War, and intelligence studies as well as international relations scholars, political geographers, and political scientists interested in intervention and statecraft. This well researched and clearly written book argues coherently for Chilean agency in its own destiny, and places the activities of the CIA in an informed context.