After all, the CIA has been a key party to many of the international conflicts that academics must study. This problem of objectivity is essentially the same one that scientists are addressing with regard to biomedical research funded by drug companies. Biomedical scientists increasingly are expected to reveal financial support that might bias their findings. It is regrettable that political science, which has no expectation of full disclosure relating to work for the CIA, holds itself to a lower standard. This is mostly a public-relations gambit.
Secrecy poses a special problem for scholars.
Research undertaken for the CIA often is classified, so that academics who have performed the research are legally barred from revealing much of what they may find. Scholars thus are prevented from doing their jobs, which must include disseminating the fruits of their research through publication. In undertaking classified work, researchers have become complicit in the practice of secrecy, one of the most undemocratic characteristics of the intelligence services. Jervis, Nye and Westerfield seem to discount any suggestion that academic-intelligence ties might bias scholarship. These operations resulted in some of the most controversial actions during the Cold War, including U.S. support for overthrowing governments in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Zaire in 1961, Indonesia in 1965 and Chile in 1973.