Secret history
Subtitle: the CIA's classified account of its operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954
By: Nick Cullather ; with a new introduction by the author and an Afterword by Piero Gleijeses.
Contributors: Gleijeses, Piero.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 142
Subjects: Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo, 1913-1971; United States. Central Intelligence Agency; Guatemala -- History -- 1945-1985; Guatemala -- History -- Revolution, 1954; United States -- Relations -- Guatemala; Guatemala -- Relations -- United States
Description: In 1992, the Central Intelligence Agency hired the young historian Nick Cullather to write a history (classified "secret" and for internal distribution only) of the Agency's Operation PBSUCCESS, which overthrew the lawful government of Guatemala in 1954. Given full access to the Agency's archives, he produced a vivid insider's account, intended as a training manual for cover operators, detailing how the CIA chose targets, planned strategies, and organized the mechanics of waging a secret war.

In 1997, during a brief period of open disclosure, the CIA declassified the history with remarkably few substantive deletions. The New York Times called it "an astonishingly frank account ... which may be a high-water mark in the agency's openness." Here is that account, with new notes by the author which clarify points in the history and add newly available information.

This book reveals how the legend of PBSUCCESS grew, and why attempts to imitate it failed so disastrously at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and in the Contra war in the 1980's. The Afterword traces the effects of the coup of 1954 on the subsequent unstable politics and often violent history of Guatemala.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [133]-136) and index.