The Mighty Wurlitzer
How the CIA Played America

Publisher:  Harvard University Press
Resource Type:  Book
Cx Number:  CX9441

Wilford's illuminating book reveals a largely unknown history of the CIA during the Cold War. Using the Soviet Union's technique of "front organizations" the agency spent millions creating organizations with names such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, or the Free Trade Union Committee. Few people in the groups, the artists and writers suspected that the CIA were meeting with their leaders and paying their bills. His book is a systematic look at the agency from the 1940's to the investigative report in Rampart's Magazine 20 years later that explained their cultural offensive. With wit he also describes that few of the fronts behaved as the agency desired and that they couldn't "play" the opinionated citizens raised on the First Amendment. They were not like a disciplined Stalinist cadre.