> Frank Snepp’s Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End Told by the CIA’s Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam, which was published in late 1977.
> At the very least Snepp had written the definitive history of the final days of the American imperium—in Vietnam anyway—in a gripping, page-turning style. The rooftop escape defined so much about the blundering American experience in Vietnam, and Snepp was the only witness to the tawdry retreat who wrote it all down as if a modern-day Xenophon, on the payroll of the CIA, retreating from the Asian wars.
> In 1981, the CIA had dragged him into the Supreme Court, to block his earnings from the book and to teach other agents in the field that there were costs associated with tell-all books about the failings within agency. I remember being shocked that Snepp lost his appeal to the Supreme Court and that he had been forced to pay $300,000 in book royalties to his former CIA handlers.
Hopefully on topic: a good English language book on the CIA origin story is “The Devil’s Chessboard” that was a fascinating read. While most of my reading is technical and science fiction, I also really enjoy reading history. It is difficult to understand the world ‘in real time’ but looking back into history more things make sense.
In a democracy, it is important to really understand history, what we got right and what we got wrong. If we want a better world, we need to learn from history.
On the shorter side, there is a very good article from the New Yorker which was published last October for the 75th birthday of the CIA entitled "Has the C.I.A. done more harm than good?" [1]
The journalist is clearly verging on the side of more harm.
>It is difficult to understand the world ‘in real time’ but looking back into history more things make sense.
Gotta be careful with this though, as when it comes to reading history, it really depends on what sources you are reading. The old saying "history is written by the winners" which leads to the opposing side's views being suppressed if not outright omitted. So hopefully, when it comes to "real time" views or historical views, the sources are from more than one viewpoint and are more than one.
This is largely why the academic study of history has become historiography, the study of how history is written, and by whom, and understood in which contexts. Academic history books, from university presses, are usually pretty different than the pop-history books or books aimed at general audiences for a similar topic. They are much more skeptical and questioning of narrative and are usually very willing to bring up counter-arguments or competing claims.
A really good example, one of my favorite academic history books, is When Champagne Became French by Kolleen Guy [1]. It's really more a history of how the story of champagne was integrated into the ongoing narrative of French national history and identity, and how this integration obscured the sometimes violent disagreements over the identity of champagne and who ultimately "owned" it.
And, historical accounts can be revised both to correct issues and to spread false narratives[1]. So, when and not just by whom a history was written, and the context the writer was operating in is important too e.g., sources of funding.
[1] "[NELA in the United States] recruited academics to rewrite textbooks with pro-market, anti-government messages and pressured schools and libraries to adopt these rewritten textbooks. They funded academics to create new programs in high schools, colleges, and universities..."
random linkable source that quotes the book:
"The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market" by Naomi Oreskes (professor of the history of science at Harvard University)
There isn't much need to suppress novels anymore. People no longer have sufficient attention span to even finish a 5 minute video and need to be fed bite-sized shorts. No need to kill the producer, consumers have been killed.
The role of censorship that the government used to have has shifted to companies like Visa, Mastercard, Amazon, etc. If you try and sell a spicy enough book, they will make sure nobody reads it, and the government can be completely "hands-off".
They can fail to process the customer's payment, remove your book from the marketplace, and ban your account. If you try to build your own marketplace, you won't be able to use any major payment processors.
Modern dissidents are building alternatives, but still there are roadblocks. All this to say, books are still very much being suppressed.
Refuting adopted positions on complex issues usually requires more than the five minutes allotted either in video programming format or in the conditioned mind you describe. Concision reinforces the conventional narrative as explained in this 5 minute video https://youtu.be/xIbfl7OQ0y4.
EDIT: I posted this as a joke, but the video is very interesting. Chomsky says that a need for concision favors conventional thoughts, because needing concision means you can only say things that don't need elaboration (ie only things everyone already agrees with).
The article writes about this new translation, linking to from the side, which I've overlooked at first, believing it's an ad, irrelevant to the article:
"a scholar, literary critic, and editor of Latin American literature. From 1969 to 1985" .. "a professor of Latin American contemporary literature at Yale University".
For those thinking this is some sort of banned book, it's not. Asturias won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967. This book is almost definitely available in your language in your nearest book store. And it's a great book, exhilarating and expertly written.
It's still interesting that the CIA _tried_ to suppress it (and news to me!), but it certainly didn't work.
> But its 1946 debut reflected a delay of more than a decade by the country’s real dictators, who disrupted the novel’s genesis and sent its author into exile. And in this act of suppression, Asturias’s censors and exilers were aided by the US, specifically the CIA.
From Wikipedia: the CIA was founded September 18, 1947.
How did the CIA "specifically" helped delay the publication of this book from 1936 to 1946 if it didn't even exist in that time frame ?
The official formation of the CIA was also only a formality, it essentially already existed in its components and other forms, e.g., the OSS. You can’t get so fixated on the official title, it’s the underlying people and their motivations that are the thing. It’s why people have such a hard time understanding and believing the “deep state” and why it hates even being called that because it identifies them.
What the worst people hate the most is being identified and named and associated with their nefarious actions. It’s why they like “classifying” to keep their evil deeds covered and hidden behind an vail of authority. It is how a minority of evil people control the majority of the world, often while claiming to be the good guys.
“deep state” is insanely vague. Does it mean the part of the government that has lots of secrets it fights tooth and nail to make sure is never revealed and even potentially engages in illegal acts? Or does it mean bureaucracy?
From what I’ve heard most people complaining about the “deep state” they always seem to express their complaint about the bounds of normal bureaucracy and less about secret/covert/illegal activities.
Maybe people have a hard time with the “deep state” because every claim is so unfalsifiable. It’s the new “wake up sheeple”.
Presumably 1000s of executive appointments and senior civil servants across generations of administrations all collectively conspire on odd Tuesdays and think exactly alike like all complex organizations do.
Reductionism provides all truth, the world is black and white.
> It’s why they like “classifying” to keep their evil deeds covered and hidden behind an vail of authority.
I found classified docs pretty boring. Most of them remained classified because the information presented had limited distribution, which could identify sources. I never worked at the CIA though, so maybe you're right, the entire CIA is just a Ton Clancy novel.
It's not me that is fixated on the name, it is the article that goes out of its way to assign responsibility "specifically" to the CIA - it's right in the title and in the first paragraph!
And this produce what is objectively an historical howler right at the start. As the other commenter said, maybe it's just sloppy editing. But seems pretty click baity to me.
Readit News
> Frank Snepp’s Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End Told by the CIA’s Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam, which was published in late 1977.
> At the very least Snepp had written the definitive history of the final days of the American imperium—in Vietnam anyway—in a gripping, page-turning style. The rooftop escape defined so much about the blundering American experience in Vietnam, and Snepp was the only witness to the tawdry retreat who wrote it all down as if a modern-day Xenophon, on the payroll of the CIA, retreating from the Asian wars.
> In 1981, the CIA had dragged him into the Supreme Court, to block his earnings from the book and to teach other agents in the field that there were costs associated with tell-all books about the failings within agency. I remember being shocked that Snepp lost his appeal to the Supreme Court and that he had been forced to pay $300,000 in book royalties to his former CIA handlers.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/09/why-vietnam-still-ma...
In a democracy, it is important to really understand history, what we got right and what we got wrong. If we want a better world, we need to learn from history.
The journalist is clearly verging on the side of more harm.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/has-the-cia-do...
Dead Comment
Gotta be careful with this though, as when it comes to reading history, it really depends on what sources you are reading. The old saying "history is written by the winners" which leads to the opposing side's views being suppressed if not outright omitted. So hopefully, when it comes to "real time" views or historical views, the sources are from more than one viewpoint and are more than one.
A really good example, one of my favorite academic history books, is When Champagne Became French by Kolleen Guy [1]. It's really more a history of how the story of champagne was integrated into the ongoing narrative of French national history and identity, and how this integration obscured the sometimes violent disagreements over the identity of champagne and who ultimately "owned" it.
[1]: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/3029/when-champagne-be...
[1] "[NELA in the United States] recruited academics to rewrite textbooks with pro-market, anti-government messages and pressured schools and libraries to adopt these rewritten textbooks. They funded academics to create new programs in high schools, colleges, and universities..."
https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/big-myth-american-busin...
random linkable source that quotes the book: "The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market" by Naomi Oreskes (professor of the history of science at Harvard University)
They can fail to process the customer's payment, remove your book from the marketplace, and ban your account. If you try to build your own marketplace, you won't be able to use any major payment processors.
Modern dissidents are building alternatives, but still there are roadblocks. All this to say, books are still very much being suppressed.
I can believe that there are books that Amazon won't carry but I don't believe that there are books that Credit Card networks won't deal with.
TLDR?
EDIT: I posted this as a joke, but the video is very interesting. Chomsky says that a need for concision favors conventional thoughts, because needing concision means you can only say things that don't need elaboration (ie only things everyone already agrees with).
Dead Comment
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https://bookshop.org/p/books/mr-president-miguel-angel-astur...
"Mr. President"
Miguel Ángel Asturias (Author) (the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967)
David Unger (Translator)
Mario Vargas Llosa (Foreword by)
Gerald Martin (Introduction by) (cited often in the article)
----
The New Yorker 2022 coverage of the translation:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-timely-retu...
-------
Related:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pgp53z/how-the-cia-infiltrat...
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Guatemala
and (a "part-time hack with a political off switch"):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emir_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Monegal
"a scholar, literary critic, and editor of Latin American literature. From 1969 to 1985" .. "a professor of Latin American contemporary literature at Yale University".
It's still interesting that the CIA _tried_ to suppress it (and news to me!), but it certainly didn't work.
"The nobel-prize winning novel that the CIA doesn't want you to read!"
The first english edition was in 1963, the first american one in 1964.
I assumed that was a translation into English.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/mr-president-18
Dead Comment
From the link:
> But its 1946 debut reflected a delay of more than a decade by the country’s real dictators, who disrupted the novel’s genesis and sent its author into exile. And in this act of suppression, Asturias’s censors and exilers were aided by the US, specifically the CIA.
From Wikipedia: the CIA was founded September 18, 1947.
How did the CIA "specifically" helped delay the publication of this book from 1936 to 1946 if it didn't even exist in that time frame ?
What the worst people hate the most is being identified and named and associated with their nefarious actions. It’s why they like “classifying” to keep their evil deeds covered and hidden behind an vail of authority. It is how a minority of evil people control the majority of the world, often while claiming to be the good guys.
From what I’ve heard most people complaining about the “deep state” they always seem to express their complaint about the bounds of normal bureaucracy and less about secret/covert/illegal activities.
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Presumably 1000s of executive appointments and senior civil servants across generations of administrations all collectively conspire on odd Tuesdays and think exactly alike like all complex organizations do.
Reductionism provides all truth, the world is black and white.
I found classified docs pretty boring. Most of them remained classified because the information presented had limited distribution, which could identify sources. I never worked at the CIA though, so maybe you're right, the entire CIA is just a Ton Clancy novel.
And this produce what is objectively an historical howler right at the start. As the other commenter said, maybe it's just sloppy editing. But seems pretty click baity to me.
Deleted Comment