The CIA and the Cold War: A Memoir

This book gives the true inside picture of the CIA during the Cold War and how the agency saw the events in which it was involved. Breckinridge started his career with the CIA as a briefing officer (and within a year had become White House Briefing Officer) in 1953 and concluded it as Deputy Inspector General in 1979. The issues Breckinridge reports on–the Bay of Pigs, the Warren Commission Report, Vietnam, Watergate, Chile, plots against foreign leaders, the Ramparts controversy, Laos, the Church and Pike committees–are among the most controversial in the lives of Americans since the mid-twentieth century. Breckinridge demostrates that the CIA was not a rogue elephant but an agency acting under high level policy directives, and he reveals a great deal about the internal life of the CIA.