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Confession to corporate memory : the memoirs of CIA director Richard M. Helms
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Moran, Christopher R. (2014) Confession to corporate memory : the memoirs of CIA director Richard M. Helms. The International History Review, 36 (1). pp. 70-88. doi:10.1080/07075332.2013.836119 ISSN 0707-5332.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2013.836119
Abstract
This article seeks to challenge the orthodoxy about memoirs by retired spies. It does so by examining the making of A Look Over My Shoulder, the 2003 memoir of Richard Helms, the second longest serving Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director. An exploration of the genesis of the Helms memoir is revealing of the motivations for autobiographical writing by intelligence veterans, as well as the procedures for the ‘vetting’ of texts by the CIA's Publications Review Board. In a departure from the existing literature on the subject of official memoir-writing, which suggests that secret organisations are hostile to former employees producing books, it is shown that the CIA did not hinder Helms, but assisted him. Drawing upon declassified materials and private papers, it is argued that the Agency aimed to mould the book as a quasi-official history for the purpose of improving public understanding about the CIA, intelligence, and US foreign policy. With journalists, renegade writers, and populist historians producing sensationalist and lopsided accounts, the CIA realised that there was more to gain by contributing to history than to remain silent while it was being compiled. To this end, they worked with Helms in turning a confessional into a piece of corporate memory.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | The International History Review | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0707-5332 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 2014 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 36 | ||||||||
| Number: | 1 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 70-88 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1080/07075332.2013.836119 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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