'The Quiet Americans' Examines Tragic Miscalculations In The CIA's Formative Years

We're used to a world in which American intelligence services operate with enormous power and reach. Our guest today, writer Scott Anderson, has a new book about the early years of the CIA, when America was victorious in World War II and former soldiers were improvising a campaign of spying and covert operations to contain and undermine the nation's new adversary, the Soviet Union. It was a time, Anderson writes, when Americans wielded great moral authority in the world and nations struggling to throw off colonial rule looked to the United States as a beacon of freedom and democracy. Anderson concludes that the CIA's rigid commitment to anti-communism and willingness to topple democratically elected governments squandered the goodwill the U.S. held in the developing world and led to a disastrous war in Vietnam.

Anderson tells the story through the lives of four young men who played important roles in the CIA. Scott Anderson is the author of two novels and four books of nonfiction. In 2016, he authored a story about the modern history of the Middle East which took up an entire issue of The New York Times Magazine called "Fractured Lands: How The Arab World Came Apart." He spoke to me from his home in Fleischmanns, N.Y., about his new book, "The Quiet Americans."