The coups in Iran and Guatemala were symptoms of a larger pathology, namely, the delegation by the American president and Congress of enormous power and resources to a largely unaccountable and opaque agency to conduct a range of subversive and violent operations against the nation’s enemies. Here, in the story of the growth of the CIA, is the most striking evidence that Eisenhower, who warned later generations about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, did so much to build it.1
