Summary Of Richard Immerman's The Hidden Hand

Richard Immerman bookends his monograph, The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA, with reflections on the role of public expectations in the shaping of the CIA’s image, both externally and internally. In-between, Immerman attempts to reconcile the antagonism between the CIA’s actions and its fundamental task. Stated otherwise, Immerman reveals a history of the “competition between covert, particularly paramilitary operations, and its core mission of collection and analysis.” Immerman, who currently serves as a Professor of History at Temple University, has held multiple positions within the intelligence network which has granted him access to privy material. He identifies his main questions in regard to the CIA as: What it does and has

done? What it is? And finally, what it should be? While Immerman is extremely informative and insightful into the CIA’s history; his conclusions about the future of the Company remain elusive. It is evident that Immerman believes that the CIA hindered its own efficacy and image by acting against its core mission; however, he also appears reluctant and at times distrustful of third-party critics of the intelligence community. The question then remains of where or to whom the intelligence community should look towards for structure? While Immerman doesn’t fully answer this question in his book, his examination of the bureaucratic complications and organizational shortcomings of the CIA does complexly illuminate an area of not only US intelligence, but also one within public imagination.
One aspect of Immerman’s work that strongly showcases his argument for the CIA’s lack of internal cohesion is his examination of the personalities and priorities of different CIA directors and their corresponding presidents.

It is clear from Immerman’s work that he strongly believes in the influence of individual psychology on history. Peppered throughout the book are references such as “Dulles’s leadership […] were vital,” “Nixon was predisposed toward covert operations,” “Reagan had a visceral hatred of all things communist,” “Ford, with Bush as his agent, signaled policy makers,” “Turner’s combative leadership style,” and “Carter’s incoherence,” and the like. Immerman demonstrates how leadership’s priorities and foreign policy concerns differed and the way in which this affected the CIA’s institutional structure and initiatives. While compelling, however, this at times appears to contradict his statements concerning historical influences on the organization. Early in his work Immerman states that “historical circumstances, organizational interests, and bureaucratic politics, not institutional planners or risk-tasking adventurers, drove the CIA’s transformation from an agency established to collect, analyze, and disseminate intelligence to an instrument for engaging in covert, frequently paramilitary operations.” Immerman’s attention to individual personality traits does nonetheless leave his audience wondering whether leadership might not also fall into the category of

adventurers of sorts. That is not to discredit Immerman’s persuasive argument for the influence of CIA directors and US presidents, however, his top-down approach to the CIA lacks serious analysis of the internal characterization of the organization.
This emphasis on single temperaments and priorities, while at times challenging, does contribute to another one of Immerman’s stronger arguments for the lack of continuity within the CIA: the politicization of intelligence.

Since, as he establishes, leadership’s political priorities were critical to the ultimate decision in the CIA’s actions, the degree to which the CIA actually concentrated on this mission of collection and analysis depended on the perceived threats from the top. Consequently, the actual level of reliable analysis deteriorated as demonstrated by the example of ORE analysists who were “normatively risk averse” and trying to “get it right,” and provide analysis that fit into the view of their leadership. Lacking trust in their analysists’ conclusions, the CIA proved unable to supply reliable intelligence and forge “collaboration and integration.” Rather than addressing institutional problems the CIA developed a pattern that continued throughout its entire history. Even though it refers to the Reagan era, Immerman’s conclusion that in a time of crisis the CIA deemed that they “required a change in leadership more than an institutional adjustment,” could easily apply to any other period. This application of psychology to history while enlightening does detract from the reader’s understanding of a formation of a CIA “culture” that limited its intelligence analysis efficiency. Without this fundamental comprehension of a CIA “culture,” some of Immerman’s later

conclusions on the culpability of the CIA in failed international operations remain dubious.
When considering “fault” in foreign policy failures one would expect a multitude of contributing factors. While Immerman does concede to diverse contributors to international debacles, he again stresses how fault frequently lied with either the president or the CIA director. He plainly articulates the way in which directors guided CIA’s policies; however, the personalities he discusses are often pro-paramilitary operations and it is difficult to detect the dissenting side within the organizational structure of the CIA. If, indeed, the history of the CIA is a struggle between its paramilitary undertakings and its mission of intelligence analysis, the work could have benefited from less focus on the external relationship between the CIA director and the president and more on the internal conflicts between CIA leadership and analysists to understand the departure from its mission. It was this removal from its mission however that ultimately led the CIA to become synonymous with the whole American intelligence community and increased governmental dependence on them. This status as the icon of American intelligence fed into and was reinforced by the secret nature of their work, which as Immerman successfully argues led to more confusion about the CIA’s purpose and public mistrust.
It is clear that Immerman gained insight from his experiences within the intelligence community. Even though it is clear from his explicit irritation in his notes that he felt academically limited by the CIA, the subsequent redactions do illuminate the degree to which secrecy is at the heart of the CIA, especially considering that “the remaining redactions [are all] material readily available in the public domain.” Immerman shrewdly underscores the way in which lack of oversight and legislative loopholes led to a culture of secrecy and fortified the organization’s rule of “plausible deniability.” Immerman highlights how the CIA’s history of paramilitary operations caused it to be heavily relied upon by Washington and thus it became more secretive in yielding oversight to other intelligence agencies or even, “acknowledg[ing] its equivalence to the agency’s 15 “partners” in the IC.” Early legal loopholes such as National Security Act of 1947 and NSC 10/2 established a precedent of the CIA’s expansion of paramilitary operations and its usefulness for the president. Likewise, in order to maintain plausible deniability, CIA oversight was “sporadic, unsystematic, [and] incomplete.” These factors all contributed to the aura of secrecy surrounding the CIA, which much like an ouroboros, rekindled in the public’s imagination and mistrust while confounding internal understanding of the role and purpose of the CIA.
Rather than answering all the questions, he set out to explore in the preface of his book, Immerman does pose inquiries which elucidate new areas of consideration in the development of US intelligence history. Likewise, he complicates contemporary understanding of the direction of intelligence in an evolving era of increasing disclosure and transparency, whether or not that disclosure is voluntary, such as in the case of Edward Snowden. The Hidden Hand, while interspersed with ambiguities and befuddling bureaucratic constructions, fits well into the characterization of the CIA that Immerman presents. Even though it remains unanswered, Immerman’s key question of the future of the CIA and its potential to inform policymakers will remain a relevant question not only for those studying intelligence or US history but for a general population concerned with governmental ethics and international relations.