Cold War intelligence: intensification and stabilization (1961–1975)

Abstract

The article analyzes the role and the transformations of U.S. intelligence services
during a critical period of the Cold War (1961-1975). In this period of time, the
information-gathering capacity was expanded, which in turn did not guarantee
the covert operations’ success and increased internal tensions over democratic
control of US intelligence services. This article applies a thick description of
historical processes in order to understand the relations between structural conditioning factors and internal contradictions of the U.S. society regarding the
expansion of its information system. The intelligence services, along with diplomacy and the military, have become an irreversible and unavoidable bureaucracy in the U.S. and were relevant in the strategic stabilization and consequent
risk reduction of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. There is also throughout
the analyzed period a trade-off between the expansion of covert operations, data
collection and the quality of the analysis. The originality of the work lies in the
approach that simultaneously considers the structural conditioning and internal
contradictions of American society to analyze the transformations of the intelligence services in the U.S.