Description

Reissue of a ground-breaking investigative history of the CIA’s covert cultural mission to win hearts and minds during the Cold War – with a new foreword by Charlie English, author of The CIA Book Club

During the Cold War, the battle for ideological and economic supremacy was fought on every front. At the heart of the US’s campaign to inoculate the world against Communism and advance its own liberal democratic ideals was the CIA’s Congress of Cultural Freedom – an organisation that was as clandestine as it was powerful. Drawing on declassified documents and exclusive interviews, this book exposes the astonishing secret campaign to deploy some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West (including Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Lowell, George Orwell, and Jackson Pollock) as instruments – whether they knew it or not, whether they liked it or not – of America’s secret service.

One of the great stories of intellectual and artistic corruption by power, Who Paid the Piper? is a classic of investigative history and a landmark portrait of a period when politics and culture became dangerously intertwined.

Publisher Review

A hugely important and original book by a remarkable writer — Philippe Sands A major work of investigative history — Edward W. Said An extraordinarily good book — Ian McEwan A crucial story * The Times *