commitment to anti-communism and its effect. And you tell a story of a moment in Central America that kind of captured your own reckoning with the U.S. And you were a war correspondent in a lot of conflict zones. government, eventually became disillusioned with the policy approaches of the government and took an early retirement. You know, you write that your father, who worked for the U.S.

Thanks for having me on.ĭAVIES: You lived abroad a lot as a kid, including a long time in Taiwan, where you kind of grew up on the edges of the Cold War. It's just come out in paperback.ĭAVIES: Well, Scott Anderson, welcome back to FRESH AIR. held in the developing world and led to a disastrous war in Vietnam.Īnderson tells the story through the lives of four young men who played important roles in the CIA in his book, 'The Quiet Americans.' I interviewed him last year when the book was published. Anderson concludes that the CIA's rigid commitment to anti-communism and willingness to topple democratically-elected governments squandered the goodwill the U.S. 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. Our guest today, writer Scott Anderson, has written a 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.

We're used to a world in which American intelligence services operate with enormous power and reach. I'm Dave Davies in today for Terry Gross.

Scott anderson the quiet americans