Nick Cullather

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Nick Cullather is an American historian and professor of history at Indiana University. His research interests include US diplomatic history and intelligence, and he is notable especially for his studies of the role of the CIA in coups and nation building in Latin America.

Contents

Biography and career

Cullather graduated from Indiana University (AB 1981) before working as press secretary for US Representative Lee H. Hamilton in the 1980s. [1] [2] He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1993.

Cullather was recruited by the CIA as a graduate student in 1992 to investigate documents pertaining to PBSuccess, the operation that led to the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, as part of a larger review meant to determine which documents could be declassified. The result of that study was Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954. Many of the documents discussed in the book had already been publicized by Philip Agee and others; [3] Cullather's study, "the facsimile reproduction of an internal agency study", [4] was released in 1997 before the CIA, in mid-1998, "aborted the entire declassification process". Cullather's study, according to Lars Schoultz, is "an exceptionally valuable document-not simply a lucid chronicle of who did what to whom, but a vivid cautionary tale about how the cloak of secrecy allowed government officials to avoid questions of perspective, of proportion, and of right and wrong". [3] Historian Greg Grandin called it "an extremely important scholarly and pedagogical work". [5]

Cullather's study of Philippines–United States relations, "Based on extensive research in U.S. and Philippine archives", [6] was the subject of his 1994 book Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States-Philippines Relations, 1942–1960. He argued that these relations were not as dominated by the United States as conventional wisdom dictates, that the client-patron relationship is often a complicated dynamic [7] (for instance, the US were interested in military bases while the Philippines sought to control their own economy [8] ), and that "American influence--so often portrayed as fact in United States documents--is in many ways illusory". [7]

Cullather was an editor at The Journal of American History , [9] and is interviewed as an expert in a movie on gold mining in Guatemala, Gold Fever. [10]

Selected works

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Operation PBHistory was a covert operation carried out in Guatemala by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It followed Operation PBSuccess, which led to the overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in June 1954 and ended the Guatemalan Revolution. PBHistory attempted to use documents left behind by Árbenz's government and by organizations related to the communist Guatemalan Party of Labor to demonstrate that the Guatemalan government had been under the influence of the Soviet Union, and to use those documents to obtain further intelligence that would be useful to US intelligence agencies. It was an effort to justify the overthrow of the elected Guatemalan government in response to the negative international reactions to PBSuccess. The CIA also hoped to improve its intelligence resources about communist parties in Latin America, a subject on which it had little information.

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References

  1. ↑ Rosenstiel, Thomas B. (24 March 1986). "Parable for Press: Espionage--Coverage Poses Risks". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 2 May 2013.
  2. ↑ "Hoosier Will Lead House Iran Probe". Kokomo Tribune . 18 December 1986. p. 20. Retrieved 2 May 2013.
  3. 1 2 Schoultz, Lars (2000). "Rev. of Cullather, Secret History". The Journal of American History . 87 (2): 735–36. doi:10.2307/2568893. JSTOR   2568893.
  4. ↑ Granding, Gregory (2001). "Rev. of Cullather, Secret History". Journal of Latin American Studies . 33 (33): 656–57. doi:10.1017/s0022216x01456173. JSTOR   365374.
  5. ↑ Grandin, Gregory (2001). "Rev. of Cullather, Secret History". Journal of Latin American Studies . 33 (33): 656–57. doi:10.1017/s0022216x01456173. JSTOR   365374.
  6. ↑ May, Glenn Anthony (1996). "Rev. of Cullather, Illusions of Influence". The American Historical Review . 101 (1). JSTOR   2169392.
  7. 1 2 Merrill, Dennis (1995). "Rev. of Cullather, Illusions of Influence". The Journal of American History . 82 (3): 1275–76. doi:10.2307/2945251. JSTOR   2945251.
  8. ↑ Biedzynski, James (1995). "Rev. of Cullather, Illusions of Influence". Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies . 9 (1): 128–30. JSTOR   40860511.
  9. ↑ Evans, Crystal (12 September 2005). "SAU to host annual Walz Lecture". Southern Arkansas University . Retrieved 2 May 2013.
  10. ↑ Boddiger, David (14 April 2013). "Global gold frenzy has devastating impact on Guatemala's Mayans". The Tico Times. Retrieved 2 May 2013.
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