Many AHA members have expressed alarm about a post on the National Archives website regarding restricted access to Archives II in College Park, Maryland. In a message on X (formerly Twitter), which we...

The American Historical Association supports historians employed by the federal government. We appreciate the important work they do every day to preserve, chronicle, and interpret American history. T...

Tulsi Gabbard and the CIA director say Iran’s nuclear sites were ‘destroyed’, amid reports of White House efforts to limit sharing of classified information with Congress

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the YearHow the fight for civil rights in America became an important front in the Cold War

Reveals the previous underexplored influence of religious thought in building the foundations of the CIA. Michael Graziano’s intriguing book fuses two landmark titles in American history: Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness (1956), about the religious worldview of the early Massachusetts colonists, and David Martin’s Wilderness of Mirrors (1980), about the dangers and delusions inherent to the Central Intelligence Agency. Fittingly, Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors investigates the dangers and delusions that ensued from the religious worldview of the early molders of the Central Intelligence Agency. Graziano argues that the religious approach to intelligence by key OSS and CIA figures like “Wild” Bill Donovan and Edward Lansdale was an essential, and overlooked, factor in establishing the agency’s concerns, methods, and understandings of the world. In a practical sense, this was because the Roman Catholic Church already had global networks of people and safe places that American agents could use to their advantage. But more tellingly, Graziano shows, American intelligence officers were overly inclined to view powerful religions and religious figures through the frameworks of Catholicism. As Graziano makes clear, these misconceptions often led to tragedy and disaster on an international scale. By braiding the development of the modern intelligence agency with the story of postwar American religion, Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors delivers a provocative new look at a secret driver of one of the major engines of American power.

This paper explores the role of U.S. intelligence in assessing the effectiveness of national-level strategies and plans. A high-speed information environment may require a more dynamic, continuous ...

Washington’s loose lips and closer ties to Moscow could unravel Western cooperation.

A top former US intelligence expert pulls back the covers of Beijing’s espionage juggernaut

Intelligence Studies Section Panels at ISA2025

In an unprecedented humiliation, the security service apologises for “inaccurate” evidence.

Explore the lives of CIA spies in The Quiet Americans, a gripping look at espionage during the Cold War. Book review inside.