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- GRAPEVINE, Page 29The Devil Made Them Do It
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- By PAUL GRAY/Reported by David E. Thigpen
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- Covert operations may seem to come naturally to the CIA,
- but in fact the agency was reluctant to get into that business.
- This is the surprising conclusion of Arthur Darling, the
- agency's first official historian, whose manuscript on the early
- days of the CIA has finally been declassified. The Central
- Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government, to 1950 will
- be published later this month.
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- The book portrays officials at the State Department
- vehemently arguing that undercover operations were necessary to
- combat communist expansionism, while also maintaining that dirty
- tricks should not be run out of the country. The CIA finally
- took on the task, which ever since has accounted for about 5%
- of its activity and 95% of its headaches. Darling, who died in
- 1971, taught at Yale and Phillips Academy, where he encountered
- a student named George Bush, who still calls him his all-time
- favorite professor.
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