Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA

by David H. Price

During the early Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency created dozens of funding fronts to finance projects producing work that supported CIA goals, from clandestine operations and research to liberal anticommunist programs. While investigative journalists and congressional inquiries exposed many of these fronts, little detail is known about their daily internal workings. With a specific focus on the 1950s and 1960s Asia Foundation, Cold War Deceptions provides a rare view into the bureaucratic functioning of a covert operation in which most employees did not know they were working for the CIA. Drawing on the foundation's extensive surviving archival records and thousands of pages of declassified CIA documents, David H. Price examines how the foundation, secretly created and funded by the CIA, tried to shape Asian political, economic, intellectual, and cultural developments during the early years of the Cold War. Uncovering how unwitting scholars were used to support pro-American and anticommunist positions, Price also questions the impacts of political forces on shaping disciplinary knowledge and considers how these past events connect to the present.

358 pages, Paperback

First published February 13, 2024

Reviews

[Mia Burke · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA, anthropologist David H. Price uncovers how a seemingly independent nonprofit became one of the most effective covert instruments of U.S. influence in Asia. Drawing on foundation archives and declassified intelligence records, Price demonstrates that the Asia Foundation – publicly committed to philanthropy, education, and democracy promotion – was in fact deeply entangled with CIA funding and strategy during the Cold War. Price reconstructs the Asia Foundation’s complex history, tracing its establishment in the 1950s with substantial CIA support and how its programs were carefully designed to counter Communist influence across the region. Price begins by situating the Foundation’s origins and leadership within the broader landscape of Cold War soft power, highlighting the deliberate concealment of CIA ties from many staff and beneficiaries. Under the guise of neutral civic development, Price explains how academic scholarships, cultural exchanges, journal publications, and legal reforms were all funded and employed to shape intellectual, cultural, and political life in ways favorable to U.S. strategic objectives. The latter half of the book focuses on the public exposure of the CIA connection in the late 1960s and the resulting crisis of credibility for the Foundation. Price situates this within broader debates about the independence of academic inquiry and the manipulation of knowledge under conditions of covert patronage.

His central thesis is that the Foundation’s programs, from academic fellowships to cultural exchanges, were not neutral acts of development but carefully orchestrated forms of soft power that shaped knowledge, politics, and culture in ways favorable to American interests.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.7