CIA Covert Operations Essay

CIA Covert Operations

The cold war started in 1947 with Truman and continued in Eisenhower’s presidency. By using the strategy of containment that George Kennan advised, the United States avoided direct aggressions with the Soviet and kept communism from spreading to other countries. In this race of technologies and weapons, the soviets placed spies in the United States, and with the information they gained, they invented their first nuclear bomb. Thus, Truman established the CIA through the National Security Act to spy Soviet’s activities. However, Eisenhower alters the role of CIA during his presidency through different covert operations that manipulated governments to benefit the United States.

In 1953, the CIA performed an undercover

The democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz threatened to nationalize the land that the United Fruit company used to make profit. For the same reason as Mossedq, Jacobo Arbenz realized that the United Fruit Company owned seventy five percent of the land in Guatemala and gained a lot of money. However, the common people in Guatemala received nothing. Thus, Arbenz wanted to nationalize those lands in Guatemala. The United Fruit Company would lose a lot of money because of those lands. They reported to the federal government implying that Arbenz was a communist. During this time, the United States was very sensitive to any communism countries and automatically grouped them with the Soviets. The United States overthrow the Guatemala government and placed a militaristic authoritarian government that was pro- American. Any country who did not openly announce that they sided with the United States were viewed as enemies. Although the moral issues behind those operations existed, Eisenhower discovered the way to forcefully gain a country’s favor without direct military aggression. Although the people did not know that the governmental changes are associated with the United States, through the CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala, Eisenhower was able to secretly force the countries to side with the United States in the Cold