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How the CIA Really Won Hearts and Minds

Naïve

In Patriotic Betrayal, author Karen M. Paget meticulously documents the agency’s long infiltration of student groups around the world. But she avoids the most important question: Why?

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Gjon Mili/LIFE via Getty

In his 2004 memoir A Look Over My Shoulder, former CIA Director Richard Helms singled out Feb. 13, 1967, as the bleakest day of his career.

After a morning spent inspecting nuclear labs at Los Alamos, New Mexico, Helms received a message calling him back to Washington at once.

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