Interview of Thursday, 13 May 2021 with David Robarge PhD, CIA Chief Historian, PDB Editor. Host-Interviewer: AFIO President James Hughes, a former CIA Operations Officer.
TOPIC: Dr Robarge discusses “CIA and Covert Action” — the complexities, pros and cons, of covert action, with examples throughout modern U.S. history.
The presentation, which uses extensive number of PowerPoint slides, runs 76 minutes.
Dr Robarge mentions the ODNI release of Vietnam Tet Offensive material, which was a multi-agency collaboration between CIA, NSA, DIA and NGA. A link to those documents is here: https://www.odni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2019/item/1985-intelligence-community-completes-third-release-of-declassified-tet-offensive-documents
BIOS:
Dr. DAVID ROBARGE received his Ph.D. in American History from Columbia University. After teaching at Columbia and working for banker David Rockefeller and at the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia, he joined CIA in 1989 and later became a political and leadership analyst on the Middle East. Dr. Robarge moved to the CIA History Staff in 1996 and was appointed Chief Historian of the CIA in 2005. He has published several classified works as well as unclassified monographs on the CIA’s supersonic A-12 reconnaissance aircraft and intelligence in the American Revolution. His biography of Director of Central Intelligence John McCone was recently declassified. His articles and book reviews on CIA leaders, counterintelligence, covert action, and technical collection have appeared in Studies in Intelligence, Intelligence and National Security, The Journal of Intelligence History, and The Oxford Handbook of Intelligence and National Security. Dr. Robarge has taught intelligence history at George Mason University and Georgetown University and also has written a biography of Chief Justice John Marshall.
JAMES R. HUGHES currently serves as the 17th President of AFIO. His service began January 2015. He had a career of US Government service spanning 37 years in numerous foreign countries with a particular focus in the Middle East. He started in U.S. Military Intelligence in the late 1960s and then joined the CIA’s Clandestine Service. He served overseas as a Chief of Station several times, and at CIA Headquarters in a number of senior management positions, including as Chief of the Near East and South Asia Division, in the Directorate of Operations [today’s National Clandestine Service]. He was also named the Associate Deputy Director of Operations (ADDO) at the National Security Agency, 1998-99. Following his retirement from the government in 2005, he joined EDS in Herndon, Virginia, as the Client Industry Executive for the U.S. Intelligence Community. After the HP acquisition of EDS, he continued to serve in a similar capacity until his retirement in 2012. His parents were missionaries in Turkey in the 1950s, where Jim spent his formative years. He is fluent in Arabic.
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