When the CIA’s connections to the Paris Review and two dozen other magazines were revealed in 1966, the backlash was swift but uneven. Some publications crumbled, taking their editors down with them, while other publishers and writers emerged relatively unscathed, chalking it up to youthful indiscretion or else defending the CIA as a “nonviolent and honorable” force for good. But in an illuminating new book Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, writer Joel Whitney debunks the myth of a once-moral intelligence agency, revealing an extensive list of writers involved in transforming America’s image in countries we destabilized with coups, assassinations, and other all-American interventions.

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