Organizing for the ‘gray zone’ fight: early Cold War realities and the CIA’s Directorate of Operations

David P. Oakley

Small Wars and Insurgencies, 2019, vol. 30, issue 1, 62-80

Abstract: Despite its portrayal as something new, the concept of the ‘gray zone’ is not novel. It was the Cold War battleground in which the USA and the Soviet Union waged rival unconventional campaigns, and it was there that the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was given responsibility for operating. This was not the organization’s original purpose, but Cold War exigencies forced Washington to improvise and build an organization with unique capabilities. These early years shaped the CIA’s operations directorate, creating two distinct cultures within the larger agency, one focused on intelligence collection and the other focused on covert action.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09592318.2018.1552430 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:30:y:2019:i:1:p:62-80

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/fswi20

DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2018.1552430

Access Statistics for this article

Small Wars and Insurgencies is currently edited by Paul Rich

More articles in Small Wars and Insurgencies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().