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Reagan's plan to 'make America great again'
Phil Tinline explores why Ronald Reagan's presidency was a pivotal moment for the United States – and the extent to which we can draw parallels between the country during his 1980s tenure and today
The phrase 'Make America Great Again' is indelibly associated with President Trump – yet a very similar version of the slogan – 'Let's Make America Great Again' – was in fact used by his predecessor Ronald Reagan. What can this parallel tell us about the United States of the 1980s? And does drawing such comparisons reveal anything about the US today? Speaking to Matt Elton, author and documentarian Phil Tinline offers his take.
Professor Kornel Chang revisits the three-year US occupation of the southern half of Korea that followed the Second World War, to see if opportunities were missed to prevent the bloodshed and division that followed
For three quarters of a century, the Korean peninsula has been divided between two very different regimes that are bitterly opposed to each other. But did it have to be this way? In his book, A Fractured Liberation, which has been shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, Professor Kornel Chang revisits the US occupation of the south of Korea between 1945-1948 to explore whether opportunities were missed for a better future. For today's episode, he shared his findings with Rob Attar. Kornel Chang is the author of A Fractured Liberation: Korea under US Occupation (Harvard University Press, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones
Vladislav Zubok debunks many of the popular beliefs about the Cold War, instead presenting an era of relentless change
For most of the latter half of the 20th century, the world was frozen in a standoff. The Cold War era was defined by the ideological fissure between capitalism, led by the United States, and communism, espoused by the Soviet Union. But in a new book, Vladislav Zubok challenges much of the accepted wisdom that has shaped popular perspectives about this standoff since 1991. Speaking to Danny Bird, Zubok discusses why Americans were far more ideological than their Soviet contemporaries; why decolonisation and the Global South became the ‘nuclear fuel’ that sustained the Cold War; and how the conflict’s conclusion in the 1990s continues to reverberate in global affairs to this day. Vladislav Zubok is the author of The World of the Cold War: 1945-1991 (Pelican). Buy it now from Amazon
Watergate is the ultimate American conspiracy – but what if we’ve been misunderstanding it all along?
Journalist and author Phil Tinline explores how a fake 1960s document convinced millions – and reveals what it says about fear, power and belief in modern America
In 1967, a mysterious book appeared on American shelves. It seemed to confirm the darkest suspicions of a country gripped by Cold War paranoia, grappling with increasingly controversial entanglement in the Vietnam War. Titled The Report from Iron Mountain, the book claimed to be a leaked government report, the findings of a secret think tank commissioned by the Kennedy administration to explore what might happen if the world ever achieved permanent peace. The conclusions were chilling. War, the report claimed, wasn’t just inevitable – it was essential. Without it, economies would falter, governments would lose their grip on power, and society would unravel. To preserve stability, the report proposed alternatives: mass enslavement, faked alien invasions, even environmental catastrophes staged to keep the population afraid and obedient. It's because of this report, says journalist and author Phil Tinline speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, that we’ve been getting Watergate wrong for decades. It wasn't the work of “Satanic cabals” lurking in the shadows like a demonic Illuminati. It was simply a political farce amplified by a short-lived zeitgeist. Which was made all the more galling by the fact that The Report from Iron Mountain was actually a work of fiction. How a ‘peace scare’ startled Wall Street The Report from Iron Mountain was not the work of shadowy government operatives. It was satire, authored by Leonard Lewin – a political provocation designed to question America’s military priorities and its dependence on conflict. “In early 1966, it looks for a moment like the Vietnam War is going to come to an early close, that there's going to be a peace settlement,” says Tinline, author of Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax That Duped America. “On Wall Street, the response to this prospect of peace is that the price of shares dips. It doesn't go up; it dips. That’s what's called a peace scare.” This bizarre market reaction – the fear that peace could harm the economy – inspired a group of journalists and writers to explore the idea further. Led by Lewin, they created a fictional government document that took the logic of Cold War strategy to its most absurd conclusion. Read more | How the USA & USSR became bitter enemies Tinline explains how they, “concocted this story of a top-secret government report scoping out what would have to happen if permanent global peace broke out, and how it would be a disaster”. The result was a deadpan satire dressed as a classified white paper – complete with footnotes, official-sounding language and the cold, analytical tone of real government reports. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-2083151782-9dde249-e1753450019322.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="On 23 December 1967, President Lyndon B Johnson addresses American troops at Cam Ranh Bay during a brief stopover in Vietnam. The visit followed the funeral of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt and came at a tense moment in the escalating conflict." title="President Johnson In Vietnam" /> A satire that seemed all too real “The aim of the satire was very clear, I think,” says Tinline. “It was to make people think.” But The Report from Iron Mountain didn’t just make people think. For many, it confirmed their deepest fears. It didn’t look like parody. It looked like proof. Even the White House, for a brief time, feared it might be genuine. Instead of being merely a thought-provoking, authority-challenging piece of fiction disguised as a mock-report, it snowballed into a greater conspiracy: one that would then go on to pour rocket fuel onto other conspiracies that emerged throughout the 1960s and ‘70s. But why was it so convincing? “The key thing is that it is based on some truth,” says Tinline. The report echoed real attitudes held by some figures in the upper echelons of power. But, he explains, the satire “exaggerates them to the point of absurdity”. In the aftermath of the satirical report, following the turbulence of the 1960s (which had seen a string of shocking assassinations, the Moon landing, botched invasions and moments of nuclear crisis) the line between fiction and reality was becoming harder to draw. Read more | Did NASA fake the Moon landing? And then, in the early 1970s, came Watergate – a real conspiracy that seemed to vindicate the public’s worst suspicions. From Iron Mountain to Watergate The satirical report was published during Lyndon B Johnson’s presidency, at the height of the Vietnam War. But its influence lingered – and arguably laid the groundwork for the public’s response to the presidential scandal that would bring down Johnson’s successor, the Republican president Richard Nixon. “Unlike The Report from Iron Mountain, the thing about Watergate is that it's a real conspiracy.” In 1972, operatives linked to Nixon’s re-election campaign broke into the Democratic Party’s headquarters at the Watergate complex. The burglary itself was clumsy – but the subsequent cover-up, and Nixon’s direct involvement, created a political firestorm that led to resignations, impeachment proceedings and his eventual resignation. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-515451050-1bc423d-e1753449826192.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="On 8 August 1974, tourists read headlines outside the White House as news spreads of President Richard Nixon’s impending resignation amid the Watergate scandal. That evening, Nixon announced he would step down, becoming the first US president to resign from office." title="Tourists Reading Nixon Resignation Headline" /> But while Watergate is often remembered as proof of how sprawling and dark government conspiracies can be, Tinline believes this interpretation misses the point. “Watergate is a specific conspiracy which was largely plotted in one building by a very small bunch of people who are highly connected with each other and have connections to the president,” he says. “That is not showing us a generalised nefarious web of dark, sinister power stretching across Washington and through all the agencies, explaining the Kennedy assassination and anything else.” Read more | The 5 most notorious presidents in US history Instead, he argues, Watergate shows something else entirely: a strange mixture of fragility and incompetence. “It’s a bunch of men who are making a shabby decision and eventually getting caught out for it. It seems to suggest enormous power, but actually it suggests weakness. The only reason it happens, you could argue, is that [those involved in Watergate] don't have enough confidence in themselves to think they're going win the 1972 election fairly.” That, he concludes, “is not the work of Satanic cabals”. While The Report from Iron Mountain positioned the state as a calculating machine – coolly staging wars and disasters to maintain control – Watergate revealed something far more relatable: the idea that right at the top of the US government was a small group of anxious, paranoid men making reckless decisions rooted in personal ambition. But by the time of Watergate, the public had spent years being primed to see hidden hands and dark networks everywhere. In that climate, even a very localised and specific conspiracy took on epic proportions. Taking root in the fertile ground sown by The Report from Iron Mountain, Watergate became an archetypal conspiracy that has overshadowed everything subsequent to it. This article is based on an interview with Phil Tinline, speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. The Cuban Missile Crisis: World on the Brink Member exclusive | In this HistoryExtra podcast series, we explore the roots of the Cold War standoff and meet the key players in the confrontation. We track the pivotal 13 days at its centre, and the Cold War alliances that saw diplomatic tensions escalate to breaking point Listen to all episodes now
Iron Mountain: the conspiracy that duped America
Journalist Phil Tinline unpacks the impact and influence of The Report From Iron Mountain – a satirical document that unintentionally put rocket fuel under the conspiracies and paranoia of the 1960s
As the war in Vietnam spiralled out of control, US president Lyndon B Johnson was confronted by a different type of threat: a fake report so convincing that it tricked Americans into believing dangerous disinformation. But that was never the intention. Revisiting The Report From Iron Mountain, journalist Phil Tinline speaks to James Osborne, to reveal how a satirical report evolved into something far more sinister than anyone could have predicted. Phil Tinline is the author of Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and its Sinister Legacy (Apollo, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones
Is Oppenheimer a true story? Meet the real Robert Oppenheimer, ‘father of the atomic bomb’
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer tells the story of the creation of the atomic bomb, a weapon so powerful that it redefined the world order. And at the centre of its development was of the first nuclear weapon, and the paradoxes and moral questions that dogged him for the rest of his life
Few famous scientists have left quite as complex a legacy as J Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb' who reflected, in aftermath watching the raw power of the first ever nuclear test in 1945, "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer's moral quandaries and personal demons nestled alongside his scientific brilliance, and all are explored in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which tells the story of the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. Starring Cillian Murphy ( perhaps known to history fans for his role in Peaky Blinders) in the title role, the film follows Oppenheimer’s journey from acclaimed theoretical physicist to director of the top-secret Los Alamos laboratory, where he led team of brilliant minds in a race to unlock the destructive power of the atom. The star cast also includes Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Robert Downey Jr as Lewis Strauss, and Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves. But is any of what we see in the film true? Read on for a full breakdown of the real history in Oppenheimer. Is Oppenheimer a true story? Yes, Oppenheimer is based on true events. The film tells the story of J Robert Oppenheimer, a real-life American physicist who played a central role in the Manhattan Project, the United States’ secret programme to develop the first atomic bomb, which began in 1942. Kitty Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss, Jean Tatlock, General Leslie Groves – they were all real historical figures who shaped Oppenheimer's life and work. So too were the questions around his political leanings, and the intense scrutiny he endured during the post-war era. Briefed with weaponising atomic energy, the 38-year-old Oppenheimer was chosen by General Leslie Groves to head up the project’s secret research laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and oversaw the development of the world’s first atomic weapons between 1943-45. Prior to taking up the post, he had carried out research into the quantity of radioactive material that would be required to make an atomic weapon, and how destructive it might be. Such insight proved indispensable to the project’s ultimate success. “Everyone we interviewed about his years in Los Alamos always mentioned that the atomic bomb would never have been produced in two and a half years if they had chosen anyone other than Oppenheimer. It turned out that he was a brilliant administrator, and was very persuasive at getting all these large-ego minded scientists to work together.” That was Kai Bird, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, speaking to us on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast about the physicist’s life and unique value to the project. Oppenheimer was anti-fascist in his political leanings, explains Bird, and this was his major motivation for building what he called “the gadget”. He knew from the physics that such a weapon was possible; it was simply a large engineering problem. He feared that the German physicists with whom he had studied in the 1920s were just as capable of building this weapon, and believed that they would gift it to Adolf Hitler and Germany would win the war. “He was very fearful that they were way too far behind,” says Bird. “And this gave him the motivation to work hard and to inspire other physicists and scientists at Los Alamos to build the gadget.” An important part of his brilliance, says Bird, is that he was a polymath. “He loved quantum physics, but he also loved the deserts of New Mexico. He first went to New Mexico when he was an 18-year-old, and he fell in love with horseback riding and the very spartan cowboy existence out there.” Oppenheimer also loved French poetry and the novels of Ernest Hemingway, and he also acquired an interest in Hindu mysticism and read the Hindu scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita. “He taught himself Sanskrit so he could read it in the original,” says Bird. It was this multifaceted brilliance that was part of his appeal, says Bird. He differed from other theoretical physicists as he was able to explain concepts in “plain English” and was also a charismatic speaker, though Bird notes that he could also be shy and reticent. He was “very complicated”, says Bird. “He could be sweet and patient with his students, and then in the presence of authority figures, he could suddenly become brusque and even rude. And, of course, this was part of his downfall later.” Watch now: Is Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer guilty of perpetuating a historical myth? View Green Video on the source website Kitty Oppenheimer: who was Robert Oppenheimer married to? J Robert Oppenheimer was married to Kitty Oppenheimer (formerly Kitty Puening). A German American biologist and botanist, Puening studied mathematics, biology, and chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1920s, and in the early 1930s became a member of the Communist Party of the America (CPA). Prior to meeting Oppenheimer in 1939, Kitty had been married three times, and was married to her third husband, Richard Stewart Harrison, when her relationship with the physicist began. Kitty became pregnant with their first child in the autumn of 1940, and soon afterwards she obtained a divorce from Harrison, which left Robert and Kitty free to marry in November 1940. A keen horsewoman and lover of the outdoors, Kitty joined Oppenheimer to live in the desert town in Los Alamos, where she worked as a biologist on the health group of the Manhattan Project, conducting blood tests to assess the danger of radiation, before she became pregnant again. During this period, she also suffered with depression and alcohol issues, in part due to the isolation of the military facility. She survived Oppenheimer by four years, dying of an embolism in 1972. What was Oppenheimer’s relationship with Jean Tatlock? Oppenheimer also had an enduring relationship with Jean Tatlock, a woman whom he met in the early 1930s. She was a psychiatrist and also a member of the Communist Part of America, and is often credited with introducing Oppenheimer to radical politics. Some historians have suggested that Oppenheimer and Tatlock were romantically involved following Oppenheimer’s marriage to Kitty in 1940; though their relationship had broken off in 1939, Oppenheimer continued to visit Tatlock in San Francisco until 1943. Tatlock suffered from clinical depression and died by suicide in 1944. Was Oppenheimer a communist? There is no direct evidence that Robert Oppenheimer was a communist, but many people close to the physicist were either members of the party – including Kitty, Jean, and his brother Frank Oppenheimer – or had links to its activity. “Any attempt to label Robert Oppenheimer a party member is a futile exercise,” wrote Kai Bird and the late Martin Sherwin in their 2005 biography, “as the FBI learned to its frustration over many years.” Though Sherwin and Bird concluded that Oppenheimer didn’t join the party himself, he did contribute to Communist Party activities, including an effort to desegregate a public swimming pool in California, and a fund to buy an ambulance to ship it to the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. These associations would “haunt him with the American political authorities and the FBI”, explains Bird. “He fell under FBI surveillance as early as 1940. And by 1954, his FBI file had grown to be about 8,000 pages.” Did Oppenheimer really say, “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”? The line is often associated with Oppenheimer, who quoted “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, after the successful detonation of the Trinity nuclear weapon in July 1945. He did say it, but not right away. Immediately afterwards, explains Bird, the physicist turned to his brother Frank and simply said: “It worked.” It wasn’t until a few days later, when he was interviewed by the New York Times, that Oppenheimer quoted the Hindu scripture. “He had a very theatrical sense to him,” says Bird. “He knew how to get up on the stage and perform.” Oppenheimer himself later spoke of the moment in a 1965 NBC documentary: “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture.” The Trinity bomb was successfully tested on 16 July, producing the estimated equivalent of 20,000 tonnes of TNT. German-born Rudolf Peierls recalled that the brilliant blinding flash “told us… we had done our job”. Yet by that time, the war with Nazi Germany was over and so Japan instead became the target. Some Los Alamos staff expressed concern that, as Japan had no bomb project, why should the operation go ahead? Though Oppenheimer grappled with the huge moral weight of deploying such a weapon, he was influenced by Danish physicist Niels Bohr who, upon a visit to the project in 1943 had asked Oppenheimer: “Robert, can you tell me, is it big enough?” – meaning, will it be significant enough to change the nature of warfare? Did Oppenheimer regret the atomic bomb? Though conflicted, Oppenheimer’s position in August 1945 was that the bomb would ignite with such explosive power that it could persuade all of humanity that the world should never again fight total warfare like the Second World War. There is evidence that the decision undoubtedly weighed heavy on Oppenheimer. Bird interviewed Anne Wilson Marks, Oppenheimer’s secretary. She recalled that one day, in the intervening three weeks between the Trinity test and the use of the bomb on Japan, Oppenheimer was muttering under his breath as they walked to work: “Those poor little people, those poor little people.” “Anne stopped him and said, ‘Robert, what are you talking about?’ And he said, ‘Well, the Trinity test shows that the gadget has worked, and now it's going to be used on a large target in Japan, meaning a city. And there are going to be innocents, thousands of innocents killed. Those poor little people.’” This shows, explains Bird, that he was painfully aware of the tragic implications of the gadget. And yet, as Bird and Martin Sherwin considered Anne Wilson Marks’s testimony when writing American Prometheus, “Marty pointed out that, chronologically, that [conversation with Anne Wilson Marks] is the same week that [Oppenheimer] was briefing some of the bombardiers who were going to be on the aeroplane that was going to drop the bomb. And he instructed them exactly at what altitude they should detonate the weapon to have the maximum destructive power, and [said] that it should be dropped on the centre of the city for to have the most destructive implications.” At 2.45am on 6 August 1945, the crew of the Enola Gay aircraft dropped a bomb named Little Boy on Hiroshima, a 4.8-tonne device that detonated with the power of 15,000 tonnes of TNT. Authorities estimated the number of deaths by December 1945 to be around 140,000 (since then, deaths from radiation-related diseases have added to the toll). Japan surrendered on 14 August 1945, five days after a second bomb devastated Nagasaki. Read more | Was the US justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War? What happened to Oppenheimer after the atomic bomb? After the detonation of the two atomic bombs in August 1945, Oppenheimer never worked on weapons again. Kitty Oppenheimer’s letters to friends tell of how in the days following the bombs, he plunged into a deep depression, and she feared for his life. As journalist Lincoln Barnett wrote in Life magazine in 1949: “Oppenheimer knew that he and his coworkers had acquired a promethian [sic] burden they could never shed.” Once somewhat recovered, Oppenheimer headed to Washington, DC for briefings on the end of the war, and in October 1945 he met with US President Harry Truman. “By this time, Oppenheimer was determined to try to persuade the president and the policy makers that they needed to understand that this is a weapon that cannot be used defensively, and that we shouldn't rely on it,” says Bird. He believed “that we should try to find some way to impose international regulations, and maybe ban it and control the technology”. President Truman didn’t respond favourably to Oppenheimer’s pro-regulation position or the suggestion that the US had blood on its hands. In response to Truman’s belief that the Russians would never be able to match the technology, Oppenheimer strongly felt that “there were no secrets to this weapon,” says Bird. “The physics was known.” Just a few weeks later in November 1945, Oppenheimer delivered a speech in Philadelphia to the American Philosophical Society, in which he said: “We have made a thing, a most terrible weapon, that has altered abruptly and profoundly the nature of the world. We have made a thing that, by all standards of the world we grew up in, is an evil thing. By so doing, by our participation in making it possible to make these things, we have raised again the question of whether science is good for man, of whether it is good to learn about the world, to try to understand it, to try to control it, to help gift to the world of men increased insight, increased power.” Read more | How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world Why is Oppenheimer known as the father of the atomic bomb? By the autumn of 1945, the Manhattan Project was public knowledge, and Oppenheimer’s position on the development of the world-changing weapons had caused him to become a household name. He was described by Life magazine as “one of the most famous men in the world, one of the most admired, quoted, photographed, consulted, glorified, well-nigh deified as the fabulous and fascinating archetype of a brand new kind of hero, the hero of science and intellect, originator and living symbol of the new atomic age." What was Oppenheimer’s relationship with Albert Einstein? In 1947, Oppenheimer took up a position as Director at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, where faculty members included one Albert Einstein. The pair later became close colleagues, and were united in their desire to highlight the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. Both were against the development of more destructive weapons such as the hydrogen bomb (H-Bomb). Such a weapon “will be 2,500 times as powerful as that which destroyed Hiroshima”, warned a 1955 manifesto by Einstein and philosopher Bertrand Russell, adding that “the best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race.” While Oppenheimer didn’t sign the Einstein-Russell manifesto, as part of the Atomic Energy Commission (an agency founded to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology) he frequently worked with Einstein and other eminent scientists to advocate for peaceful use of nuclear fission for energy production. Who was Lewis Strauss – and how did he cause Oppenheimer’s downfall? Lewis Strauss was appointed to the position of chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1953 and quickly formed a rivalry with Oppenheimer so antagonistic that it would lead Strauss to publicly challenge his character, ultimately ending in Oppenheimer's security clearance being revoked. Strauss and Oppenheimer were “like oil and water”, says Bird. “They had bad chemistry. Strauss, although he only had a high school education, prided himself on his knowledge of science and things atomic. Oppenheimer was rather dismissive of these pretensions, and he made it clear what he thought of Strauss. “Famously, he testified at the Senate in the presence of Lewis Strauss and made fun of something that Strauss had just testified to, disparaging his scientific knowledge. So Strauss acquired a deep sort of animosity for Oppenheimer.” In Strauss’s capacity as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, he had access to Oppenheimer’s FBI file – which had been open since March 1941. “Strauss got it into his head, looking at these files, that perhaps Oppenheimer was a security risk. He orchestrated a complicated series of charges against Oppenheimer, and announced that Oppenheimer either had to go through a security hearing and defend himself, or give up his security clearance altogether.” As it happened, Oppenheimer’s security clearance was set to expire in June 1954. Oppenheimer sought the opinion of his friend Einstein, who advised Oppenheimer to walk away, explains Bird, telling him that he shouldn’t have anything to do with the “witch hunt”. So why did Oppenheimer choose to fight the hearing rather than walk away? Oppenheimer felt that he needed to use his celebrity status as a scientist to inform the public and the politicians in Washington about the dangers of nuclear weapons, explains Bird. “He wanted to use his expertise for the public good and participate in the policy debates. And to do so, he needed a security clearance and otherwise he wouldn't be able to brief the president. “And, truth be known, Oppenheimer by this time had fallen in love with the status that he had, his access to the establishment and to power, to be able to walk the halls of Congress and talk to congressmen and senators and the president. There was something attractive about all this that he didn't want to give up. And in this, he was certainly politically naïve.” In the spring of 1954, Strauss orchestrated a hearing that went on for weeks, exposing many private details about Oppenheimer, his political associations and intimate life – details which were later leaked to the New York Times and other newspapers. When was Oppenheimer’s security clearance revoked? On 12 June 1954, it was recommended that Oppenheimer's security clearance not be reinstated, bringing to an end any influence he could have in government or policy. “The result was a public humiliation of America's greatest working scientist, and Oppenheimer never really recovered from it,” says Bird. “He became a public nonentity for the rest of his life.” “It was a terrible black mark on American history,” says Bird. “And Oppenheimer became essentially the sort of chief celebrity victim of the entire McCarthy era.” Oppenheimer held the position of director at the Institute for Advanced Study until 1966, a year before his death from advanced throat cancer in 1967, at the age of 62. Kai Bird is the co-author, with the late Martin Sherwin, of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005, Alfred A. Knopf). This article includes quotes from Bird, who was speaking with Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full episode now.
The CIA’s most unlikely Cold War weapon? A secret smuggling operation that terrified Soviet censors
In the aftermath of the Second World War, as the Soviet Union imposed ideological control across Eastern Europe, the CIA turned to an unexpected tactic: a covert smuggling operation designed to win hearts and minds
At the height of the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union vied for any advantage they could find. And between the various proxy wars and games of economic brinkmanship, the CIA unleashed its most unexpected weapon: books. Their ambitious and unusual plan was to smuggle banned literature into the heart of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe – and by doing so, weaken the grip of Soviet ideology on people’s hearts and minds. The books chosen (from authors including George Orwell, Agatha Christie, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Albert Camus) were specifically picked for their power to challenge authoritarianism, undermine censorship and question the doctrines of totalitarian ideology. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, journalist and author Charlie English lifted the lid on the scale and ambition of this extraordinary campaign, which spanned four decades and reached deep behind the Iron Curtain. Read more | Did the Cold War ever really end? “The ‘CIA Book Program’ was a long-running US intelligence operation that ran from the mid 1950s until about 1991,” English explains. “It succeeded in secretly infiltrating around ten million books into the Eastern Bloc over that period in a bid to undermine the draconian censorship regimes that existed in every East European country.” A war of words In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Soviet Union had expanded its influence across Central and Eastern Europe, establishing satellite states in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and beyond. With that expansion came rigid political control alongside strict ideological enforcement. Enabling this control were state censorship offices which policed what could be published, read or discussed. Large swathes of Western literature were suppressed, critical thinkers were silenced and entire philosophical traditions with rich histories (from liberalism to existentialism) were denounced as dangerous. Read more | What was the Truman Doctrine? “Every East European country that was part of the Soviet Bloc had a state censor,” says English. “The aim of it was to stop people thinking thoughts that were beyond the kind of framework of the ideology of the regime at the time.” For the CIA, this environment created opportunity. Rather than risking direct military confrontation, it decided it could chip away at communist legitimacy by exposing people to forbidden ideas. In this regard, English notes, “books were probably unrivalled at that time. The printed word was the main form of delivery of ideas”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-464426051-1-f8b05bb-e1751813826740.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="On 7 November 1957, trucks carrying missiles roll through Moscow during a parade marking the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The display of military power took place beneath a giant image of Lenin — a striking symbol of Soviet strength during the Cold War." title="Moscow. November 7, 1957. Artist: Anonymous" /> The ultimate reading list At the top of the CIA’s list for covert distribution were George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, arguably the foremost stories exploring the perils of authoritarian control and propaganda. Alongside Orwell were works by Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Milan Kundera and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose memoir-novel The Gulag Archipelago was a blistering critique of Soviet labour camps. Read more | The history that inspired Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four But the campaign wasn’t limited to heavy-hitting dissident texts. Western detective fiction, with its focus on individual agency and the power of creative and rational thinking, risked feeling revolutionary within the Soviet context. “Even Agatha Christie … was read very differently in the East,” English explains. So, unintentionally, “[Christie’s works became] a very strong argument against the communist.” The CIA’s covert cultural contraband Choosing the books was one thing, but the actual act of smuggling them into authoritarian states required more than good literary taste. The CIA worked through front organisations, often operating under the guise of charitable or cultural foundations. No shipments bore the CIA’s name, and funding was laundered through seemingly benign intermediaries. The Agency deliberately obscured its involvement to maintain deniability. But even with these fronts, a lot of creative licence was often required to get books past Soviet lines. “One book was taken in inside a baby's nappy,” says English. They also produced miniature books that could fit inside a can of baked beans. “Someone would presumably get a tin of baked beans and open it up and find that it was a copy of George Orwell, which must have been a bit of a shock,” says English. Others were hidden in false-bottomed suitcases, secret vehicle compartments or the hollowed-out interiors of seemingly innocuous objects. The CIA even developed portable printing presses, allowing dissidents to reproduce smuggled texts on the ground. Ultimately, it was a global operation, reliant on willing students, diplomats, missionaries and tourists; anyone who could cross borders and carry hidden cargo. It was also expensive, with English suggesting that the operation probably cost in the region of $4 million a year. Literature as a tool for resistance Once a book had successfully infiltrated the Soviet Union, the operation transitioned into a new phase. Dissidents copied, translated and distributed the material through underground networks, a system Soviet authorities labelled as samizdat. These illegal, often hand-copied editions passed person-to-person in secret. The risks were enormous. Read more | Stanislav Petrov: The Soviet soldier who saved the world In Poland, where the Solidarity trade union emerged as a mass movement in the 1980s, literature played a decisive role. Books helped activists formulate ideas, critique the system, and envision democratic alternatives. Meanwhile, underground publishers, such as Poland’s prolific Mirosław Chojecki (who was imprisoned more than 40 times) became incredible symbols of defiance. Cumulatively, the impact was enormous. “It was literature that won the Cold War in Poland,” says English. “Uncensored literature became so pervasive that the regime really lost control of the argument and lost control of the population.” Did the CIA’s Book Program work? By the 1980s, conversations were decidedly shifting. Communist regimes that had once controlled every channel of discourse found themselves outmatched by ideas they no longer had the political power to suppress. And while the Cold War was largely a conflict defined by arms races, space exploration, proxy wars and nuclear standoffs, a paperback novel hidden in a tin can could still pose a very real threat to a regime that required ideological control. Charlie English was speaking to Lauren Good on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. The Cuban Missile Crisis: World on the Brink Member exclusive | In this HistoryExtra podcast series, we explore the roots of the Cold War standoff and meet the key players in the confrontation. We track the pivotal 13 days at its centre, and the Cold War alliances that saw diplomatic tensions escalate to breaking point Listen to all episodes now
Charlie English explores how the CIA used literature as a secret weapon during the Cold War, by smuggling books into the Eastern Bloc
During the Cold War, the CIA book programme was a covert campaign to smuggle books into the Eastern Bloc using everything from balloon drops to baked bean tins. But why was literature such a significant weapon in the culture wars between east and west? Lauren Good speaks to author Charlie English about his book The CIA Book Club: The Gripping New History of the Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War. Charlie English is the author of The CIA Book Club: The Gripping New History of the Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War ( William Collins, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones
From Operation Snuffles to Killer Kleenex: the forgotten history of the secret Cold War experiments in Antarctica has just been uncovered
A new academic study reveals how Cold War paranoia, space medicine, and germ theory collided in one of the most bizarre scientific outposts of the 20th century. Meet the men who gave their blood and nasal mucus to NASA in the name of science…
The United States emerged from the aftermath of the Second World War a superpower. Stepping into the Cold War – and a technological arms race with the Soviet Union – the US’s new dominance within the global order meant that both powers increasingly viewed space as a scientific frontier and potential strategic domain. With this came a wave of research to answer increasingly urgent questions. Could humans survive in total isolation? What would happen to human bodies in sterile environments? And how could disease or disaster be prevented in space? NASA, the US space agency founded in 1958, was at the forefront of these investigations, not only as an engineering powerhouse but also as a pioneer in biomedical science. Now, decades on, newly published historical research shines a light on one of the strangest – and most obscure – arenas of this Cold War experimentation and biomedical testing: the frozen bases of Antarctica. In ‘Germs, infections, and the erratic 'natural laboratory' of Antarctica: from Operation Snuffles to the Killer Kleenex’ (Medical History), historian Vanessa Heggie of the University of Birmingham uncovers a remarkable and little-known chapter in the story of 20th-century science. Her research argues that Antarctica was a key pillar in global biomedical research – and a Cold War-era site of secretive NASA-backed experiments. Drawing on decades of archival material, Heggie traces the evolution of microbiological studies on the continent, from the early days of sampling to Cold War surveillance-style studies and, ultimately, experiments to mimic the environment of space on earth, backed by the American space agency. The Heroic Age of sampling Heggie’s research explains that Antarctica’s journey to become a hub of experimental testing began in the early 20th century, during the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. As germ theory gained traction in Western medicine, medical officers on polar expeditions began collecting bacteria from the environment and from their own bodies. One of these men was Dr Archibald McLean, who took part in the Australasian Antarctic Expedition from 1911 to 1914. Read more | Ernest Shackleton, the great Antarctic explorer of the Heroic Age As Heggie recounts, McLean conducted the first major attempt to study human microbes in Antarctica. He swabbed noses, throats, and skin; collected pus samples; and tested blood for immune responses. Despite the harsh conditions and limited lab equipment, McLean’s work helped overturn the myth that Antarctica was microbially ‘pure.’ His theories suggested that bacteria in the environment were not native to the region but carried by winds or humans from elsewhere. More provocatively, he observed that explorers often fell ill not during isolation, but after returning home. Could cold exposure and isolation suppress immunity? Enter Operation Snuffles By the 1950s, as the Cold War intensified and the Space Race accelerated, Antarctica gained continual strategic significance for US science. The United States Navy launched Operation Deep Freeze, establishing a presence on the continent. As part of the fourth Deep Freeze mission, one project was a large-scale microbial surveillance program with the charming name: Operation Snuffles. Led by Professor William ‘Bill’ Sladen, a British-born medic-turned-penguin-biologist, this study collected hundreds of nasal swabs and blood samples from sailors aboard the USS Staten Island and staff at remote Antarctic bases. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-598967218-Deep-Freeze-6569cc3.jpg" width="1772" height="1180" alt="A view of the flagpole and radar wind tower at Byrd Station, Antarctica, 1959. This image was taken during one of the US' Operation Deep Freeze missions (Image by Getty Images)" title="A view of the flagpole and radar wind tower at Byrd Station, Antarctica, 1959. This image was taken during one of the US' Operation Deep Freeze missions (Image by Getty Images)" /> As Heggie details in her research, the goal was to understand how infections behaved in small, isolated human populations — a concern that mirrored NASA's fears about long-duration spaceflight. The findings from Operation Snuffles, though not widely publicised at the time, were noteworthy. Certain strains of bacteria were found to persist in the human body for months, even in sterile environments, without causing illness. Infections rarely spread, even in crowded, shared quarters. Tragedy, sabotage, and lost data Operation Snuffles was no smooth scientific enterprise, and Heggie’s research brings to light the human drama behind the petri dishes. Sladen had already survived a base fire that killed two of his colleagues and, later, at Wilkes Station in 1959, another crisis struck. According to oral histories cited by Heggie, an unstable crew member deliberately destroyed medical cultures by smashing lab equipment by smashing them, derailing that season’s data collection. Other setbacks show the active agency of Antarctica in disrupting scientific research: blood samples spoiled in broken freezers, reagents froze, lab materials were lost in storms. Read more | Alternate history: what if the Soviets had landed on the Moon first and won the Space Race? NASA, the Space Race, and the Killer Kleenex But those challenges didn’t deter researchers from Antarctic testing, and Heggie’s article reveals how, by the 1970s, NASA had taken a deeper interest in Antarctic medicine. The confined, isolated bases offered a parallel to life in space capsules or lunar habitats. One unusual experiment at McMurdo Station in Antartica in 1979 involved handing out tissues impregnated with virucide — known as ‘Killer Kleenex’ — to test whether respiratory infections could be reduced. The result? Infection rates dropped dramatically. These studies fed into a larger body of space medicine research (shaped by Cold War fears and the legacies of programmes like Operation Paperclip, the plan that had quietly brought former Nazi scientists into NASA’s ranks). One man known only by his initials, WS, was studied for over 15 years, with scientists noting the evolution of his nasal staph bacteria from sensitive to penicillin-resistant. So for NASA, Antarctica became an important site where human biology could be tested under extreme conditions, and away from public scrutiny. Heggie’s research highlights that Antarctica is not as ‘pure’ as it has previously been depicted and underlines the role of Antarctica in scientific history. It reveals how Cold War anxieties turned a continent of ice into a proxy warzone for ideas about human biology and its implications for spaceflight.
Geoffrey Wawro considers the question of whether US firepower in Vietnam could ever have won out against their elusive enemy
When US forces entered Vietnam, the nation's leaders believed they could contain communism and secure victory. Instead, they found themselves trapped in a war that drained resources, divided the country, and ultimately ended in failure. Geoffrey Wawro explains to Elinor Evans how flawed strategies doomed the US campaign from the start, and why Nixon’s secret plan to end the war failed to achieve lasting 'peace with honour'. Geoffrey Wawro is the author of The Vietnam War: A Military History (Basic Books, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon