This is a remarkably honest picture of the CIA and its operations during the Cold War. For anyone who thinks of President Eisenhower as a well-meaning, avuncular, sometime doddering Grandpa, it's almost blasphemous.
Underneath that salesman's smile lay a "pretty tough S.O.B.," as one of the talking heads puts it. And the talking heads have no particular axe to grind. One is Ike's son or grandson, who looks a lot like his forebear.
Ike's military career is skipped over, presumably covered in other episodes, but Charlton Heston's sonorous baritone carries us through the most lubricious incidents engineered by the CIA with the president's blessings.
Did we not like Mohammed Mossadeq, elected ruler of Iran, and put the business-friendly Shah in his place? You bet we did, and we did it for oil, and we're still paying for that little adventure.
There wasn't much the CIA could do to stop Fidel Castro. Cubans liked him and they disliked the current rulers of Cuba -- the American Fruit Company and the Mafia -- or, of course I mean Juan Batista.
I'm being a little ironic, I know, but the film isn't. It's a straightforward account of what our side was up to in the 1950s. The other side was hardly an improvement.
Many Americans will find this extremely informative, especially youngsters, who may not have a clear idea of what the Cold War was like -- or any idea at all.
Underneath that salesman's smile lay a "pretty tough S.O.B.," as one of the talking heads puts it. And the talking heads have no particular axe to grind. One is Ike's son or grandson, who looks a lot like his forebear.
Ike's military career is skipped over, presumably covered in other episodes, but Charlton Heston's sonorous baritone carries us through the most lubricious incidents engineered by the CIA with the president's blessings.
Did we not like Mohammed Mossadeq, elected ruler of Iran, and put the business-friendly Shah in his place? You bet we did, and we did it for oil, and we're still paying for that little adventure.
There wasn't much the CIA could do to stop Fidel Castro. Cubans liked him and they disliked the current rulers of Cuba -- the American Fruit Company and the Mafia -- or, of course I mean Juan Batista.
I'm being a little ironic, I know, but the film isn't. It's a straightforward account of what our side was up to in the 1950s. The other side was hardly an improvement.
Many Americans will find this extremely informative, especially youngsters, who may not have a clear idea of what the Cold War was like -- or any idea at all.