A Word From Our Sponsor: The Might Wurlitzer by Hugh Wilford Reviewed

Glazer, Nathan. "A Word From Our Sponsor" Review of The Mighty Wurlitzer by Hugh Wilford, The New York Times, January 20, 2008.

Excerpt: This is a book whose content somewhat contradicts its title. “Mighty Wurlitzer” was the metaphor Frank Wisner, the first chief of political warfare for the Central Intelligence Agency, used to describe the C.I.A.’s “array of front organizations.” They were, he said, “capable of playing any propaganda tune he desired.” But Wisner rather exaggerated what he was able to do, as one learns from this remarkably detailed and researched book by Hugh Wilford, a British scholar now at California State University, Long Beach. For these organizations were not exactly “front organizations” as the term was understood by the Communist Information Bureau, or Cominform, the model that the young C.I.A. was trying to match.

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