Since @TheAtlantic excerpt from FREEDOM'S LABORATORY doesn't include citations, a couple of people have (reasonably!) asked what it's based on. A short thread. theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
Chapter 3, from which the excerpt is drawn, is probably the thing closest to "high diplomatic history" in the book. It's an institutional and administrative history of the origins of the U.S.'s involvement in Cold War-era psychological warfare and propaganda.
As such, it primarily relies on the tools of high diplomatic history, particularly materials made available through @HistoryAtState 's FRUS series. history.state.gov/historicaldocu…
I found the two retrospective volumes on the origins of the intelligence establishment (from 1945-1950 and 1951-1955, respectively), particularly helpful. history.state.gov/historicaldocu…
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But since "high diplomatic history" isn't really my speciality, it also of course draws on the work of prior scholars on this topic, particularly Walter Hixon, Scott Lucas, Nicholas Cull, Laura Belmonte, Michael Hogan, and Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones.
What's tricky about reconstructing a narrative on this topic is that a number of important documents, particularly NSC 4/A, were only declassified in the 2000s, after the publication of some key works (i.e., Hixson and Lucas).
It's not so much that the secondary accounts contradict each other as that they have strategic holes/knowledge gaps that the authors write around, with each successive author filling in another piece. The literature makes A LOT more sense once you understand that.
The methodology used in this chapter isn't particularly representative of the research in the rest of the book, which mostly draws on institution and individual archives, as well as declassified materials available through gov't FOIA sites & my own requests.
The book has an extensive note on sources explaining what sorts of things I used, what sorts of things I avoided, and why. tl;dr: It's mostly textual sources from archives.
If you were interested in researching/writing about Project Troy in particular, or the origins of U.S. Cold War-era psychological warfare in general, your best bet would be to start with the @TrumanLibrary, whether in person or online. trumanlibrary.org/online-collect…
In any case, if you're wondering about the source of a specific thing in the excerpt, please ask! I'm *always* thrilled to have something in The Atlantic, but I would have written things slightly differently for online.
Or just buy the book, lol. jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/freedo…
