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Civil Air Transport (CAT), founded in China after World War II by Claire Chennault and Whiting Willauer, was initially a commercial carrier specializing in air freight. Its role quickly changed as CAT became first a paramilitary adjunct of the Nationalist Chinese Air Force, then the CIA's secret "air force" in Korea, then "the most shot-at airline in the world" in French Indochina, and eventually becoming reorganized as Air America at the height of the Vietnam War. William M. Leary's detailed operational history of CAT sets the story in the perspective of Asian and Cold War geopolitics and shows how CAT allowed the CIA to operate with a level of flexibility and secrecy that it would not have attained through normal military or commercial air transportation.

Provides for the first time a complete and dispassionate history of the most discussed and least known agency in the history of the American Republic

In late 1974 the U.S. Senate Select Committee on the CIA, headed by Frank Church of Idaho, began collecting documents and materials to buttress the committee hearings on the CIA’s role and activities that were to begin in the fall of 1975. Among the materials prepared for the Church Committee is History of the Central Intelligence Agency, which was written by committee staff member Anne Karalekas.

This book reproduces the History, with an introduction by Leary that establishes the historical framework for the Church Committee hearings, and also includes ten relevant documents covering events from 1944 to 1981.