Covert capital : landscapes of denial and the making of U.S. empire in the suburbs of Northern Virginia / Andrew Friedman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Friedman, Andrew, 1974-

Series:

American crossroads ; 37.

American crossroads ; 37

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intelligence service--United States--History.

Intelligence service.

Federal areas within states.

United States.

History.

Federal areas within states--Virginia.

Buildings--Virginia, Northern.

Buildings.

Northern Virginia.

Virginia.

Physical Description:

416 pages: illustrations; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2013]

Summary:

The capital of the U.S. empire after World War II was not a city. It was an American suburb. In this innovative and timely history, Andrew Friedman chronicles how the CIA and other national security institutions created a U.S. imperial home front in the suburbs, of northern Virginia. In this covert capital, the suburban landscape provided a cover for the workings of U.S. imperial power, which shaped domestic suburban life. It was there that the Pentagon and the CIA built two of the largest office buildings in the country, during and after the war that anchored a new imperial, culture and social world. As the United States expanded its power abroad by developing roads, embassies, and villages, its subjects also arrived in the covert capital as real estate agents, homeowners, builders, and landscapers who constructed spaces and living monuments that both nurtured and critiqued postwar U.S. foreign policy. Tracing the relationships among American agents and the migrants from Vietnam, El Salvador, Iran, and elsewhere who settled in the southwestern suburbs of Washington, D.C., Friedman tells a story that recasts ideas about U.S. immigration, citizenship, nationalism, global interconnection, and ethical responsibility from the post-World War II period to the present. Opening a new window onto the intertwined history of the American suburbs and U.S. foreign policy, Covert Capital gives readers a broad interdisciplinary and often surprising understanding of how U.S. domestic and global histories intersect in many contexts and on many scales. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Covert Intimacies of Langley and Dulles 29

2 At Home with the CIA 83

3 Saigon Road: The Co-Constituted Landscape of Northern Virginia and South Vietnam 123

4 The Fall of South Vietnam and the Transnational Intimacies of Falls Church, Arlington, and McLean 163

5 Iran-Contra as Built Space: U.S. Imperial Tehran in Exile and Edge City's Central American Presence 220.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0520274652

9780520274648

0520274644

9780520274655

OCLC:

839395801

Publisher Number:

99954984580