Intelligence experts gather to explore the history of the CIA

PA145/11 Fifty years after the CIA was thrown into the public spotlight by its attempt to remove the Castro regime in Cuba in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, some of the world's leading experts on intelligence and espionage will gather for a conference at The University of Nottingham to reveal new findings about the history of the Central Intelligence Agency. 'Landscapes of Secrecy: The CIA in History, Fiction and Memory', will be held at the East Midlands Conference Centre on Friday 29th and Saturday 30th April, 2011. It will feature several guest lectures and panel sessions on such topics as: The origins of the CIA The CIA and its relations with the press, including the recruitment of journalists The CIA and its unknown operations in East Germany during the Cold War Covert action and democracy The CIA and spy fiction The CIA and conspiracy theory The CIA and declassification of its own history How the CIA was viewed by MI6 in London and the KGB in Moscow The CIA's secret spy-flights over China Why the CIA has failed on issues such as 9/11 and Iraqi weapons The conference marks the final stage of a three-year research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, which has seen a team of academics from The University of Nottingham and the University of Warwick trawling through records at the US National Archives and other repositories across the United States, as well as conducting numerous interviews. The aim of the project as a whole has been to investigate the CIA's past history, recent performance, and how it is portrayed in films, memoirs and the media.