Dynamiken des Misstrauens. Nachrichtendienste und Öffentlichkeit in der westlichen Welt seit 1945

1960s America is typically regarded as an era in which the liberal consensus of the previous decade gave way to an age of social fracture. This paper will explore how public scandals surrounding CIA covert actions in the sixties both facilitated and were facilitated by this growing age of fracture. This presentation will argue that public perceptions and popular representations of the CIA in the 1960s offer an oblique bellwether of wider social and cultural attitudes towards the US government and its foreign policy, ultimately charting the shift from and age of consensus to an age of dissent

The claim for public trust in democracy often collides with the public distrust in secret intelligence, since by their very nature, they cannot meet democratic transparency standards. Therefore, trust in the democratic system perhaps is dependent on mistrust in secret intelligence. Looking at the case studies of Germany and Britain, this presentation will compare the dynamics, which from time to time threatened or even destroyed the fragile arrangements created to balance the arcane sphere of intelligence and public mistrust.

This contribution examines the role of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in the (West-) German media landscape since the 1960s. It is generally believed that the service has continuously been regarded lowly by mass media and had to struggle with its image as a costly band of amateurs. However, this examination of press coverage of “BND scandals” reveals the German mass media showed restraint in their reporting, especially in comparison with intelligence coverage by Anglo-American investigative journalists. national (security) politics in West German political culture?