Cover image of "The Determined Spy,"

Throughout its eight-decade history, the Central Intelligence Agency has racked up an extraordinary number of clandestine operations gone wrong. Of course, the agency’s defenders assert we don’t know about the many successes that have never seen the light of day as well as a few that have. One, for example, was the 1953 coup in Iran that overthrew the elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh. Regime change there brought pro-American Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi back to power. A year later, CIA operatives engineered the coup in Guatemala that replaced “Communist” President Jacobo Árbenz with pro-American Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. But there’s a problem with this slanted view of history. In both cases, regime change led to long-term catastrophe. And the man behind both operations as head of the CIA’s Clandestine Service was CIA pioneer Frank Wisner (1909-65). He’s the subject of The Determined Spy, an unsparing new biography by Douglas Waller.

A key figure in US foreign policy circles in the 1950s

If you Google the name Frank Wisner, you’re more likely to end up at a page for Frank G. Wisner. His New York Times obituary describes him as “a veteran American diplomat, Washington insider and foreign affairs specialist who relished the prestige of ambassadorial life as much as the back-channel cajoling and arm-twisting of less public influence.” Although much of that description also applies well to the subject of Waller’s biography, Frank G. Wisner was actually his son, described as Frank Jr. in the book. And it’s no accident that the son is better known today than the father, who died a tragic death at his own hand.

Frank Wisner, Senior, suffered from bipolar disease throughout much of his life, which it ended in 1965. And revisionist histories of the CIA have tended to downplay his role in the Agency’s most notorious operations, which have attracted widespread condemnation. Frank Wisner and his work have fallen out of favor. But in the 1940s and 50s, when he operated at the highest levels in the OSS and the CIA, he was widely regarded as brilliant and a key figure in US foreign policy circles. Without question, his reach extended far further than that of his son in a later era.

The Determined Spy: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner by Douglas Waller (2025) 655 pages ★★★★★

Photo of winners cheering in 1953 Iran coup
Supporters of the 1953 Iran coup d’etat cheer their victory. Image: Wikipedia

Granular detail about the operations in Iran and Guatemala

Waller devotes a great deal of detail to Wisner’s experiences in the OSS in World War II. They were instrumental in instilling in him the fierce anti-Communism that motivated so much of what he did in later years. But he also dwells in granular detail on the operations in Iran and Guatemala. Readers who are familiar with them in a general way, as I was, will no doubt be surprised by some of the detail in this biography. For example, Waller describes how the CIA’s man on the scene in Tehran, Kermit Roosevelt Jr., failed again and again to pull off the coup. The operation’s “success” in the end had at least as much to do with homegrown efforts in Iran and masterminding by British intelligence as it did with Roosevelt.

Wisner did pull strings in Washington to set the operation in motion. But he only did so at the direction of President Dwight Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers, Foster (Secretary of State) and Allen (CIA Director). Of course, few of us need any reminder of the operation’s doleful consequences, as it led to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that brought Islamist hardliners into power. And they’re still in place nearly half a century later.

Photo of Frank Wisner as a young man
Frank Wisner in his Navy uniform early in World War II. Image: ISSUU

A case study in bipolar disorder

In a sense, Waller’s biography of Frank Wisner is a case study of bipolar disorder. Formerly called manic depression, it’s a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings. Most often, the syndrome is diagnosed in the teens or early 20s. In Frank Wisner’s case as Waller describes it, the symptoms didn’t become evident until much later in life. There were hints in the 1940s, when he was in his 30s, but the most extreme symptoms didn’t emerge until the following decade, when he was director of the CIA’s Clandestine Service and under immense and unrelenting pressure. When Wisner did eventually kill himself in 1965, his wife Polly was devastated but not surprised. The man’s profound depression had been obvious for some time.

About the author

Photo of Douglas Waller, author of
Douglas Waller. Image: Wall Street Journal

Douglas Waller is the author of six nonfiction books about American espionage and military affairs, including an excellent biography of Wild Bill Donovan. Donovan ran the CIA’s forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services, which employed Frank Wisner early in his career in espionage. For long periods he woriked as a reporter for Newsweek and later TIME.

Waller was born in 1949 in Norfolk, Virginia. He holds a degree in English from Wake Forest University and a master’s in Urban Administration from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He and his wife live in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Previously I reviewed the author’s earlier biography, Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage (The remarkable spymaster who launched the US into espionage).

I’ve also reviewed two excellent books that cast additional light on the CIA’s Guatemala operation: The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen (The amazing story of America’s Banana King) and the novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, Harsh Times (When the CIA overthrew the Guatemalan government).

Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism by Karen M. Paget (How the CIA infiltrated the National Student Association) details one of the most significant elements of Frank Wisner’s career in the CIA.

You’ll find additional perspective at:

And you can always find the most popular of my 2,300 reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.