The US intelligence community's biases during the Nigerian civil war

Abstract

The United States Intelligence Community struggled to deliver impartial and dispassionate analysis on the Nigerian Civil War. Two US presidents and the American public had strong, often emotional, responses to the 30-month conflict, which pitted the Federal Government against the secessionist Republic of Biafra. President Johnson saw the war as an unwelcome distraction, ordering aides to get those ?babies off [his] TV set?.1 President Nixon spied an opportunity, seizing on the conflict as a way to show his human side; he argued that the United States was not doing enough to ease civilian suffering in the secessionist enclave.2 Similarly, many Americans identified with Nigeria's Igbos who, aided by a slick propaganda campaign, portrayed in moving images the war's toll on Biafra's civilian population. Time and Life magazines published sympathetic cover...