An examination, in some depth, of the early national security state, mainly in Latin America. Herman's work is polemical, but still provides a critical analysis of the mature form of what O'Donnell called bureaucratic authoritarianism. The national security state was the form in Latin America of the right-wing reaction to the progressive movement of the 1960s and 1970s in the developing world. Supported by the United States, it used repression and claims of defending the nation in order to justify the harshest repression.