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."Once our enemies are defeated the demand will beequally pressing for information that will aid in solving theproblems of peace."This requires two things:1.That Intelligence control be returned to thesupervision of the President.2.The establishment of a central authority reportingdirectly to you."On careful scrutiny, this is a most unusual memorandum to bewritten during time of war to the Commander in Chief of the greatestmilitary force ever assembled.First there is the assumption, and perhapseven an implied criticism, that the control of Intelligence was not underthe President, or that the President had lost control of that aspect of themilitary effort world wide.(Later historians may be able to probe thedepths of Donovan's feelings about General MacArthur by delving into themeaning of such papers as that memo.) The other veiled criticism was hisproposal that the central authority be made to report directly to thePresident.By this, Donovan hoped that Roosevelt might establish such acentral authority, that would be himself, and that he might thereby gainascendancy over his arch rivals, J.Edgar Hoover, the Navy, and most ofall, General Douglas MacArthur.The germ of these ideas lived throughout the following quarter-century.Even today, there are those who still propose that the DCI beassigned to the immediate Office of the President.The zeal within the"silent arm of the President", as the intelligence service is fondly called byits own, is so strong that they have created a special meaning for thephrase, "the immediate Office of the President".It might generally beconsidered that the Cabinet is part of this office, but what the Intelligencebuffs mean is that the DCI would be above or, to put it more precisely,equal to and separate from the Cabinet.From General Donovan's daydown to the present time, it has been the goal of a good segment of theintelligence community to install their Director next to the President.Theyalways claim that the reason for this is so that the President may alwayshave at his elbow the best and most current intelligence available.This,too, is a master cover story.Just like General Donovan and his clan, whatthey really want is the place at the elbow of the President, unfettered bythe Secretaries of State and Defense, in order to have their way with thefunction of Special Operations.Of course, what follows from this is whatwould amount to having the ability to make and to control the foreignpolicy and military policymaking machinery of this country.We shallhave more to say about this.It suffices now to point out where and whenthe seed was planted.Shortly after the war had ended, President Truman dissolved theOSS.On September 20, 1945, certain functions of the OSS weretransferred to the Departments of State and of War.Although the UnitedStates did not delay in disbanding her military might as soon as the warhad ended, no group was terminated faster than the OSS.Some of thepressure to dissolve this agency came from the FBI, the Department ofState, the Armed Forces, the Bureau of the Budget, and from PresidentTruman's own belief that the "fun and games" was over.He felt that therewould be no need for clandestine activities during peacetime, and hemeant to devote his time to winning a peace of lasting duration for thegeneration which had fought its way through the worst depression inhistory and then through the most terrible war in history.In this rapid divestiture of its clandestine wartime service, only twosections were saved.The Secret Intelligence Branch and the AnalysisBranch were tucked away among the labyrinth of the departments of Stateand War, where a few dedicated veterans labored quietly through aprecarious existence to preserve files and other highly classified materials.Had it not been for the professionalism and zeal of this group ofresponsible men, these files that had been created during the war wouldhave been lost.Had they been lost or destroyed, or most serious of all, hadthey been compromised, they might have occasioned the deaths ofhundreds of agents who had risked their lives for the United States andwho lived in constant fear lest they be exposed in their homelands, whichhad fallen under Soviet control.Fortunately, these records, along withirreplaceable talent, were saved.Thus ended an era of war-time inspiredclandestine activity, the contagion of which was sufficient to infect a newgeneration of intelligence professionals for the next twenty-five years._______1.Sanche de Gramont, The Secret War, New York, G.P.Putnam's Sons, p.29.Next | ToC | Prevback to JFK | ratville times | rat haus | Index | SearchNext | ToC | PrevChapter 3An Overview of the CIASECTION II: Origins of the Agencyand Seeds of Secret OperationsBy the end of world war II it was abundantly clear that the U.S.must have a central intelligence authority.The mistakes which were made,more by omission than by commission, by the intelligence communityduring the war were serious.This country could never again afford theluxury of overlooking the need for reliable intelligence.The witch huntthat took place right after the war in an attempt to fix the blame for thedisaster at Pearl Harbor was indicative of the depth of the problem.Afterthe war, it became clear to many that we had seriously overestimated thestrength of the Japanese and that we had as a result seriously overrated thetask that confronted the Russians in moving their eastern armies acrossManchuria against the Japanese at the end of the war.In addition to these rather obvious criticisms, there was the fact ofthe atomic bomb.It had been developed in great secrecy under theManhattan Project; but once it had been demonstrated at Hiroshima andNagasaki, it was no longer a secret.Scientists all over the world would beattempting to solve the bomb's problems, knowing now that it was entirelyfeasible and practical, and their own intelligence and spy networks wouldbe trying to steal the secrets of the bomb from the United States.This putanother serious burden upon the intelligence community.Not long after the cessation of hostilities, the first measures towardthe establishment of a central intelligence authority were announced.Lessthan six months after the end of the war the President set up the CentralIntelligence Group.The New York Times on January 23, 1946, reportedthat President Truman established a National Intelligence Authoritycomposed of the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy.It was to be headedby a Director of Central Intelligence.The DCI would have at his disposalthe staffs and organizations of all government intelligence units, includingthose overseas, and would undertake "such services of common concern asthe National Intelligence Authority determines can be more efficientlyaccomplished centrally" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]