Birth of the CIA

U.S. intelligence agency created reluctantly amid Cold War fears

By Bruce Kennedy
CNN Interactive Writer

"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."

Legend has it that with that statement, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Stimson in 1929 closed down an intelligence operation that had broken the codes of many countries. Stimson's reported words seemed to sum up U.S. sentiment about espionage in the years leading up to World War II.

In December 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor -- despite warnings to the U.S. government that a Japanese carrier force was sailing toward the Hawaiian islands. The attack brought America into the war -- and remained a painful reminder of what can happen to a nation without the proper intelligence coordination.

In the prewar years, the United States relied on the FBI and the military for its secret spy work. But World War II crystallized the need for a centralized intelligence network.

In 1942, on orders from President Franklin Roosevelt, the United States set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was responsible for intelligence and secret operations. Led by William "Wild Bill" Donovan, the 13,000 agents of the OSS played an important role worldwide in the victory over fascism. But at war's end, President Harry Truman closed the OSS, fearing an "American Gestapo" -- an intelligence organization that might be used against U.S. citizens.

The emergence of the Cold War, and increasing Soviet domination in Europe, soon changed Truman's mind. He later recounted to an aide, "When I suddenly became president I had little or no knowledge how policies had been arrived at before my accession. I had information coming at me from 200 different sources and no one to boil it down for me."

The United States reorganized its defenses in 1947 with passage of the National Security Act, which created the Department of Defense, the National Security Council (NSC) and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The CIA was placed under control of the NSC, which in turn advised the president. According to the National Security Act, the CIA would advise the NSC "in matters concerning such intelligence activities ... as relate to national security." U.S. counterespionage efforts would be left in the hands of the FBI. The act said the CIA would have "no police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers or internal security functions."

Almost from its first hours, a debate was under way in the U.S. government regarding the CIA: Was its role purely defensive, or offensive as well? Rear Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the CIA's first director, wondered whether the agency had the legal right to be involved in covert actions.

After weighing the legal issues, and with the backing of Truman and Congress, the CIA began its covert operations. All such operations, according to a National Security Council directive, were to "counteract Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities which constitute a threat to world peace and security or are designed to discredit and defeat the aims and activities of the United States."

"Covert action started virtually immediately", says Melvin Goodman, professor of international security at the National War College in Washington, D.C., and a former Soviet policy analyst at the CIA. "I don't think it was intended, but it grew up with the time -- our perceptions of the Soviet threat and the need for a counter."

Goodman also notes the expected cost-efficiency of covert operations. "Truman wanted to control the (federal) budget. He perceived covert action as less risk, less funding ... a tool of convenience."

According to "Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage," by Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, the CIA soon developed a mechanism for covert operations:

"The NSC would recommend such action when it decided that some U.S. foreign policy objective could not be fulfilled by diplomatic means and when miliary action was judged to be too extreme or too dangerous. The DCI (director of Central Intelligence) would be asked to direct the action in such a way that the administration could give a plausible denial of U.S. involvement."

In 1948, the Christian Democrats won Italy's national elections. Their victory was seen as the first major step forward for the CIA, which had orchestrated covert operations in Italy to sway voters against communist candidates. But that initial success gave way to some notable failures, as the CIA tried to match the well-established Soviet intelligence system in the decades-long struggle for information.

Covert operations in the CIA, says Goodman, "grew because of what was percieved as early successes in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in '54 -- which led to the hubris of the Bay of Pigs."