T2 B3 Relevant Articles and Reports 2 of 5 Fdr- Changing American Intelligence- Draft Report- CIA History Staff 913

8/14/2019 T2 B3 Relevant Articles and Reports 2 of 5 Fdr- Changing American Intelligence- Draft Report- CIA History Staff 913

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclass i f iedChanging American Intelligence

Six Episodes

Michael WarnerC IA History S t a f f

You cannot discuss reform without reference to f o r m.O.K. Chesterton

The American intelligence establishment may not be the world ' s largest, but it issurely the costliest and it wields p erhaps the broadest range of cap abilities. For now it isalso arguably the most newsworthy. Its very prominence means that its accomplishmentsan d shortcomings, real or perceived, often appear in sharp relief. It also suggests thatsome form of intelligence reform may be likely as the W hite House and Congressdemand that intelligence do more to support the war on terrorism and military"transformation." Indeed, the press ha s reported on all ma n n e r of intelligence reformproposals since the attacks of 11 September 2001.While significant changes in the Intelligence Com mu nity seem possible, there isno consensus about what must change and how. W hat com plicates the discussion is thedifficulty of understanding how the intelligence agencies and capabilit ies fi t together as awhole how they complem ent a nd compete w ith one another, as well as how they wereconstructed and collectively develope d. Few Am er icanseven those working inintel l igencehave a good grasp of the structure as a functioning system, and even fewerhave watched that system evolve. Theoretical m ode ls of how corporations and militaryorganizations function offer some insights, but these are usually m odels of single entities,not of what the Intelligence C omm unity is a collection of offices and agencies withdifferent missions, cultures, and legal a uthorities.T he best way to understand how the Am erican intelligence establishmen t canchange might be to learn how it has in fact changed in the past. Historical examples canshow policym akers the bounds of what is possible and benefic ia l fo r intelligence in ourconstitutional order. W hile no official history of the Community exists, students ofintell igence can still glean insights from what ha s already been declassified and public lydiscussed.The following six episodes were selected and arranged in the hope of illustratingwhy American intelligence evolved as it did,what its major functions are, and how, attimes, its com pone nts have m eshed in a totality greater than the sum of its parts. Theyshow the several discip lines of the Comm unity, and how those discipline s provideactionable, secret in form ation to users, and suppo rt through clan destine activities theimplementation of US foreign and security policies. They were also chosen to illum inatethe variety of ways in which reforms of the Com mu nity have come to pass, and to showdifferent ways in which reform can be made to work.

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Defending th e Homeland in World War IThe first mission of any nation's intelligence structure is to defend the nation, i tspopulat ion, and its vital interests. Historically those nations with intelligence systemscreated them in hopes of augmenting the efforts of their military and domestic security

organizations to protect the regime from threats, both internal and external. Indeed,intelligence gradually emerged as a profession as m u c h f rom th e "domestic security"field as from the m ilitary art . This was indeed the case in the United States, where theevents that caused the federal government to create a rud imen tary but permanentintelligence establishment came about as a result of the Firs t World War.That s t ruggle tempted Germany and Bri ta in to comprom ise Am erican neut ral i tyduring the 32 months in which the United States remained aloof f rom th e conflict. Eachside wanted access to American goods and capital, and wanted to deny it to the other.The Germans took the more dangerous and r isky approach. G e r m a n y ' s noisy butcomparatively bloodless sabotage campaign in the United States reached its height in1916, when agents resorted to desperate measures to slow the f low of war materiel to theAllies. The most spectacular incident was the explosion at Black Tom pier in New Yo rkharbor, which shook th e city and caused millions of dollars worth of damage. Thecampaign w as costly to Berlin, however, because itwith G e r m a n y ' s waging ofunrest r ic ted submarine warfare convinced many Am ericans that the Kaiser was aruthless enemy of the United States.1British diplom ats and operatives had an easier task. They strove to confirm inAmer ican m i n d s th e suspicion that German agents roamed th e streets, and also to dampenW ashington 's com plaints about B r i ta in ' s blockade of Central Europe and its aggressivecensorship of cable and mail t raffic. Am erica 's react ion to the Zimm erm an Telegram inearly 1917 was in part a t rium ph for Brit ish intelligence. G e r m a n y ' s famous overture toMexico w as authentic enough, but its presentation to President Wilson w as made moreconvincing thanks to the efforts of Royal Navy codebreakers and some adroit espionageby British agents. After Am erica joined the A ll ies that April , US policymakers andsecurity services remained dependent upon the Brit ish for strategic intelligence andcounterintelligence leadsa situation that London could not help but to exploit to its ownadvantage.2The Germans and the Brit ish were able to affect public sent iment and policydecisions in America in part because of the weakness of this nation's security andintelligence statutes and services. In 1914 no federal law ban ned peacetime espionagean d sabotage, which meant that federal agencies had no warrant to investigate th eGerman campaign, and that bewildered local authorit ies were left to their ow n devices.Congress redressed the first problem by passing the Espionage Act of 1917, th e statutethat still unde rgird s Am erican counter intelligence law. Passage of the Act alsoempowered th e Justice Department to tackle th e second problem; it s Bureau of

Michael Warner , "The Kaiser Sows Destruction: Protecting the Homeland the First TimeAround," Studies in Intelligence 46:1 (2002), pp. 3-9.2 Christopher Andrew, For the President 's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the AmericanPresidency from W ashington to Bush (New Yo rk: H arperC ollins, 1996 [1995]), pp. 38-52.

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassifiedInvestigation took the lead in the natio n's counterattack on German operatives. TheBureau (which was renamed the FBI in 1935) has been the premier Americancounterintelligence service ever since, in part because of J. Edgar Hoover's determinat ionto professiona lize it in order to ensure that foreign agents never again mounted anothersabotage cam paign on Am erican soil.The larger effort against sabotage also prom pted the m ilitary to establishpermanent codebreaking teams. Decrypting the coded messages of German agentsoriginally formed m uch of the early work of the US Arm y's codebreaking section, MI-8,housed in a reconstituted M ilitary Intelligenc e Divisio n and headed b y Herbert O.Yardley. Ya rdley spent much of this career in the State Departme nt, however, an d hegrasped th e potential to exploit his cryptologic prowess to garner positive intelligencefrom diplomatic and military com mu nica tions. Although Secretary of State Stimson in1929 halted State's subsidy of the Ya rdley operation w ith the fam ous sentiment that"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," by that t ime the Army and Navy cryptologicprograms were perm ane ntly established and bu ildin g the capa bility that would serve sowell in the next conflict.3The widespread impression that Britain and Germ any had taken advantage ofAm erica in W orld War I had two more far-reaching effects on the public 's view ofintelligence issues. A generation of Americans drew the lesson that enemy aliens in ourmidst can cause great mischief in wartime, and therefore must be closely watched. Thissentiment lasted into World War II, when it colored p ublic opinion against German- an dJapanese-Ame ricans, and even into the Cold War, where it fueled allegations ofCom munist influe nce and fears of a Soviet Fifth Column. The second effect was apopular resentment against foreign intrigue that, until th e fall of France and Pearl H arbor,restrained America ' s response to the rise of the totalitarianism in Europe. This attitude inCongress and to a lesser extent in the Execut ive Branch helped to ensure that Americanintelligence capabilit iesthough professionalized and made more capable through theefforts of their new codebreaking officeswould remain small and defensively orientedthrough the inter-war years.As a result of World War I and the violence on American soil, policymakersquietly agreed that maintaining a permanent intelligence establishmentlike aprofessional, standing mili tarywas cheaper and safer than bu ilding one from scratch inwartime. Before the 20 th Century the ways of conducting intelligence had not changedmuch since Biblical times, but in the First W orld W ar the use of electronic signals,overhead imagery, and air power had created n ew arena s for intelligence exploitation,new dem ands for military and policy support, and new security challenges. Nevertheless,the nation as a whole w as still not ready to m aintain either its military or its intelligencecapability at a size that would enable them to exercise much inf luence in policymaking,or project more than a token presence overseas.

Creating an Offensive Intelligence Capability

3 G.J.A. O 'Toole, Honorable Treachery: A History of U S Intelligence, Espionage, an d CovertAction from th e Am erican Rev olution to the CIA (New Yo rk: Atlantic Mo nthly Press, 1991), pp .330-343.3Unclassified


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The Second World War forced dramatic changes in America's national strategyand th e means employed by its mili tary forces and its intelligen ce services. The UnitedStates created and transformed whole intelligence organizations, doctrines, and skills tofashion new tools for an emerging national security strategy.American intelligence in 1939 was ready to win the last war. In the late 1930sPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt h ad quietly ordered the FBI to m onitor Com mun ist andFascist sym pathizers. W hen Hitler invad ed Poland the W hite House authorized the FBIto take more aggressive measures. The Arm y and Navy intelligenc e agencies soon joine dthe FBI in a com mittee to coordinate the ir activit ies; it bears note that the focus of thiscoordinat ion Am erica 's f i rs t t rue, civil ian/mili tary in te l l igence arrangementwas onth e prevention of another sabotage campaign. These combined efforts largely stymiedth e work of Axis agents in America.Spring 1940 marked the h istoric break in A me rica's conception of its role in theworld. Hitler in one season conquered France, Norway, Denmark, and the LowCountries. Suddenly th e Nazis controlled th e Cont inent from th e Arctic Circle to thePyrenees, and seemed poised to swallow Spain, Gibraltar, and North Africa. Britainstood alone, and if the Royal Navy were sunk or surrenderedeither was possibleGermany would ow n the entire eastern side of the Atlantic. Once that happene d,President Roosevelt bel ieved, war would ine vi tably come to the New W orld, a t a t imean d place of Hitler ' s choosing.One could hardly exaggerate the shock these events had on W ashington. Drivingth e sense of crisis was the growing recognition that technology had foreclosed evenAmerica's latest defense plans. Long-range bombers could reach across oceans, and theresources the United States needed to run its economy had to be imported from aroundth e world. An enem y with a monopoly on key suppl iesor control ling devastating newtechnologiescould attain a preponderance of power over th e United States without ashot bein g fired on Am erican soi l. Real iz ing that t radi tional defense plann ing w assuddenly obsolete, President R oosevelt concluded that America ' s first l ine of defense wasnow the English Cha nn el. If we missed this chan ce to stop Hitler in Europe, heproclaimed, we would have to fight him here, or turn America into an armed camp andlose our traditions of liberty in so doing. Am erica migh t survive as "a lone island," hesuggested, but only by mortgaging its freedo ms and prosperi ty.4President R oosevelt an d Congress spent the 18 months between the fall of Franceand Pearl Harbor trying to prepare Am erica for the coming con flict . Congressquadrupled defense spending in one year , and authorized conscription for the first t ime inpeacetime. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented third term, and drafted Republ icansHenry St imson and Frank Knox to oversee the Army and Navy. He sent arms and shipsto Great Britain through Lend Lease and authorized work on an atomic bom b. TheBritish and American mili tar ies shared an amazing quan t i ty of technical and intelligencedata, inaugurating a strategic partne rship that would end ure for decades to com e.

4 Roosevelt said on 10 June 1940 at Charlottesville, Virginia (in his famous "Stab in the Back"speech) that it was a delusion to believe Americans "can safely permit th e United States tobecome a lone island in a world dominated by the philosophy offeree ."4

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassif iedThe crisis of 1940 also caused signi ficant changes in American intel l igence.Congress passed th e draconian Smith Act, cr iminal izing conspiracy to overthrow th egovernmen t and requir ing the periodic re-registrat ion of al iens (and thus giving federallaw enforcement a powerful weapon to use against radicals of all stripes). A n Army-Navy-FB I intel l igence committee, w i th FDR's intervention and blessing, worked out anarrangement w hereby the Bureau w ould create i ts own intel l igenc e service in Latin

Am erica the first such organized, civi l ian organizat ion in American h istory. Cal led theSpecial Intell igence Service (SIS), this outfit would start slowly over th e next year asHoover and his agents felt thei r way in an unfami l i a r realm. The FBI gained new pow ersat home as wel l when the President and Treasury Secretary Morgen thau secretly reversedlong-standing prohibi t ions on wiretapping and scrut iny of ban k transact ions. AsRaymond Batvin i s has noted, these m easures col lect ively made th e Bureau a t ruecounterintel ligence service and enab led i t to stym ie the work of Axis agents in Ame r i c a .5Even i f Lend Lease and US help could save England, however, Roosevelt and hiscommanders still had to figure out how to defeat Hi t ler . Am erican and Bri t i sh plannerssecretly in Ma rch 1941 outl ined a joint w ar plan for use if and wh en A merica e ntered theconflict , which they assumed could be a two-front war wi th Japan as wel l . They agreedto concentrate on defeat ing German y fi rst , and to employ, at least init ially, the strategiesof naval b lockade , aeri al bomb ardm ent of German industry, and clandest ine subversionto spark rebell ions in Nazi-occupied territory. 6 The Bri t i sh were a l ready implem ent ingal l three parts of this strategy, and had created in their Special Operations Executive aclandest ine, offens ive capabi l i ty to "set Europe ablaze," in Prime M inister Church i l l ' sf amous phrase .7The joint wa r plan 's secret cal l for an Am erican "Fifth Col um n" office caused aproblem for the White House because the US governmen t had no such thing at the time.President Roosevelt could h ardly have imagined using his exist ing intel l igence bureaus,as smal l and defen sively focused as they were , in such a role. These organizat ions w erejust begin ning to col lect intel ligence by secret mean s abroad, m ostly in Latin A merica.They could not even sett le inter-mural disputes about thei r t iny espionage uni ts wi thoutWhite Hous e interven tion. How , Roosevelt m ust have won dered, could these agenciesmount a clandest ine campaign overseas?Wil l i am J. Donovan soon offered a solution. A New York corporate lawyer andglobe-trotting foreign affairs expert, Don ovan in June 1941 proposed to the Whi te Housea plan to use intel ligence as a n offens ive weapon in an office to perform espionage,propaganda, guerri l la warfare, an d intel ligence analysis . He offered to work w i th theBritish, and the B ritish told Rooseve l ton the very day Donovan subm itted his planthat they wanted to work wi th him. Donovan also assured a Whi te House weary of inter-5Raymond J. Batvinis, '"In th e Beginning ' : A n Examination of the Development of the FederalBureau of Investigation's C ounterintelligenc e Program, 1936-1941," unpublished doctoraldissertation, Department of History, Catholic University of America, 2001, pp. 81-83, 132, 326-328.6Maurice Matloff and Edwin M . Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare (Washington:Departme nt of the A rmy, 1953), pp. 44-46.7 J.R.M Butler, Grand Strategy, Volume II , September 1939-June 1941, in United KingdomMilitary Series, History of the Second W orld W ar (London; Her Majesty 's Stationery Office,1964), pp. 215, 549-550.

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DRAFTNot fo r citation or distributionUnclassi f iedagency turf squabbles that he would leave domestic security to the FBI and technicalmilitary reporting to armed services.8President Roosevelt soon approved Donovan's plan. His outfit would become theOffice of Strategic Services (OSS), which embodied his vision of an in te l l igence andspecial warfare capabi l i ty to a ntic ipate an enemy ' s moves and w age war b ehind his l ines .O SS grew to be both more and less than Donovan had envis ioned. I t eventual ly operatedspies and commandos on three continents, in the process buildin g substantial capabilitiesthat would be revived in the latter day Cen tra l Inte l ligence Agency and US SpecialO perations Comm and. O n the other hand, it never became the Pres ident 's premierintelligence agency and clandestine arm, being shifted from th e White House to the JointChiefs of Staff in 1942 and always having to compete with so many other in te l l igencesources fo r access to the Oval Office. In addition, it had to leave Latin A merica to theFBI, and com mand ers like Douglas MacArthur and Chester N im itz in the Pacific felt freeto ban O SS from their theaters, relegating it to a m ino r role in the war against Japan.Part of the reason that Donovan and O SS did not win greater inf luence w as thatth e imperatives of technology proved almost as important as strategic considerations inthe development of wa rtime intelligenc e. Senior civilian and m ilitary leaders prized thecrucial contributions of the ULTRA and MAGIC codebreaking efforts to the Alliedvictory, and they allowed no agency to compete with th e codebreakers. Indeed, th es ignals in te ll igence branches of the A rmy and N avyw hich in 1939 were small adjunctsof their respective services ' com mu nications bureaushad grown large and wonsubstantial au tonomy by 1945.9 Signals in te l l igence was the most important secretsource that th e Allies possessed, and the armed services cited th e need for the tightestpossible security in keeping Donovan and OSS from sharing in this bounty, as well asensuring that O SS would have little part in its combat exploitation.A s if to demonstrate what could have been if these decisions had gone otherwise,O SS analysts played an im portant role in developing the in ter-All ied capabi l i ty to employanother in te l l igence innovation. Imagery an alysis won a place as i ts own discipl ine inWorld W ar II. Allied bombers were growing so large and long-ranged that theypromised to make a reality of pre-war forecasts of the power of s tra tegic bombing. In sodoing, aircraft technology brief ly outstripped the crude reconnaissance capabilities of theAllies to guide targeting and dam age assessment. Aerial photography long predatedWo rld War II, of course, and it was h ard ly clandes tine, but what ma de it "intelligence"was the tightly guarded sophistication of the ana lysis that interpreted the pictures in lightother sources to maximize the strategic impact of air power.Britain out of necessity had pioneered this field, creating an inter-service photointelligence center in late 1940. The British taught their ne wly acquired skills to the8Thomas F. Troy, Wild Bill an d Intrepid: Donovan, Stephenson, and the Origin of CIA (NewHaven: Yale Un iversity Press, 1995), pp. 107, 121-127. See also Jay Jakub, Spies an dSaboteurs: Anglo-American Collaboration an d Rivalry in Human Intelligence Collection an dSpecial Operations. 1940-45 (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), p. 26.9 The Army's cryptologic service w as transferred from Signal Corps to the Military IntelligenceDivision in late 1944; th e Navy 's OP-20-G remained under th e purview of the Chief of Nava lCommunications through the war's end. Robert Louis Benson, "A History of USCommunications Intel l igence during World W ar II : Policy and Administration," NationalSecurity Agency Center fo r Cryptologic History Series IV , volume 8, 1997, pp. 45, 47, 147-148.

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DRAFTNo t for citation or distributionUnclassi f iedAmericans, who appreciated the value of integrating all available sources in anorganization em ploying teams of expert photo-interpreters su pported by analy sts l ikethose of OSS's Enem y Object ives U nit . Indeed, by the end of the war, imageryprocessed by theater photo interpretation centers was providing large portions of thetactical and strategic intelligence that Allied com man ders employed against the Axis, andwas a key to the bombers' success in cr ippl ing the German economy.10 Victory in WorldWa r II made strategic air power henceforth a cornerstone of A me rican defen se policy, butit also showed for the observant fe w that strategic air operations depended fo r theirsuccess on vast quantities of accurate and t imely intelligence reports.11World War II marked the second time in three decades that America ha dsignificantly augme nted its intelligence system in response to external threats. As wasthe case with the signals intelligence cap ability growing out the in it ial em phasis oncounterintelligence after W orld War I, the innova tions of the Second W orld War w ouldhave far-reaching and unforese en institutional consequen ces. At the end of the war, theTruman Adm inistration and Congress took stock of what ha d changed in America'sposture toward the world, and in its military and intelligence capa bilit ies, and sought toorganize these ca pabilit ies in a lasting, peace time configura tion.

Mo dernizing the National Security StructureAmerica by 1945 had acquired global responsibilities, although neither Congressnor the W hite House initially had a clear idea of how to meet them. There seemed to bewide agreement w ith President Roosevelt that the U nited States must prevent an y nationfrom dom inating a region from which to attack us, and that the best m eans for d oing sowere the maintena nce of a balance of power in Europe and East Asia, support forinternational law and institutions, the l iberalization of trade, and the spread of democracy.Even before the surrender, Ame rican policym akers and d iplomats were fashio nin g a

United Nations and an international monetary system to further these goals. As soon asthe fighting stopped, moreover, President Truman began pressing Congress and themilitary to build a modern national security structure. As he later explained , "[o]ne of thestrongest convictions which I brought to the office of President was that the antiquateddefense setup of the United States had to be reorganized quickly as a step toward in suringou r future security and preserving world peace."12A sim ilar consensus prevailed on the need fo r intelligence reform . Indeed , theJoint Chiefs of Staff advised in September 1945 that:

10 For more on imagery intelligence in World Wa r II, see Alexander S. Cochran, Jr., Robert C.Ehrhart, an d John F. Kreis, in John F. Kreis, editor, Piercing the Fog: Intelligence an d Army AirForce Operations in World W ar II (Washington: Air Force History an d Muse ums Program,1996), pp. 85, 92-93.11 See, for instance, form er Treasury De partment econom ic analyst an d Amherst Collegeprofessor George S. Pettee's The Future of American Secret Intelligence (Washington: InfantryJournal Press, 1946), p. 35.12 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Volume II , Years of Trial an d Hope (Garden City, NY,Doubleday, 1956), p. 46.

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassif iedRecent d evelopments in the field of new weapons have advanced the quest ion ofan efficient intelligence service to a position of importance, vital to the security ofth e nation in a degree n ever attained and never contemplated in the past. It is nowentirely possible that failure to provide such a system might bring nationaldisaster .13

The question was not whether to modernize in te l l igence but how. Each part of theTruman Administration seemed to have its own ideas about the lessons of the war and theproper way to support pol icymakers and commanders . Many of these ideas weremutual ly contradictory, and few officials had the insight and the clearances to see the fullsweep of America ' s new capabili ties. Nevertheless, th e Truman Adminis tra t ion madethree crucial decisions shortly after the war. The Nation al Security Act of 1947ult imately established these decisions in statute, and collectively they set the course ofAmer ican intell igence for decades to come.Pres ident Trum an himself made the first decis ion. He wanted no repeat of PearlHarbor, and he believed that th e Japanese attack might have been prevented "i f there hadbeen something like co-ordination of information in the government." There certainlywas no such thing in 1941: "In those days th e mil i tary did not know everything th e StateDepartment knew, and the diplomats did not have access to all the Arm y and Navyknew."14 Truman dis l iked General D onovan and had dissolved his office in September1945, so he could not give th e needed coordinating mission to OSS. Instead he approveda plan offered by his Joint Chiefs of Staff for an independent "central" agency to affectth e "synthesis of departmental intell igence on the strategic and national policy level."15This new intell igence system represen ted something original in W ashington . Atits apex would be a capacity fo r channeling information toward senior civil ian andmilitary decis ionmakers and an an alyt ica l funct ion to synthesize "national intell igence"from the consequent mass of reports. Control over thi s synthesization would be wieldedby a Director of Central Intell igence (DCI), in a post that w as nominal ly independent ofpol icymaking and hence (a t least in theory) a guarantor of the quality of the intelligencereaching th e top. The DCI in turn would answer to a committee of Cabinet secretaries toensure, in the words of then-Deputy Director of Naval Intell igence Sidney Souers inDecember 1945, that "no one department could un duly inf luence th e type of intell igenceproduced." Souers, who was then advis ing th e W hite House on intell igence reform,explained:

The evaluation of information is not an exact science and every safeguard shouldbe imposed to prevent any one department from having the oppo rtuni ty to

13 Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Secretary of the Navy JamesForrestal, "Establishment of a central intelligence agency upon liquidation of OSS," 19September 1945, reprinted in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945-1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment (Washington, DC: Government PrintingOffice, 1996) [hereinafter cited as FRUS], p. 41.14 Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, p. 56.15 Joint Chiefs of Staff to Stimson an d Forrestal, "Establishment of a central intelligenceagency," FRUS, p. 41.

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassif iedinterpret informat ion in such as way as to ma ke i t seem to support previouslyaccepted pol icies or preconceived not ions.16

B y the tim e Souers penned these words, not a few senior Ad m inistrat ion officials largelyagreed with his conception of the proposed intel l igence agency's role.17 In essence, th eidea w as that th e President and his key advisers needed a control variable against whichto test the intel l igence an d pol icy ad vice co rning from the depa rtmen ts. Only a free-standing intel ligence agency, they felt, could provide such a perspect ive. Object ivi ty wasvalued, but independence f rom "policy" was the real desideratum.In January 1946 President Trum an appointed Souers the first Director o f Centra lIntell igence to "accomplish th e correlation and evaluat ion o f intel l igenc e relating to thenat ional security, and the appropriate dissemination within th e Go v er nm en t of theresulting strategic and national policy intel l igence." 18 President Truman in effect m adeSouers his personal intel l igence advisor, assigning his sm al l office the responsibi l i ty ofsummar iz ing th e daily f lood o f cables, memos, reports, and dispatches coming to theWhite House.Trum an's l ieutenants recognized the imp ortance of this innovation, and at leastone of them resented it . Secretary o f State James Byrnes complained that he should beth e one "responsible fo r reporting to the President o n matters of foreign policy," andfur thermore that "it was his funct ion to furnish the President w i th inform ation on whichto base conclus ions ."19 Trum an never the less rebuffed Byrnes ' at tempt to quash th eD C F s new Daily Summary, and he did not seem to m i n d whether it s product w as calledintell igence or information as long as i t was useful to h i m .20 Nevertheless, Byrnes w o nout in the end on a larger point; the m i l i tary and the diplom ats did not al low any D C I tocontrol inform ation going to the Oval Office. They conceded that the DCI should offer"factual" intelligence, but both th e State Department and the armed services l imited th ef low o f informat ion (such as communicat ions intercepts) to the D C F s new CentralIntel ligence Group (CIG). In addition, they refused to share "operational" details aboutUnited States plans and capabi l i t ies data that were essential to an in fo rmed assessmentof foreign activities and intent ions.

16 Sidney Souers to Clark M. Clifford, "Central Intelligence Agency," 27 December 1945,reprinted in FRUS, pp. 157-158.17 Secretary of War Robert Patterson argued with State that "intelligence must be divorced frompolicy making," Minutes of a 26 December 1945 meeting of the Acting Secretary of State withth e Secretaries of War and Navy, reprinted in FRUS, p. 153. Forrestars aides were making asimilar case with their A r m y and State counterparts, saying the director of the new centralintelligence agency should "not be ident if ied with any of the departments concerned"; seeMathias F. Correa, special assistant, to Forrestal, 27 December 1945, in ibid., p. 156.18 Harry S. Truman to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of theNavy, 22 January' 1946, reprinted in FRUS, pp. 178-179.19 National Intelligence Authority, "Minutes of the First Meeting of the National IntelligenceAuthority," 5 February 1946, reprinted in FRUS, p. 328.20 Arthur B. Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government to 1950(Universi ty Park: Pennsylvania State Univer s i ty Press, 1990), pp. 81-82.

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassif iedThe second decision reached in early 1946 w as that th e clandest ine operat ionalcapabil i t ies bui l t in the course of the w ar needed a ho m e and a leader. Once again, itcould not be Gen eral Don ovan or his OSS, wh ich had been pa rtitioned between the Statean d W ar Depar tments th e preceding autumn. Few people in W ashington understood th escope of the secret c ampaigns launche d by OSS and the military, but that handful ofofficials wanted no repetition of wartime incidents in which th e activities of one agency

jeopardized those of another .21 It was thought after the war that a coordinator couldreduce th e chance of such conflicts, and as early as September 1945 th e Joint Chiefsproposed that the d irector of the new central agency sh ould further the "coordination ofintell igence activitie s related to the nationa l security."22Whe n President Trum an approved th e appointment of a DCI, the remnant of OSS 'operational branches res id ing in the W ar Department lobbied for a t ransfer to the CentralIntelligence Group. DCI Souers heard their plea, and enabled selected veterans, assets,an d fi les o f OSS to became th e CIG's Office of Special Operations before the end of1946. By this point OSS' paramil i tary and "psychological warfare" elements had beendemobil ized, bu t CIG nonethe less gained a ne twork of overseas stations and growingespionage, liaison, and cou nterintelligen ce skill s.23 Th us the DCI took com mand of asub stantial portion of al l US clandestine activities abroad, as well as substantial clout touse in coordinating those ac tivities not under his direct control. Most of these a ctivitieswere not "covert action" per se, but they were nonetheless importan t in the day-to-dayconduct of Am erican foreign relat ions. The act ive intel l igence capabi l i ty that W il l iam J.Donovan had envisioned in 1941 thu s found a permanent inst i tut ional base, and its quietassistance has benefited th e nation's diplomats and commanders ever since.Most nat ions do not combine execut ive intel l igence synthesis and operationalcoordination in one "central" office l ike that which President T ruma n authorized. Theirmarriage in the n ew C entral Intelligence Group was a response to a specific set ofhistorical circumstances immediately after World War II. It might never have happenedat allor not in the same wayat another time. Nonetheless, the fact that it did makes

21A notorious example was OSS' heist of material from the code room of the Japanese embassyin Lisbon in June 1943. Tokyo instituted new securi ty measures, and Allied codebreakers br ief lyfeared they would lose a vital window into Japanese communications. The head of US Armyintelligence, Maj. Gen. George Strong, condemned th e "ill-advised and amateurish" activities ofOSS, calling Donovan's office "a menace to the securi ty of the nation," and Assistant Secretaryof War Robert Lovett cited th e caper in discussing intel l igence reform in November 1945. SeeBradley F. Smith, The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA (New York: BasicBooks, 1983), pp. 220-221; and also "Meeting of the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy"[meeting minutes], 14 November 1945, reprinted in FRUS, p. 110. The Secretaries of State, War,and Navy later explained to Congress that central coordination of intelligence operations w asessent ial because, with "a mult i tude of espionage agencies," the agents in the field "tend touncover each other." National Intel l igence Authori ty to Clare Hoffm an (R-MI), Chairman,House Committee on Expendi tures in the Execut ive Departments, 26 June 1947, reprinted inFRUS, p. 311.22 Joint Chiefs of Staff to Stimson and Forrestal, "Establishment of a central intelligenceagency," F R US, p. 41.23Michael Warner, "Prolonged Suspense: The Fortier Board and the Transformation of theOffice of Strategic Services," Journal of Intelligence History 2 (June 2002), pp. 74-76.

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassifiedth e DCI the titular head of American intelligence, and means that that intelligenceestablishment he oversees h as two m ain missions: providing secret info rma tion andrunning clande stine activities.Other important intelligence missions, however, would soon be conspicuous bytheir absence from this list. President Truman, while reviewing intelligence reformproposals, agreed with the Army and Navy in late 1945 that "every department requiredits own intelligence." 24 His order establishing CIG in January 1946 accordinglystipulated that th e "existing intelligence agencies . . . shall continue to collect, evaluate,correlate, and disseminate departmental inte ll igence."25 It also added a related provisionthat CIG should exercise "n o police, la w enforcement or internal security functions," norshould it make "investigations inside th e continental limits of the United States." Theseconcessions, w hile necessary to win mili tary and FBI assent to the creation of CIG,marked the third major step taken by the Trum an Adm inis tra t ion. This s tep soon hadunintended consequences because President Trumanand in all l ikelihood his advisersas wel llacked current knowledge of the true state of "departmental" intelligence.By 1946 rapid demobil izat ion was gutt ing A merican m il i tary intel ligence. Thecombat in telligence centers built dur ing the war were all but gone. Sophisticated inter-Allied systems to provide air targeting intelligence through exploiting imagery and allavailable sources, to cite th e most imp ortant example, were being dism antled, theirpersonnel demob il ized and their equipm ent sold. Few of the Arm y A ir Force's leadersunderstood how dependent these efforts had been on British expertise, on signalsintelligence, and on inter-service coordination, and so little was done to preserve in AirForce hand s th e capa bility that had been so painfully won in wart ime . 26 As yet therewas no Secretary of Defense to coordinate a joint, all-source combat intelligencecapabili ty, and DCI leadership had been barred. The Trum an Adm inis tra t ion 's decis ionto allow th e "departments" to provide their ow n intelligence thus abetted, in practice, asituation in wh ich a single service throug h simp le neglect could deprive the nation of avaluable asset.

A similar gap opened in the field of "internal security." The FBI em erged fromWorld W ar II as the leader of a substantial counterintelligence capability that w as alreadyredirecting its efforts against Soviet espionage in America. Part of that capability,however, would not survive the end of the conflict. The mili tary 's counterintelligenceoutfits at home and abroad were m ostly dem obil ized. The X-2 branch of OSS virtual lythe only part of OSS to receive UL TRA decrypts of German communica t ionslanguished when th e ULTRA reports dried up. The FBI itself saw its well-regardedSpecial Intelligence Service, w hich tracked leads on spies from embassies in LatinAmerica, handed to the new CIG (Director Hoover in pique dismantled th e operation andtransferred only it s furniture). The Truman Adm inis tra t ion had erected a barrier betweenthe FBI and CIG by ba rring the D C F s officers from internal security funct ions, but the

24 Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, p. 57.25 Truman to the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy , 22January 1946, pp. 178-179.26 Some air targeting intelligence continued, with fits and starts, to be shared between the Britishand Americans as both nations exploited Luftwaffe imagery of the Soviet Union. Richard J.Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold W ar Secret Intelligence (London: JohnMurray, 2002), pp. 206-217.

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassi f iedPresident and his advisers did not inquire about th e details of wha t had happened s ince1945, and thus probably did not unders tand that the w holesale loss of co unterinte l l igenceassets after the war helped to ensure that the Bureau, the m il i tary, and n ew C IA wouldhave less information to share and fewer o perat ions to coordinate .The sweeping refo rm of Am erican in te l l igence between 1945 and 1947 cam eabout because a determined Pres ident wanted to re-shape th e national securityestablishment and took full advantage of the opportunity provided him in the wake of thelargest war in his tory. Pres ident Trum an received from Congress th e statutoryratification of his initiatives in the Nation al Secu rity Act of 1 947, the intelligence sectionof wh ich essen tially reiterated Truman ' s January 1946 directive. The Act unified (after afashion) the armed services, created an independent Air Force and CIA, as well as a newcouncil of advisers on security policy the Na tional Security Council (NSC ). It laid afirm legal and institutional foundat ion to imp lemen t man y of the lessons learned duringWorld W ar II and is s t il l (with m any ame ndm ents) the charter of the nat ional securi tyestabl ishment . With it , Presidents s ince Trum an have had tools they needed toimplement in peacetime the new national security strategy bequeathed to them byPresident Roosevelt.

The Korean Emergency Fosters an Intelligence Com munityThe refashioned inte l l igence es tabl ishmen t was soon tes ted and found wanting.Between 1945 and 1950 the Trum an Adm inis tra tion and Congress had transforme d thenational security structure into a durable instrument fo r waging th e Cold War. WithCommunism on the march in Chin a and Europe, A mericans once again feared that armedtyrannythi s t ime with nuclear weaponscould control the far shores of the Atlantican d the Pacif ic . In this uncerta in t ime, the new C entra l In te l l igence Agency w as no tperforming as its makers had hoped. T he Truman Adm in ist ra tion drafted a list of

changes fo r CIA, but it took tw o disasters in Korea to bring about th e appoin tment of anew D C I and give him a manda te to change th e Agency and make th e "intelligencecommunity" work as a t eam.An early warning of t rouble came from a blue-r ibb on s tudy com mission. TheNSC in early 1948 had asked three intelligence veteransAllen Dulles, William Jackson,an d Matthias Correato evaluate what had changed s ince the war in order to determ inehow the new NSC should supervise CIA.27 Their report, submitted on 1 January 1949,ha d called CIA "a semi-autonomous highly centra l ized agency with a broad variety ofintelligence responsibilities," and noted that it s very creation marked a departure "fromth e general pattern followed by other countries." Such a degree of centralization entailedcertain disadvantages, but it could "b e jus t i f ied , provided that [CIA's] distinctivefunct ions. . .are handled according to their specia l requirements ." T he Agency should bea coordinating service that increased the effectiveness of the whole intelligenceestabl ishment , but unfor tunately i t was becoming just one more bureau "producing

27 Darling, T h e Central Intelligence Agency, p. 299. Ludwell Lee Montague, General WalterBedel l Smith as Director of Central Intelligence: October 1950 - February 1953 (UniversityPark, PA : Pennsylvania State Universi ty Press, 1992), pp . 39-40.12Unclassi f ied


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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassif iedintell igence in com petition with older established agencies of the Governmentdepartments." Dul les and his col leagues blamed CIA's drift on "inadequacies ofdirection" provided by the current DCI, Roscoe Hillenkoetter.28The Dulles Report added to sentiment in the Truman Adm inis trat ion that CIAneeded stronger leade rship. The NSC soon endorsed man y of the Dulles Report'srecommendations, but the question of DCI Hillenkoet ter ' s replacement became tangled inAdministration debates over the direction of defense policy, and thus the reformsmandated by the NSC w ere held in abeyance for the t ime being. 29North Korea 's l ightning invasion of the South in June 1950 spurred th eAdministration to complete it s unfinished reform. The White House quickly named anew DCI Lt. Gen. Walter Bedel l Smith, who had been G eneral Eisenhowe r 's chief ofstaff in Europe (Churchi l l had dubbed him "the American bulldog"). After the warPresident Truman made Smith ambassador to Moscow, and af ter the Korean invasionordered him to take the job of DCI. "I expect the worst and I am sure I w on't bedisappointed," Smith told a f r iend .3 0 H e took office on 7 October with th e determinationand mandate to re-shape th e organization and make U S intelligence work as a team.Within weeks of Smith 's arr ival , America suffered one of i ts worst battlefielddefeats when Chinese troops fell upon G eneral Ma cA rthur 's overstretched forces .Disaster was averted and the front stabilized in January 1951, but the rout marked th esecond intel l igenc e failure in six months . N ei ther the CIA nor other Am ericanin tel l igence units foresaw th e t iming and skill of the Chinese counterattack. ForWashington and MacArthur to be surprised in battle leant a palpable urgen cy to the newDCI' s reforms.Smith w as a l ready implem ent ing th e changes l is ted in NSC 50. He hired A gencycritics W ill iam Jackson and Allen Dul les as his deputies , and they se t about to tightenCIA's internal ad minis trat ion, reform it s production of finished inte l l igence, and establisha clear division of labor among th e various components of the intell igence com mun ity.By taking th e recommendat ions of the Dulles Report (a s expressed in NSC 50) as hisguide, Smith inciden tally made it perhaps th e most influential survey ever done ofAmerican inte l l igence.Smith fol lowed the blueprint of NSC-50 to reform what was considered one of themain weaknesses of CIA, its office for analyzing and disseminating intelligence. Und erSmi th ' s predecessors , Agency products represented the judg me nts of CIA analysts butha d not truly ref lected th e range of views and information of other intelligence agencies.He had been angered upon his arrival to find that CIA's Office of Reports and Estimatesha d no current, coordinated e stimate of the Korean situation, and he soon broke th e officeinto three pieces .31 Smith 's new units comprised a board of experts and staff to draft and

28 Intelligence Survey Group, "The Central Intelligence Organization and National Organizationfor Intelligence ," 1 January 1949, Nationa l Arch ives and Records A dmin istration, Record Gro up59 (Department of State), Records of the Executive Secretariat, NSC Files: Lot 66 D 148, Box1555, pp. 11, 23. The report 's executive sum mary is reprinted in FRUS; see p. 909.29 National Security Council, NSC 50, 1 July 1949, reprinted in FRUS, see pp. 978-979. (U )3^ D.K.R. Crosswell, The Chief of S t a f f : The Military C areer o f General Walter Bedell Smith(New Yo rk: Greenw ood, 1991), pp. 122, 332 . M ontague, pp. 55-56. (U)31 Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, p. 151.

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DRAFTNot fo r citation or distributionUnclassif iedcoordinate truly national estimates, a "current intell igence" shop to produce th e dailybulletin for the President, and a research office to conduct analyses that exceeded th escope of the establishe d intell igen ce services. Those same "depa rtmen tal" services wo uldbe key to the success of Smith 's reform s; upon them fell th e duty to perform th e basicanalysis of subjects in their designated fields, wh i l e th e Agency would cease dupl icat ingtheir efforts and con centrate on integrat ing the whole effort of American intel l igenceanalysis .The Korean c onf l ict also forced a similar c lari f icat ion of CIA' s authority overparamili tary operat ions. The NSC in its 1948 authorization of "covert action" hadspecified that CIA's organizing of indigen ous guerril la forces behind enem y l ines shouldshift to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a "time of war or national emergency." Such a shiftnever occurred. In late 1950, as the Agency responded to high-level tasking to mountsuch operations in support of UN forces in Korea, the NSC suspended th is proviso at DCISm ith 's request . Smith bel ieved such operat ions distracted CIA from i ts "primaryin tel l igence functions," and he h op ed the JCS would take responsibi l i ty for them, but hewas soon to be di sappointed . The NSC in Apri l and October 1951 gave overall commandof paramilitary operations to the regional "American Theater Commander" but affirmedth e DC Fs "responsibi l ity and authori ty" for creat ing and run nin g such act ivi t ies.Compla in ing about this solution in 1952, Smith conceded that it had advantages: "i tseems impracticable, for reasons of coordina tion and s ecuri ty , to divorce these from othercovert operations."32 This logic has endured through subsequent changes in legislationand directives, and it is a reason why the CIA for the last hal f -century has been assignedsensi tive (and sometimes signif ican t) param il i tary engagemen ts on the m argins of largerUS mi l i tary dep loym ents .The improvement of "departmental" intelligence that DCI Smith had hoped tospur saw l imited progress d uring his tenure. Hi therto the armed services had maintaine dseparate cryptologic efforts u nder a loose con federat ion cal led th e Armed Forces SecurityAgency (AFSA, whic h reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff). Com plaints about signalsintell igence support for the Korean effort provoked Smith's ire, and at his urging theNSC in 1952 replaced this system with a new N ationa l Securi ty Agency (NSA)subordinated to the Secretary of Defense.33 The change preserved th e cryptologic arm sof the various services but recogn ized the "national" imp ortan ce of their collective effort,providing fo r tighter coordination and better support to the Secretary. Progress elsewherein the Defense Dep artment, however, was uneven . In Korea a surprised US A ir Forcehad to reconstruct, almost from scratch, the sort of intell ige nc e support for strategic air32 Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, pp. 206-208; Walter B. Smith to the NationalSecurity Council, "Report by the Director of Central Intelligence," 23 April 1952, reprinted inMichael Warner, editor, The CIA under Harry Truman (Washington: Central IntelligenceAgency, 1994), p. 460. Anne Karalekas, "History of the Central Intelligence Agency," inWill iam M . Leary, editor, The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents (University,AL: Universi ty of Alabama Press. 1984), p. 48; see also National Security Council, NSC 10/2,18 June 1948, reprinted in F RUS, p. 714; an d National Security Council, NSC 10/5, 23 October1951, reprinted in Warner, Th e CIA under Harry Truman, pp . 438-439.33 Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, pp. 253-254. See also David A . Hatch with RobertLouis Benson, "The Korean War: The SIGINT Background,"National Securi ty Agency Centerfo r Cryptologic History, 2000, pp. 15-16.

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassifiedopera tions it had enjoy ed in 1945. Indeed, one of the Air Force commanders therecomplained "it appe ars that these lessons [of World War II] either were forgotten ornever were documented."34 By the end of the war imagery support w as once againcompetent and robust, but recouping that capability had been expensive in time, money,and l ivesand there wa s still little understanding that the job w as pe rhap s too big for anyone service.

By the time Sm ith left the Central Intelligence Agency in early 1953 he hadconsolidated its major functions and recast its place in the national intelligence system.Although DCI Sm ith saw CIA as first and foremost an "intelligence" agency, and worriedthat operations we re c rowding out this "prima ry" function, his deputy, Allen Dulles,understood th e importance of clandestine activities. Despite Dulles' shortcomings as anadministrator, he ensured that the Agency would also provide direct, clandestine supportto American diplomacy and military operations both during Smith's tenure and his ownyears as DCI. The combination of a sound blueprint in the Dulles Report, the nationalemergency in Korea, and forceful leadership by Smith, helped shape th e disparateagencies into something l ike an Intelligence Community. In fact, that very term began toappea r for the first time in descriptions of the intelligence system tow ard the close of histenure.35

Responding to Scandal: The Church CommitteeAmerica had acquired an intelligence community as a result of World W ar II.During th e Cold War the nation's Rooseveltian engagement with the worlda posturethat was at once concerned with the mechanics of the international balance of power andwith high democratic idealscombined with th e rapid ev olution of technology to createin the United States a perm anent, global military and diplom atic presence. M aintainingand guiding that w orld p osture required v ast q uantities of intelligence informa tion and a

cap able clandestine operational arm for the Cold War. By the 1970s, however, the newintelligence establishm ent seemed to cost the na tion more tha n it could afford, both interms of sheer resources and in terms of Am erica's reputation and self-imag e as a countrycommitted to open government and the rule of law. While the Cold W ar consensus thathad held since the Trum an Adm inistration came unravele d in Vietnam , Congressionalopponents of the White House used their subpoena power to investigate Nixon34 Cited by Robert F. Futtrell in "A Case Study: US AF Intelligence in the Korean War," inWalter T. Hitchcock, editor, T he Intelligence Revolution: A Historical Perspective [Proceedingsof th e Thirteenth Military History Symposium], (Washington. Office of Air Force History,1991), p. 275. The report of another blue-ribbon panel headed by Ferdinand Eberstadt hadwarned in 1948 that the military intelligence arms had lost most of the "skilled and experiencedpersonnel of wartime," and those w ho remained had seen "their organizations and their systemsruined by superior officers with no experience, little capacity, and no imagination." The report onintelligence w as given to Congress in February 1949 as a chapter titled "The Central IntelligenceAgency: National and Service Intelligence" in the classified Volume II of the HooverCommission's national security organization report. Its pages are numbered 25 through 60, andthe best CIA copy is in Executive Registry Job 86B00269R, box 14, folder 22; see pp. 39-40.35 Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, p. 74.

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclass i f iedAdminis trat ion wron gdoing and credible a l legat ions of inte l ligence in f r ingements uponcivil l iberties. Such inqu iries soon led to questions ab out the foreign activit ies of theIntel l igence Community, and its stewardship of publ ic funds.Years before th e Watergate scandal, however, th e Nixon Adminis t ra t ion grewconcerned over th e In te l ligence Co m m uni ty ' s apparent inabil i ty to make th e best use ofexpensive and wondrous new collection m ethods. Since DC I Walter B . Smi t h ' s day theCom m un i t y that he had buil t had seen rapid technological innovation that had solvedsom e of the problem s of collecting reliable data on the So viet Union . Satellites and otherdeve lopments had given analysts precise details o f Moscow's mili tary and economiccapabilities, an d President Nixon and his advisers could not fa thom why the intelligenceanalysts and their leaders in the Co m m unity som et imes seemed so passive and easi lysurprised.The Nixon A dm inis t ra t ion author ized a survey of the Intel ligence C om m unity inlate 1970. The job fell to James Schlesinger , the deputy head of the White House Officeof Management and Budget, w ho worked w ith Henry Kiss inger ' s N SC staff on theproject. Their March 1971 report complained that the cost of intelligence had climbedtoo steeply while, at the sam e tim e, it was "not at all clear that our hypo theses aboutforeign intentions, capabilit ies, and activit ies have improved commensurately in scopeand quality as more data comes in from m oder n collection m ethods." In short, themarvelous new collection systems had outstripped th e c ommun i t y ' s abi l i tyorwill ingnessto analyze th e data they gathered.36President Nixon adopted a package of reform s based on the Schlesinger study andissued them to the C o m m u n i t y in November 1971. These included th e appointment of aDeputy to the DCI for Co m mu nity affairs and of an Assistant Secretary of Defense forIntelligence, and the creation of the Defense Mapping Agency and a unified CentralSecurity Service und er NS A to com bine the m il i tary 's separate s ignals inte l l igenceservices.37 The most influential s teps augm ented th e DCI's powers over Communi tytasking and resources. Indeed, every DCI since then has been expected to oversee th epreparat ion of the Intel l igence Community 's budget , to establish intelligencerequirements and priorit ies, and to ensure the quality of its products.Before the Nixon Ad m inis t ra t ion could fully imp lem ent i ts vis ion of a newIntelligence Community, however, controversy over foreign policy and the Watergatescandal dis tracted pol icymak ers and intelligence officers. The init iative in examin ingintelligence shifted to Capitol Hil l and the proceedings of the Congressional selectcom mittees probing the reve lations that had accom panied W atergate. In Januar y 1975the Senate created a select committee to investigate foreign and dom est ic inte l ligenceactivit ies, including but not l imited to allegations of wrongdoing and the adequacy of the36 Cited in Senate Select Commit tee to Study Governmental Operations with respect toIntelligence Activities, "Final Report," Volume 1, "Foreign an d Military Intelligence," 94 thCongress, Second Session, 1974, [hereinafter cited as "Final Report"], pp. 122, 257, 274. Seealso C om m iss ion on the Roles and Missions of the United States Intell igence Community [ theBrown-Aspin commission], Preparing for the 21st Century: An Appraisal of US Intelligence(Washington. Government Printing Off ice , 1996), p. A 1 4 .37 Most of these changes were ordered by President Nixon in a 5 N o v e m b e r 1971 letter to theleaders of the Intell igence Community; it is reprinted in Michael Warner, editor, CentralIntelligence: Origin an d Evolution (Washington: Central Intelligence Agency, 2001), pp. 77-80.

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassif iedlaws and oversight me chan isms governing the Com mun ity. The panel , led by Sen. FrankChurch (D-ID), interpreted this charter as a mandate to "determine what secretgovernmen tal act ivi t ies are necessary and how they best can be conducted un der th e ruleof law."38 Senator Church and his col leagues spent fifteen mo nths preparing on e of themost detai led publ ic appraisals of any nat ion's intel l igence structure.The Church Com mittee 's "Final Report" in Apr i l 1976 offered proposals on theorganizat ion and m anagem ent of the C om mu nity that were art iculate an d largelycongruent wi th Nixon and Ford A dministrat ion concerns. Like intel ligence surveysbefore and since, the Final Report assumed that the cure for lackluster performan ce wasre-organization. The Com mittee sought to bring order and efficiency to a system inwhich "[t]he real executive authority over at least four-fifths of the total resources spenton intell igence activities has resided with th e Secretary of Defense" whi le "[t]he D C F sinf luence over how these funds are allocated was l imited, in effect, to that of an interestedcrit ic." Recom men dations centered on notion that the DCI needed enhanced authori t ies;Congress should pass legislation to increase his power over Community coordinat ion,budgeting, and requirements, and give him a second Deputy Director of CentralIntelligence fo r Community affairs. Along these lines, th e Final Report suggested thatCongress con sider "removing the DCI from direct mana gemen t respon sibi li ty" for CIAand so free him "to concentrate on his responsibi l i t ies wi th regard to the entireintell igence c o mmu n i ty . "39The breakthrough for the Church Committee came in its treatment of theoperat ional side of Am erican intel l igence . At i ssue here was not cost and efficiency, butth e powers and the very existence of clandest ine act ivi ties. Wou ld intel l igence merelycol lect data and produce information, or would i t also he lp implem ent foreign andsecurity policy? The Church Com mittee said intel ligence m ust do both, with propersafeguards. W ith i ts focus on mistakes and misdeeds, the Com mittee 's 'F inal Report"concentrated on clandestine activities, but i t tempered its criticisms with a firmconclusion that intell igence had "made important contributions" to national security andbecome a "permanent and necessary component of our government." This conclusioncountered growing public and Congressional concern over "the integrity of our na t ion ' sintell igence agencies."40The "Final Report" painted a detailed portrait of clandestine activities, al lowing acareful reader to appreciate their several nuan ces. Espionage, coun terintell igence,foreign intell igence l iaison, and domestic collection were al l deem ed necessary andvaluab le, given proper oversight. Even covert action received a grudging endorsement.The Committee had considered "proposing a total ban on all forms of covert action," butconcluded that Am erica should retain a capabi l i ty to react to extraordinary threatsthrough covert m e a n s .41The Church Committee 's success in craft ing bipar t isan conclus ions and winn ingexecutive branch assent to issuing a public report of this scope and detail stood incontrast to the results of the other Congressional study of intell igence conducted at the38 Senate Select Committee, "Final Report," pp. 11, 423.39 Ibid., pp. 333, 434-435, 449.40 Ibid., pp. 1-2,423-424.41 Ibid., 159, 425, 437-439, 459; emphasis in original.

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DRAFTNot for citation or distributionUnclassif iedt ime . The House's select committee, chaired by Rep. Otis Pike (D-NY), took anadversarial approach to the In te l ligence Com mu ni ty and comp lained that th e ExecutiveBranch was stonewalling its inquiry. The full House in early 1976 declined to release i tsfinished report (which soon leaked any way), in effect repudiating the work of i ts owncommit tee . 42The imm ediate impact of the C hurch and Pike inquiries was on Congress i t se l f .President Ford ha d signed Executive Order 11905 as the two committees were finishingtheir work, thus implem ent ing by decree some of their recomm endat ions and lesseningthe impe tus for more sweeping reforms. Debates over intell igence reform on Capitol Hillthen shifted to the mechanics of adding perman ent overs ight panels to the delicatelybalanced committee structures of Congress . Within tw o years both chambers establishedpermanent select committees to oversee intell igence activit ies. Although th e powers ofthese co mm ittees had distinct l imits, thanks in part to their com petit ion with theestablished authorizing and appropriating committees, they gradually exerted discernibleand posit ive effects on operations and policymaker guidance of intell igence, tending tomake both more disc ipl ined and accountable. Indeed, in later years Congress ' oversightof th e Com m uni ty budge t has tended to make th e comm ittees view in te l l igence as acorporate enterpriseas opposed to a collection of agenciesand to press th e ExecutiveBranch also to view it that way.In the 1970s both the Executive and the Legislative Branches had re-examined th elegal and pol icy foun dat ions of the In tel l igence Co m m unity and found them to be stillsolid, though in need of m aintenance. After th e 1971 Schlesinger report , PresidentsNixon and Ford had paid closer attention to monetary costs of intelligence. They grantednew powers to the DCI, enhancing his abili ty to lead th e Commun i t y but notfundamental ly challenging th e division of labor or the powers of the Secretary ofDefenseestabl ished by the National Security Act of 1947. The detailed and publ icf indings of the Church Co m m ittee were soon viewed as a m odel for democratic oversightof both the inform ationa l and the clandestine sides of intell igence . In effect, these stepsadded legit imacy and purpose to the Intell igence Community, ensuring that i ts costs (inall their forms) would be more clearly stated, better spent, and more will ingly borne.

The First Persian Gulf War and a Revolution in Military AffairsThe 1991 Persian Gulf War suggested how changes in weaponry and doctrinewere fostering a "radical change in the nature of warfare," according to a study of the

In tel ligence Co m m unity produced for the Congress in 1996.43 The incorporation ofprecision weapons, microprocessing, and real-t ime global, secure communications in amilitary structure that had been reformed and pushed by Congress into truly "joint"operations had beg un by 1991 to create a "Revolution in M ilitary Affairs." Thisrevolution would, over the 1990s and beyond, t ransform the in te l l igence requireme nts of

42 For more on the Pike Comm ittee and its troubles with the White House and the IntelligenceCommuni ty , see Gerald K. Haines, "The Pike Comm ittee Investigations and the CIA," Studies inIntelligence (Winter 1998-99).43 Commission on Roles and Missions, Preparing for the 21 st Century , p. 21 .

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D R A F T N o t for citation or distributionUnclassif iedcommanders and military personnel , p lac ing stra ins on a Com mu nity buil t on lessonsfrom earlier wars.The Gulf co nf l ic t was the first major war in wh ich the m il i tary deployed andfought along the l ines laid dow n by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which hadincreased th e power of the comba t commands to employ their forces in a truly "joint"manne r .44 One of the tasks involved in deplo ying General H. Norman Schwarzkopf sCentral Com m a n d (CE NT COM) to the region w as that of bui ld ing it s intell igencecapabili ty. CENTCOM and the other combat commands did not fully staff theirintell igence, logistics, and other support funct ions in peacetime. Thus C E N T C O M ' sintel l igence staff be fore the crisis "did not have the resources, equip me nt, ororganizational structure needed to deploy and support operations of the level and scope"of Desert Storm, according to the Defense Depar tmen t 's 1992 report to Congress on theconduct of the war. The difficulty of constructing an in-theater in te l ligence sys tem w ascompounded by the lack of a blueprin t . Fortunate ly, D IA and the Pentagon's Mili taryIntell igence Board helped CENTCOM to establish a Joint Intell igence Center (JIC) inRiyadh jus t weeks before the war began. The JIC proved a good mechanism to allocatetaskings amo ng th e collectors and analys ts in the theater, to el iminate dupl ica tion, and tosort th e requ i remen ts of the combat uni ts . It even incorporated Bri t ish, C anadian, andAustral ian l ia ison officers, as wel l as teams of officers from the Washington-basedintell igence agencies. 45Wh e n Desert S hield beca me Desert Storm on 17 January 1991 CENTCOM andit s comm anders who fought the war in Kuwai t and Iraq found ways to get enoughinte ll igence to do their jobs , b ut there were prob lems. Perhaps the m ain shortfa l l came inproviding in te l l igence support to air opera tions . T he Pentagon had learned and re-learnedin World War II, Korea, and Vietnam that strategic air cam paigns require especia lly c losesupport from in te ll igence. To unders tand what ensued for the C om mu nity in the G ulf , i tis important to rememb er something that was not ye t c lear a t the t ime. Stra tegic bom binghad f i rs t been tr ied in World W ar II, when the bas ic prob lem for comm anders w asdropping enough inaccurate bom bs near a target to ensure it s destruction. Precisionweapons by 1991 were changing that dilemma to a new one: that of using jus t enoughweapons to destroy th e target and then moving on as soon as possible to the next.Intell igence was just as essential in choosing the righ t targets in 1991 as i t had been in1944, but now in te l ligence had to identify so man y more targets m ore quickly and toassess with greater urgency which, if any, needed to be struck again. As the DefenseDepartment explained to Congress in its report on the conduct of the war,

the revolutionary changes in the way A merican forces conducted combatoperations during Operation Desert Storm outstripped th e abi l i t ies of the [battle

44 Roger R . Trask and Alfred Goldberg, Th e Department of Defense, 1947-1997: Organizationand Leaders (Washington: Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office, 1997), pp. 44-45 .^Office of the Secretary of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War [Pursuant to Title V of thePersian Gulf Supplemental Authorizat ion and Personnel Benefi ts Act of 1991], (Washington:Department of Defense, 1992), pp . 335, 337, 339.

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