A unique Cold War tactical weapon, the CIA was created by
President Truman who did not like or trust the quality and timeliness of the
intelligence he was receiving. The agency was born to serve one master, the
president, not the people. The birth of
the CIA was spawned by nasty surprises beginning with Truman’s sudden rise to
the oval office upon Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in Warm Springs, GA on April
12, 1945.
Truman and Roosevelt were estranged bedfellows thrown together to win an
election. For his part, Roosevelt reportedly did not hold Truman’s intellect in
high regard and Truman did not like Roosevelt’s politics. Certainly a portion
of their mutual disdain was caused by then Senator Truman who chaired the Truman
Committee. The committee had exposed considerable waste, fraud, and abuse by
government defense contractors during WWII. It is not surprising that the two
did not meet often and, in general, Truman was excluded from cabinet and most other
high level meetings during his vice presidency.
While Truman knew he was ‘out of the loop’, he discovered
just how much he did not know when he assumed the presidency. In his previous
life as the Senator from Missouri, Truman had heard rumors of a super-secret
defense project. As vice president, he’d caught a scent of it again, but twelve
days into his tenure he was fully briefed for the first time on the Manhattan
(atomic bomb) Project by Henry Stimson, Secretary of War. The briefing by
Stimson and others coupled with the complex bureaucratic Washington, D.C. maze
that horded information like gold convinced Truman that he wanted his very own
intelligence gathering service. Irrespective of all the excuses he heard from
various agencies and departments, Truman was determined to have the
intelligence he required to do his job on a daily basis. In January of 1946,
the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) was formed and, by September 1947, the National
Security Act of 1947, transmuted it into the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA,
headed by Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter.
It was not smooth sailing for the CIG. Its very existence
threatened the military, State, and War (Defense) Departments’ intelligence
rice bowls and the governmental infighting was intense. According to John L.
Helgerson’s CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates, 1952-1992, “The
President was virtually alone in expecting to receive a daily, comprehensive
current intelligence product, whatever the formal charters of the CIG and CIA
might say. Needless to say, his expectations carried the day.”
The go-ahead for broad-based covert activities was on Hillenkoetter’s
desk a short nine months later in the form of National Security Council
directive NSC 10/2. The directive
created the Office of Special Projects within which it placed covert
activities. The Chief of Special Projects, who reported to the CIA director, was
appointed by the Secretary of State and approved by the National Security
Council. The CIA covert operations authorization was simple: 1. coordination
with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2. National Security Council approval of any
plans, and 3. provided for action "against hostile foreign states or
groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so
planned and executed that any US Government responsibility for them is not
evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US Government can
plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.” The directive provides a very
broad loose definition of covert activities:
…Specifically, such
operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, economic
warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage,
demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states,
including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and
refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in
threatened countries of the free world. Such operations shall not include armed
conflict by recognized military forces, espionage, counter-espionage, and cover
and deception for military operations.
Adversity, properly channeled, yields increased resilience
and strength. Professional embarrassment, properly channeled, yields a
fortified resolve. A government rice bowl filled with taxpayer dollars for
continued survival yields strong motivation. The CIA was still young and wet
behind the ears when the Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb, which
the U.S called Joe-1 after Joseph Stalin. While the CIA knew the Soviets were
working on the Bomb, it was the Air Force that produced the proof enabling Truman
to crow ‘I-told-you-so’ at the top of his voice to the whole world. The ‘government game’ is replete with players
that run, not walk, to the boss to be the first one through the door with new
information. It’s called the ‘kibble’ effect. Like Pavlov’s dogs, we in the
government and the government contractor community are conditioned to receive
treats when we fetch new data ‘the boss’ can use. The boss rewards those who
bring the best information with kibbles, or other treats. The boss collects the
data, places it in a context his boss can use and runs the information up the
ladder to the next boss as soon as possible so he can get his or her kibble.
One can only imagine the pure joy the Air Force felt at
being the first through the president’s door with proof of the Soviet atomic
bomb test and how professionally embarrassed the CIA was. Sixty four years ago
this month the Joe-1 test was conducted at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, STS, in Kazakhstan on August 29,
1949. Joe-1 yielded a 22 kiloton detonation
over twice the estimated yield of the Hiroshima bomb. The STS is about the size
of New Jersey, which is five times larger than the U.S.’s former Nevada Test
Site,
and very remote so how was the test discovered? According to George Washington
University’s Nuclear Vault, the answer to that question lies in the direction
given the Army Air Force by Dwight D. Eisenhower, Army Chief of Staff, in 1947
to develop an Atomic Energy Detection System (AEDS) to remotely sense nuclear
testing through the emissions it released. Between 1947 and 1949, the Defense
Department developed and deployed an "Interim Surveillance Research
Net" that was fully operational by the spring of 1949.
