act the advisor to the president on intelligence matters. The act also gave
the DCI command of the CIA. The CIA’s limited mandate—the act de-
nied the CIAany police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers, or internal
security functions—spoke to the concerns of those who feared for Amer-
ican liberties.
The National Security Act of 1947 also created the National Military
Authority and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, with little authority
over the autonomous military services. A 1949 amendment to the law es-
tablished the Department of Defense (DOD) and incorporated the services
within it. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was also created out of the loose
arrangements that existed during World War II and before. The act did not
abolish the intelligence units of the army, the Military Intelligence Divi-
sion (MID), or the navy, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), or other
departmental intelligence services. Instead, the act stipulated each would
continue to perform its own more specialized intelligence functions.
The Central Intelligence Agency became the spearhead for intelli-
gence operations during the Cold War. However, given the bureaucratic
tensions over the creation of the CIA, it surprised no one that the CIA
quickly became enmeshed in bureaucratic fights to expand its authorities
into areas not mentioned in the National Security Act and into covert op-
erations designed to thwart Soviet designs in the European theater. As a
matter of fact, the late 1940s and the entire decade of the 1950s were
later to be known as the CIA’s Golden Age, when the agency engaged in
a series of successful covert operations that built its reputation as the
“quiet option” available to American presidents for wielding power. For
example, the CIA’s operations secured Italy away from the communists
in 1948; overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in
1953 (Operation Ajax); and ousted the elected government of Alfonso
Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 (Operation Success). U.S. intelligence also
managed to get hold of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s secret 1956
speech to the Communist Party Congress, denouncing Stalin’s abuses. In
addition, the CIA forecast the launching of the Soviet Sputnik in 1957.
However, the CIA failed in many respects to anticipate key develop-
ments during this time. For example, it failed to forecast the North Ko-
rean invasion of South Korea in 1950; the People’s Republic of China’s
(PRC’s) entry into the Korean War; the defeat of the French in Vietnam;
the British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt that led to the Suez Crisis in
1956; and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.xlvi • INTRODUCTION05-398 (1) FM.qxd 10/20/05 6:14 AM Page xlvi