Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence

Period of Professionalization, 1945–Present

At the end of the war, President Harry S. Truman and his advisors fol-

lowed American tradition and demobilized the armed forces, including

the OSS. Even with the emergence of the USSR as a serious threat and

the rapidly changing strategic situation, the Truman administration was

slow to recognize the need for the United States to have an intelligence

capability. As a stopgap measure, and bowing to the realities of the

emerging Cold War, Congress in January 1946 established the National

Intelligence Authority (NIA) and the Central Intelligence Group (CIG)

to coordinate intelligence, primarily among the feuding military ser-

vices and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), while the civilians

debated the merits of establishing a permanent professional civilian in-

telligence organization.

A good deal of public and policy opposition to a central civilian or-

ganization focused on possible threats to civil liberties and constitutional

government. Even President Truman wanted to be certain “that no single

unit or agency of the Federal Government would have so much power

that we would find ourselves, perhaps inadvertently, slipping in the di-

rection of a police state.” The military also opposed the creation of a cen-

tral intelligence organization for bureaucratic reasons, fearing some loss

of turf, access, authority, and money if strategic military intelligence

were to be taken away by a new intelligence-gathering agency. The FBI

was opposed, too, because it did not want to lose the foreign intelligence

and espionage capabilities in Latin America that it had acquired in the

1930s.

Yet, Congress enacted the National Security Act in August of 1947,

setting up the National Security Council (NSC), a coordinating and

policy-planning body consisting of the president, vice president, and the

secretaries of defense and state. It also established the Central Intelli-

gence Agency (CIA) to coordinate intelligence analysis so that never

again would the government suffer from too many intelligence agencies

working at cross-purposes. The act specified the CIA as an independent

agency reporting to the president through the NSC to coordinate intelli-

gence activities, provide intelligence analysis to political leaders, and en-

gage in special activities that the National Security Council may direct.

The director of central intelligence (DCI), whose position was created in

1946 to coordinate intelligence information, was designated under the

INTRODUCTION• xlv

05-398 (1) FM.qxd 10/20/05 6:14 AM Page xlv