Creation of the CIA

Creation of the CIA

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Creation of the CIA

Introduction

Despite the popular perceptions generated by Tom Clancy novels and James Bond movies , American intelligence gathering was not a Cold War invention : it has existed since the Republic 's founding . George Washington organized his own intelligence unit during the Revolutionary War , sending spies behind enemy lines and overseeing counterespionage operations . In 1790 , just three years after the Constitutional Convention , Congress acknowledged executive prerogative to conduct intelligence operations and gave then-President Washington a secret

br unvouchered fund "for spies , if the gentleman so s . Intelligence has been a component of American foreign policy ever since

More important for our purposes , America 's growing involvement in world affairs during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the establishment of several permanent intelligence organizations . In 1882 , the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI ) was created and charged with collecting technical data about foreign navy ships and weapons Three years later , the Department of War established its own intelligence unit -- the Military Intelligence Division (MID . In 1908 the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened its doors . By the 1930s , the FBI had become the nation 's preeminent counterespionage agency and had branched into running intelligence activities in Latin America

The State Department , meanwhile , had developed an expertise and a mission , which focused on overt information collection . Finally , several critical events sparked the creation of a new wartime central intelligence agency under the Joint Chiefs of Staff , the Office of Strategic Services (OSS , which collected information , analyzed raw intelligence , and carried out a range of covert , subversive operations abroad - from propaganda , to sabotage , to paramilitary operations . By the end of World War II , these five bureaucratic actors were vying for their own place in the postwar intelligence arena . This was hardly the same straightforward War versus Navy Department environment that gave rise to the National Security Council system or the Joint Chiefs of Staff

It is frequently cited that former President Truman never thought that when he created the CIA it would ever be involved in peacetime covert operations . In 1964 Allen Dulles , one of the most influential Directors of Central Intelligence in CIA history , challenged Truman 's remarks saying that although Truman did not care for dirty Gestapo tactics , the CIA had certainly performed them during his presidency . This will chronicle the transformation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS into the Central Intelligence Agency . It also will examine how and why the peacetime Central Intelligence Agency came to possess many of the same powers as its wartime predecessor . In particular this will focus on the OSS legacy of covert operations and how the CIA inherited that legacy

The Creation of CIA

During World War II , the OSS wielded broad powers , including clandestine intelligence gathering and covert political warfare . William Donovan Director of the OSS , exhorted the United States to maintain the OSS or a close facsimile of it in the post-war period . The end of the war and...