CONTENTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00951R000400030001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 118
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 17, 2003
• Sequence Number: 1
• Content Type: MISC

25X1A
A. The Liaison Function
1. Background
2. OC and OD
3. A Single OCD Emerges
4. The Fledgling's Role
5. Early Growth
;L V/Scp
y _g
The Reference Function
1. Design of a Reference Center
2. Initial Organization
3. GrowH,.'i - ~:'a-Lns
4. Character of the Reference Center
5. Unification Leads to Progress
6. Relocation
C. The "New" OCD
1. Merger of OCD and the Reference Center
2. You Gain Some, You Lose Some
3. Threats to OCD's Existence Surmounted
4. Achievement of a Goal Brings New Problems
5. Growth
6. Physical Problems--The Stadium
7. Stability
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A. The Liaison Function
Throughout their histories, the Office of
Collection and Dissemination (OCD) and its forebears
performed two basic functions: liaison and reference.
These functions were conceived together during
the earliest planning for the Central Reference
Group (CIG), and they were considered vital to
the proposed development of the new central intelligence
concept.
Operating in tandem from the time of their
inception, the liaison activities (requirements,
collection and dissemination) in effect sustained
the reference function, which was embodied in
the original Reference Center. The latter was
envisioned as a focal point where the intelligence
officer would find "all" of the pertinent information
bearing on a given problem. The liaison function,
on the other hand, represented the beginning of
the requirements-collection-dissemination-reference
cycle.
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1. Background
When President Truman established the National
Intelligence Authority (NIA) and the CIG under
a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) in January
1946, he directed the DCI to correlate and evaluate
intelligence "relating to national security" and
to assure appropriate dissemination. 1/ The
principal actions thus required to execute the
basic directive were collection (both in the field
and from the files of other agencies), evaluation
and dissemination. Two of these actions--collection
and dissemination--were embodied in the liaison
function. In other words, someone must determine
what information was needed by the intelligence
producers, assure that it would be collected for
them, and see to it that it reached them.
To carry out these activities, the DCI, General
Vandenberg, established the Office of Collection
(OC) and the Office of Dissemination (OD) as two
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of the first four offices of CIG created in July
1946 to provide centralized "services of common
concern." 2/ Both Offices were directly under
the DCI but operated "within the cognizance" of
the Interdepartmental Coordination and Planning
Staff (ICAPS).
The Office of Collection was responsible
for collecting intelligence "required for the
production of strategic and national policy intelli-
gence" by the Office of Research and Evaluation
(ORE--later Office of Reports and Estimates) and
for coordinating the collection of necessary foreign
intelligence with other government agencies.
The Office of Dissemination was to assure proper
distribution of the "strategic and national policy
intelligence" produced by ORE. (Responsibility
for disseminating the flow of incoming intelligence
documents from the other intelligence agencies
was assigned later.)
At first neither office was involved in "collection"
and "dissemination" in the sense in which the
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terms are traditionally understood in the profession--
that is, actually collecting information in the
field and deciding to whom the intelligence should
or should not be disseminated. Rather, the "collection"
activity had to do with broad planning and coordination
within the U.S. intelligence collection apparatus,
while "dissemination" was similarly concerned
with broad decisions reached on an interagency
basis regarding permissible distribution of evaluated
national intelligence. In short, liaison activities
were treated as unique types of interagency coordination,
an activity supervised in general by ICAPS.
The first detailed CIG organizational charts,
issued in July 1946, show the "tentative organization
and functions of the components of CIG down to
and including the branch level." 3/ The scope
of responsibilities assigned to OC.and OD on these
charts is rather surprising and, as it developed,
were quite short-lived, particularly with regard
to the former.
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The Office of Collection had six branches.
Two, the Information Control Branch (OC's Message
Center for receiving and distributing raw intelligence)
and the Personnel and Administration Branch, were
supervised by the Executive. In addition, there
were four operating branches, one each for Security,
Requirements,
"Special Intelligence." Thus, in addition to
the basic requirements and collection activities,
the original OC was assigned broad security powers,*
including, but not restricted to Top Secret Control
and custodianship of registered documents; responsibility
and vaguely
defined activity in the field of "Special Intelligence."
The Office of Dissemination had three branches:
Distribution, Intelligence Control, and Surveys
and Reports. The first of these handled mail
and reproduction services. The Intelligence Control
Branch applied to dissemination the "overall
*For example, the Security Branch's primary
responsibility was to prescribe "such information
controls, counterintelligence measures, and overall
security measures as may be required to secure
the operations of the CIG."
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security measures prescribed by the Security Branch
of the Collection Office"--for example, authentication
of document classification and security control
of dissemination procedures. The main job of the
Surveys and Reports Branch was to assist ORE,
primarily in the dissemination of evaluated strategic
and national policy intelligence produced by the
latter office. The Branch was also assigned,
?- inter responsibility for the maintenance
of an "intelligence operations room" and a briefing
and presentations capability.
Personnel records for both Offices are incomplete
for the period. The Acting Assistant Director
for Collection was
and
25X1A9A I Iwas assigned to the Security
Branch, presumably as Chief. Navy Capt.
25X1A
25X1A9A
was the Acting Assistant Director for
Dissemination. other key rsonnel assignments 25X1A9A
to OD included Army Colonel- 9A
initial CIG assignment in February 1946 had been
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25X1A9A
25X1A9A
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that of Acting Assistant Chief of the Central
Planning Staff, predecessor of ICAPS.) Both operations
were housed in what was then known as the "New"
War Department Building at 21st Street and Virginia
Avenue, N.W., the site of today's State Department
headquarters building.
Such were the functions and organizational
structures of the original Offices of Collection
and Dissemination as officially described in July
1946. It is difficult to determine the extent
to which the Offices actually got under way in
executing all the functions initially assigned
to them. Possibly, some were never more than
"paper assignments." The charts themselves, as
well as the Administrative Order to which they
were attached, were labeled "tentative." The
Administrative Order further declared that
Because of limited personnel presently
available, the office of Collection and the
Office of Dissemination ... activities will
necessarily be restricted largely to planning
for future operations. 5/
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One month later, another Administrative Order
setting forth the "Interim Policy and Procedure
for Dissemination" still specified that ORE would
continue to disseminate its own intelligence products
until OD had obtained sufficient personnel to
function adequately. 6/
Personnel orders attest to the assignment
of people and rooms and daily security check duties,
but whether the Offices actually achieved an operational
mode cannot be determined. They remained in a
constant state of change, and within a relatively
short period they lost many of their originally
assigned functions and finally their separate
identities as well.
The first change concerned OC's relationship
to the Office of Special Operations (OSO). Included
in OC's Statement of mission was the following:
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In conjunction with [ICAPS] and [OSO],
conducts constant research into the field
of collection of information and recommends
new means, methods and techniques for
improving the over all intelligence
f
coverage by U S_j. governmental collecting
agencies. 7/
The original clandestine services people would
have none of this, however. They considered their
collection operation sacrosanct. As a result,
a change order appeared in August 1946 that deleted
the words "and the Office of Special Operations"
from the OC statement of mission. 8/
3. A Single OCD Emerges
On 10 September 1946, presumably because
management had recognized as artificial the administra-
tive barrier separating the two closely aligned
functions, the Offices of Collection and Dissemination
and all their functions were merged into a single
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Office of Collection and Dissemination. 9/
Excepted from the merger were the functions of
the former OD "pertaining to maintaining an operations
room, and briefings and presentations in connection
therewith," which were transferred to ORE.
STATINTL
STATINILater, OCD lost the
and the Security Branch.
The former was transferred to the newly activated
Office of Operations (00) in October 1946. 10/
The latter was abolished in July 1947, and its
functions were transferred to the Executive for
Inspections and Security (I&E). 11/ Left unexplained
by available documentation is the nature and fate
of the original OC's Special Intelligence Branch.
The mission of the new OCD was generally
the same as before, although, in retrospect, it
appears to have been made slightly more realistic.
It was as follows:
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To determine the collection and
dissemination requirements for strategic
and national policy intelligence
information and intelligence; and to
formulate and supervise the implementation
of operating plans, policies and procedures
in connection therewith. 12/
The new Office was subdivided into three
functional branches. The Requirements Branch
was responsible for determining what each agency
wanted to know; the Collection Branch assigned
field collection responsibility; and the Dissemination
Branch assured proper distribution of ORE-produced
intelligence.
25X1A
, the former OD chief, was named
the first Assistant Director for Collection and
Dissemination (AD/CD). His Deputy (DAD/CD) was
LORIP P I I I
the only holdover from OC, was named to head the
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new Collection Branch, and
25X1A
of OD,
the Requirements Branch. The Dissemination Branch
25X1A
was set up under who had originally
been assigned from State to CIG and slotted as
the Acting Administrative Officer.
Chief of the former OC, was reassigned to the
Office of the Director and shortly thereafter
returned to the War Department.) 13/
4. The Fledgling's Role
The Office had emerged from its incubation
stage and was struggling to solve the problems
inherent in all newly achieved operational capabilities.
Not surprisingly, the most immediate collection
and dissemination problems involved OSO and 00.
Especially irritating to OSO, for example, was
the fledgling OCD's habit of simultaneously levying
collection requirements upon overt and covert
sources. OSO rightfully held that overt possibilities
(nonclandestine overseas sources as well as headquarters
files) should be exhausted before their limited
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covert resources were approached. Among other
matters worrying both OSO and 00 was the ever-
present danger of having one of their sources
compromised by OCD Collection Directives levied
on other agencies concerning reports that had
originated with 00/Contacts Branch (OO/CB) or
OSO.
A more basic problem, however, was defining
OCD's role in collection and dissemination--particularly
with regard to the latter. From the outset, OCD's
collection function was generally understood to
be one of broad planning and coordination with
respect to the government's intelligence collection
system--i.e., a liaison activity--rather than
direct involvement in field collection. In other
words, OCD was a middleman allocating responsibility
for field collection of required intelligence.
There were, however, officially recognized
exceptions to even this rather mundane role.
OSO dealt directly with the FBI and other counterparts
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and would, in fact, accept from OCD only requirements
of demonstrated importance that could not be collected
through overt channels. Similarly, 00 often bypassed
the OCD mechanism and worked directly with its
own sources, as would the Office of Scientific
Intelligence (OSI) with the Atomic Energy Commission
(AEC) a short time later. Moreover, even within
the "middleman" sphere, OCD's authority was dichotomized
in that it handled only "specific" collection
requirements. Responsibility for "general" or
"standing" types of requirements belonged to ICAPS.
The dissemination role of OCD was surrounded
by confusion from the beginning. To avoid another
Pearl Harbor, the National Security Council (NSC)
had placed a positive obligation upon the DCI
to keep the policy and operational echelons of
the government informed with timely and accurate
warnings through the fullest exchange of information.
This was basically a positive charge devoid of
exceptions. Thus, the CIG Administrative Order
that, in August 1946, set forth an interim policy
for the dissemination of CIG-produced intelligence,
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in effect directed that all such intelligence
would be disseminated by OCD "in close collaboration
with ORE and interested offices and staffs." 14/
The intelligence dissemination principle, however,
also implied a negative system of controls to
safeguard the information. The Administrative
Order had also stated that desirable changes would
be made to meet organizational requirements.
The "interested offices and staffs" began pressuring
for the "desirable changes"--i.e., negative controls
to safeguard the intelligence to be disseminated.
In the process that would take place over
the next few years, OCD's role as a disseminator
of "all" intelligence would change to that of
disseminator of only that intelligence that could
safely be disseminated on a "need to know" basis.
The function moved toward decentralization. Offices
such as OSO and 00 naturally wanted to protect
their sources and methods, and their material
was "sanitized" prior to dissemination, or, as
in the case of the former's counterespionage reports,
withheld altogether.
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Within a short period of time, many other
types of reports would be exempt from the OCD
channels. Nonetheless, most types of Agency-
produced reports, as well as the largest bulk
of incoming material, came within the purview
of OCD's dissemination system. Dissemination,
even with all the exceptions, rapidly became the
largest and most meaningful of OCD's functions.
It was, in fact, soon described as "the single
most important tool for carrying out the
Director's continuing obligation to insure exchange
of intelligence." 15/
Dissemination was to remain an OCD function
long after the other two original activities--
requirements and collection--had been transferred
to other offices.* Given the broad and ill-defined
terms of its original mandate, and the fact that
only some of the functional conflicts were essentially
resolved during its first year of operation, OCD
*Domestic collection (from U.S. Government
sources) went to 00/CD in July 1961; the require-
ments function to the Collection Guidance Staff (CGS),
O/DDI, in June 1963; and the remaining pure liaison
activities to CGS and the
(formerly 00) in January 1967.
25X1A
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came to be recognized simply as an intermediary
between the collector and the producer;* and as
a distribution center within CIG and a central
clearing house for the routing of intelligence
within the government.
By early 1947, then, the operation in the
new OCD had settled down as much as any operation
could in that early, tumultuous period. If the
Office's mission was more plebeian than was originally
envisaged, its services were nonetheless vital
to the government's new centralized intelligence
operation. In January 1947, when General Vandenberg
presented his yearend report for 1946 to the NIA,
he highlighted, among other things, the increasing
workloads of OCD's Collection and Dissemination
Branches. He noted that the former was already
handling collection requests from seven government
agencies in addition to the internal CIG requests
and that the other agencies had "come more and
*There would be minor exceptions in the future
when, as in 1950 and 1955, OCD was to engage in
direct field collection by sending survey and
microfilming teams to Western Europe to collect
overt industrial and biographic information.
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more to call on [OCD] to assist in locating and
supplying their required intelligence material." 16/
5. Early Growth
By March 1947 the Office's on-board strength
stood at 43, against an authorized ceiling of
61, 17/ and in June Admiral Hillenkoetter's first
report to the NIA emphasized CIG's (that is, OCD's)
expenditure of "much time" for the coordination
of U .,S. collection efforts "through clearing house
arrangements and central reading panels." 18/
At about this time--mid 1947--OCD's by now noticeably
lumbering operation was moved from the War Department
location on 21st Street to South Building in the
2430 E Street, N.W., complex and to M Building
on 26th Street, N.W., near Constitution Avenue. 19/
Intense recruitment and training programs
were beginning to alleviate OCD's staffing problem,
though the Branches were still hard pressed to
keep up with the rapidly mounting volume of business.
Throughout the second half of 1947, personnel
and work statistics continued to climb. By October
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the on-board strength had risen to 62 and the
authorized ceiling to 73. 20/ In the same month
the Office received about 325 Requirements, compared
to 175 in August, and it issued almost 400 Collection
Directives against the August total of 250. 21/
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B. The Reference Function
If the basic mission of the new intelligence
concept for centralization of the national security
alarm system was to collect intelligence and make
it available to the estimators, then the very
fact of availability presupposed the existence
of an information storage capability--that is,
a reference center. Thus, in establishing CIG,
President Truman also directed the new department
to perform "such services of common concern as...can
be more efficiently accomplished centrally." 22/
One of the services intended--along with the more
glamorous covert activities--would logically be
a reference service, and five months later, in
the first DCI's June Progress Report to the NIA, 23/
the center is identified by name for the first
time--by the first of several names, in fact.
Specifically, Admiral Souers included a "Central
Register of Intelligence Information" as one of
the nine problems "for which immediate solutions
are well advanced" and which could be more efficiently
operated centrally by CIG.
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1. Design of a Reference Center
The "immediate solution" of the policy planners
had been to assign to ORE responsibility for develop-
ing the center, and in August 1946, ORE's first
Administrative order 24/ in part directed its
Executive Staff to "prepare for the earliest practicable
activation of the projected...'ntelligence Library"--
characteristic terminology of a time when the
reference center concept envisioned a "total library"
containing information for all intelligence purposes.
The CIG planners rightfully considered the
creation of such a reference center a vital part
of the system. They also recognized the problem
that faced them in determining the nature of the
beast to be developed--that is, either a system
that guaranteed access to the files of participating
agencies; or a common library where, in fact,
all national security intelligence would be deposited;
or a compromise arrangement according to which
required intelligence would be released at the
holder's discretion. In other words, would it
be an interagency effort operated for the benefit
of all concerned or a CIG-oriented system developed
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within the context of "correlation and evaluation
of national security intelligence [by ORE]"?
At the policy level, early signs indicated a preference
for the latter.
Such policy matters notwithstanding, the
practical planners* who were designing the reference
center were faced with a task for which there
was no precedent or experience upon which they
could draw. The problems were formidable, and
the solutions had to be created, not borrowed.
For a library of such hitherto unknown complexity,
for example, the chore of systemizing the mass
of information for specialized control was, in
itself, almost overwhelming.
It is not particularly surprising that the
Central Planning Staff had elected to place the
reference activity in a production office such
as ORE as a secondary function rather than make
it an independent office as they had done with
collection and dissemination. First, it probably
25X1A , an ORE senior officer
and later Executive, OCD, and
O/DCI Adviser for Organizational Management, :,7ere
primarily responsible for planning the reference
center.
25X1A
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did not seem illogical at the time to assign such
a support function to the office that it was primarily
intended to support--although this fact in itself
would later prove detrimental to the center's
development. Further, the assignment of the activity
to ORE was regarded, at least theoretically, as
temporary in nature. Witness the ORE Instruction
that stated that:
This Reference Branch will
be a temporary responsibility
pending organizational develop-
ment and availability of space
for later efficient independent
operation of a CIG Reference
Center. 25/
25X1 C
25X1 C
Placement notwithstanding, in October 1946
there appeared the first official definition of
the proposed reference center--almost indirectly,
as it were.
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abroad.* As part of the new operation, the Directive
required the DCI to establish within the "Center
Register a contact register of all existing and
future business-contacts, from which clearances
must be obtained by participating agencies before
new contacts are approached." The Directive thus
secondarily established the Contact Control Register,
which would remain a part of the reference complex
for about two years, and also defined both Registers.
The Central Register, that is, the reference
center, was defined as:
A file to be established by and
in the Central Intelligence Group
in which will be recorded--in a
form mutually agreed upon--the
location, nature, reliability, etc.,
of all foreign intelligence infor-
mation related to the national
security in the possession of and
acquired by the government. The
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general function of the Central
Register is to provide a central
and easily administered means of
facilitating access by one agency
to information in the physical
possession of another agency and
the exchange of valuable information
by and between authorized agencies.*
The ,It.atement of mission is interesting in
retrospect--not simply because it represents the
first definition of the new reference center but
more because its wording presaged a problem that
would concern the early policy planners. The
main thrust of the first mission description,
particularly in its final sentence, clearly implies
that the Register was envisioned as a common effort
operated by and for all agencies. Influencing
the CIG planners, however, was the increasing
*The definition was proposed by Harry
25X1A then Assistant Director for Collection
(see page ), apparently in response
to a request from Commander
originally on the Central Planning Staff, for
25X1A suggested definitions of terms used in a draft
of the I. 28/
25X1A was one of the prime architects of 00's
Contact Branch.
25X1A
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conviction that the reference center should be
maintained primarily by and for CIG; that is,
operated within the context of ORE's "correlation
and evaluation of national security intelligence,"
with secondary service to other agencies. It
was the latter philosophy that would shortly prevail.
At any rate, by January 1947, in the same
1946 Yearend Report to the NIA 29/ in which he
highlighted OCD's increasing interagency activities,
General Vandenberg was also able to state that
The administrative preliminaries
to the creation of an interagency
reference center have been
underway for some time. Delays
have resulted from my desire to
initiate the project only when
adequate and competent personnel
are available, but several
related projects which have been
given consideration have been
so developed that when the time
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comes they will easily fall into
the Reference Center pattern.
Among these are the Biographic
Data Compilation Plan, the Central
Contact Register-and Intelligence
on Foreign Industrial Establishments.
25X1A9A
25X1A
The "administrative preliminaries" had begun,
of course, during CIG's initial structuring phase
in mid-1946 when the CPS had established the first
four operating offices and had placed the reference
element in one of them--that is, as the Reference
Branch of ORE. Recruitment of key officers to
design the center was begun in the late summer
of 1946, and
was brought back
to CIG* from State Department in November--this
time permanently. 30/ He was assigned to ORE
and given the job of developing the reference
center ./I At the same time, ICAPS was working to
I had previously been with CIG for
about ree months. In February 1946, he was
detailed, with two others from State and six from
the War and Navy Departments, to man the hastily
formed Central Reports Staff and prepare the
President's Daily Summaries. F- I subsequent
selection for the reference center assignments was
undoubtedly influenced by his prewar EAM work with
New York's Museum of Natural History and his OSS
wartime experience.
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25X1A
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25X1A9A
25X1A
25X1A
resolve interagency problems, including those
involved in reference center planning, such as
development of a coordinated biographic intelligence
plan; acquisition and centralization of data on
foreign industrial establishments (the "FIE plan");
and a programmed study by library and business
machine experts (when recruited) to design an
"interagency filing system and reporting manual." 31/
A planning staff was gradually being assembled
to design the new facility within ORE, and among
the key personnel first recruited were
joined CIG in November 1946;
in March 1947. Before the close of 1946,
the staff had been bolstered by the addition of
four cleared IBM specialists, who were brought
in as consultants.. 32/ Since the main emphasis
of the early planners was on mechanization of
a "super library," the group would thus also be
staffed with experienced librarians, such as Joseph
Becker, Chief Librarian of 00's Foreign Document
Division (FDD), who would join the staff in June
1947.
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As we have seen, the planners' mission was
to design a truly centralized reference facility
where, for the first time, an intelligence officer
could find any type of information necessary to
conduct any kind of intelligence operation--in
other words, a "total library." A further requirement
was that it be as completely mechanized as possible,
not only to handle the large volume of incoming
intelligence material but to assure the requesting
officer of prompt all-inclusive retrieval.
During the early planning stage, the staff,
quartered in Q Building, wrestled with the fundamentals
of organization and procedures. Immediately apparently
to them was that there existed no such "total"
reference facility--either within or outside the
government--which was even remotely similar in
extent to the one they had been directed to design.
Many reference facilities were in operation, but
they were all narrow in scope and parochial in
content; they served one master, not an entire
community of diverse users. Storage and retrieval
mechanization, where it existed at all, was relatively
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primitive. In short, there was no precedent to
follow, no model from which to borrow. Whatever
was developed by the staff would have to be created.
Theirs would be the prototype.
It also quickly became evident to the planners
that the information storage and retrieval requirements
of the proposed reference center were too complex
for a single library--both for effective management
and for conventional library indexing systems.
They therefore decided that there should be a
central repository for traditional library materials
and a series of semiautonomous "satellite" libraries
for specialized materials containing biographic,
industrial, photographic and domestic contact
data; that all would be machine-controlled to
the maximum extent possible; and that all would
be under single management.
There thus evolved, at first on paper, an
initial organizational structure of an.Intelligence
Documents Division (Library), a Contact Control
Register (CCR), a Biographical Intelligence Register
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(BIR), a Foreign industrial Register (FIR), a
Graphic Materials Division (GMD), and, providing
machine support to all, a Central Index. In addition,
there would be the Executive and Coordinating
Staffs.
2. Initial Organization
On 1 January 1947 the CIA Library, then known
as the Intelligence Document Division, was organized.
The Central Index (later the Machine Techniques
Branch and then the Machine Division) came into
being on 17 March, and the Industrial, Graphics
and Biographics Registers were in operation by
Because the proposed mission of the Reference
Branch was to receive, classify, record, prepare
for retrieval and file all incoming intelligence
material, work had also begun on developing systems
and procedures. The incoming volume of the material
was so heavy and the media diversification so
great that the problem of systemizing the mass
of information was, in itself, a formidable task.
In essence, the diverse types of media had to
be sorted out and a coding system developed.
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Ea Master Files and Statistical
Q Ln Records Division
Index Division
H a
09
w E~
25X1X8
STAT
U
z
w to
0 H
~-4 z
10
E-+ U
z o
Bibliographic Division
Selected Reference, Acces-
sion and Circulation
Division
Pictorial Records Division
Map Division
Film Division
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Since the system had to cover a wide range
of subjects of interest to the entire community,
the group set out to adapt to its purposes portions
of extant classification schemes--mainly the War
Department's Basic Intelligence Directive (BID),
which was not a storage and retrieval coding system,
per se, but rather a guide for field collection
of intelligence. At the outset, the group sought
to design, as directed, an "interagency filing
system" and worked with representatives of other
departments, but the intransigence* of the latter,
their unwillingness to adapt to a common system,
made the effort increasingly fruitless. Although
it was to take more than a year, the planners
eventually developed the Intelligence Subject rs=
Code (ISC)--a classification system for coding
the area and subject content of intelligence documents.
*Something less than a willingness to cooperate
frequently characterized the attitudes of the
other departments during CIG's formative period.
In a December 1946 report to the Chief of ICAPS,
one of the CIG members frankly stated that many
of the difficulties encountered by ICAPS repre-
sentatives' uncertainty regarding CIG's permanence
and [then] ill-defined mission; lack of vision by
some subordinates who feared transfer of functions
to CIG would jeopardize their own positions; the
fear of service departments to surrender important
operations to a quasi-civilian organization; and
frequent changes in policy of IAC members as
announced at ICAPS meetings. 33/
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Simultaneously, the machine specialists were
working to mechanize the system, seeking a solution
that would combine the advantages of IBM punch
cards and rapid electronic reproduction of document
descriptions. The Finch Telefax equipment (a
facsimile printer) supplied the missing element,
and the planners began the development of what
would become the CIA Intellofax System. The system
permitted machine retrieval of data from the files
through the medium of Faxcards--that is, an IBM
card, code-punched according to the ISC for subject
and area, upon which a description or abstract
of the document had been printed, and which was
delivered to the searcher in the form of a continuous
Intellofax Tape.
It would take until July 1949 before the
system would become fully operative, but the ground-
work was laid by the early planners. Similar
classification systems and internal operating
procedures had to be developed for each of the
specialized libraries--or registers. Procedures
were designed to redirect the heavy flow of incoming
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intelligence documents through the processing
machinery of the Reference Branch. (All incoming
material was then being routed by OCD's Dissemination
Branch to ORE'S "Information Center" for distribution.)
The arbitrary placement of CCR in the Reference
Center at the beginning probably resulted from
two factors: the availability of CIG's only business
machine capability in the Center and
previous exposure to the "contact" business.
After V-E Day in mid-1944,
the General Staff Corps,* had been recruited by
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to set
up West Coast offices and conduct a "Survey of
Foreign Experts"--that is, to locate organizations
and individuals in the Western States with knowledge
of Far Eastern countries and to index their capabilities.
As a result of the operation, a file of some 10,000
5"x8" cards was amassed, each of which indexed,
among other things, the source's area, language
and professional knowledge. After the war,
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a complete set of the cards was placed in the
OSS Archives, 34/ and it was a selected portion
of these cards that became the base for CCR's
files. It is not so surprising, then, that the
contact control operation was initially placed
in the new Reference Center--partly, one would
25X1A9A assume, because o I experience and the
25X1A
enthusiasm he had conveyed to
but most certainly because the "index" would thus
become part of the Center's vaulted machine controls.
Actually, at the time there was no other
place to put the activity. It was very shortly
afterward, however, that OO/CB was established
(October 1946), and the battle was joined. Where
the mission of OO/CB was to "open up" US organiza-
tions in order to tap the flow of intelligence
information from their foreign representatives,
CCR's job in OCD was to machine index for rapid
had left the General
Staff Corps to become the first Special Assistant
25X1A to the for Research and
Intelligence. In an April 1946 memorandum to
25X1A the DCI, became one of the few to
urge that the United States continue its wartime
domestic collection effort.
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retrieval the information producing capabilities
of the individual sources involved. From the
outset, this functional dichotomy was anathema
to the officers of OO/CB's Field Division. In
their opinion, no one except themselves, apparently
not even their own headquarters people, could
properly protect the identities of their US sources.
As later noted by the Contact Division's historian,
it was obvious-that the field officers
would never consent to the inclusion of
their sources' identities in an index
available to all of the outside intelligence
agencies; or, to venture into a completely
different area of dispute, to other
elements of CIA. 35/
The contact control index, or CCR, remained in
OCD for two more years before the OO/CB position
prevailed and the operation was transferred out
of OCD and absorbed by OO/CB.
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3. Growing Pains
As the planning continued, the Reference
Branch staff grew slowly--painfully so--and as
personnel reported for duty, they were assigned
to one of the Branch components. A skeletal organiza-
tion was gradually developed, and the literally
few people in the library and each of the Registers
began putting the untried plans into operation.
Internal procedures and proposed systems had to
be tested and improved. Bases of information,
upon which to build the centralized reference
repositories, had to be developed.
To a very considerable extent, the new staff
members achieved these objectives by visiting
every similar organization, both governmental
and private, that they could identify. In each
instance, systems and procedures were studied
to determine their possible applicability to the
partly developed CIG reference system. More important,
such visits helped accelerate the establishment
of data bases. Many of the parochial files that
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were reviewed were integrated into the Reference
Branch data base, either by indexing the material
and storing it on machine cards, or by outright
transfer of the hard-copy file to the central
collection. Biographic data in both forms, for
example, was obtained from the Department of State
and the Service Departments.
Library equipment and collections, either
in whole or in part, were obtained from numerous
government libraries, such as the Library of Congress,
and from such unlikely sources as the Civilian
Production Administration of the Office of Housing
Expediter. Similarly, the industrial and graphics
specialists added sizable increments to their
data bases as, for instance, the entire OSS photo
collection, which GPM inherited from State. While
the EAM and systems experts accompanied the substantive
specialists on their visits to other government
agencies, their efforts were concentrated on private
industry, investigating all possibly applicable
electrical, electronic and photographic hardware.
In some cases, shelf items were applicable. In
other cases, necessary equipment was created or
converted from available models.
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In short, the activity of the earliest Reference
Branch personnel was hectically multifaceted.
Newly arrived upon the scene, they simultaneously
struggled to implement and improve procedures;
receive, index and file for retrieval the routine
flow of material that had begun to come in; relieve
ORE and other CIG elements of the files they had
amassed; locate and integrate into their system
large data collections from other agencies; and
respond to the information requests that had begun
to arrive.
This earliest developmental period, of course,
took well over a year, and some of the more comprehensive
subsystems, such as Intellofax, were not fully
implemented for about we years. During the developmental
period, the embryonic Reference Branch could,
at best, barely limp along, pending full development
of the basic systems and, more importantly, the
acquisition of adequate staff.
In retrospect, it is difficult to determine
the developmental status of any one of the units
at any given time during the first year. As noted
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above, all six components of the Reference Branch
officially became operative between January and
June 1947. A memorandum issued by the DCI's Assistant
Executive Director on 25 June informed all Assistant
Directors (ADs) that the Reference Branch was
prepared to begin operations in all its stated
functions. The announcement went so far as to
instruct the ADs to "make such adjustments in
current operational procedures as may be necessary
to conform therewith." 36/
Officially, then, the Reference Branch was
operational. The operational capability, however,
must have been minimal. With all the developmental
tasks that had to be carried on, there were undoubtedly
too few people available during the first half
of 1947 to achieve any meaningful operational
capability. In fact, as late as 31 March 1947,
an ORE personnel roster shows a total of only
28 people assigned to the Reference Branch. 37/
With s:ach severely limited manpower, the major
effort must have been on in-house development.
Nonetheless, as a result of the superb efforts
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25X1A9A
25X1A9A
of the early planners, the central reference facility
was becoming fairly well established within the
first several months of its existence--certainly
in blueprint, if not in operating fact.
In January 1947 the operation was moved from
Q Building to the first floor of Central Building
in the 2430 E Street complex (the remainder of
ORE occupied the second floor), and in February,
was named Acting Chief, Reference
Branch, ORE. 38/
Late in the first quarter of 1947 the staff
completed their planning, and on 28 March, Dr.
ubmitted to ICAPS the proposed Statement
of Mission and Table of2Wa ization for the Reference A
Branch, as approved by then AD/RE.
On 25 June, ICAPS approved the plan, with certain
changes in the functional statement.
The changes were important with regard to
the scope of the reference center's responsibility.
Previously, there had been indecision on the part
of the early policy planners as to whether the
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centralized reference facility should be an interagency
partnership or whether it should be operated by,
and primarily for, CIG, with secondary responsibility
allocated to the other intelligence agencies.
The modifications by ICAPS clearly indicated that
the policymakers had opted for the latter arrangement.
The Statement of Mission submitted to ICAPS in
March had echoed the original concept implied
in the first CIG definition of the proposed reference
element, which envisioned the facility as a common
effort operated by and for all the intelligence
agencies.
25X1A9A
Specifically, th proposal stated
...to centralize various reference
functions related to the intelligence
activities of the United States
Government and to provide a
Reference Library for CIG.... This
Branch serves as a Reference Center
for CIG and the member agencies. [italics supplied] 39/
However, the approved ICAPS version of June officially
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declared that the mission of the Branch was
To be the repository for all
intelligence and intelligence
information to be permanently
filed by CIG, to maintain records
of all available intelligence
sources, intelligence information
and intelligence; to provide a
reference library for CIG; and to
establish, in coordination with
OCD, procedures for utilization of
its materials and catalogs by other
agencies. 40/
Moreover, whereas the March submission proposed
as the primary duty of the Chief the establishment
of reference activities for CIG and the member
agencies, the June ICAPS version directed him
to "Establish the central reference activities
for CIG, and maintain appropriate liaison administra-
tive and policymaking activities." 41/ It was
now indelibly clear that the policymakers were
no longer undecided about the Reference Center's
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scope of responsibility. With regard to this
very fundamental principal, they had finally decided
that the Center would be not a community partnership
effort but a wholly CIG owned and operated facility,
the services of which would also be available
to other agencies, circumstances permitting.
Throughout its history, the reference element,
whatever its organizational title, would serve
first as a mechanism for its parent organization
and second for the other agencies, with the latter
service dependent upon budgetary realities.
The Reference Branch organizational structure
approved by ICAPS was identical with that developed
by the planners and was by then (June) actually
in rudimentary operation. With the T/O pegged
25X1A
at positions, the Branch's components and
their position allocations (indicated parenthetically),
were the Office of the Chief I the Executive
and Coordinating Staffs and six operating
25X1A
components: the
, the Intelligence Documents Division
or Library and a Central Index
Branchwide machine support.
to provide
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Although officially designated the Reference
Branch of ORE, the new operation was more generally
known as the Reference Center, a name it was actually
given when it was transferred from ORE to the
CIA Executive for Administration and Management
(A&M) in September 1947.
4. Character of the Reference Center
Over the years, countless changes in systems,
procedures and objectives of the Reference Center
were to be effected; divisions appeared and disappeared;
and eventually much of the operation was computerized.
The fundamental central reference system as originally
conceived would nevertheless prove sound in principle--
that is, the channeling of "all" intelligence
documentation to the reference facility for general
and specialized indexing and storage by the central
library and the specialized registers; category
retrieval of documents on demand; and, as will
be discussed below, the presumably unplanned develop-
ment of area expertise for substantive analysis
and the production of finished or semifinished
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intelligence within fields of specialty. In fact,
the prototype reference center of June 1947 would
remain essentially unchanged in structure and
system for two decades. Even after the reorganization
of the functionally arranged Office of Central
Reference (OCD's new title after 1955) into the
graphically arranged Central Reference Service,
the same basic principles of operation would prevail.
Early organizational structures contemplated
reflect what was apparently a fundamentally different
functional concept on the part of the earliest
policy planners--that is, development of a reference
system exclusively involved in the indexing and
retrieval of documents and books, or, in other
words, a machine-supported general and specialized
reference activity devoid of any substantive analysis
capability. If the need for analysis was not
apparent to the early policymakers and
planners, it became almost immediately evident
to the first reference specialists. They quickly
discovered that the input and retrieval aspects
of a machine-based operation could not be divorced
25X1A9A
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from analysis; that even their primary decisions
to code or not to code, to correct factual errors
in dates and name spellings, and to select pertinent
extracts were actions that constituted basic analysis.
However slowly, such decisions became increasingly
intellectual (involving detection, evaluation
and interpretation, and even before the end of
the first year it had become evident that the
process was not one of perfunctory indexing for
storage and retrieval.
Rather, analysis had clearly begun to emerge
as an integral and inseparable part of the reference
analyst's job. In fact, after the Reference Branch
had been in existence for only i c months, the
AD/RE, Theodore Babbitt, stated that analysts
in BIR should maintain a reports-writing capability.
At the outset, it had apparently been agreed that
the State Department would bear primary responsibility
for preparing biographic reports for CIG. The
Department's Biographic Information Division (BI),
however, lacked sufficient manpower to carry out
the responsibility, and BIR, to fill the gap,
had begun writing biographic reports for CIG requesters
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(rather than transmitting batches of pertinent
raw documents). It was this "emergency" production
effort that Babbitt said should be maintained. 43/
Babbitt reportedly held that BIR should have
the capability of preparing biographic studies
"in addition to its regularly allotted functions"--
that is, locating, indexing, recording and retrieving
biographic informa?~ion--and that the Register
should recruit people "capable of doing biographical
research work." 44/
That the character of the reference analyst's
job was changing was indelibly recorded in November
when an officer from A&M, reporting on her manpower
initial T/O but recommended that
survey of the Reference Branch, approved I
A substantial saving in personnel
could be achieved if Reference Center
register activity was confined exclusively
to punch card recording. The establish-
ment of files and the extracting and
annotating of reports for file purposes
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which occurs in FIR, BIR, and CCR are
time-consuming and require the services
of many professional employees. 45/
The trend toward analysis in the reference
analyst jobs was to continue, however, with the
eventual development of effective and highly regarded
officers who were recognized authorities in their
support specialities--for example, industrial
officers, graphics specialists and biographic
officers. The apex of distinction in this respect
would accrue to the Biographic Register, which
would become the most prestigious component in
OCD, culminating in the DCI's Directive of October
1961 46/ and subsequent DDI action, authorizing
BR to produce finished intelligence--the only
reference register ever so empowered.
The approval by ICAPS of its mission and
functions marked the first milestone in the early
development of the Reference Branch. At about
the same time, and equally important to its development,
the Branch was finally allocated sufficient working
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area. Space limitations in Central Building had
begun to inhibit even the slow growth of that
early period, since the relatively small number
of newcomers that the recruitment program was
beginning to produce could not be integrated into
the operation but had to be "held" in A&M. Finally,
after secure wire-mesh storage facilities were
installed, the Reference Branch moved on 12 June
1947 into the fourth wing of the first and second
floors of M Building on 26th Street near Constitution
Avenue.
5. Unification Leads to Progress
At last unified in adequate quarters, the
Branch began to show small but meaningful progress.
By the end of the month, on-duty strength had
risen to 48, and in late July it stood at 59.
47/ Developmental and operational activities
were accelerated. With regard to the former,
Intellofax* negotiations moved beyond the initial
25X1A
May contact with
*Actually, the name "Intellofax" would not
be coined until about mid-1949, when the system
was implemented.
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25X1A
by July involved
By late August the Library's Classification Unit
had completed the general framework of the "all-
inclusive" subject and area classification schedule
(later the ISC), and interagency subcommittees
were attempting to develop additional classification
segments for coding military subjects (especially
for Navy and Air Force) not covered by the initial
plan.
In the same month, the Branch began indexing
FBIB's Daily Reports by subject and area for 00
wa
and were drawn further into the new business of
providing administrative support by automating
personnel records for A&M's Personnel Division.
The "search and find" visits to other installations
increased in number, and in June alone, over 100
meetings and visits were logged. As a result
of the contacts, additional large file increments
were added tc the Reference Branch's specialized
information bases. For instance, CCR, which had
started its data base with the inherited OSS Survey
of Foreign Experts File (on U,,S,. sources of foreign
intelligence), now arranged for a steady flow
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of new data from the domestic contact offices
of 00, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)
and the Military intelligence Division. By August
it had developed machine control on over 1,100
foreign intelligence sources in the United States.
Similarly, the Intelligence Documents Division
had arranged to take over the entire reference
collection of the deactivated Office of Housing
Expediter (OHE);* FIR began building its data
base by acquiring the Industrial Card File (on
Russian installations) from the Army's Special
Document Section at Fort Holabird, Maryland; and
BIR had obtained and was indexing State's Category
File (biographic information arranged by organizational
affiliation) and was completing priority work
on "Project 1640"--locating and centralizing under
machine control information on all foreign scientists
available in Sj agencies. During the same June-
August 1947 period most, but not all, of the reference
components were capable of conducting servicing
operations.
*The overall plan was subsequently abandoned
when the OHE material proved to be almost thoroughly
domestic. Only selected items were actually
transferred.
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In general, then, by the end of August 1947
all six elements of the Reference Branch were
staffed, however minimally, and in various stages
of operation. Their internal procedural patterns
had been designed, their data bases established,
and all, with the exceptions of FIR and GMD, were
actually answering requests. As a branch of ORE,
the new reference facility was developing slowly--
but apparently too slowly--for in September it
was transferred out of ORE and reestablished
as a separate office under the Executive for A&M.
From this point on, the Reference Branch was officially,
as well as popularly, designated as the Reference
Center.
6. Relocation
The reasons motivating the administrative
relocation are not at all clear. It will be recalled
that assignment of the Reference Branch and its
development to ORE had been specified as
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a temporary responsibility pending
organizational development and
availability of space for later
efficient independent operation of
a CIG Reference Center. 48/
Perhaps management, that is,
25X1A
, had
come to the conclusion that the reference facility
had been developed to the point where it could
strike out on its own. After all, it was a "common
concern" utility for all of CIA (which replaced
CIG in September 1947) and the entire intelligence
community and not the functionary of any single
office. More probable, however, is that as a
stepchild in a production office, the Branch tended
to channel its reference activities into that
particular form of production; and that the reference
activity, regarded as incidental to the parent
office's primary function of production, received
short shrift in budgetary and manpower allocations.
Identical views were historically reviewed
seven years later by James M. Andrews, the man
who directed the merged reference-collection-dissemination
operation:
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It very quickly became evident
that the Reference Center could not hope
to fulfill its mission of developing
advanced techniques and equipment, and
of serving all offices and staffs of the
Agency, as long as it was located in ORE.
Being only one of several divisions in a
single office, it failed to receive from
ORE the support in terms of budget and
manpower which were needed in order that
it might have the strength to achieve
its objectives... 49/
in considering all the elements that might have
played a part in dictating the transfer, it would
Center. Having worked so closely wit
in developing the Center, he would presumably
be anxious to guarantee to the Center's operators
a maximum opportunity to prove its conceptual
soundness.
Whatever the reasons, it is indisputable
that the reference activity eventually did fare
better as a quasi-independent function under A&M
25X1A9A
25X1A9A
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than as a subordinate activity in a production
office. In fact, in his recollections, Dr. Andrews
also stated that
...in this new location, the Reference
Center received far more administrative
support, and was able to commence building
up its manpower both in quality and in
quantity. Contracts were let for the
development of special machine equipment,
and a serious attack was made on the major
problems which were awaiting solution. 50/
There was not, of course, any immediate develop-
mental surge for the Reference Center. It took
some time. before the administrative benefits resulting
from its new status became apparent, but progress
did continue at a slightly accelerated tempo during
the final quarter of 1947. By December, for instance,
although the Reference Center on-board strength
had oy' risen to a tot~~Xq people, against
an authorized total of r further developmental
and operational progress had been achieved.
25X1A
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With regard to the single most important
developmental target (Intellofax), the design
of the "all-inclusive" unified coding scheme and
hardware for the retrieval and bibliographic printout
system had been brought to near completion. The
community-oriented document coding plan had been
developed by Library and machine personnel to
the point where it was ready for implementation,
but continued reluctance on the part of other
agencies to adapt to the common system had virtually
decided Agency planners to go ahead on their own.
Similarly, the design of special machines to handle
the coded documents had reached a crucial point
by the end of the year. The systems experts had
inspected equipment produced by RCA, Eastman Kodak
and many other companies and had investigated
systems and machines in use in other agencies.
None met the Center's requirements as well as
25X1A
the proposed approach. An overall plan
and funds to develop and produce the special equipment
were approved2%) 14A December, and the contract
was let with the following
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Operationally, the Registers were also beginning
to function with primitive effectiveness. By
the end of the year, their data bases, although
still unimpressive in size, had nonetheless grown
to usable proportions. Some of these document
collections were already under machine control,
while others were manual files, pending final
development of the master coding scheme. The
Intelligence Documents Division (Library), for
instance, had hand filed 150,000 documents by
source; among the Registers, IBM punched card
techniques controlled
BIR,
about the same number of foreign industrial installations
in FIR, and almost
From these data bases, the Registers had
begun to provide CIA and the other IAC members
with the reference service that would characterize
their operations for decades to come. With a
staff of 23, for example, the Intelligence Documents
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Division in November serviced 299 requesters,
and in December a significant CIA Instruction
51/ centralized the accountability and procurement
of all foreign and domestic books in the new library--
ending uncontrolled independent purchasing by
Agency components. Similarly, the Registers had
also moved into a primary operating mode. Most
active were CCR, BIR and FIR, whose December personnel
totals stood at 21., 15 and 10, respectively.
BIR was now unofficially recognized as the focal
point for biographic information on foreign scientists
and technologists (S&T), and preliminary NSC action
had been initiated to formally delegate the S&T
biographic responsibility to CIA--that is, to
BIR.
Least capable of providing more than token
service was GMD. The last of the Registers to
be developed, GMD, working with Central Index
specialists, had completed its procedural and
coding plans and had only recently begun to function
with its staff of eight. The Central Index had
only five people on board but, with the help of
at least four IBM consultants, had made considerable
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25X1A9A
25X1A9A
STAT
progress. In addition to completing the hardware
design of the main index, setting up a storage
and retrieval system, and sharing in the development
of the "unified" document coding scheme with Library
personnel, the small staff was machine indexing
rate of 500 cards per day, after having eliminated
the three-month backlog it had inherited in August;
was keypunching machine indexes to map and pictorial
material for GMD; and was automating personnel
records for A&M's Personnel Division, as well
as coordinating the utilization of machines for
the entire Agency.
STAT
From the outset, the Central Index was directed
by Previously,0 had worked 25X1A9A
brief.ingly for IBM before joining the State Department
and serving a consular tour in Poland. His forte
was organization and administration. His deputy,
1with 15 years of experience in his
field, was the machine systems expert.
originally with the ONI Library, had transferred
to CIG in December 1946 as chief librarian in
OO/FDD and six months later was reassigned as
the Reference Center's Chief Librarian (later,
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STAT
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A-CIA Librarian), with complete authority for the
Library's planning, staffing, organization and
management. CCR had also been under single leadership
since its inception.
CIG in November 1946, along with
and was immediately appointed by the latter to
organize CCR.
GMD, having served in that position since July
1947, and was apparently the
key officer in FIR.
Among all the Registers, BIR alone was still
without continuing leadership at the close of
the year. From about May,
served, apparently without title, as the focal
25X1A9A
25X1A9A
25X1A9A
25X1A9A
25X1A9A
point for activities in BIR. He was replaced
in January 1948 by from the 25X1A9A
Department of State, who served as Acting Chief
for the first quarter of the year and subsequently
25X1A9Areturned to the Department.* For the remainder
25X1A9A of 1948, and, from about September,
D
served as Acting Chiefs until the appointment
25X1A9A
eturned to CIA in mid-1961,
after the Agency had absorbed State's biographic
operation, to serve as Program Coordinator for
the expanded Biographic Register.
25X1A9A
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25X1A9A
as Chief in January 1949.
Thus, by the end of 1947, its first full
year of operation, the Reference Center was fairly
well established and its continued development
would remain uninterrupted by the reorganizational
upheavals that were destined to sweep the Agency
during the next several years.
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The year 1948 began a new era, not only for
the Reference Center but for the entire collection-
dissemination-reference function. It was at this
point that two major events occurred that had
a major impact on the function's development--
the advent of James M. Andrews and the decision
25X1A9A of A&M
to merge OCD and the Reference
Center because of the former's procedural ineffectiveness
and the close interrelationship between the two
activities.
a
For ert months after the transfer of the
Reference Center to A&M the Center continued to
operate in close collaboration with OCD, receiving
the intelligence collected by the latter office
and performing the final function of the collection-
dissemination-reference cycle. By early 1948
the flaws in the overall system had become apparent.
In 1946, CIG planners had decided that the liaison
functions of requirements, collection and dissemination
were sufficiently important to require a separate
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office where such functions could be concentrated
upon exclusively. Although plausible in theory,
the scheme did not work out in practice because
the arrangement isolated OCD's liaison function
from both the poeple who generated requirements
(production) and the reference people who know
what was already available. Thus, liaison tended
to operate in a vacuum and its staff became increasingly
divorced from the realities of both production
and reference. Further, their contacts with other
offices had become formalized and ritualistic,
creating too much paper--;cork, delay and inefficiency.
The two-year-old fledgling needed corrective
surgery, and the DCI obliged. By the time James
Andrews arrived in January 1948 to become Chief
of the Reference Center,
25X1A9A
Branch, unde
s Management 25X1A9A
shad already completed
plans for merging the Center and OCD. Scarcely
War.as months later, on 3 May, the Reference Center
and OCD were combined into a single Office of
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Collection and Dissemination,* under Dr. Andrews
25X1A
as Assistant Director. 52/ the
former AD/CD, returned to the Navy.
Dr. Andrews, an enthusiastic advocate of
the use of business machines (electrical accounting
machines or EAM) for the indexing and retrieval
of information, had been brought in from Harvard
University in January 1948 to head the Reference
Center. Characteristically, when the OCD-Reference
Center merger was effected, Dr. Andrews obtained
carte blanche authority to change the merger plans,
and the organizational surgery was performed accord-
ing to the blueprint that he and his staff developed,
and not according to the plan prepared by Robert
and his management officers--"much to
chagrin," according to one source. 53/
*Along with the Reference Center, A&M's Central
Records Division, Services Branch, was also merged
into the new OCD. Of the services involved,
however, the messenger and courier service and
management of the Agency's administrative records
and archives were transferred back to A&M's
successor (Deputy Director of Administration) in
December 1950, while OCD retained Top Secret
Control and "custody of registered documents."
25X1A
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The new OCD was the organizational as well
as the functional model that would remain basically
unchanged for almost 20 years. Collection and
dissemination were functionally geared to the
vitally intertwined reference activity under a
single direction. The new office contained the
six original reference divisions, plus the collection
and dissemination activities from the original
OCD, now designated the Liaison Division (LD).
Thus, the reconstructed OCD contained the Machine
Division (MD), the Library, the Biographic (BR),
Industrial (IR), Graphic (GR) and Contact Control
Registers, and the new LD.*
It was also at this time that the mail and
courier activities of A&M's Central Records Division
were transferred to OCD, thus also returning the
*To avoid excessive detail, the traditional
titles of OCD's subdivisions will be used
henceforth, even though titular changes continued
to occur for two years--e.g., for most of 1948
the Central Index would be known as the Machine
Methods Branch before final designation as the
Machine Division; the Registers' names would
be shortened; and organizational indicators
differed until the CIA General Order of September
1949 54/ directed Agency adoption of the Federal
vertical departmental organizational structure
(office-to-division-to-branch).
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Top Secret and registered document control functions.
On 21 May, three weeks after the merger, Dr. Andrews
appointed an Air Force colonel,
as his Deputy and his Executive
Assistant Directi~an (EAD). 55/
2. You Gain Some, You Lose Some
By the end of May, other events of developmental
significance had occurred. First, the Library's
community-oriented document coding scheme, now
officially called the Intelligence Subject Code, *1~'S
was put into experimental operation. Early in
1948 the system planners had finally concluded
that the document classification scheme had crystallized
to a degree that justified its use on a trial
basis and that the Intellofax System--that is,
the ISC and the necessary hardware then under
development--gave reasonably sure promise of providing
a satisfactory mechanical solution to the reference
problems. On 15 March 1948 the first edition
of the Intelligence Subject Code Manual was published,
and in April the Library began the ISC indexing
of intelligence documents and the preparation
of descriptive abstracts for selected documents.
25X1A9A
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Pending the development of the Intellofax
hardware, the indexed documents were stored manually.
In brief, the ISC was a six-digit numerical framework,
which permitted the subject and area indexing
of intelligence documents for machine retrieval.
The first manual, of course, was experimental
and constant changes were necessary to adapt the
new system to consumer demands, a process that
slowed down operations. By October 1948, however,
the volume of output had increased to the point
where the coding operation was keeping pace with
the flow of incoming documents.
The second significant development in early
1948 was the first official assignment of a Community-
wide reference responsibility to the new OCD.
On 25 May the NSC issued NSCID No. 8, which formally
delegated to CIA--that is, to BR--primary responsibility
for the maintenance of data on foreign scientists
and technologists. 56/ This assignment would
remain the only formally delegated Community reference
responsibility for OCD and its successor organizations.
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OCD's July 1948 "Statement of Functions"
was far more realistic than preceding charters,
and the organizational set-up was more workable.
Furthermore, the mission statement clearly indicated
that OCD would become essentially a facility for
CIA alone rather than a truly centralized file
where the intelligence officer could find all
the necessary information without having to check
other sources. The narrowness of this mission
was influenced by several factors. First, as
the system had developed up to 1948, there had
been no call for Central Intelligence to establish
a collection or reference system for the entire
Intelligence Community. Second, any attempt to
"coordinate"--that is, to determine the contents
of other agencies' files in order to obtain pertinent
information--would have involved the Director's
"right of inspection" (apparently never invoked
by any DCI) as well as the issuance and enforcement
of interagency compliance directives. To these
and other policy reasons was added a clinching,
practical argument: Surveys conducted in 1946
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and 1947 had clearly indicated that such an interagency
"library" would be too extensive and complex to
permit effective central management.
Thus, the dilemma that had plagued early
CIG planners had now been resolved. Finally cast
aside was any idea of an OCD "super" file. Instead,
the decision had been made to continue the system's
development within the context of "correlation
and evaluation of national security intelligence"--
that is, as produced by ORE.
Although arranged somewhat differently, the
functions of the OCD units remained basically
unchanged. The Library continued to serve as
a general repository for the machine-indexed collection
of intelligence documents; BR, GR and IR maintained
files and provided service within their respective
fields of responsibility; and MD provided machine
support and developed new EAM techniques as required.
LD continued its liaison functions of requirement,
collection and dissemination.
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By mid-1948 OCD's growth impetus had accelerated
noticeably. Its divisions' operating procedures
had been improved to the point where they were
all functioning fairly effectively. In addition,
the Agency's recruitment program was beginning
to provide a steady flow of new people, and by
the end of July, OCD had an on-board strength
of 268. The office was, in fact, in the early
stages of a 10-year growth period, and the expansion
was not even affected by the loss of two functions
in the latter half of 1948.
The first operation to be transferred out
of OCD was CCR. Effective 26 August, CCR was
reestablished within OO/CB's Source Development
Division (originally the Control Division). Respon-
sibility for providing machine support for CCR's
25X1A9A operations remained with OCD. 57/
did not accompany the operation to 00 but shortly
afterward joined the newly established Office
of Policy Coordination (OPC--established on 1 September
1948 to handle covert psychological operations).
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The second function to be transferred out
of OCD during the last half of 1948 was the map
activity carried out by the Map Division of GR.
In June 1947 the State-OSS map library and geographic
intelligence functions had been transferred to
CIA, and in August they were reestablished in
ORE as the Map Intelligence Branch under
0
From its inception, GR had carried out
a closely allied function in its map Division:
the codification and machine indexing of essential
information on foreign maps of intelligence value
held by governmental and nongovernmental institutions
in the United States. It was this activity that,
in September 1948, was moved out of OCD and merged
with the Map Library Division of ORE's Map Branch.
Again, however, the machine support responsibility
remained with OCD's MD. 58/
By the close of 1948, OCD's rate of growth
was still increasing, despite the two functional
excisions. In December the on-board personnel
strength had risen tolagainst an authorized
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25X1A
total of II as
compared to 92 people and an
1
authorized total of
0 just 12 months previously.
Operationally, the divisions were eliminating
the functional flaws, but service demands were
increasing even faster than personnel strength.
Key reassignments continued to be rather
25X1A
frequent. In August, was brought
25XJA
into OCD as Chief of IR, where
had been Chief pro tem. In September, Colonel
25X1A
returned to the Air Force. He was succeeded
25X1A
as DAD/CD by
the Army; and
as Acting Chief of BR. In December, Commander
25X1A
, who had been first the Navy and later
operation, was named Chief of LD, replacing John B.
25X1A
By the end of 1948 the "new OCD" was already
proving itself to be an effective office--a viable,
service-dedicated organization. In November,
25X1A
25X1A
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Dr. Andrews flatly identified service to Agency
requesters as the Office's "major function" and
specified that such requests would never be denied
unless "compliance would work harm to the Agency
by interfering with other [vital] services...."
Burying the old ritualistic approach for all time
was his warning that "No hint of this approach
will be tolerated today." 59/ Channels and procedures,
as far as Dr. Andrews was concerned, were worthless
if they failed to yield "practical results."
In short, Dr. Andrews held that OCD existed to
provide service to CIA customers and would not
concern itself with questions of policy, prestige
or prerogatives.
The organizational structure of OCD was to
remain basically unchanged throughout the administrations
of DCI's Hillenkoetter (May 1947-October 1950)
and Smith (October 1950-February 1953), despite
the impact of major investigations by the Eberstadt
and Dulles Committees.
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3. Threats to OCD's Existence Surmounted
The Eberstadt Committee* in its December 1948
report acknowledged that OCD appeared to be an
efficient operation under its "new head" although
it had sometimes acted as a "bottleneck" in the
past. It suggested, however, that the title "OCD"
was a.misnomer, that it should become purely a
reference service, and that its liaison functions
should be "split off." 60/
The Dulles group's survey report of January
1949** similarly recommended that OCD's collection
and dissemination functions be transferred to
a new "Coordination Division" (an expanded ICAPS)
and that the "library, index and register functions"
be placed in a "centralized Research and Reports
*The Hoover Commission's Task Force on
National Security Organization headed by
Ferdinand Eberstadt.
**The committee of consultants chaired by
Allen Dulles had been established by the NSC
in February 1948 to survey CIA and the U.S.
intelligence community. It began its survey
of OCD about mid-1948.
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Division (ORE)." The survey team was thus urging
return to an organizational setup that had already
proved unworkable. The Dulles Committee, however,
had begun its investigation immediately after
the OCD reorganization and therefore had neither
the opportunity to observe how the functions (collec-
tion, dissemination and reference) had operated
separately, nor what the consolidated office was
capable of achieving after its "shakedown" period.
Under such circumstances, the Committee's conclusions
were understandable--i.e., viewing collection
and dissemination as functions of coordination
(ICAPS) to be managed apart from reference, which
they considered adjunctive to research (ORE). 61/
Dr. Andrews' reply to the Dulles Committee
report was immediate and devastating. In his
memorandum of rebuttal to the Director, he zeroed
in on the obvious fact that the proposed functional
separation had already been tried and found wanting.
He cited the reasons why the arrangement had failed
and emphasized, contrary to the Committee's view,
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the close interrelationship of liaison and reference.
It was only after lengthy and often painful experience,
Dr. Andrews held, that the Agency had indisputably
learned that the two functions were indeed so
closely related that they were performed best
by a single, independent administrative unit.
In his words, it was
too early to say that the present is
the best of all possible organizational
patterns for these functions, but it
is not too early to say that it
represents an improvement over the
older and more obvious pattern, which
is now proposed anew. 62/
The Director agreed and in his February 1949
comments to the NSC rejected the Dulles Committee's
recommendations. 63/ The NSC, on the other hand,
endorsed the Committee's plan. It was, however,
a limited endorsement, since it contained the
reservation that "there may be other methods of
organization which will accomplish the same objectives."
64/
As for -,:~rsonnel, with one exception the
key assignments in OCD remained unchanged during
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1949. The exception was the arrival of John M.
25X1A
who became Chief of BR on 3 January 1949.
25X1A
25X1A
65/ He retained as his deputy.
2bAIA
25X1A
Marine served as Commande
25X1A
in GR and 0 in IR still had no deputies--
at least in the titular sense. In the new LD,
25X1A deputy; worked under
25X1A
25X1A
as Assistant Librarian; and George
25X1A
' deputy in MD.
By 1949 the Executive and Coordinating Staffs
had been replaced by the Administrative Staff
and the Operations Staff; the former was headed
25X1A
by (although she would not be formally
appointed until December 1950 66/), and the latter
25X1A
25X1 25X1 A
b In the Library, William J.
had succeeded in January
1949 as Top Secret Control Officer (TSCO), CIA
Records Administrator and Custodian of Registered
25X1A
the original TSCO, had transferred
to ORE when the Central Records Division had been
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merged with the reorganized OCD in May 1948.*
67/ In February 1949, Central Records Divisio.
was dissolved, and its functions were distributed
to other OCD offices. The mail and courier activity
became the responsibility of the Administrative
Staff, and the Administrative Records, Top Secret
Control and Records Management (CIA Archives)
functions were assigned to the Library.
During the first a j4:k months of 1949, OCD's
on-board strength rose more than 12 percent, to
(people, and the authorized T/O increased by
almost 15 percent, to
In addition, the Office's
operations were finally beginning to achieve the
functional effectiveness that comes with experience.
After its late start, for example, GR, with D
people, handled over 1,400 requests for still
photos and motion picture film during FY 1949.
*Throughout the first 20 years of reference
25X1A service history, there were only fo r Top Secret
Control Officers (excluding the original TSCO,
25X1A ~, who never joined OCD) : from
January 1949; from April 1950; John R.
25X1A 0 from September 1954; andl in 1967.
25X1A
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Within its field of responsibility--preparing
biographic reports and providing other types of
biographic support--BR was amassing files on all
types of foreign personalities and not simply
on the foreign scientists and technicians for
whom it was held responsible by NSCID No. 8.
During FY 1949 the Register's staff of F-Iresponded
to 1,229 requesters; IR, also with non board,
answe A28 queries; and the reconformed LD,
with 0 people, provided 2,413 collection and
liaison services. The Library's broader reference
function naturally resulted in a far larger request
total of over 22,000 for the same fiscal period. 25X1A
It also had the largest working staff, ^ people.
Cumulatively, the OCD components during FY 1949--
that is, after twe to thxee&years of operating
experience, depending upon the unit--serviced
a total of 28,245 requests, almost 3,000 of which
25X1A
25X1A
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were from non-CIA requesters. In addition, LD
received and disseminated over 263,000 documents
(including cables and airgrams)*--an increase
of almost 23,000 over the total of the previous
fiscal year. 68/
4. Achievement of a Goal Brinc;s New Problems
It was thus evident by 1950 that OCD had
become a reality within the profession; that its
functions had been soundly conceived and developed.
In short, the planners had accomplished what they
had set out to achieve--the creation of a first-
of-its-kind, centralized intelligence reference
It is interesting that 22 years later, in
FY 1961, the 12-month total for collateral documents
received had stabilized at almost exactly the
same figure--260,000 (exclusive of cables, which,
in later years, were held for only several months).
The all-time collateral document peak of 409,000
was registered in FY 1963. From that point forward,
however, the true work measurement had to include
the Special Intelligence documents, which the
office began disseminating in 1963 and which,
in FY 1971,, alone, totaled more than 582,000 items.
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facility. By that year, the office had grown
into an on-going and youthfully successful operation.
Constant change, both major and minor, would,
of course, continue to occur, and the system was
still a far cry from the comparatively sophisticated
machine that would evolve in future years. Nonetheless,
OCD had become an effective and viable operation.
The basic problem was no longer one of trying
to make the machine work and prove its value.
Rather, the major difficulty was the operation's
inability to keep pace with the soaring request
load. The divisions' administrative files for
1950 reflect a heavy use of overtime, the need
for additional personnel, and the development
of backlogs in pending requests, filing and reproduc-
tion. To help absorb the ballooning workload,
Dr. Andrews in May requested an additional 29
people--two for LD, 13 for the Library, and 14
for BR's Regional Branch, thus raising OCD's authorized
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25X1A
The situation was further aggravated
by the outbreak of the Korean War, and all of
6
OCD was forced into a e -day work week from mid-
July to early October.
STATINTL
In July plans were approved to relieve OCD
of the Agency's machine records functions, as
recommended by a survey team from the Management
Staff, which had conducted a yearlong study of
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OCD. Because the CIA machine system had begun
in OCD (in the premerger Reference Center), the
office had been assigned responsibility for applying
machine techniques to the Agency's accounting
and administrative record keeping. By 1950, nine
such programs were being performed by MD's Administra-
tive Project Branch, ranging from personnel statistical
records and payroll accounting to stock inventory
and machine utilization records. On 17 July 1950,
25X1A9A Acting Executive
approved the transfer
of all administrative support by machine techniques
from OCD to Management's Special Support Staff
(SSS) in L Building. It is doubtful that the
move lightened the work burden of OCD, inasmuch
moved with the function to SSS, presumably to
serve as supervisor-planner for all Agency machine
operations.* He was succeeded as MD's chief by
his former deputy
25X1A9A
*By 1950 there were already six separate CIA
machine installations: OO/CD in South Building;
OCD in M Building (by far the most extensive operation);
the Special Research Center in Q' OSO's Communications
Division in L (where SSS would also be established);
and MD's Board of Geographic Names unit in South
Interior Building.
25X1A9A
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The MS plan that resulted in the transfer
of functions from MD to SSS also called for the
reestablishment of LD's collectiDn requirements
function under the "joint control" of the require-
ments staffs of ORE and OSI and proposed that
LD's functions of obtaining information from the
files of other government agencies and maintaining
its Control Register of CIA contacts with other ,
government agencies be transferred, respectively,
to 00 and the Inspection and Security Staff.
The MS plan proposed to reconstitute the remaining
MD and LD functions, along with the Library and
the three Registers, as the Office of Reference
and Dissemination (ORD). This was called the
"ORD Plan." The DCI (Admiral Hillenkoetter) asked
for the comments of the Assistant Directors who
would be involved, but he expressed his own concern
that the proposed "dismemberment of OCD' would
be more costly than the existing arrangement.,s~,
69/
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Other OCD organizational problems, under
study from mid-1950 onward, included centralized
procurement of foreign language publications,
the creation of consumer-oriented branch libraries,
and the handling of "special intelligence" documentation.
Resolution of these and other problems regarding
OCD depended, to a considerable degree, on the
impending reorganization of the production offices,
which was being held for consideration by the
incoming DCI.
Gen. Walter B. Smith succeeded Admiral Hillenkoetter
on 7 October 1950. He announced formation of
a new Office of Research and Reports (ORR) on
13 November and, a few days later, an Office of
Intelligence Coordination (OIC). In this production
office reorganization, ORE was replaced by ORR
(first under Theodore Babbitt ai_d shortly afterward,
Max F. Millikan) and the Office of National Estimates
(ONE), under William L. Langer. Less than -twe C..
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months later, on 15 January 1951, the Office of
Current Intelligence (OCI) was established under
Kingman Douglass. The Office of Scientific Intelligence
(organized in December 1948) was not changed.
The new OIC replaced the Coordination, Operations
and Policy Staff (COAPS), which in turn had replaced
ICAPS in July 1950.
General Smith, immediately after taking office,
announced his intention of implementing the Dulles
Plan. It therefore appeared certain that the
new ORR and OIC would absorb the functions of
OCD. OCD's reference and machine support functions
even appeared in a proposed ORR organizational
chart.
After a month of deliberation, however, General
Smith decided to leave OCD essentially intact,
as Admiral Hillenkoetter had. On 1 December 1950
it was announced that OCD would remain as it was,
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both organizationally and functionally. On the
same date, the new CIA organizational chart showed
OCD grouped with the production offices under
the new Deputy Director for Central Intelligence
(DDCI), William H. Jackson. The only functional
changes were minor and involved the transfer of
administrative support activities to the DDA (see
footnote on page
Key personnel assignments remained relatively
static during 1950. In June,
DAD/CD, returned to the Army and was not immediately
replaced.
Despite its growth problems, the overall
success of the OCD operation by the end of 1950
was indisputable. In addition to the technical
and analytical expertise that had been developed
by desk personnel, OCD's success was attributable,
in no small degree, to the office's machine systems'
growth. By the close of the year, Intellofax
25X1 C4D
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had become effectively operational. The system
would never cease to be a target of customer criticism,
but it nonetheless represented a technological
breakthrough. Irrespective of its early flaws
and the shortcomings that would draw fire throughout
its existence, the Intellofax System provided
the intelligence analyst with a tool that had
never previously been available anywhere. It
presented, for the first time, a solution to the
analyst's historical problem: the painstaking
and time-consuming effort necessary to pull together
all available intelligence material bearing on
a given problem. Whatever its shortcomings, Intellofax
did provide the intelligence analyst, to a very
considerable degree, a mechanical means of readily
obtaining access to all pertinent intelligence
documents, thereby meaningfully increasing the
time available to him for pursuing his primary
function--the production of intelligence.
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The basic Intellofax System continued to
develop* as the first machine-based document retrieval
system within the intelligence profession, largely
sustaining Dr. Andrews' earlier observation in
a status report to the DCI when he suggested:
It is quite possible that the central
reference system being built by CIA will
ultimately prove the most important
central intelligence service which the
Agency provides. 70/
5. Growth
Beginning with General Smith's administration,
OCD embarked on a long period of organizational
and functional stability that was also characterized
*The Intellofax System endured for 17 years,
until 1967, when, largely for reasons of economy
and redirection of effort, it was replaced by
AEGIS (Already Existing General Information
System), which, in truth, was indexed far more
general and far less detailed than Intellofax.
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by rapid growth, especially during the first two
years (1951 and 1952). In that relatively short
time span, the Of ell staff almost doubled in
size , from about 0 people in 1950 to nearly
0
by February 1953, and the files more than
doubled to a total of over a million regularly
classified documents--a total that included neither
the large holdings of Top Secret and specially
classified material nor the Library's already
extensive unclassified collections.
With the operation stabilized and the "central
reference" concept generating a rapidly increasing
workload, management renewed its concern for OCD's
organizational problems. The problems, none of
which had been mentioned in either the Dulles
recommendations or the "ORD Plan," revolved about
OCD's jurisdiction over certain types of materials,
expansion of its documentary holdings, and further
demands for specialized services.
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As a result of mar:agement's studies, a few
small changes were made that largely resolved the
problems. Relatively inconspicuous as the changes
were, they nonetheless significantly bolstered
OCD's jurisdiction as the Agency's reference
facility. For example, the responsibility for
distributing all IAC cables within CIA was transferred
from ORR to OCD and r stablished as a Cable Branch
in LD in February 1951. In June 1951 the military
desks of LD were combined into a single Defense
Branch.
Similarly, OCD's Agencywide responsibility
for the procurement of foreign language publications
was affirmed in December 1950, and early in 1951
the function was centralized within the Library.*
*Procurement had previously been split among
the Library, OO/FDD, and the DDA's Procurement
Office. In addition, most operating offices
had ordered such publications independently.
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In June 1951. the Special Register (SR) was
established on a compartmented basis--that is,
physically located within OCI's "Closed" area in
Q Building--as OCD's seventh line division, replacing
the Collation Division of OCI. The operation was
placed under OCD authority to assure indexing and
retrieval compatability between OCI's special intelli-
25X1A
ence and the collateral material.
0
In the same year, OCD responded to increasing
demands from Agency components outside the production
area by establishing three branch libraries--one
in K Building to serve DDP components; one in Central
Building for the Medical Office; and the third
in Alcott Hall for the Office of Training. The
satellite branches were designed to make the main
Library's specialized holdings more immediately
accessible to offices located away from the main
collection.
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The year 1951 also marked the beginning of
OCD's limited involvement in direct field collection.
25X1A9Ap February,
25X1A9A
25X1A6A
25X1A
Branch, completed a survey of files in 11 U: .
on foreign S&T personalities. In August,
military intelligence headquarters in Europe.
During the trip, he arranged for the transfer or
microfilming of almost 300,000 dossiers or cards
led an Overseas Microfilming Team
to Europe. For about t years the team operated
hot only exploiting files of
industrial intelligence interest (over 1,000 reels
were microfilmed) but also coordinating some of
the Agency's overt requirements with U.S. field
collectors, particularly with State's Publications
Procurement Officers. Although there was only
one more large-scale, direct collection effort
mounted by OCD,* such operations were the
I L_
BR exploited the
25X1A9A -
in 1955
biographic files of U.S. installations in
cities. The operation
resulted in the acquisition of hard-copy or microfilm
records on almost 8,000 foreign S&T personalities.
25X1A9A
25X1A9A
25X1A
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beginning of OCD's low-key program of dispatching
representatives to the field on ad hoc collection
or coordination missions.*
Key personnel changes, although minimal during
1951, completely changed the leadership of LD.
25X1A
In April, LD's Deputy Chief,
was named
Q1 new DAD, filling the vacancy left when Norman
returned to the Army in 1950. In August the
25X1A
division's chief,
25X1A
(by then Captain
was recalled to sea duty. He was succeeded
25X1A
a month later by
Ih January 1952, OCD's status as an "intelligence"
office was reiterated when it was regrouped with
the production offices under the new Deputy Director
for Intelligence (DDI), Loftus Becker. 71/ Although
*After the Agency absorbed State's biographic
effort in mid-1961, the program was expanded to
assure two or three annual trips abroad, primarily
to coordinate biographic collection with Foreign
Service posts and improve communications between
CIA reference analysts and their Foreign Service
counterparts.
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undisturbed by the altered chain of command, OCD
continued its painful expansion, beset by soaring
request loads and inadequate staffing. As the
Agency's offices expanded, so did their demands
on OCD. A total of over 27,000 requests for intelli-
gence information were received by five of the
OCD divisions in 1951 (not including MD and the
new SR), an increase of 29 percent over the 1950
total of less than 21,000. 72/ In May, the appr %rOA
OCD on-duty ceiling was increased from
73/ still 66 short of the 0 "hands" Dr. Andrews
The struggle to keep pace with the rapidly
growing workload was aggravated by the fact that
OCD services were no longer restricted to the routine
question-and-answer activity. In response to customer
demands, the OCD divisions had begun to render
the more sophisticated services that would become
their future trademark. In May 1952, for instance,
IR had begun to produce Plant Summaries to facilitate
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the work of ORR analysts, and in June, BR produced
the first OCD
of Science,
reference publication, Soviet Men
compilation of 18,000 biographic
briefs pn Soviet scientists, which had been ems`
years in the making. 74/
Amidst its burgeoning growth, it is not surprising
that OCD began to develop problems stemming from
work overload, command faults and procedural inadequacies.
Freedom from Agency organizational changes fortunately
permitted OCD's front office to concentrate on
correcting internal problems. In order to meet
changing and increasing customer demands, for instance,
it was still necessary to make continual changes
in the various machine systems--not only in the
main Intellofax system but in each of the divisions'
subsystems. In addition, there was the need to
develop an entirely new system for SR. The major
problems, however, centered in BR and IR, where
disharmony and low morale had reached major proportions
by mid-1952.
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25X1A
25X1A
In BR, the problem was brought to a head by
the proposed imposition of a "Four-Way Index" scheme.
Plagued by an alarming backlog of unindexed documents,
the Register's top management had developed a quick
indexing system whereby every name on each document
would be carded and coded according to four different
identifying items, thereby virtually eliminating
the dossier system of storing all documents on
one personality in one machine-controlled jacket.
The rank and file violently objected to the proposed
system on the grounds that name-servicing from
a file of raw documents would be so time-consuming
that it, too, would become hopelessly backlogged.
In the ensuing confrontation, Dr. Andrews apparently
elected to continue with the dossier system, and
transferred to the DDP. In July, Dr. Andrews
chief. 75/
25X1A
to replace 0 as BR's
Actually, the BR problem was far more complex
and was attributable more to an underlying flaw
in the Register's operations than to any single
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personality or processing plan. It will be recalled
that NSCID No. 8, promulgated in 1948, specifically
delegated to CIA, that is, to OCD/BR, responsibility
for maintaining biographic data on foreign S&T
personalities, as opposed to State's longstanding
responsibility for providing biographic service
on foreign political types. The allocation of
servicing responsibility existed in name only,
however. In actuality, State could not provide
adequate political biographic support to the Agency
because its biographic operation was geared to
the Department's own needs--both with regard to
the size of its Biographic Information unit (State/BI)
and the nature of its biographic files, which contained
data only on "prominent" people and not on lower
echelon types who were of interest to CIA's intelligence
operations. State's inability to satisfy the Agency's
political biographic needs had led to the development
of the capability in BR's Regional Branch, which,
according to one source document, accounted for
65 percent of BR's requests at that time. Thus,
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despite Dr. Andrews' actions to settle the BR "crisis,"
the basic cause of the problem remained: duplication
of effort because the State's inability, under
existing budgetary restraints, to provide political
biographic support to CIA. Initial steps were
taken by representatives of both departments to
4
solve the problem, and within trm months, OIC
had developed a plan to eliminate the duplication.
Not surprisingly, the proposal called for consolidation
of the function within State/BI. According to
the major terms of the plan, BI, in addition to
servicing the Department, would be responsible
for providing CIA requesters with complete biographic
service on foreign political, sociological and
cultural personalities. In return, all pertinent
documents in the files in BR's Regional Branch
would be transferred to BI and the Regional Branch
would thenceforth concentrate on foreign economic
personalities (particularly for ORR). In addition,
the Agency would fund the project to the equivalent
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STATINTL
of about ^ positions. Dr. Andrews objected to
the plan, citing procedural awkwardness--for example,
inaccessibility of dossiers for CIA analysts and
machine complications--and, most importantly,
predicting that CIA would lose control over funds
allocated to the BI project. He further opined
that the trend toward consolidation of biographic
service was virtually inevitable and that the
Agency would be unwise to take any step that would
perpetuate the existing dispersal. Despite Dr. Andrews'
nonconcurrence, the plan was approved in November
by Loftus Becker, the DDI, and by W. Park Armstrong,
Jr., the Special Assistant to the Secretary of
State for Intelligence. 76/ In March 1953 BR
began an area-by-area transfer of the political
biographic responsibility to state/BI. The transfer
of responsibility was completed by mid-July, and
the physical shift of pertinent files shortly
thereafter.
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In addition to the personnel changes affecting
BR, numerous other key changes were made by the
AD/CD during June and July 1952. When
I hifted to the DDP in June, he was replaced
25X1A9A by Joseph Becker as Executive, OCD. Becker, in
turn, was succeeded as CIA Librarian byl
during the same month. In July,
25X1A
2
Jr., was designated as Deputy in
the Liaison Division and
Deputy CIA Librarian.
At the same time that Dr. Andrews was dealing
with the BR problem, he was also addressing himself
to his other major source of trouble--IR--where
apparent internal strife had rendered the division
operationally ineffective. As a result of a survey
he had ordered, Andrews apparently came to the
conclusion that IR needed rejuvenation and redesign,
particularly a redefinition of its mission, a
new administrative policy, and a general reorganization.
25X1A9A
25X1A9A
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25X1A9A
In August, the chief of IR,
Jr., transferred to ORR and was replaced by Joseph
Becker, who served as Acting Chief, IR, in addition
to his other duties. 77/
6. Physical Problems-'The Stadium
As the size of OCD and its customer offices
had increased, so too had their need for space.
Crammed into M Building (the old "temporary" govern-
ment office building close to Constitution Avenue
on 26th Street, N.T.) was practically all of OCD,
ORR, OSI,and other elements. The already creaking
M Building was dangerously overtaxed, and the
need for additional space in the area was urgent.
Unfortunately, the only available, nearby space
was in Riverside Stadium, an unused skating rink
across from M Building at 350 26th Street, N.W.
The interior of the Stadium was one vast, unbroken
expanse, poorly lighted, badly ventilated, and
in sad disrepair. Nonetheless, a major program
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of repair and renovation was undertaken to make
the unlikely site suitable for office used and
on the weekend of 4 April 1952, most of OCD moved
into "The Stadium" (or "Rista")`
y 78/
25X1A
Resettling II people in the Stadium 79/
in the course of one weekend (along with their
office equipment and furniture, the Registers'
already bulky files, and MD's heavy equipment)
without noticeably disturbing service was a herculean
task. Virtually all OCD personnel were involved
in the operation. Many worked until midnight
for three successive days)and by14onda noon,
7 April, OCD was again in full operation, having
achieved a considerable logistical feat. 80/
A few OCD elements were not shifted to the
Stadium. The Library's main files and the Office
of the Assistant Director stayed in M Building.
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SR continued to operate within OCI space in Q Building,
and GR remained in Building 14 at 23rd Street
and Constitution Avenue, N.W. (There were also
six OCD people working the branch libraries
at K Building and Alcott Hall. 81/ Nonetheless,
with the exception of BR, which soon moved "up
the hill" to North Building on E Street, Riverside
Stadium remained "home" to most of OCD for rrirre
years, until the office's relocation in the new
Headquarters Building.
It proved to be an unsettling home. The
old building was fraught with safety and health
hazards. Despite the extensive and very costly
rebuilding operation preceding the move, the building
was to remain in a constant state of disrepair
for most of the years of OCD's occupancy. One
month after the move, a four-page memorandum to
the Chief of General Services listed 19 deficiencies
in the building. Most of the defects were serious
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in nature, such asfaulty plumbing, buckled floors,
defective electrical wiring, noninstallation of
fire extinguishers, and grossly inadequate ventilation.
Not the least of the complaints concerned bad
odors emanating from "a stagnant pool of water
under the north end of the building" and, at the
other end, from the adjoining stables!
Then there were the ladies' rest rooms, where
the defective plumbing and the absence of mirrors,
soap dispensers, and bolts on doors inspired the
following message "To The Powers That Be, From
The Gals In OCD":
Oh, the restroom isn't restful anymore,
There's water six feet deep upon the floor,
The walls are blue and slimy,
The faucets dry and grimy,
And the restroom ain't the best room anymore.
If you like privacy behind the little door,
Then this room, girls, you surely will deplore:
We cannot comb our hair,
For the mirror, it ain't there-
Oh, the restroom ain't the best room anymore. 82/
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Most critical, however, was the oppressive
heat that developed in the badly ventilated building
with the advent of summer. During the worst of
the hot spells, a nurse from the Medical Staff
took up her duty station within the Stadium from
about 1100 hours onward, as did a technician swinging
a sling cyclometer to obtain temperature and humidity
readings. Their daily tours were not lengthy,
however. All personnel were frequently released
by noon, leaving behind a volunteer skeleton force.
General Services Administration (GSA) arranged
an emergency installation of air conditioning
equipment and GSA work crews gradually overcame
the host of other defects. It was months, however,
before the situation could be described as even
close to normal. In fact, as late as August 1955,
water leaks repeatedly flooded the EAM punched
card file room and the microfilm laboratory 83/
and, in one instance, the building had to be sand-
bagged when the flooded Potomac River threatened
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to overflow its banks. In time, conditions became
more bearable and, with constant attention, the
old building served its purpose until the move
to Headquarters.
7. Stability
During 1953 numerous changes occurred in
OCD, none of which were major or particularly
significant. In January the International Conference
Branch (ICB) was established in LD, and in March
25X1A9 hief of LD's non-IAC Branch, was
made chief of IR, relieving Joseph Becker of his
additional, temporary duties. With the procurement
of foreign language publications now centered
in CIA as the result of NSCID No. 16, in July
the Foreign Publications Branch in the Department
of State was abolished and reestablished in CIA
as the Foreign Branch (later the Acquisitions
Branch) of the Library. Before the year had ended,
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the Library had begun microfilming all incoming,
single-copy intelligence documents. BR had reorganized
on a geographical basis into the Soviet and non-
Soviet Branches and had begun publishing a new
report series--Biographic Intelligence Bulletins.
In retrospect, if any particular year can
be singled out, 1953 was the year in which OCD
came of age. Many changes would, of course, occur
in the future. By the end of 1953, however, the
organizational structure was established and all
the machine-based systems had been developed.
There would be changes in the key personnel, either
through rotation or reassignment, but basically
the men who directed OCD in 1953 constituted the
team that continued to lead OCD for the next 10
years. With its 1953 T/O ceiling at an all-time
25X1A high of n (except for a few short years beginning
with 1964 when FDD would be part of CCD), Dr. Andrews
and hi key officers had soundly developed OCD
into a unique, effective centralized reference
facility.
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1. Presidential memorandum to Secretary of State,
War and Navy, 22 Jan 46, U, HS/HC-244
2. CIG Directive No. 14, 19 Jul 46, C, HS/HC 275
3. CIG Administrative Order No. 6, 22 Jul 46,
Plates 1-8, C, HS/HC-333
4. CIG Personnel Order No. 5, 22 Jul 46, C,
HS/HC-33
5. See 3, above
6. CIG Administrative Order No. 12, 22 Aug 46, C,
HS/HC-333
7. See 3, above, Plate 6, Fig. 3
8. Changes No. 1 to CIG Administrative Order No. 6,
6 Aug 46, C, HS/HC-333
9. Changes No. 5 to CIG Administrative Order No. 6,
10 Sep 46, C, HS/HC-333
10. CIG Administrative Order No. 22, 17 Oct 46, C,
HS/HC-333
11. CIG General Order No. 3 (renumbered GO No. 2),
18 Jun 47, S, HS/HC-211
12. ORE, Office Operating Procedure No. 5-47, 2 Jan 47,
S, HS/HC-625
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13. CIG Personnel
CIG Personnel
CIG Personnel
CIG Personnel
CIG Personnel
CIG Personnel
Order No. 1, 18 Feb 46, R, HS/HC-33
Roster, 25 Feb 46, U, HS/HC-33
Order No. 13, 10 Sep 46, C, HS/HC-33
Order No. 18, 4 Oct 46, C, HS/HC-33
Order No. 20, 17 Oct 46, C, HS/HC-33
Order No. 22, 25 Oct 46, C, HS/HC-33
14. CIG Administrative Order No. 12, 22 Aug 46, C,
HS/HC-333
15. DCI's Report on Central Intelligence to 10th
NIA Meeting, 26 Jun 47, TS, HS/HC-208
16. DCI's Yearend Report to the NIA, 3 Jan 47, S,
HS/HC-39
17. CIG Personnel Chart, Mar 47 to May 48, S, HS/HC-366
18. See 15, above
19. Interview with
20. See 17, above
25X1A9A
21. CIA Summary of Operations, 2 Oct 50, S, HS/HC-85
22. See 1, above
23. DCI Memorandum for the National Intelligence
Authority, 7 Jun 46, S, HS/HC-39
24. ORE Administrative Order No. 1, 7 Aug 46, C,
HS/HC-625
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25. ORE Office Operating Procedures 4-47, 2 :.n 47,
S, HS/HC-625
26. CIG Directive No. 15, 1 Oct 46, S, HS/HC-275
27. See 10, above
28. Memo, AD/C to Secretary NIA, Definitions,
27 Aug 46, S, HS/HC-707
29. See 16, above
30. Report of Personnel Action, 16 Dec 46, and
Qualifying Memoranda, U, HS/HC-707
31. ICAPS Weekly Activity Report, 16 Sep 46-3 Jan 47,
U, HS/HC-39
25X1A9A 32. Memo,
, 27 Nov 46, U, HS/HC-707
33. ICAPS Annual Report Draft, 31 Dec 46, S, HS/HC-39,
Item 2
34. Corrected Notes, Interview
14 Jan 72, S, HS/HC-707
35. CIA, DCS-5, The Origin and Development of Contact
Division, Jun 69, S, ?
36. Memo, Assistant Executive Director to All AD's,
Function of the Reference Branch, ORE, 25 Jun 47,
S, HS/HC-81, Item 4
37. ORE Personnel Roster, 31 Mar 47, S, HS/HC-707
38. ORE Administrative Memorandum No. 8-47, 18 Feb 47,
C, HS/HC-625
25X1A9A
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25X1A9A
, Organiza-
tional History of the Central Intelligence Agency,
May 57, Chapter V, HS/HC-707
40. See 36, above
41. See 36, above
42. See 36, above
43. Memorandum to Files, Biographical Intelligence
Register, 6 Aug 47, S, HS/HC-707
44. See 43, abovv5X1A9A
45. Memorandum, (Administration
and Management), Reference center , 13 Nov 47,
C, HS/HC-707
46. DCID 1/9, Biographic Intelligence, 26 Oct 61, S,
HS/HC-707
47. ORE Reference Branch Monthly Reports, Jun-Sep 47,
S, HS/HC-707, Items 1 and 2
48. See 25, above
49. OCD Notes for Clark Committee, 1 Aug 54, S, HS/HC-707
50. See 49, above
S1. CIA Administrative Instruction No. 40-15,
Accountability, Procurement and Library Service,
31 Dec 47, R, HS/HC-707
STAT 52. 1
HS/HC-4
HS/HC-4
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25X1A9A
STAT
STAT
53. Notes on Draft CRS History
20 Jan 72, S, HS/HC-707
55. CIA, OCD Notice, 21 May 48, R, HS/HC-707
21 Sep 49, C, HS/HC-707
Organizational Titles,
56. NSCID No. 8, Biographical Data on Foreign
Scientific and Technological Personalities,
25 May 48, S, HS/HC-707
C, HS/HC-707
Organization, 26 Aug 48,
58. A&M/OCD/ORE Memorandum of Agreement, 7 Sep 48, C,
HS/HC-707
59. See 39, above
60. See 39, above
61. See 39, above
62. See 39, above
63. See 39, above
64. See 39, above
65. OCD Notice, 3 Jan 49, R, HS/HC-707
66. OCD Notice, Appointment of Administrative Officer
for OCD, 4 Dec 50, R, HS/HC-707
STAT 67.
28 Jan 49, R, HS/HC-4
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68. OCD Issuance, Current Status of Personnel Positions
in OCD, 1 Sep 49, S, HS/HC-707
OCD Statistical Production Summary for Fiscal Years
48 and 49, S, HS/HC-707
69. See 39, above
70. OCD, Central Reference Facilities, Status and
Objectives, 1 Nov 49, S, HS/HC-707
71. CIA, Historical Staff Chronology, Vol. 1, 1946-55,
S/Internal Use Only
72. OCD, Operations Staff Report, 30 Jan 52, S, HS/HC-707
73. Memo, ADD/A to AD/CD, Increase in Personnel Ceiling,
20 May 52, S, HS/HC-707
74. Soviet Men of Science, CD 1, May 52, S, CIA
Archives 64-62 Box 6
75. OCD Notice 8-52, 7 Jul 52, R, HS/HC-707
76. Memo, ADD/I to State SA/I, 5 Nov 52, S, HS/HC-707
77. OCD Notice 10-52, 6 Aug 52, R, HS/HC-707
78. Andrews (AD/CD) Memo to "All Hands, OCD" re
Stadium Move, 11 Apr 52, U, HS/HC-707
79. Memo, E/AD/CD to C/Administrative Services, Space
Utilized by OCD Personnel, 14 Feb 52, S, HS/HC-707
80. See 78, above
81. See 79, above
82. Memo, E/AD/CD to C/General Services, Requirements
for Riverside Stadium, 2 May 52, R, HS/HC-707
83. Memo, AAD/CD to DDI, Repairs for Riverside Stadium,
24 Aug 55, Internal Use Only, HS/HC-707
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