THE CIA AND DECISION-MAKING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100010068-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 2, 1998
• Sequence Number: 68
• Publication Date: January 1, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

FOREIGN
Approved For Release 2000/92~,i,CIA-RDP75-000
THE CIA AND DECISION-MAKIN
r',0VDnU7 By Chester L. Cooper
Cording to the actual conditions. When we study the causes of the mistakes we have made,
subjective in determining our working policies."-"The Thoughts of Mao Tse-tung."
N bucolic McLean, Virginia, screened by trees and sur-
rounded by a high fence, squats a vast expanse of concrete
anu glass Known ramiliarly as the "Fickle Factory." and
more normally as "Headquarters, Central Intelligence Agency."
Chiselled into the marble which is the only relieving feature of
the building's sterile main entrance are the words, "The Truth
Shall Make You Free." The quotation from St. John was
personally chosen for the new building by Allen W. Dulles over
the objection of several subordinates who felt that the Agency
,
then still reeling from the Bay of Pigs debacle, should adopt a
.somewhat less lofty motto. (In those dark days of late rg6r, some
suggested that a more appropriate choice would be "Look Before
You Leap.") But Dulles had a deeper sense of history than
most. Although he was a casualty of the Bay of Pigs and never
.sat in the Director's office with its view over the Potomac, he
left a permanent mark not only on the Agency which he had
fashioned but on its building which he had planned.
Allen Dulles was famous among many and notorious among
some for his consummate skill as an intelligence operative
"
"
(
spook
in current parlance), but one of his lrreatest contribu-
tions in nurturing the frail arrangements he helped to create to
provide intelligence support to Washington's top-level foreign-
Harry Truman, whose Administration gave birth to both the
National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.
recalls that, ??r,ach time the 1V ational Security Council is about
*to consider a certain policy-let us say a policy having to do
with Southeast Asia-it immediately calls upon the CIA to
present an estimate of the effects such a policy is likely to
have...: President Truman painted a somewhat more cozy
relationship between the NSC and the CIA than probably
existed curing, and certainly since, his Administration. None
the less, it is fair to say that the intelligence community, and esne-
cially the CIA, played an important advisory role in high-level
policy deliberations during the i9_5os and early ig6os.
To provide the most informed intelligence judgments on the
effects a contemplated policy might have on American na-
tional security interests, a group especially tailored for the task
was organized in 195o within the CIA. While this step would
probably have been taken sooner or later, the communist victory
FOIAb3b
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