III: THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY, THE DARK COUNCILS OF POWER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000202030039-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 18, 2010
• Sequence Number: 39
• Publication Date: December 12, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00552R000202030039-4
k'I..STO"?-SAL JOTJRIti'AL (ATC)
12 DEC1 SER 1982
1191P The Seats of th
the Bark Councils. V W qc;l
In a short time Gray had become sec-
retaryy of the Army, had probably refused
By Roy Thompson appointment as director of the CIA and
Staff Reporter
O n Dec. 7, 1941, the United States was
the only major power on earth that
had no national intelligence service, and
there are those who believe that the lack
o; one made the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor possible.
We created the Office of Strategic Ser-
vices as a wartime emergency and dis-
banded it as soon as the war was over.
Then ... realizing that we were the
leaders of the Western world ... we es-
tablished the Cez:* IatelliQeAC~A en-
c, .so meet the threat of intern ational
communism...... .? ...... .
Fighting fire with fire, it was called.
-' Lining in the real world, it was called.
In the first- administratWn of Dwight
D. Eisenhower there was-created-acom-
mittee of firefighters that has had many
names but is most commonly known as
"The Forty Group." -
Five ... sometimes six ... men named
by the president from- the higher eche-
lons of his State Department and mili-
tary advisers met in deepest secrecy to
fight a secret war in ways that the pre-
war nation would have found unaccept-
able.
"In the early days of the nation we had
sent the U.S. Cavalry. Later we had sent
the Marines.
'Early in the Eisenhower years we
were sending the CIA:
People in the intelligence community
refer to the most secret of its covert
missions as "black," and the blackest of
them all were those designed to over.
throw governments or assassinate the
beads of foreign states.
All.such operations of deep blackness
had to be approved by the Forty Group,
and for years the late Gordon Gray
from Presidents Truman and Eisenhow-
er to serve them in matters usually relat-
ed to national security.
In one of those ... the chairmanship of
a committee named to inquire into the
loyalty of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the
physicist who was someumes described
as the father of the atomic bomb ... Gray
did his job as he saw- it and led the
committee to a finding that was was
probably justified by the evidence:
Oppenheimer's loyalty to his country
was not questioned,, but he was denied
further access to the nation's atomic se-
crets.
Oppenheimer had a broad base of sup-
port. The Gray committee was widely
criticized, and. as a .friend of.; Gray said
later:
"That/ really scalded him: Be talked
about it years later. He stayed out of
controversy after that-He was never-an
activist. After the Oppenheimer thing he
was always a compromiser."
installed one who was more to Eisenhow-
er's liking.
The CIA got rid of Iran's premier.
Mohammed. Mossadegh, and replaced
him with the CIA's man, Gen. Fazollab
Zahedi. .- 1
Col. Edward G. Lansdale of the CIA
was sent to Saigon to organize a paramil-
itary force to fight North Vietnam.
The operations in Guatemala and Iran
were considered successful, but the CIA
-was being talked about around the world,
and some people at-bome were beginning
to ask embarrassing questions.
Gen. Mark Clark headed a task force
representative. . to their expected posts, the president of that looked into the nation's intelligence
This is how he came to be there ... the United States had an agency tailored operations. It eventually recommended
Gray is believed to have been intro- to his needs. If a thing could be described that a congressional "watchdog" com-
duced to President Harry Truman by as being a threat to our national security, mittee be named to keep an eye on the
Frank Wisner. a wealthy, bright and he could direct the CIA to do whatever intelligence community ... and especial-
charming Mississippian who had been in seemed necessary to remove the threat ly the CIA.
the OSS in World War II. And he had a blank check with which Congress had been persuaded in the
Wisner had a great interest in and to pay the bills. past that the CIA must be let alone for
knowledge of international affairs. Gray. in the meantime, was president the good of the nation. Now someone was
He -__? L__~ --A l;t...A ;., UN- _r L_ rr_:..-..... -.r wt....w r+~.ni;n~ lust n1AL-in0 Waves- and the boat was being
had left Washington for the presidency of
his alma mater in Chapel Hill.
The CIA of the Truman administration
was quite different from. the one we
know today.
. Truman had wanted a central agency
for collecting and using foreign intelli-
gence to sound an alarm before another
Pearl Harbor. .
. There were men who wanted a bigger,
stronger and more powerful CIA with the
authority to "fight fire with fire," and one
of these was Allen Dulles, who was the
nation's most experienced and skillful
tulles was convinced ... as most of the
a7tioii ..that Harry'Truman would
be beaten by Tom Dewey in 1948. Dulles'
brother,' John Poster, would be named
secretary of state. Allen Dulles would
become director of the CIA.
Dulles had a hand in shaping some of
the early CIA legislation to make it the Oppenheimer was invited to speak there.
instrument he expected to have at`his and the audience gave him a 10-minute
disposal by early 1949. standing ovation when be was intro-
. The act that created it specified cer- duced).
taro areas of responsibility and then add ' In Washington ...
ed a Dulles line which said the agency An army backed by the CIA invaded
was also empowered to "perform such Guatemala, overthrew the president and
other functions and duties relating to
intelligence as the National Security
Council. may from time to time direct."
Truman surprised almost everyone
but himself by beating Dewey in '48, but
Allen Dulles, a patient man; continued to
shape the agency to his own liking.
-:1n 1949, be managed to have included
in new legislation a line .that said "the
urns made available to the Agency may
be expended without regard to the provi-
sions of law and regulations relating to
the expenditure of Government funds"..
.-By the time Dwight Eisenhower be-
(Shortly after Gray left -Chapel ,Hill-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00552R000202030039-4