FIFTY YEARS OF THE CIA

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 05500084
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 328
• Document Creation Date: December 28, 2022
• Document Release Date: October 18, 2018
• Case Number: F-2010-00392
• Publication Date: January 1, 1998

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
Fifty Years
of the CIA
Editors
Michael Warner and
Scott A. Koch
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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
Fifty Years
of the CIA
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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
Fifty Years
of the CIA
Editors
Michael Warner and
Scott A. Koch
History Staff
Center for the Study of Intelligence
Central Intelligence Agency
1998
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National Security Unauthorized Disclosure
Information Subject to Criminal Sanctions
This publication contains copyrighted
photographs that may not be further
reproduced or disseminated without
permission.
All material on this page
is Unclassified.
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Contents
Foreword (u)
Introduction (u)
Notes on the Essays and Contributors
Chronological List of Directors of Central Intelligence
The Creation of the Central Intelligence Group (u)
Michael Warner
The Office of Reports and Estimates (u)
Woodrow J. Kuhns
The First Star: Douglas Mackiernan in China and Tibet (c)
Nicholas Dujmovic
CIA and TPAjAX: The Tension Between Analysis
and Operations (s)
Scott A. Koch
Closing the Missile Gap (u)
Leonard F. Parkinson and Logan H. Potter
The Construction of the Original Headquarters Building (u)
Peyton F. Anderson and Jack B. Pfeiffer
John A. McCone, Bud Wheelon, and the Wizards of Langley:
The Creation of the DS&T and the Battle Over Spy Satellites (u)
David Robarge
The Demise of the House of Ngo (u)
Thomas L. Ahern, Jr.
The Shock of the Tet Offensive (u)
Harold P. Ford
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209
Hunting the Rogue Elephant:
The Pike Committee Investigation (U) 233
Gerald K. Haines
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Inside Moscow (U) 255
271
Hard Targets: Reviewing the Attacks on
CIA's Gulf War Analysis (u) 299
Michael Warner
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Foreword (u)
This volume continues the effort of the CIA History Staff and the
Center for the Study of Intelligence to make the history of the Central
Intelligence Agency more accessible and understandable to Agency
employees and other members of the Intelligence Community. The ed-
itors, both members of the History Staff, have compiled the first collec-
tion of classified, scholarly essays on CIA history to be published in
book form. Scholars and journalists have tried to interpret the Agency's
past without having access to its records. Some Agency officers with
such access have also set down their reflections or penned chronicles of
various offices and operations. This collection combines the best of
both approaches; its essays meet academic standards of historical re-
search and presentation, and were prepared from relevant CIA and US
Government records. (u)
The editors have attempted to present a balanced picture of the
Agency's functions and its performance in carrying out its essential
missions. Successes and setbacks are described here to help the reader
gain an appreciation of the full historical context in which the Agency
aided the United States in winning the Cold War and then in adapting to
new and uncertain international realities. The volume includes essays
on the work of all four directorates and the major functional tasks of the
Agency as a whole, spanning the five decades of the Agency's existence
(but naturally weighted toward the earlier years because of the avail-
ability or sensitivity of sources). They touch on the Agency's presence
in almost all of the main geographic areas of its work. Many of the es-
says show how the Agency's components worked alongside their coun-
terparts in various parts of the Intelligence Community, the military,
and other agencies of the US Government. The editors have also taken
pains to show the many ways in which CIA has served the interests of
and interacted with policymakers in the White House and Congress. (u)
The editors have included an explanatory introduction that ties
the various essays together. It should be read carefully, as it can stand
alone as a worthy contribution to the interpretive literature on the
Agency's past. The introduction explains the dynamic tension between
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Foreword
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the Agency's several missions, from analysis to collection to covert op-
erations, and highlights the ways in which the fourteen historical arti-
cles in this volume illustrate the problems and the advantages that have
historically resulted from the combination of such varied responsibili-
ties and capabilities in a single intelligence organization. (u)
Four of the essays have been previously published; all the rest are
being made available to a wider readership for the first time here. Most
were adapted from manuscript histories at various stages of preparation
under the supervision of the CIA History Staff. Two articles were ex-
cerpted from limited-circulation histories prepared in the 1970s and
now held in the History Staff's files. A note on the contributors and es-
says, which follows the introduction, explains the origin of each essay
and summarizes the backgrounds and Agency careers of the respective
authors. (u)
Gerald K. Haines
Chief Historian
October 1997
(This foreword is Unclassified.)
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Introduction (u)
Almost since its founding, the Central Intelligence Agency has at-
tempted to preserve and interpret its past. As part of this effort, Agency
officers and historians drafted several hundred historical studies of CIA
offices and operations. Although concentrating on clandestine activi-
ties, those studies touch on every major field of Agency work. Most of
these studies have tended to concentrate on the accomplishments of
Agency leaders, on specific projects, or on individual offices. These
early histories preserve a wealth of detail about CIA's origins and de-
velopment, but they offer comparatively few insights into the function-
ing of the CIA as a whole and the Agency's role and place in the
evolving intelligence, foreign policy, and security structures of the US
Government. (Li)
In recent years the Agency has sponsored a different way of study-
ing its past. Using newly available files and benefiting from wider de-
classification of US and foreign records, scholars employed by CIA
have adopted a more comprehensive approach, looking at Agency lead-
ers, activities, and offices as part of US Government policies and oper-
ations and of America's role in the Cold War. The new approach
examines what the Agency did or did not accomplish in its historical
setting, instead of merely chronicling the activities of specific individu-
als or offices. (u)
What these new studies have shown is a tension between the
Agency's major missions of strategic warning and clandestine activi-
ties. For half a century the Central intelligence Agency has been the na-
tion's primary agency for both missions. Strategic warning entails the
concentration of information available to the US Government so that
the discrete bits of publicly and covertly acquired data can be assessed
for whatever they might reveal of an enemy's or potential adversary's
intentions and capabilities. Clandestine activities are simply those ac-
tions that the US Government wishes, for reasons of national security,
to undertake in ways that conceal an official US hand. America, and ev-
ery other nation, has always had some requirement and capability to
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Introduction
perform both missions. Before World War II, however, both functions
were performed in the breach by the president himself and a few trusted
advisers, with no controlling authority short of the Oval Office. (u)
The relationship between these two missions has formed the cen-
tral dynamic in the Agency's unfolding history. No law of nature or in-
telligence practice dictates the same organization provide strategic
warning and manage covert activities, and these two missions have not
always fitted together comfortably, as several essays in this volume
demonstrate. They are not mutually exclusive activities, but it takes a
conscious effort to make them work harmoniously. Left to their own,
they often go their separate ways. Nevertheless, conducting both mis-
sions from under the same organizational roof has occasionally given
rise to opportunities and inspirations that might otherwise have been
missed. (u)
These two missions actually came together in the same agency as
much by accident as by design. The Agency began its statutory exist-
ence in September 1947, but this event in a sense merely ratified a series
of decisions taken after the end of the Second World War. When Presi-
dent Truman dissolved the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
in September 1945, he had no clear idea how to proceed in building the
modern peacetime intelligence structure that he and his advisers be-
lieved they needed in an atomic age. Over the course of 1946, the White
House created a small staff�the Central Intelligence Group (CIG)�to
collate intelligence reports from the armed services and civilian depart-
ments, and allowed CIG to absorb the espionage and counterintelli-
gence offices left over from OSS (which had been preserved in the War
Department). Initially these disparate components in the new CIG
shared little in common except an interest in foreign secrets and a sense
that both strategic warning and clandestine activities abroad required
"central" coordination. (u)
Under a series of capable Directors of Central Intelligence, CIG
and the Truman administration came to realize how strategic warning
and clandestine activities complemented one another. This realization
was codified in the National Security Act of 1947, which renamed CIG
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and gave it a statutory basis. The
new CIA's performance in the worsening Cold War in Europe and East
Asia would soon prove the flexibility and strength of the government's
new intelligence arm. (u)
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President Truman's first mission for the Agency was to collate and
analyze the pile of cables and reports that daily filled his inbox. Most of
official Washington remembered all too vividly the surprise attack on
Pearl Harbor, and the President and many of his aides believed (with
some justification) that that disaster could have been averted if the var-
ious departments had simply shared their intelligence. This view of in-
telligence analysis had to be modified when it encountered everyday
reality. Woodrow Kuhns's essay on the Office of Reports and Estimates
(ORE)�CIA's first analytic arm�explains how the new office spent
its five-year existence interpreting the intelligence pouring into Wash-
ington. That was no easy task. The capability itself had to be built al-
most from the ground up (in part because the OSS' s pioneering
Research and Analysis Branch had been disbanded after the war), po-
tential analysts were scarce, and the sources available to CIA were of-
ten, for various reasons, lacking. Dr. Kuhns shows how ORE, before
DCI Walter Bedell Smith replaced it with a new Directorate of Intelli-
gence, nonetheless built a credible analytic record, particularly in divin-
ing Stalin's unwillingness to risk war to secure Soviet ambitions in
Europe and Asia. (u)
The Cold War also placed new demands on CIA's clandestine ser-
vices. Nicholas Dujmovic separately illustrate the
Agency's attempts under very different conditions to gather intelli-
gence on the growing Communist threat. In Western China,
Douglas Mackiernan reported on the deteriorating situation and
opened contacts with anti-Communist forces before tragically losing
his life in April 1950 the first CIA officer to die in the line of duty
Covert action for a time became perhaps the Agency's preeminent
mission during the Korean war and throughout the tenure of DCI Allen
Dulles (1953-61). As the ideological battlelines stabilized in Europe
and the Korean war ended, the main stage of superpower contention
began shifting to developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America,
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Bold CIA operations convinced President Eisenhower and Agency
leaders that covert action offered a cheap, effective, and safe means of
reversing Communist gains in what would come to be called the Third
World. One of those operations, TPAJAX, is known to scholars and the
public, but Scott Koch reveals important details of the project. (s)
Technological advances during the 1950s for the first time permit-
ted Agency officers to surmount the Soviet Union's security systems
and collect accurate information on deployments and capabilities. Sovi-
et deception measures combined with incomplete intelligence, howev-
er, to convince many US Government officials that the USSR was
outstripping the United States in the production of jet bombers and
long-range missiles. This faulty intelligence produced the "bomber
gap" and "missile gap" controversies. The missile gap in particular
loomed large after the Soviets' 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellites,
and even became an issue in the 1960 presidential campaign. According
to Leonard Parkinson and Logan Potter, hard analytical labor using a
variety sources�from human agents to manned reconnaissance aircraft
to the first imagery satellites�proved the missile gap illusory. Accurate
data from these sources about the scope and pace of Soviet missile de-
ployments may well have saved billions of dollars. From these sources
President Kennedy soon received Intelligence Community information
and assessments on the strategic balance that would prove invaluable a
year later as he sought a peaceful solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis�
the closest the superpowers ever came to nuclear war. (u)
The growing importance of satellites and other technological
means prompted DCI John McCone to reorganize and enhance the
Agency's scientific capabilities in the early 1960s. David Robarge
shows how McCone ultimately recruited a brilliant young physicist, Al-
bert (Bud) Wheelon, to run the new Directorate of Science and Technol-
ogy (DST). Under Wheelon's leadership, the Directorate during the
1960s played a major role in the National Reconnaissance Program and
the development of new collection technologies. Although full consol-
idation of Agency scientific and technical functions would not take
place until the early 1970s, the DST took primary responsibility for col-
lecting information vital to the Agency's strategic warning mission. (c)
The conflict in Vietnam consumed much of CIA's operational and
analytic energies in the 1960s. Tom Ahern's description of the plots
against President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam in 1963 demon-
strates the importance that CIA's Saigon station played in the direction
of the war�and the importance that an individual case officer could
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suddenly assume in the deliberations in Washington. Harold P. Ford's
evaluation of the Intelligence Community's analysis of the warning in-
dicators before the Communists' 1968 Tet offensive shows again how
hard it has been for analysts to anticipate sudden shifts in an opponent's
strategy. Some CIA and Community officers read the signs and predict-
ed an attack, but the uncertain evidence and the debates among ana-
lysts�and policymakers themselves�prevented a clear warning from
reaching the White House and commanders in the field. (u)
The nationwide debates over the Vietnam war fractured the politi-
cal consensus that had long underlain bipartisan support for a strongly
anti-Communist foreign policy and an activist Central Intelligence
Agency. The Watergate scandal in the mid-1970s�itself partly a prod-
uct of President Nixon's response to criticism over Vietnam�briefly
threatened to engulf the Agency. Revelations emerging in conjunction
with Watergate and allegations of CIA wrongdoing prompted far-
reaching Congressional probes of CIA and the entire Intelligence
Community. Gerald Haines examines one of the most important of these
investigations, led by Representative Otis Pike of New York. The Pike
Committee investigation is not as well-known today as Senator Frank
Church's Select Committee, but Dr. Haines shows that the House's ef-
fort was, despite its ultimate failure, actually the more insightful of the
two probes. As such it heralded a new era of Congressional oversight for
CIA, and a new legal climate for Agency operations. (u)
The revival of Cold War tensions after the Soviet invasion of Af-
ghanistan in 1979 helped to refocus CIA efforts on "the main enemy."
Under the Reagan administration, the Agency once a ain launched si
nificant covert action programs on four continents
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Introduction
With the end of the Cold War in early 1990s, CIA found itself fac-
ing new challenges. Ironically, some of the problems analysts and oper-
ators faced in this new era look much like those confronting their
predecessors two generations earlier. Michael Warner's essay on Agen-
cy analysis of Iraqi intentions and capabilities in the Gulf war argues
that predicting sudden, dramatic shifts in opposition strategy is still as
difficult as it had been in 1941 or 1968. Technological and political
changes, however, have added new wrinkles to CIA' s analytical mis-
sion. Dr. Warner explains that "smart weapons" and improved national
reconnaissance capabilities opened new means of support to American
military forces in the field, while Congress's growing role as a consum-
er of finished intelligence brought continued questions as well as oppor-
tunities for the Agency. (C)
Throughout its five decades of operation, the Agency's dedicated
and sometimes gifted personnel have labored in strange and even dan-
gerous conditions all over the world. Sacrifices were also made by
employees who labored in safe but nevertheless cramped and uncomfort-
able temporary quarters scattered around downtown Washington during
the Agency's early years, until the opening of a modern headquarters
compound in Langley, Virginia, in September 1961. Peyton Anderson
and Jack Pfeiffer explain how the Original Headquarters Building was
built, and in the process they explain how and why much of the physical
environment familiar to so many Agency veterans came to be. Their
essay chronicles, in particular, the enormous contributions of the Direc-
torate of Support (now the Directorate of Administration), and especially
of its longtime chief, Col. Lawrence K. White. (u)
Few government departments so quickly have the opportunity to
assess objectively how well they have performed their missions. The
end of the Cold War provided just such a moment for the Central Intel-
ligence Agency when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1997. Viewed from
the present, the CIA made a palpable difference in bringing about the
end of the Soviet empire. The Cold War was in many ways an intelli-
gence struggle, drawing upon the Agency's expertise in foreign collec-
tion, analysis, covert action, counterintelligence, and technological
innovation. CIA did not win every confrontation, or every battle, but it
won often enough. The awkward fit between CIA' s primary missions�
strategic warning and clandestine operations abroad�sometimes
caused problems. That same tension, however, also gave rise to inspira-
tions and innovations that helped to provide the ultimate margin of vic-
tory in the Cold War. (u)
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Notes on the Essays and Contributors
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The Office of Reports and Estimates (U)
Woodrow J. Kuhns of the CIA History Staff wrote this article as
the Preface for his collection of declassified documents, Assessing the
Soviet Threat: The Early Cold War Years, published by CIA in 1997. A
graduate of Kutztown State College in Pennsylvania, Dr. Kuhns
received his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Pennsylvania
State University. Before joining the Center for the Study of Intelligence
in 1996, he was an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence. He also
served for three years as CIA's representative on the faculty of the
Naval War College. (u)
The First Star: Charles Mackiernan in China and Tibet (C)
This account of the first CIA officer to die in the line of duty
developed from a speech that Acting DCI George Tenet delivered at the
annual ceremony at the Memorial Wall in the lobby of the Original
Headquarters Building in May 1997. Nicholas Dujmovic received his
Ph.D. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Di-
plomacy at Tufts University. Prior to coming to CIA in 1990, he served
as a US Coast Guard officer and an instructor at the US Coast Guard
Academy. He began his CIA career as a Directorate of Intelligence ana-
lyst
Dr. Dujmovic has also served on rotation to the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, and was then-ADCI Tenet's speechwriter. He is
currently an editor for the President's Daily Brief (C)
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Closing the Missile Gap (u)
This article was adapted from "The Development of Strategic
Research at CIA, 1947-1967," Office of Strategic Research (OSR-2),
May 1974. A copy of the original history, which focuses on the Office
of Research and Reports' s (ORR) role in resolving the issue, resides in
History Staff files. Leonard F. Parkinson was born in 1937 in Kansas.
After graduating from the University of Kansas, he joined CIA's For-
eign Broadcast Information Division. From the mid-1960s he worked as
an industrial and economic analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence un-
til his resignation in 1977. Logan H. Potter was born in 1920 in Seattle.
He graduated from the US Merchant Marine Academy in 1944. Mr. Pot-
ter served as a junior officer in the US Navy at the end of World War II,
attended Georgetown University, and held several jobs with the US
Government before joining ORR in 1952. He worked as an industrial
and economic analyst with the Directorate of Intelligence until his re-
tirement in 1980. (u)
Notes
The Construction of the Original Headquarters Building (u)
This essay was adapted from a classified history by Peyton F.
Anderson and Jack B. Pfeiffer, "Planning and Construction of the
Agency Headquarters Building, January 1946�July 1963" (DCI-6),
June 1973, in CIA History Staff files. Peyton F. Anderson was born in
Richmond, Virginia in 1921. He served as a sergeant in the US Army
Air Forces in World War II, and worked with the Veterans Administra-
tion after the war. Mr. Anderson joined the Agency in 1949. A longtime
Office of Logistics officer, he was assigned to the Building Planning
Staff during the construction of the Original Headquarters Building.
After serving two tours supporting the CIA station in Saigon,
Mr. Anderson resigned from CIA in 1973, and died in 1976. Jack B.
Pfeiffer was born in 1920 in Peoria, Illinois. He earned a doctorate in
History at the University of Chicago, and worked for several years as an
intelligence analyst for the US Air Force before joining CIA' s Office of
Research and Reports in 1955. He transferred to the Historical Staff of
the Office of the DCI in 1969; his chief project there was a multivolume
official history of the Bay of Pigs operation. Dr. Pfeiffer resigned from
the Agency in 1984, and died in 1997. (u)
John McCone, Bud Wheelon, and the Wizards of Langley: The
Creation of the DS&T and the Battle Over Spy Satellites (u)
This article is part of a study-in-progress of John McCone's tenure as
Director of Central Intelligence. David Robarge received bachelor's and
master's degrees from George Mason University and a doctorate in history
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from Columbia University. He has taught on the adjunct history faculties
of both schools. Dr. Robarge was a historian for the Rockefeller Family
and a researcher at the Gannett Center for Media Studies before coming to
the CIA in 1989. After serving briefly in the Office of Information
Resources, he worked as an intelligence analyst in the Counterterrorism
Center, the Office of Leadership Analysis, and the Office of Near Eastern
and South Asian Analysis. He joined the History Staff in 1996. (u)
The Demise of the House of Ngo (u)
This account of the closing episode in the Agency's relationship
with the Ngo Dinh Diem government in South Vietnam is adapted from
The CIA and the House of Ngo. That volume is the first of three History
Staff studies on the CIA role in Vietnam. Drafted for the History Staff
by Thomas L. Ahern, Jr., it will be published in 1998. Mr. Ahern was
educated at the University of Notre Dame and joined CIA in 1954. He
became an officer in the Directorate of Plans in 1956
Mr. Ahern retired from the Agency in 1989. The edi-
tors, with Mr. Ahern's cooperation, added material on DCI John A.
McCone's role in the US Government's halting encouragement of the
coup d' etat against Ngo Dinh Diem. (u)
The Shock of the Tet Offensive (u)
This account of the performance of US intelligence prior to the
enemy's sudden Tet offensive of early 1968 is adapted from Harold P.
Ford's CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-
1968. Drafted on contract for the CIA History Staff in 1995, it was pub-
lished in June 1998. Dr. Ford was educated at the University of Red-
lands, served as a naval officer in the Pacific in World War H, and took
a Ph.D. in History at the University of Chicago. In 1950 he joined CIA's
Office of Policy Coordination, but soon transferred to the Directorate of
Intelligence, where he served the bulk of his Agency career. After serv-
ing Dr. Ford worked for the Office of Na-
tional Estimates and participated in several Vietnam War analytical
working groups. He retired from CIA in 1974 and worked for the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence. Dr. Ford returned to the Agency's
National Intelligence Council in 1980; he served as Acting Chief of the
Council before retiring again in 1986. (S)
Hunting the Rogue Elephant: The Pike Committee Investigation (U)
This account of the Congressional probe was excerpted from
Gerald K. Haines's draft history of CIA relations with Congress.
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Notes
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Directors of Central Intelligence (u)
Sidney W. Souers
Hoyt S. Vandenberg
Roscoe Fl. Hillenkoetter
Walter B. Smith
Allen W. Dulles
John A. McCone
William F. Raborn, Jr.
Richard Helms
James R. Schlesinger
William E. Colby
George Bush
Stansfield Turner
William J. Casey
William H. Webster
Robert M. Gates
R. James Woolsey
John M. Deutch
George J. Tenet
(This chronology is Unclassified.)
23 Jan 1946 �
10 Jun 1946
1 May 1947 �
7 Oct 1950 �
26 Feb 1953
29 Nov 1961
28 Apr 1965
30 Jun 1966
2 Feb 1973 �
4 Sep 1973 �
30 Jan 1976 �
9 Mar 1977 �
28 Jan 1981 �
26 May 1987
6 Nov 1991 �
5 Feb 1993 �
10 May 1995
11 July 1997
xvii
10 Jun 1946
� 1 May 1947
7 Oct 1950
9 Feb 1953
�29 Nov 1961
�28 Apr 1965
�30 Jun 1966
� 2 Feb 1973
2 Jul 1973
30 Jan 1976
20 Jan 1977
20 Jan 1981
29 Jan 1987
�31 Aug 1991
20 Jan 1993
9 Jan 1995
� 13 Dec 1996
� present
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The Creation of the
Central Intelligence Group (U)
Michael Warner
January 1996 marked the 50th anniversary of President Harry
Truman's appointment of the first Director of Central Intelligence and
the creation of the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), CIA's institution-
al predecessor. The office diary of the President's chief military advis-
er, Fit. Adm. William D. Leahy, records a rather unexpected event on
24 January 1946:
At lunch today in the White House, with only members of the
Staff present, Rear Admiral Sidney Souers and I were presented
[by President Truman] with black cloaks, black hats, and wooden
daggers, and the President read an amusing directive to us outlin-
ing some of our duties in the Central Intelligence Agency [sic],
"Cloak and Dagger Group of Snoopers."'
With this whimsical ceremony, President Truman christened
Sidney W. Souers as the first Director of Central Intelligence. (u)
The humor and symbolism of this inauguration must have been
lost on many veterans of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the big
intelligence and covert action agency that President Truman had sud-
denly dismantled at the end of World War II, only four months earlier.
CIG inevitably suffered (and still suffers) from comparisons with OSS.
The Group began its brief existence as a bureaucratic anomaly, with no
independent budget, no statutory mandate, and staffers loaned from the
permanent departments of the government. Nevertheless, CIG grew
rapidly and soon gained a fair measure of organizational autonomy.
The Truman administration vested it with two basic missions�strate-
gic warning, and the collection of foreign intelligence�although inter-
departmental rivalries prevented the Group from performing either
'Diary of William D. Leahy, 24 January 1946, Library of Congress. Admiral Leahy was
simultaneously designated the President's representative to the new, four-member Na-
tional knell igence Authority (CIG's oversight body). The other members were the Sec-
retaries of State, War, and Navy. (6)
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mission to the fullest. Strategic warning and clandestine collection are
the two basic duties of today's CIA.2 (u)
Historical accounts of President Truman's dissolution of OSS and
creation of CIG have concentrated on assigning credit to certain actors
and blame to their opponents and rivals.' The passage of time and the
gradually expanding availability of sources, however, promise to foster
more holistic approaches to this subject. (u)
The problem for the Truman administration that autumn of 1945
was that no one, including the President, knew just what he wanted,
while each department and intelligence service knew full well what
sorts of results it wanted to avoid. With this context in mind, it is infor-
mative to view the gestation of Central Intelligence Group in the fall of
1945 with an eye toward the way in which Truman administration offi-
cials preserved certain essential functions of OSS and brought them to-
gether again in a centralized, peacetime foreign intelligence agency.
Those decisions created a peacetime intelligence structure that, while
still incomplete, preserved some of the most useful capabilities of the
old OSS while resting on a firmer institutional foundation. (u)
From War to Peace (u)
Before World War II, the US Government had not seen fit to cen-
tralize either strategic warning or clandestine activities, let alone combine
both missions in a single organization. The exigencies of global conflict
persuaded Washington to build a formidable intelligence apparatus in
A recent unclassified statement to CIA employees entitled "Vision, Mission, and Val-
ues of the Central Intelligence Agency" identified the following as the CIA's basic mis-
sions: "We support the President, the National Security Council, and all who make and
execute US national security policy by:
� Providing accurate, evidence-based comprehensive and timely foreign intelligence
related to national security; and
� Conducting counterintelligence activities, special activities, and other functions
related to foreign intelligence and national security as directed by the President." (u)
Several authors describe the founding and institutional arrangements of CIG. Three
CIA officers had wide access to the relevant records in writing their accounts; see
Arthur B. Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government, to
1950, (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990); Thomas F.
Troy, Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence
Agency (Washington DC: CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1981); and Ludwell
Lee Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence: Octo-
ber 1950-February 1953 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1992), pp. 15-35. See also Bradley F. Smith, The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Ori-
gins of the CIA (New York: Basic Books, 1983). B. Nelson MacPherson offers thought-
ful commentary on this literature in "CIA Origins as Viewed from Within," Intelligence
and National Security 10 (April 1995), pp. 353-359. (u)
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7--
Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan (u)
Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan's Office of Strategic Services. OSS's
novelty was that it was America's first centralized and nondepartmental
intelligence arm. As such, it encountered an enduring resentment from
the established services like the Justice Department's Federal Bureau of
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Investigation (FBI) and the Military Intelligence Division of the War De-
partment General Staff (better known as the G-2). (Li)
General Donovan advocated the creation of a permanent foreign
intelligence service after victory, mentioning the idea at several points
during the war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made no promises,
however, and after Roosevelt's death in April 1945 and the German sur-
render that May, President Truman felt no compulsion to keep OSS
alive. Mr. Truman apparently disliked Donovan (perhaps fearing that
Donovan's proposed intelligence establishment might one day be used
against Americans).5 More importantly, the President and his top mili-
tary advisers knew that America's wartime intelligence success had
been based not on human sources but on cryptologic breakthroughs�in
which OSS had played only a supporting role. Signals intelligence was
the province of the Army and Navy, two jealous rivals that only barely
cooperated; not even General Donovan contemplated centralized, civil-
ian control of this field. (u)
President Truman could have tried to transform OSS into a central
intelligence service conducting clandestine collection, analysis and op-
erations abroad. He declined the opportunity and dismantled OSS in-
stead. Within three years, however, Truman had overseen the creation
of a central intelligence service conducting clandestine collection, anal-
ysis, and operations abroad. Several authors have concluded from the
juxtaposition of these facts that Truman dissolved OSS out of igno-
rance, haste, and pique, and that he tacitly admitted his mistake when he
endorsed the reassembly of many OSS functions in the new CIA. Even
Presidential aide Clark Clifford has complained that Mr. Truman "pre-
maturely, abruptly and unwisely disbanded the OSS."6 (it)
A look at the mood in Washington, however, places President Tru-
man's decision in a more favorable light. At the onset of the postwar
era, the nation and Congress wanted demobilization�fast. OSS was
already marked for huge reductions in any event because so many of its
personnel served with guerrilla, commando, and propaganda units
considered extraneous in peacetime. Congress regarded OSS as a tem-
porary "war agency," one of many bureaucratic hybrids raised for the
Donovan's "memorandum for the president," dated 18 November 1944, is reprinted in
Troy, Donovan and the CIA, pp. 445-447. (u)
Richard Dunlop, Donovan: America's Master Spy (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1982),
pp. 467-468. See also Troy, Donovan and the CIA, p. 267. (U)
6 Clark Clifford, it bears noting, played little if any role in the dissolution of OSS; see
Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 165. Will-
iam R. Corson calls the affair a "sorry display of presidential bad manners and short-
sightedness"; The Armies of Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Empire
(New York: Dial Press, 1977), p. 247. (u)
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national emergency that would have to be weeded out after victory.'
Indeed, early in 1945 Congress passed a law requiring the White House
to seek a specific Congressional appropriation for any new agency op-
erating for longer than 12 months.' This obstacle alone might have
blocked a Presidential attempt to preserve OSS or to create a permanent
peacetime intelligence agency along the lines of General Donovan's
plan, especially given the wide circulation of innuendo, planted by
Donovan's rivals, that the General was urging the creation of an "Amer-
ican Gestapo."9 (ti)
Truman had barely moved into the Oval Office when he received
a scathing report on OSS. (Indeed, this same report might well have
been the primary source for the above-mentioned innuendo.) A few
months before he died, President Roosevelt had asked an aide, Col.
Richard Park, Jr., to conduct an informal investigation of OSS and Gen-
eral Donovan. Colonel Park completed his report in March, but appar-
ently Roosevelt never read it. The day after Roosevelt's death, Park
attended an Oval Office meeting with President Truman. Although no
minutes of their discussion survived, Colonel Park probably summa-
rized his findings for the new President; in any event, he sent Truman a
copy of his report on OSS at about that time. That document castigated
OSS for bumbling and lax security, and complained that Donovan's
proposed intelligence reform had "all the earmarks of a Gestapo sys-
tem." Colonel Park recommended abolishing OSS, although he conced-
ed that some of the Office's personnel and activities were worth
preserving in other agencies. OSS's Research and Analysis Branch, in
particular, could be "salvaged" and given to the State Department.
Donovan himself hardly helped his own cause. OSS was attached
to the Executive Office of the President, but technically drew its orders
and pay from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Donovan refused to
compromise on his proposals with JCS representatives delegated to
study postwar intelligence needs. The General insisted that a permanent
intelligence arm ought to answer directly to the President and not to his
' The Bureau of the Budget had warned Donovan in September 1944 that OSS would
be treated as a war agency to be liquidated after the end of hostilities; Troy, Donovan
and the CIA, pp. 219-220. (u)
The legislation was titled the "Independent Offices Appropriation Act of 1945," Public
Law 358, 78th Congress, Second Session. (u)
' For an indication of the mixed Congressional attitudes toward OSS, see Smith, The
Shadow Warriors, pp. 404-405. (u)
1� The Park report resides in the Rose A. Conway Files at the Harry S. Truman Library,
"OSS/Donovan" folder; see especially pp. 1-3, and Appendix III. Thomas F. Troy
noticed strong similarities between the Park report and the famous Walter Trohan
"Gestapo" stories in the Chicago Tribune; see Donovan and the CIA, pp. 267, 282. (u)
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The Creation
advisers." The Joint Chiefs had already rescued Donovan once, when
the Army's G-2 had tried to subsume OSS in 1943. This time the White
House did not ask the Joint Chiefs' opinion. The JCS stood aside and let
the Office meet its fate. (u)
Taking the Initiative (u)
The White House evidently concluded that the problem was how
to create a new peacetime intelligence organization without Donovan
and his Office. Many senior advisers in the Roosevelt and Truman ad-
ministrations believed that the nation needed some sort of permanent in-
telligence establishment; that it could not return to its pre-1941 ways.
The White House's Bureau of the Budget took up this issue shortly
before the death of President Roosevelt in April 1945, presenting itself
to Roosevelt as a disinterested observer, and creating a small team to
study the government's intelligence requirements and recommend pos-
sible reforms. Soon after he took office, President Truman endorsed the
Budget Bureau's effort. '2 (U)
In August, the Budget Bureau began drafting liquidation plans for
OSS and other war agencies, but initially the Bureau assumed that liq-
uidation could be stretched over a period of time sufficient to preserve
OSS' s most valuable assets while the Office liquidated functions and
released personnel no longer needed in peacetime. On 27 or 28 August,
however, the President or his principal "reconversion" advisers (Budget
Director Harold D. Smith, Special Counsel Samuel Rosenman, and
Director of War Mobilization and Reconversion John W. Snyder) sud-
denly recommended dissolving OSS almost immediately.13 Bureau
staffers had already conceived the idea of giving a part of OSS, the
Research and Analysis Branch (R&A), to the State Department as "a
going concern." The imminent dissolution of OSS meant that some-
thing had to be done quickly about the rest of the Office; someone in the
"Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, pp. 19-21. For more on Donovan's refusal
to compromise, see Troy, Donovan and the CIA, pp. 270-271. (u)
12 George F. Schwarzwalder, Division of Administrative Management, Bureau of the
Budget, project completion report, "Intelligence and Internal Security Program of the
Government" [Project 2171, 28 November 1947, National Archives and Records
Administration, Record Group 51 (Bureau of the Budget), Series 39.35, "Progress Re-
ports," Box 181, p. 5. (u)
" George Schwarzwalder recorded several years later that the Budget Bureau learned on
24 August that OSS would be dissolved; see his 1947 progress report on Project 217,
cited above, p. 9. (u)
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Budget Bureau (probably the Assistant Director for Administrative
Management, Donald C. Stone) quickly decided that the War Depart-
ment could receive the remainder of OSS "for salvage and liquida-
tion."4 Stone told frustrated OSS officers on 29 August that important
functions of the Office might survive:
Stone stated that he felt that the secret and counterintelligence
activities of OSS should probably be continued at a fairly high
level for probably another year. He said he would support such a
program. '5 (U)
The reconversion trio of Smith, Snyder and Rosenman endorsed
the Budget Bureau's general plan for intelligence reorganization and
passed it to President Truman on 4 September 1945.6 Donovan predict-
ably exploded when he learned of the plan, but the President ignored
Donovan's protests, telling Harold Smith on 13 September to "recom-
mend the dissolution of Donovan's outfit even if Donovan did not like
it." Within a week the Budget Bureau had the requisite papers ready
for the President's signature. Executive Order 9621 on 20 September
dissolved OSS as of 1 October 1945, sending R&A to State and every-
thing else to the War Department. The Order also directed the Secretary
of War to liquidate OSS activities "whenever he deems it compatible
with the national interest." � That same day, President Truman sent a let-
ter of appreciation (drafted by Donald Stone) to General Donovan.�
The transfer of OSS' s R&A Branch to the State Department, wrote the
President, marked "the beginning of the development of a coordinated
system of foreign intelligence within the permanent framework of the
14 Donald C. Stone, Assistant Director for Administrative Management, Bureau of the
Budget, to Harold Smith, Director, "Termination of the Office of Strategic Services and
the Transfer of its Activities to the State and War Departments," 27 August 1945, repro-
duced in Thomas Thorne, Jr., and David S. Patterson, editors, Emergence of the Intelli-
gence Establishment, US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States
series (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1996), pp. 22-23. Hereinafter cit-
ed as FRUS. (Li)
G.E. Ramsey, Jr., Bureau of the Budget, to Deputy Comptroller McCandless, "Con-
ference on OSS with Don Stone and OSS representatives, Aug. 29," 29 August 1945,
National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 51 (Bureau of the Bud-
get), Series 39.19, "OSS Organization and Functions," Box 67. (u)
'6 Smith, Roseman, and Snyder to Truman, "Termination of the Office of Strategic Ser-
vices and the Transfer of its Activities to the State and War Departments," 4 September
1945, Official File, Papers of Harry S. Truman, Harry S. Truman Library, Indepen-
dence, Missouri. (U)
The quoted phrase comes from the Harold Smith's office diary for 13 September
1945, in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York. (u)
'8 Executive Order 9621, 20 September 1945, FRUS, pp. 44-46. (U)
19 Stone's authorship is noted in Corson, Armies of Ignorance, p. 246. (u)
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Government." The President also implicitly repeated Donald Stone's
earlier assurances to OSS, informing Donovan that the War Department
would maintain certain OSS components providing "services of a mili-
tary nature the need for which will continue for some time."2� (U)
OSS was through, but what would survive the wreck? The Presi-
dent probably gave little thought to those ostensibly necessary "services
of a military nature" that would somehow continue under War Depart-
ment auspices. Truman shared the widespread feeling that the govern-
ment needed better intelligence, although he provided little positive
guidance on the matter and said even less about intelligence collection
(as opposed to its collation). He commented to Budget Director Harold
Smith in September 1945 that he had in mind "a different kind of intel-
ligence service from what this country has had in the past"; a "broad in-
telligence service attached to the President's office."21 Later remarks
clarify these comments slightly. Speaking to an audience of CIA em-
ployees in 1952, President Truman reminisced that, when he first took
office, there had been "no concentration of information for the benefit
of the President. Each Department and each organization had its own in-
formation service, and that information service was walled off from
every other service."22 (U)
Mr. Truman's memoirs subsequently expanded on this point,
explaining what was at stake:
I have often thought that if there had been something like coordi-
nation of information in the government it would have been more
difficult, if not impossible, for the Japanese to succeed in the
sneak attack at Pearl Harbor. In those days [1941] the military did
not know everything the State Department knew, and the diplo-
mats did not have access to all the Army and Navy knew. 23
These comments suggest that President Truman viewed strategic
warning�preserving the United States from another Pearl Harbor in a
nuclear age�as the primary mission of his new intelligence establish-
ment, and as a function that had to be handled centrally. His remarks
also suggest that he viewed intelligence analysis as largely a matter of
" Harry S. Truman to William J. Donovan, 20 September 1945; Document 4 in Michael
Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, (Washington: Central Intelligence Agency,
1994) p. 15. See also Troy, Donovan and the CIA, pp. 302-303. (0
2' Harold Smith's office diary entries for 13 and 20 September 1945, Roosevelt Library.
(u)
22 Truman's speech is reprinted as Document 81 in Warner, The CIA under Harry Tru-
man, p. 471. (u)
" Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Volume II, Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, NY,
Doubleday, 1956), p. 56. (u)
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collation; the facts would speak for themselves, if only they could be
gathered in one place. That is what he wanted his new intelligence ser-
vice to do. (u)
The Budget Bureau itself had not proposed anything that
looked much clearer. Bureau staffers wanted the State Department to
serve as the president's "principal staff agency" in developing "high-
level intelligence," after taking the lead in establishing the "integrat-
ed Government-wide program."24 At the same time, however, Bud-
get Bureau officers wanted the departments to continue to conduct
their own intelligence functions, rather than relegating this duty to
"any single central agency." A small interagency group, "under the
leadership of the State Department," would coordinate the depart-
mental intelligence operations.25 This proposed program rested on
two assumptions that would soon be tested: that the State Depart-
ment was ready to take the lead, and that the armed services were
willing to follow. (u)
In the meantime, General Donovan fumed about the President's
decision yet again to Budget Bureau staffers who met with him (on
22 September) to arrange the details of the Office's dissolution. An
oversight in the drafting of EO 9621 had left the originally proposed ter-
mination date of 1 October unchanged in the final signed version, and
now Donovan had less than two weeks to dismantle his sprawling agen-
cy. One official of the Budget Bureau subsequently suggested to Donald
Stone that the War Department might ease the transition by keeping its
portion of OSS functioning "for the time being," perhaps even with
Donovan in charge. Stone preferred someone other than Donovan for
this job, and promised to discuss the idea with Assistant Secretary of
War John J. McCloy on 24 September.26 (u)
Two days later, McCloy stepped into the breach. Where Donald
Stone had simply ensured that pieces of OSS kept a temporary lease on
life in the War Department, McCloy glimpsed an opportunity to do
much more: to save these components as the nucleus of a peacetime
intelligence service. McCloy was a friend of Donovan's and had long
promoted an improved national intelligence capability.27He interpreted
2' Quoted phrases are in Snyder, Roseman, and Smith to Truman, 4 September 1945.
(u)
" Harold D. Smith to Harry S. Truman, "Transfer of Functions of the Office of Strategic
Services," 18 September 1945, Official File, Papers of Harry S. Truman, Harry S.
Truman Library. (u)
26 G.E. Ramsey, Jr., Bureau of the Budget, to the Assistant Director for Estimates,
Bureau of the Budget, "Disposition of OSS," 24 September 1945, FRUS, pp. 51-52. (U)
" For McCloy's advocacy of a centralized intelligence capability, see Kai Bird, The
Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1992), pp. 129-130. (u)
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The Creation
the President's directive as broadly as possible by ordering OSS ' s Dep-
uty Director for Intelligence, Brig. Gen. John Magruder, to preserve his
Secret Intelligence (SI) and counterespionage (X-2) Branches "as a go-
ing operation" in a new office that McCloy dubbed the "Strategic Ser-
vices Unit" (ssu):
This assignment of the OSS activities.. .is a method of carrying
out the desire of the President, as indicated by representatives of
the Bureau of the Budget, that these facilities of OSS be examined
over the next three months with a view to determining their appro-
priate disposition. Obviously this will demand close liaison with
the Bureau of the Budget, the State Department and other agen-
cies of the War Department, to insure that the facilities and assets
of OSS are preserved for any possible future use.... The situation
is one in which the facilities of an organization, normally shrink-
ing in size as a result of the end of fighting, must be preserved so
far as potentially of future usefulness to the country." (U)
The following day, the new Secretary of War, Robert P. Patterson,
confirmed this directive and implicitly endorsed Assistant Secretary
McCloy's interpretation, formally ordering Magruder to report to Mc-
Cloy and to "preserve as a unit such of these functions and facilities as
are valuable for permanent peacetime purposes" [emphasis added].29
With this order, Patterson postponed indefinitely the assimilation of
OSS ' s records and personnel into the War Department's own intelli-
gence arm, the G-2. (u)
General Magruder soon had to explain this unorthodox arrange-
ment to sharp-eyed Congressmen and staff. Rep. Clarence Cannon,
chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, asked the
General on 2 October about the OSS contingents sent to the State and
War Departments and the plans for disposing of OSS ' s unspent funds
(roughly $4.5 million). Magruder explained that he did not quite know
what State would do with R&A; when Cannon asked about the War De-
partment's contingent (SSU), the General read aloud from the Secretary
of War's order to preserve OSS' s more valuable functions "as a unit."3�
" John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, to John Magruder, OSS, "Transfer of
OSS Personnel and Activities to the War Department and Creation of Strategic Services
Unit," 26 September 1945, FRUS, pp. 235-236. (U)
29 Robert P. Patterson to John Magruder, 27 September 1945, National Archives and
Records Administration, Record Group 319 (Army Intelligence), Decimal File 1941-
48, "334 OSS," box 649, "Strategic Services Unit" folder. (u)
" US House of Representatives, House Appropriations Committee, "First Supplemental
Surplus Appropriation Recission Bill, 1946," 79th Cong., First Sess., 1945, p. 615-621.
(u)
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Two weeks later, staffers from the House Military Affairs Committee
asked why the War Department suddenly needed both SSU and the G-2:
General Magruder explained that he had no orders to liquidate
OSS (other than, of course, those functions without any peace
time significance) and that only the Assistant Secretary of War
[McCloyl could explain why OSS had been absorbed into the War
Department on the basis indicated. He said he felt, however,...
that the objective was to retain SSU intact until the Secretary of
State had surveyed the intelligence field and made recommenda-
tions to the President.
Committee staff implicitly conceded that the arrangement made
sense, but hinted that both SSU and the remnant of R&A in the State
Department ought to be "considerably reduced in size."3 (u)
Reducing SSU is just what was occupying the Unit's new Execu-
tive Officer, Col. William W. Quinn:
The orders that General Magruder received from the Secretary of
War were very simple. He was charged with preserving the intelli-
gence assets created and held by OSS during its existence and the
disbandment of paramilitary units, which included the 101 detach-
ment in Burma and Southeast Asia, and other forms of intelli-
gence units, like the Jedburgh teams, and morale operations, et
cetera. My initial business was primarily liquidation. The main
problem was the discharge of literally thousands of people. Con-
sequently, the intelligence collection effort more-or-less came to a
standstill." (U)
Magruder did his best to sustain morale in the Unit, keeping his
deputies informed about high-level debates over "the holy cause of
central intelligence," as he jocularly dubbed it. He suggested optimisti-
cally that SSU would survive its current exile:
In the meantime I can assure you there is a great deal of serious
thinking in high places regarding the solution that will be made for
OSS ESSIJ1. I hope it will prove fruitful. There is a very serious
3' John R. Schoemer, Jr., Acting General Counsel, Strategic Services Unit, memoran-
dum for the record, "Conference with representatives of House Military Affairs Com-
mittee," 19 October 1945, CIA History Staff HS/CSG-1400, item 14. (u)
" William W. Quinn, Buffalo Bill Remembers: Truth and Courage (Fowlerville, MI:
Wilderness Adventure Books, 1991), p. 240. (u)
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The Creation
movement under way to reconstruct some of the more fortunate
aspects of our work." (U)
Despite Magruder's and Quinn's efforts, the House of Represen-
tatives on 17 October lopped $2 million from the OSS terminal budget
that SSU shared with the Interim Research and Intelligence Service
(IRIS), its erstwhile sister branch now set in the Department of State.
The cut directly threatened both SSU and IRIS. The Truman adminis-
tration eventually convinced Congress to drop the House's recision and
even increase funding for both pieces of OSS, but not until after several
anxious weeks in SSU and the War Department. 34
Institutional enemies closer to hand also seemed to threaten SSU's
independence that fall. Just before Thanksgiving, McCloy warned Sec-
retary Patterson that only "close supervision" could prevent the Depart-
ment from taking "the course of least resistance by merely putting
[SSU] into what I think is a very unimaginative section of G-2 and thus
los[ing] a very valuable and necessary military asset."35 General
Magruder told his lieutenants that SSU was quietly winning friends in
high places, but repeatedly reminded staffers of the need for discretion,
noting that "some people" did not like SSU "and the less said about [the
Unit] the better."36 (U)
Controversy and Compromise (u)
McCloy (with Stone's help) had precipitated an inspired bureau-
cratic initiative that would eventually expand the Truman administra-
tion's options in creating a new intelligence establishment. Amid all the
subsequent interagency debates over the new intelligence agency's
structure and authorities that autumn, SSU preserved OSS' s foreign in-
telligence assets for eventual transfer to whichever agency received this
" SSU Staff Meeting Minutes, 23 October 1945, National Archives and Records Ad-
ministration, Record Group 226 (OSS), Entry 190, WASH-DIR-OP-266 (microfilm roll
M1642), roll 112, folder 1268. General Magruder made his "holy cause" quip at the 29
November meeting. (Li)
SSU Staff Meeting Minutes for 19 October, 30 October, and 20 December 1945. Har-
ry S. Truman to Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House, 7 November 1945, reprinted in
US House of Representatives, "House Miscellaneous Documents II," 79th Cong., 1st
Sess., serial set volume 10970, document 372, with attached letter from Harold D.
Smith to Truman, 6 November 1945. First Supplemental Surplus Appropriation Act,
1946, Public Law 79-301, Title 1, 60 Stat. 6, 7 (1946). (u)
" McCloy to Patterson, "Central Intelligence Agency," 13 November 1945, National
Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 107 (Department of War), Entry
180, Files of the Assistant Secretary of War, box 5, "Intelligence" folder. (u)
36 SSU Staff Meeting Minutes for 1 November, 6 November, and 29 November 1945. (u)
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responsibility. The Truman administration waged a heated internal ar-
gument over which powers to give to the new intelligence service. The
Secretaries of State, War, and Navy, who quickly agreed that they
should oversee the proposed office, stood together against rival plans
proposed by the Bureau of the Budget and the FBI. The Army and Na-
vy, however, would not accept the State Department's insistence that
the new office's director be selected by and accountable to the Secretary
of State. The armed services instead preferred a plan outlined by the
Joint Chiefs of Staff back in September, which proposed lifting the new
intelligence agency outside the Cabinet departments by placing it under
a proposed National Intelligence Authority.31 (U)
This was the plan that would soon settle the question of where to
place SSU. The JCS had been working on this plan for months, having
been spurred to action by General Donovan's 1944 campaigning for a
permanent peacetime intelligence agency. In September, JCS Chairman
William Leahy had transmitted the plan (JCS 1181/5) to the Secretary
of the Navy and the Secretary of War, who sent it on to the State De-
partment, where it languished for several weeks. The plan proposed,
among other things, that a new "Central Intelligence Agency" should,
among its duties, perform "such services of common concern as the Na-
tional Intelligence Authority determines can be more efficiently accom-
plished by a common agency, including the direct procurement of
intelligence." This artful ambiguity�"services of common con-
cern"�meant espionage and liaison with foreign intelligence services,
the core of clandestine foreign intelligence. Everyone involved knew
this, but no one in the administration or the military wanted to say such
things out loud; hence the obfuscation.39 In any case, here was another
function that the drafters of the JCS plan felt had to be performed, or at
least coordinated, "centrally." (U)
In December 1945 an impatient President Truman asked to see
both the State Department's and the Joint Chiefs' proposals and decided
that the latter looked simpler and more workable. This decision dashed
the Budget Bureau's original hope that the State Department would lead
the government's foreign intelligence program. Early in the new year,
Truman created the Central Intelligence Group, implementing what was
" Troy, Donovan and the CIA, pp. 297-300, 315, 322. (U)
3' JCS 1181/5 is attached to William D. Leahy, memorandum for the Secretary of War
and Secretary of the Navy, "Establishment of a central intelligence service upon liqui-
dation of OSS," 19 September 1945; Document 2 in Warner, The CIA under Harry Tru-
man, p. 5. (u)
" The term "services of common concern" apparently originated with OSS' General
Magruder and was adopted by a JCS study group; Troy, Donovan and the CIA, p. 233. (0)
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The Creation
in essence a modification of the JCS 1181/5 proposal. President Truman
persuaded Capt. (soon to be Rear Admiral) Sidney Souers, the Assistant
Chief of Naval Intelligence and a friend of Navy Secretary Forrestal
(and Presidential aide Clark Clifford) who had advised the White House
on the intelligence debate, to serve for a few months as the first Director
of Central Intelligence.40 The CIG formally came into being with the
President's directive of 22 January 1946. Cribbing text from JCS 1181/
5, the President authorized CIG to "perform, for the benefit of said in-
telligence agencies, such services of common concern as the National
Intelligence Authority determines can be more efficiently accomplished
centrally."4' Here was the loaded phrase "services of common concern"
again, only this time the telltale clause "including the direct procure-
ment of intelligence" had discreetly disappeared. (With minor editing,
the phrase would reappear again in the CIA's enabling legislation, the
National Security Act of 1947.) (U)
Two days later, on 24 January, President Truman invited Sidney
Souers to the White House to award him his black cape and wooden
dagger. Thanks in part to McCloy' s order to preserve OSS' s SI and X-
2 Branches, the "cloak and dagger" capability�the "services of com-
mon concern" mentioned in the President's directive�was waiting in
the War Department for transfer to the new CIG. General Magruder qui-
etly applauded Souers's appointment as DCI, explaining to his deputies
that SSU might soon be moving:
With respect to SSU, we and the War Department are thinking
along the same lines: that at such time as the Director [of Central
Intelligence] is ready to start operating, this Unit, its activities,
personnel, and facilities will become available to the Director, but
as you know, the intent of the President's [22 January] directive
was to avoid setting up an independent agency. Therefore, the
Central Intelligence Group, purposely called the Group, will uti-
lize the facilities of several Departments. This Unit will become
something in the way of a contribution furnished by the War
Department.42 (u)
Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy had saved the foreign in-
telligence core of OSS in the Strategic Services Unit; all that was required
" Truman, Memoirs, pp. 55-58. See also William Henhoeffer and James Hanrahan,
"Notes on the Early DCIs," Studies in Intelligence 33 (Spring 1989), P. 29; also Clif-
ford, Counsel to the President, p. 166. (U)
4I President Truman to the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy, 22 January 1946; FRUS,
pp. 178-179. (U)
42 SSU Staff Meeting Minutes, 29 January 1946; Magruder praised Souers' s appoint-
ment at the 24 January meeting. (u)
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"fret
President Truman and Sidney Souers (t)
was for the new National Intelligence Authority to approve a method for
transferring it. This the NIA did at its third meeting, on 2 April 1946.4'
The actual transfer of SSU personnel began after CIG had acquired a new
Director of Central Intelligence, Lt. Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, in June
1946. Vandenberg, a month later, was able to report matter-of-factly to
the National Intelligence Authority that the tiny CIG had begun to take
over "all clandestine foreign intelligence activities," meaning the much-
larger SSU. At that same meeting, Admiral Leahy also reminded partici-
pants (in a different context) that "it was always understood that CIG
eventually would broaden its scope."'" (U)
43 National Intelligence Authority, minutes of the NIA's 3rd meeting, 2 April 1946, CIA
History Staff HS/HC-245, National Archives and Records Administration, Record
Group 263 (CIA), History Staff Source Collection. (u)
44 National Intelligence Authority, minutes of the NIA's 4th meeting, 17 July 1946;
Document 13 in Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, pp. 56-59. (u)
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The Creation
From Small Beginnings (u)
An eminent historian once remarked that the crowning achieve-
ment of historical research is to attain an understanding of how things
do not happen. To put it simply, history rarely offers up tidy events and
clear motivations. President Truman did not follow a neat plan in found-
ing the Central Intelligence Group. He implicitly imposed two broad re-
quirements on his advisers and departments in the fall of 1945: to create
a structure that could collate the best intelligence held by the various de-
partments, and to make that structure operate, at least initially, on funds
derived from the established agencies. Indeed, the friction and waste of
the process that resulted from this vague guidance prompted the com-
plaint that the President had acted rashly in dissolving OSS and ignoring
the advice of intelligence professionals like William J. Donovan. (u)
In the fall of 1945, the President vaguely wanted a new kind of
centralized intelligence service, but his Cabinet departments and exist-
ing services knew fairly specifically what kinds of central intelligence
they did not want. Between these two realities lay the gray area in which
the Central Intelligence Group was founded and grew in 1946. Truman
always took credit for assigning CIG the task of providing timely stra-
tegic warning and guarding against another Pearl Harbor. CIG acquired
its second mission�the conduct of clandestine activities abroad�in
large part through the foresight of Donald Stone and John J. McCloy.
These two appointees ensured that trained personnel stayed together as
a unit ready to join the new peacetime intelligence service. Within
months of its creation, CIG had become the nation's primary agency for
strategic warning and the management of clandestine activities abroad,
and within two years the Group would bequeath both missions to its
successor, the Central Intelligence Agency. (u)
The relationship�and tension�between the two missions (strate-
gic warning and clandestine activities) formed the central dynamic in
unfolding early history of CIA. Many officials thought that the two
should be handled "centrally," although not necessarily by a single
agency. That they ultimately were combined under one organization
(CIG and then CIA) was due largely to the efforts of McCloy and
Magruder. Nevertheless, it is clear from the history of the SSU that
high-level Truman administration officials acted with the tacit assent of
the White House in preserving OSS' s most valuable components to be-
come the nucleus of the nation's foreign intelligence capability. Presi-
dent Truman's actions do not deserve the charge of incompetence that
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yet
has been leveled against them, but it does seem justified to conclude that
Truman's military advisers deserve most of the credit for the creation of
a CIG that collected as well as collated foreign intelligence. (u)
(This essay is Unclassified.)
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NOFOR (b)(3)
The Office of Reports and Estimates (U)
Woodrow J. Kuhns
During World War II, the United States made one of its few orig-
inal contributions to the craft of intelligence: the invention of multi-
source, nondepartmental analysis. The Research and Analysis (R&A)
Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) assembled a talented
cadre of analysts and experts to comb through publications and intelli-
gence reports for clues to the capabilities and intentions of the Axis
powers. R&A's contributions to the war effort impressed even the
harshest critics of the soon-to-be dismantled OSS. President Truman
paid implicit tribute to R&A in late 1945 when he directed that it be
transplanted bodily into the State Department at a time when most of
OSS was being demobilized. The transplant failed, however, and the in-
dependent analytical capability patiently constructed during the war had
all but vanished when Truman moved to reorganize the nation's peace-
time intelligence establishment at the beginning of 1946. (u)
Current Intelligence Versus National Intelligence (u)
The Central Reports Staff, home to the analysts in the Central In-
telligence Group (CIG), was born under a cloud of confusion in January
1946. ' Specifically, no consensus existed on what its mission was to be,
although the President's concerns in creating CIG were clear enough. In
the uncertain aftermath of the war, he wanted to be sure that all relevant
information available to the US Government on any given issue of na-
tional security would be correlated and evaluated centrally so that the
' The name of the Central Reports Staff was changed in July 1946 to the Office of Re-
search and Evaluations, and again in October 1946 to the Office of Reports and Esti-
mates (ORE), by which name it was known until it was abolished in November 1950.
CIA veterans typically use "ORE" as the shorthand name for the analytical office for
the whole period 1946-1950. (u)
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country would never again have to suffer a devastating surprise attack
as it had at Pearl Harbor.' (u)
How this was to be accomplished, however, was less clear. The
President himself wanted a daily summary that would relieve him of the
chore of reading the mounds of cables, reports, and other papers that
constantly cascaded onto his desk. Some of these were important, but
many were duplicative and even contradictory.' In the jargon of intelli-
gence analysis, Truman wanted CIG to produce a "current intelligence"
daily publication that would contain all information of immediate inter-
est to him.4
Truman's aides and advisers, however, either did not understand
this or disagreed with him, for the presidential directive of 22 January
1946 authorizing the creation of CIG did not mention current intelli-
gence. The directive ordered CIG to "accomplish the correlation and
evaluation of intelligence relating to the national security, and the ap-
propriate dissemination within the Government of the resulting strate-
gic and national policy intelligence."5 Moreover, at the first meeting of
the National Intelligence Authority (NIA) on 5 February, Secretary of
State Byrnes objected to the President's idea of a current intelligence
summary from CIG, claiming that it was his responsibility as Secretary
of State to furnish the President with information on foreign affairs.6 (u)
Truman wrote in his memoirs that he had "often thought that if there had been some-
thing like coordination of information in the government it would have been more dif-
ficult, if not impossible, for the Japanese to succeed in the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor."
Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, vol. 2, Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, NY: Double-
day, 1956), p. 56. (u)
See Arthur B. Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government
to 1950 (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), p. 81. (U)
Current intelligence was defined in National Security Council Intelligence Directive
No. 3, "Coordination of Intelligence Production," 13 January 1948, as "that spot infor-
mation or intelligence of all types and forms of immediate interest and value to operat-
ing or policy staffs, which is used by them usually without the delays incident to
complete evaluation or interpretation." See United States Department of State, Foreign
Relations of the United States 1945-1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment
(Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 1110. Hereafter cited as
Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment. (u)
"Presidential Directive on Coordination of Foreign Intelligence Activities," United
States Department of State, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, pp. 178, 179.
Also reproduced in Michael Warner, ed., The CIA under Harry Truman (Washington,
D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 1994), pp. 29-32. (u)
"Minutes of the First Meeting of the National Intelligence Authority," United States
Department of State, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, p. 328. The National
Intelligence Authority was composed of the Secretaries of State, War, Navy, and a rep-
resentative of the President, Flt. Adm. William Leahy. (u)
�t
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Byrnes apparently then went to Truman and asked him to recon-
sider. Adm. Sidney Souers, the first Director of Central Intelligence
(DCI), told a CIA historian that Byrnes' argument:
ran along the line that such information was not intelligence
within the jurisdiction of the Central Intelligence Group and the
Director of Central Intelligence]. President Truman conceded
that it might not be generally considered intelligence, but it was
information which he needed and therefore it was intelligence to
him. The result was agreement that the daily summaries should be
"factual statements." The Department of State prepared its own
digest, and so the President had two summaries on his desk.'
This uneasy compromise was reflected in the NIA directives that
outlined CIG' s duties. Directive No. 1, issued on 8 February 1946,
ordered CIG to "furnish strategic and national policy intelligence to the
President and the State, War, and Navy Departments."' National Intel-
ligence Authority Directive No. 2, issued the same day, ordered the DCI
to give "first priority" to the "production of daily summaries containing
factual statements of the significant developments in the field of intelli-
gence and operations related to the national security and to foreign
events for the use of the President." 9 (U)
In practice, this approach proved unworkable. Without any com-
mentary to place a report in context, or to make a judgment on its likely
veracity, the early Daily Summaries probably did little but confuse the
'Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 81, 82. (u)
'National Intelligence Authority Directive No. 1, "Policies and Procedures Governing
the Central Intelligence Group," 8 February 1946, Emergence of the Intelligence Estab-
lishment, pp. 329-331. After CIA was established, National Security Council Intelli-
gence Directive No. 1, "Duties and Responsibilities," issued on 12 December 1947,
again ordered the DCI to produce national intelligence, which the Directive stated
should be "officially concurred in by the Intelligence Agencies or shall carry an agreed
statement of substantial dissent." National Security Council Intelligence Directive No.
3, 13 January 1948, gave CIA the authority to produce current intelligence: "The CIA
and the several agencies shall produce and disseminate such current intelligence as may
be necessary to meet their own internal requirements or external responsibilities." See
Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, pp. 1119-1122; 1109-1112. (u)
9 National Intelligence Authority Directive No. 2, "Organization and Functions of the
Central Intelligence Group," 8 February 1946, Emergence of the Intelligence Establish-
ment, pp. 331-333. Interestingly, Souers, who drafted both NIA Directive 1 and Direc-
tive 2, continued to believe that CIG's principal responsibility was the production of
strategic and national policy intelligence. In a memorandum to the NIA on 7 June 1946,
Souers wrote that the "primary function of C.I.G. in the production of intelligence...
will be the preparation and dissemination of definitive estimates of the capabilities and
intentions of foreign countries as they affect the national security of the United States."
"Memorandum From the Director of Central Intelligence to the National Intelligence
Authority," 7 June 1946, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, p. 361. (u)
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Reports and Estimates
President. An alarming report one day on Soviet troop movements in
Eastern Europe, for example, would be contradicted the next day by a
report from another source. Everyone involved eventually realized the
folly of this situation, and analytical commentaries began to appear in
the Daily Summaries in December 1946�episodically at first, and then
regularly during 1947. The Weekly Summary, first published in June
1946 on the initiative of the Central Reports Staff itself, was also sup-
posed to avoid interpretative commentary, but its format made such a
stricture difficult to enforce. From its inception, the Weekly Summary
proved to be more analytical than its Daily counterpart. (U)
The Confusion Surrounding National Intelligence (U)
Similar disarray surrounded CIG' s responsibilities in the produc-
tion of "strategic and national policy intelligence." The members of the
Intelligence Community simply could not agree on the policies and pro-
cedures that governed the production of this type of intelligence. Most
of those involved seemed to believe that national intelligence should be
coordinated among all the members of the Intelligence Community, that
it should be based on all available information, that it should try to esti-
mate the intentions and capabilities of other countries toward the United
States, and that it should be of value to the highest policymaking bodies.
(U)
The devil was in the details. High-ranking members of the intelli-
gence and policy communities debated, without coming to a consensus,
most aspects of the estimate production process, including who should
write them, how other agencies should participate in the process if at all,
and how dissents should be handled. Some of this reflected genuine dis-
agreement over the best way to organize and run the Intelligence Com-
munity, but it also involved concerns about bureaucratic power and
prerogatives, especially those of the DCI and his Office of Reports and
Estimates (ORE), both newcomers to the Intelligence Community.
Even the definition of "strategic and national intelligence" had implica-
tions for the authority of the DCI and thus was carefully argued over by
others in the Community. '� (U)
DCI Vandenberg eventually got the NIA to agree to a definition in
February 1947, but it was so general that it did little to solve the problems
1� Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, p. 367. (u)
_,,,..t_
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that abounded at the working level." Ray Cline, a participant in the pro-
cess of producing the early estimates, wrote in his memoirs that:
It cannot honestly be said that it [ORE] coordinated either intelli-
gence activities or intelligence judgments; these were guarded
closely by Army, Navy, Air Force, State, and the FBI. When
attempts were made to prepare agreed national estimates on the
basis of intelligence available to all, the coordination process was
interminable, dissents were the rule rather than the exception, and
every policymaking official took his own agency's intelligence
appreciations along to the White House to argue his case. The pre-
war chaos was largely recreated with only a little more lip service
to central coordination.12 (u)
In practice, much of the intelligence produced by ORE was not
coordinated with the other agencies; nor was it based on all information
available to the US Government. The Daily and Weekly Summaries
were not coordinated products, and, like the other publications
produced by ORE, they did not contain information derived from
"The NIA agreed that "strategic and national policy intelligence is that composite in-
telligence, interdepartmental in character, which is required by the President and other
high officers and staffs to assist them in determining policies with respect to national
planning and security.... It is in that political-economic-military area of concern to more
than one agency, must be objective, and must transcend the exclusive competence of
any one department." "Minutes of the 9th Meeting of the National Intelligence Author-
ity," 12 February 1947, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, p. 492. After the
establishment of CIA, National Security Council Intelligence Directive No. 3, 13 Janu-
ary 1948, similarly defined national intelligence as "integrated departmental intelli-
gence that covers the broad aspects of national policy and national security, is of
concern to more than one Department... and transcends the exclusive competence of a
single department." See Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, p. 1111. (u)
12 Ray S. Cline, Secrets, Spies, and Scholars: Blueprint of the Essential CIA (Washing-
ton, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1976), pp. 91, 92. Cline rose to become Deputy Director
for Intelligence (DDI) between 1962 and 1966. Another veteran of the period, R. Jack
Smith, who edited the Daily Sununary, made the same point in his memoirs, The Un-
known CIA (Washington: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1989), p. 42: "We were not fulfilling
our primary task of combining Pentagon, State Department, and CIA judgments into na-
tional intelligence estimates.... To say it succinctly, CIA lacked clout. The military and
diplomatic people ignored our statutory authority in these matters, and the CIA leader-
ship lacked the power to compel compliance." Smith also served as DDI, from 1966 to
1971. (u)
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Reports and Estimates
communications intelligence. '3 The Review of the World Situation,
which was distributed each month at meetings of the National Security
Council, became a unilateral publication of ORE after the first two is-
sues.14 The office's ad hoc publications, such as the Special Evaluations
and Intelligence Memoranda, were rarely coordinated with the other
agencies. By contrast, the ORE series of Special Estimates were coor-
dinated, but critics nonetheless condemned many of them for contain-
ing trivial subjects that fell outside the realm of "strategic and national
policy intelligence." (o)
Whatever CIG' s written orders, in practice the President's interest
in the Daily Summaries, coupled with the limited resources of the Cen-
tral Reports Staff, meant that the production of current intelligence
came to dominate the Staff and its culture. National estimative intelli-
gence was reduced to also-ran status. An internal CIG memo stated
frankly that "ORE Special Estimates are produced on specific subjects
as the occasion arises and within the limits of ORE capabilities after
current intelligence requirements are met." It went on to note, "Many
significant developments worthy of ORE Special Estimates have not
been covered...because of priority production of current intelligence,
insufficient personnel, or inadequate information."16 This remained true
even after the Central Reports Staff evolved into the Office of Reports
and Estimates in CIA. " (u)
If the analysts in CIG, and then CIA, had only to balance the com-
peting demands of current and national intelligence, their performance
might have benefited. As it happened, however, NIA Directive No. 5
Smith, The Unknown CIA, pp. 34, 35. ORE began receiving signals intelligence in
1946 and was able to use it as a check against the articles it included in the Summaries.
Security concerns prevented its broader use. Signals intelligence was sent to the White
House by the Army Security Agency (from 1949 on, the Armed Forces Security Agen-
cy) during this period. CIA did not begin including communications intelligence in the
successor to the Daily until 1951. (u)
w The delays involved in interagency coordination made it difficult to meet the publica-
tion deadline while still including the most recent events in its contents. George S. Jack-
son, Office of Reports and Estimates, 1946-1951, Miscellaneous Studies, HS MS-3, vol.
3 (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 1954), pp. 279-287. National Ar-
chives and Records Administration, Record Group 263, History Staff Source Collec-
tion, NN3-263-95-003. (u)
1 See the discussion of the Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report below. (u)
16 Memo from Chief, Projects Division to Assistant Director, R&E, "Proposed Concept
for Future CIG Production of Staff Intelligence," 1 July 1947. CIA History Staff Job 67-
00059A, Box 2, Confidential. Nevertheless, during its existence ORE did produce over
125 estimates, 97 of which were declassified in 1993 and 1994 and deposited in the
National Archives. (u)
This point is made repeatedly throughout George S. Jackson, Office of Reports and
Estimates, 1946-1951. Jackson himself served in the office during the period of this
study. (u)
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soon gave the analysts the additional responsibility of performing "such
research and analysis activities" as might "be more efficiently or effec-
tively accomplished centrally." '8 In practice, this meant that the analysts
became responsible for performing basic research as well as wide-
ranging political and economic analysis. To accommodate this
enhanced mission, functional analysis branches for economics, science,
transportation, and map intelligence were established alongside the
existing regional branches. (u)
A high-ranking ORE officer of the period, Ludwell Montague,
wrote that this:
was a deliberate, but covert, attempt to transform ORE (or CRS, a
staff designed expressly for the production of coordinated national
intelligence) into an omn i competent ...central research agency.
This attempt failed, leaving ORE neither the one thing nor the
other. Since then, much ORE production has proceeded, not from
any clear concept of mission, but from the mere existence of a
nondescript contrivance for the production of nondescript intelli-
gence. All our efforts to secure a clear definition of our mission
have been in vain.20 (u)
Another veteran of the period, George S. Jackson, agreed with
Montague's assessment: "It would not be correct.. .to say that the
Office...had failed utterly to do what it was designed to do; a more ac-
curate statement would be that it had done not only what was planned
for it but much that was not planned and need not have been done. In
National Intelligence Authority Directive No. 5, "Functions of the Director of Central
Intelligence," 8 July 1946, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, p. 392. (U)
The Scientific Intelligence Branch of ORE was established in January 1947 and short-
ly thereafter incorporated the Nuclear Energy Group, which had been in charge of atom-
ic energy intelligence in the Manhattan Project, within its ranks. At the end of 1948, the
branch was separated from ORE and elevated to office status, becoming the Office of
Scientific Intelligence. (u)
20 Montague to Babbitt, "Comment on the Dulles-Jackson Report," 11 February 1949.
National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 263, History Staff
Source Collection, HS/HC 450, NN3-263-94-010, Box 14. Montague's reference to a
"deliberate but covert" attempt to increase the responsibility of ORE refers to the efforts
of DCI Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg to boost himself, and CIG as a whole, into a dominant
position in the Intelligence Community. Opposition from the other departments largely
scuttled his attempts in this direction. See Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment,
p. 366. (u)
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consequence, the Office had unnecessarily dissipated its energies to the
detriment of its main function."21 He noted that:
Requests [for studies] came frequently from many sources, not all
of them of equal importance, but there seemed not to be anyone in
authority [in ORE] who would probe beneath any of them to make
sure that they merited a reply. Nor was there anyone who took it
upon himself to decline requests�no matter from what source�
when they were clearly for a type of material not called for under
the responsibilities of the Office of Reports and Estimates.22 (u)
A Mixed Reception (U)
NIA Directive No. 5 opened the door to proliferation of various
kinds of publications and, consequently, to a dilution of analysts' efforts
in the fields of current and national intelligence.23 Perhaps as a conse-
quence of the confusion over the analytical mission, these products
received mixed reviews. The President was happy with his Daily Sum-
mary, and that fact alone made it sacrosanct. Rear Adm. James H.
Foskett, the President's Naval Aide, told ORE in 1947 that, "the Presi-
dent considers that he personally originated the Daily, that it is prepared
in accordance with his own specifications, that it is well done, and that
in its present form it satisfies his requirements."24 President Truman's
views on the Weekly Summary were less clear, but lack of criticism was
construed as approval by ORE: "It appears that the Weekly in its present
form is acceptable at the White House and is used to an undetermined
extent without exciting comment indicative of a desire for any particu-
lar change."25 (u)
Other policymakers were less impressed with the current intelli-
gence publications. Secretary of State George Marshall stopped reading
the Daily Summary after two weeks, and thereafter he had his aide flag
only the most important items for him to read. The aide did this only two
"Jackson, Office of Reports and Estimates, 1946-1951, vol. 1, p. 95. (U)
" Ibid., p. 98. (u)
" In addition to the publications mentioned above, ORE produced Situation Reports
(exhaustive studies of individual countries and areas) and a variety of branch-level pub-
lications (daily summaries, weekly summaries, monthly summaries, branch "esti-
mates," and reports of various types). (u)
" Montague to J. Klahr Huddle, Assistant Director, R&E, "Conversation with Admiral
Foskett regarding the C.I.G. Daily and Weekly Summaries," 26 February 1947, in Warn-
er, ed., The CIA Under Harry Truman, p. 123. (u)
" Ibid. (u)
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or three times a week, telling a CIG interviewer that "most of the
information in the Dailies is taken from State Department sources and
is furnished the Secretary through State Department channels."26 Mar-
shall also stopped reading the Weekly after the first issue.27 The Secre-
tary of the Navy, James Forrestal, considered both Summaries "valuable
but not...indispensable," according to one of his advisers.28 By contrast,
an aide to Secretary of War Robert Patterson reported that the Secretary
read both the Daily and Weekly Summaries "avidly and regularly."29(U)
The analytical office's work came in for the most severe criticism
in the so-called Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report of January 1949, which
assessed both the performance of CIA and its role in the Intelligence
Community.3" This report, commissioned by the National Security
Council in early 1948, was prepared by a trio of prominent intelligence
veterans who had left government service after the war: Allen Dulles,
William Jackson, and Mathias Correa. (U)
Their report candidly admitted that "There is confusion as to the
proper role of the Central Intelligence Agency in the preparation of in-
telligence reports and estimates," and that "The principle of the author-
itative national intelligence estimate does not yet have established
acceptance in the Government."31 They nevertheless took ORE to task
for failing to perform better in the production of national intelligence,
noting that although ORE had been given responsibility for production
of national estimates, "It has.. .been concerned with a wide variety of
activities and with the production of miscellaneous reports and summa-
ries which by no stretch of the imagination could be considered national
estimates."-" (u)
The trio found unacceptable ORE' s practice of drafting the esti-
mates "on the basis of its own research and analysis" and then circulat-
ing them among the other intelligence agencies to obtain notes of
dissent or concurrence. 33 "Under this procedure, none of the agencies
" Memo from Assistant Director, Office of Collection and Dissemination to Huddle,
"Adequacy Survey of the CIG Daily and Weekly Summaries," 7 May 1947, History
Staff Job 67-00059A, box 2, Secret. (u)
" Ibid. (u)
" Ibid. (u)
" Ibid., p. 5. (u)
3" Allen W. Dulles, William H. Jackson, and Mathias F. Correa, "The Central Intelli-
gence Agency and National Organization for Intelligence: A Report to the National Se-
curity Council," 1 January 1949. The summary of the report is reprinted in Emergence
of the Intelligence Establishment, pp. 903-911. The entire report is available at the Na-
tional Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Records of the Department of
State, Records of the Executive Secretariat, NSC Files: Lot 66 D 148, Box 1555. (U)
3i Ibid., pp. 65, 69. (u)
" Ibid., p. 6. (U)
33 Ibid. (u)
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regards itself as a full participant contributing to a truly national esti-
mate and accepting a share in the responsibility for it." 34 They recom-
mended that a "small group of specialists" be used "in lieu of the present
Office of Reports and Estimates" to "review the intelligence products of
other intelligence agencies and of the Central Intelligence Agency" and
to "prepare drafts of national intelligence estimates for consideration by
the Intelligence Advisory Committee." (U)
The three also were not impressed with ORE's efforts in the field
of current intelligence: "Approximately ninety per cent of the contents
of the Daily Summary is derived from State Department sources....
There are occasional comments by the Central Intelligence Agency on
portions of the Summary, but these, for the most part, appear gratuitous
and lend little weight to the material itself."16 They concluded, "As both
Summaries consume an inordinate amount of time and effort and appear
to be outside of the domain of the Central Intelligence Agency, we be-
lieve that the Daily, and possibly the Weekly, Summary should be dis-
continued in their present form."" (U)
The trio concluded disapprovingly that "the Central Intelligence
Agency has tended to become just one more intelligence agency pro-
ducing intelligence in competition with older established agencies of
the Government departments." (u)
The Analysts (u)
The Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report was extremely, perhaps un-
fairly, critical of ORE' s production record. Intelligence analysis is not
an easy job in the best of times�the available information on any given
analytical problem is invariably incomplete, or contradictory, or
flawed in some other important way�and these clearly were not the
best of times. Signals intelligence, which had proven devastatingly ef-
fective against the Axis powers in the war, was less effective against
the security-conscious Soviets, and, as noted above, in any event could
not yet be cited directly in CIA publications, even in those sent to the
Ibid. (u)
" Ibid., pp. 6, 7. (u)
3' Ibid., pp. 84, 85. (u)
" Ibid., pp. 85, 86. (u)
" Ibid., p. 11. (u)
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President." 9 The sophisticated aircraft and satellites that would one day
open the whole interior of the USSR to surveillance were not yet on the
drawing board, and the intelligence collection arm of the new CIA was
finding it impossibly difficult to penetrate Stalin's paranoid police state
with agents. In the end, the analysts had little to rely on but diplomatic
and military attache reporting, media accounts, and their own judg-
ment. (u)
The paucity of hard intelligence about the Soviet Union placed a
premium on the recruitment of topnotch analysts. Unfortunately, CIG
and CIA had trouble landing the best and the brightest. CIG was in a
particularly difficult situation; it had little authority to hire its own staff
employees and thus depended on the Departments of State, War, and
Navy for both its funding and personne1.40 Ludwell Montague com-
plained to DCI Vandenberg in September 1946 that these departments
were not cooperating: "From the beginning the crucial problem... has
been the procurement of key personnel qualified by aptitude and expe-
rience to anticipate intelligence needs, to exercise critical judgment re-
garding the material at hand, and to discern emergent trends. Such
persons are rare indeed and hard to come by, [and] the recruitment of
them is necessarily slow."4' Montague was particularly bitter about
Army intelligence's (G-2) efforts to fob off on CIG what he termed
"low-grade personnel."''' (u)
The establishment of CIA in September 1947 ended the Office's
dependence on other departments for personnel and funds. It permit-
ted the rapid expansion of ORE from 60 employees in June 1946 to
" From unsecured Soviet communications, signals intelligence provided reliable infor-
mation on such things as foreign trade, consumer goods policies, gold production, pe-
troleum shipments, shipbuilding, aircraft production, and civil defense. A weekly all-
source publication that did contain COMINT, the Situation Summary, was created in
July 1950 and sent to the White House. The Situation Summary's purpose was to warn,
in the wake of the North Korean invasion of South Korea, of other potential acts of ag-
gression by Communist forces. See George S. Jackson and Martin P. Claussen, Orga-
nizational History of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1950-1953, Chapter VIII,
Current Intelligence and Hostility Indications, The DCI Historical Series (Washington,
D.C.: The Central Intelligence Agency, 1957), p. 21, National Archives and Records
Administration, Record Group 263, History Staff Source Collection, NN3-263-92-004.
(u)
" When the Central Re (Irts Staff began o erations, it consisted o people as-
signed to it by State by War, and by Navy�all of whom immediately became preoccupied with preparing the Daily Summaries for President Truman, the first of
which they published on February 15,1946. The Staff published its first piece of nation-
al intelligence, ORE 1, "Soviet Foreign and Military Policy," at the end of July. (u)
4' Montague to Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Director of Central Intelligence, "Procurement of
Key Personnel for ORE," 24 September 1946, in Warner, ed., The CIA Under Harry
Truman, p. 85. (u)
" ibid. (u) (b)(3)
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staff employees of whom were either analysts or managers
of analysts, by the end of 1950.4' Although this solved the quantity
problem, quality remained an issue. (U)
Hanson W. Baldwin of The New York Times in 1948 noted that:
personnel weaknesses undoubtedly are the clue to the history of
frustration and disappointment, of friction and fiasco, which have
been, too largely, the story of our intelligence services since the
war. Present personnel, including many of those in the office of
research and estimates [sic] of the Central Intelligence Agency,
suffer from inexperience and inadequacy of background. Some of
them do not possess the "global" objective mind needed to evalu-
ate intelligence, coldly, logically and definitively. 44 (U)
A senior ORE officer, R. Jack Smith, shared Baldwin's view,
noting that:
We felt obliged to give the White House the best judgment we
could command, and we continued to try as the years passed by.
Eventually.. .the cumulative experience of this persistent effort,
combined with the recruitment of some genuine specialists and
scholars, produced a level of expertise that had no counterpart
elsewhere in the government. But this was a decade or more
away.45 (u)
Ray Cline agreed with Smith's views. Cline wrote that "the expan-
sion under [DCI] Vandenberg made the agency a little bigger than be-
fore but not much better. It was filled largely with military men who did
not want to leave the service at the end of the war but were not in great
demand in the military services. The quality was mediocre."46 (U)
During the critical year of 1948�which saw, among other crises,
the Berlin Blockade� analysts worked in the
As a group, their strength was pri-
or exposure to the Soviet Union:
Their backgrounds, however, were less
(b)(3)
(b)(3)
impressive in other respects.
"Table of Organization," 20 December 1950, Office of Transnational Issues Job 78-
01617A, Box 55, Confidential. (u)
�Baldwin, "Intelligence�IV, Competent Personnel Held Key to Success�Reforms
Suggested," The New York Times, July 24, 1948. (u)
" Smith, The Unknown CIA, p. 36. (u)
46 Cline, Secrets, Spies, and Scholars, p. 92. (u)
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rret.
Of those with college expe-
rience, a surprising number majored in fields far removed from their
work with CIG/CIA: civil engineering, agriculture, and library science,
for example. Far from being stereotypical well-heeled graduates of the
Ivy League, many had attended colleges that, at least in that period,
were undistinguished. Although military experience was widespread,
had served in the OSS.47 (U)
To be fair, the analysts faced a number of impediments that made
it difficult for their work to match expectations. The information at their
disposal was, for the most part, shared by others in the policy and intel-
ligence communities. Moreover, the pace of the working day was hec-
tic, and the analysts were under constant pressure. The pressure came
from outside�from government officials who demanded immediate
support�and within, from individuals who realized that career ad-
vancement rested on quantity of production. Consequently, analysts had
precious little time for reflection. In perhaps the best-known example,
Ludwell Montague in July 1946 was given only three days in which to
research, write, and coordinate with the other agencies ORE-1, "Soviet
Foreign and Military Policy," the first estimate produced by CIG." (u)
Nowhere was the pressure greater than in the production of the
Daily Summaries. Each morning, at nine o'clock, couriers would arrive
at CIA headquarters with the previous day's cable traffic from State and
the Pentagon. Between nine and 10, an editor would read the cables,
write comments on those he thought worthy of using in the Daily Sum-
mary, and sort them according to ORE' s branch organization. The ana-
lysts had on average only one hour, between 10 and 11, to draft their
articles. Between 11 and noon, the articles were edited, and at noon, the
branch chiefs, editors, and office leadership met to decide which articles
should be published. "By one o'clock, the Daily was usually dittoed, as-
sembled, enclosed in blue folders, packaged, receipted for, and on its
way by couriers to its approximately 15 official recipients."49 (u)
Because there were few contacts between the analysts and editors
on the one hand and senior policymakers on the other, choosing which
stories to include in the Daily was a shot in the dark. As R. Jack Smith,
then editor of the Daily recalled:
The comic backdrop to this daily turmoil was that in actuality
nobody knew what President Truman wanted to see or not see....
" Author's survey of CIA personnel files. Another veteran of the period, James Hanra-
han, recalls that pockets of greater academic expertise existed in other branches of ORE,
such as the West European branch. Interview with James Hanrahan, 16 July 1997. (u)
" Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 130. (u)
" Jackson, Qflice of Reports and Estimates, 1946-1951, vol. 5, p. 583. (u)
57
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How were we supposed to judge, sitting in a rundown temporary
building on the edge of the Potomac, what was fit for the Presi-
dent's eyes?"
After gaining experience on the job, Smith decided that:
Intelligence of immediate value to the president falls essentially
into two categories: developments impinging directly on the secu-
rity of the United States; and developments bearing on major U.S.
policy concerns. These cover possible military attacks, fluctua-
tions in relationships among potential adversaries, or anything
likely to threaten or enhance the success of major U.S. policy pro-
grams worldwide." (u)
The combination of uncertainty over what the President needed to
see and the analysts' need to publish as much as possible brought edi-
tors, analysts, and branch chiefs into frequent conflict. The analysts and
their branch chiefs believed that they, as the substantive experts, should
have the final say on the content of the Summaries, while the editors felt
that the experts were too parochial in outlook to make such decisions."
Neither side held command authority, so the disputes had to be settled
through argument and compromise. The most intractable cases would
be bucked up to the office leadership to decide. This situation remained
a source of tension within the office throughout ORE' s existence. (U)
The Threat of War in Europe... (u)
From the beginning, the current intelligence sent to the White
House contained numerous alarming reports about Soviet behavior
from nearly all corners of the globe: the Middle East, Eastern Europe,
Western Europe, and Korea in particular. A policymaker reading the
Summaries, or the original reports on which the Summaries were based,
could easily have concluded that Soviet military aggression was an im-
minent possibility. (U)
The most consistent�and perhaps most important�theme of
CIG/CIA analysis during this period, however, was that Soviet moves,
no matter how menacing they might appear in isolation, were unlikely
to lead to an attack against the West. This judgment looks even bolder
" Smith, The Unknown CIA, p. 34. (u)
51 Ibid., pp. 31-33. (u)
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71.1C11�
in light of President Truman's evident intention that ORE was to warn
the US Government of another Pearl Harbor�that is, a sudden surprise
attack on American forces or allies. Denied the ability to make com-
ments in the Summaries for most of 1946, CIG' s first opportunity to put
these reports into perspective was ORE-1, "Soviet Foreign and Military
Policy," published on 23 July 1946. It noted that although "the Soviet
Government anticipates an inevitable conflict with the capitalist world,"
Moscow "needs to avoid such a conflict for an indefinite period."52 (U)
Similarly, a Special Study published a month later and sent to the
President noted that "during the past two weeks there has been a series
of developments which suggest that some consideration should be given
to the possibility of near-term Soviet military action."" The authors
judged, however, that:
The most plausible conclusion would appear to be that, until there
is some specific evidence that the Soviets are making the neces-
sary military preparations and dispositions for offensive opera-
tions, the recent disturbing developments can be interpreted as
constituting no more than an intensive war of nerves. The purpose
may be to test US determination to support its objectives at the
[Paris] peace conference and to sustain its commitments in Euro-
pean affairs." (t)
Subsequent crises did not shake this assessment. During the
March 1948 "war scare," touched off when Gen. Lucius Clay, the US
military governor in Germany, sent a message to the Pentagon warn-
ing of the likelihood of a sudden Soviet attack, CIA analysts bluntly
" This and most of the studies cited in this essay are included in Woodrow J. Kuhns, Ed.
Assessing the Soviet Threat: The Early Years, (Washington: Central Intelligence Agen-
cy, 1997.) See ORE 1, "Soviet Foreign and Military Policy," 23 July 1946. (u).
" On 9 February 1946, Stalin had given a harsh speech that convinced many leading
Americans, including Secretary of the Navy Forrestal and Supreme Court Justice Will-
iam 0. Douglas, that war with the Soviet Union was becoming increasingly likely. See
Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York: The Viking Press, 1951), pp. 134,
135. Other incidents of this period that caused particular concern were Soviet diplomat-
ic pressure on Turkey over joint Soviet-Turkish control of the straits, Yugoslavia's de-
struction of two US aircraft, and a vicious Soviet propaganda campaign and internal
crackdown (the Zhdanovshchina) against Western influences. On the Zhdanovshchina,
see Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From
Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 123-125. (u)
" Special Study No, 3, "Current Soviet Intentions," 24 August 1946. (u)
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rejected the notion.55 During the scare, the State Department reported,
in separate cables, that senior members of the Czechoslovak and Turk-
ish Governments also feared the Soviet Union was prepared to risk an
imminent attack. In comments on these reports made in the Daily
Summary on 16 March 1948, analysts said "CIA does not believe that
the USSR is presently prepared to risk war in the pursuit of its aims in
Europe." On the following day, they added that "CIA does not believe
that the USSR plans a military venture in the immediate future in ei-
ther Europe or the Middle East."56 (U)
During the Berlin blockade, CIA's position remained the same.
"The Soviet action.. .has two possible objectives: either to force the
western powers to negotiate on Soviet terms regarding Germany, or
failing that, to force a western power withdrawal from Berlin. The
USSR does not seem ready to force a definite showdown."57 The ex-
plosion of the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb, on 29 August 1949,
similarly failed to change the analysts' judgment: "No immediate
change in Soviet policy or tactics is expected" was the verdict in the
Weekly Summary.58 (U)
...and in the Far East (u)
ORE initially deemed the possibility of aggression by the Soviet
client regime in North Korea as more likely.
An armed invasion of South Korea by the North Korean Peoples'
Army is not likely until US troops have been withdrawn from the
area or before the Communists have attempted to "unify" Korea
by some sort of coup. Eventual armed conflict between the North
and South Korean governments appears probable, however, in the
light of such recent events as Soviet withdrawal from North
Korea, intensified improvement of North Korean roads leading
south, Peoples' Army troop movements to areas nearer the 38th
parallel and from Manchuria to North Korea, and combined
maneuvers." (0)
" Clay's message, sent on 5 March 1948, stated that "For many months... I have felt
and held that war was unlikely for at least ten years. Within the last few weeks, I have
felt a subtle change in Soviet attitude which I cannot define but which now gives me a
feeling that it may come with dramatic suddenness." Quoted in Frank Kofsky, Harry S.
Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), p. 104. (u)
" Daily Summary, 16 March 1948, Daily Summary, 17 March 1948. (u)
" Weekly Summary, 2 July 1948. (u)
" Weekly Summary, 30 September 1949. (u)
" Weekly Summary, 29 October 1948. (u)
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ORE earlier had predicted that Soviet withdrawal from North Korea
would be followed by "renewed pressure for the withdrawal of all occu-
pation forces. The Soviet aim will be to deprive the United States of an
opportunity to establish a native security force in South Korea adequate
to deal with aggression from the North Korean People's Army.''60 (t)
Unfortunately for ORE and the policymakers who read its analy-
sis, this line was revised in early 1950. "The continuing southward
movement of the expanding Korean People's Army toward the thirty-
eighth parallel probably constitutes a defensive measure to offset the
growing strength of the offensively minded South Korean Army," read
the Weekly Summary of 13 January. ORE further stated that "an inva-
sion of South Korea is unlikely unless North Korean forces can develop
a clear-cut superiority over the increasingly efficient South Korean Ar-
my."6' Although this assessment appears naive in retrospect, it actually
fit in well with the views held by senior American military officers, who
believed the South Korean Army was sufficiently strong and no longer
required US military aid. South Korean strongman Syngman Rhee,
moreover, had begun making noises to American officials about reuni-
fying Korea under his control; the possibility of South Korean provoca-
tion thus was not as remote at the time as it seems now.62 (u)
The day after the North Korean attack on 25 June 1950, the Daily
Summary counseled that "successful aggression in Korea will encour-
age the USSR to launch similar ventures elsewhere in the Far East. In
sponsoring the aggression in Korea, the Kremlin probably calculated
that no firm or effective countermeasures would be taken by the West.
However, the Kremlin is not willing to undertake a global war at this
time."63 (U)
After initially suggesting that "firm and effective countermeasures
by the West would probably lead the Kremlin to permit a settlement to
be negotiated between the North and South Koreans," the analysts with-
in days concluded that "It is probable.. .that a concerted attempt will be
" Weekly Summary, 16 July 1948. ORE 3-49, "Consequences of US Troop Withdrawal
from Korea in Spring, 1949," published 28 February 1949, similarly predicted that the
withdrawal of US troops from South Korea "would probably in time be followed by an
invasion." Reprinted in Warner, ed., The CIA Under Harry Truman, p. 265. (u)
61 Weekly Summary, 13 January 1950. (u)
" Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Admin-
istration, and the Cold War (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992), p.
365. (u)
63 Daily Summary, 26 June 1950. (u)
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made to make the US effort in Korea as difficult and costly as possi-
ble." 64 A week later, the analysts amplified this theme:
All evidence available leads to the conclusion that the USSR is
not ready for war. Nevertheless, the USSR has substantial capabil-
ities, without directly involving Soviet troops, for prolonging the
fighting in Korea, as well as for initiating hostilities elsewhere.
Thus, although the USSR would prefer to confine the conflict to
Korea, a reversal there might impel the USSR to take greater risks
of starting a global war either by committing substantial Chinese
Communist forces in Korea or by sanctioning aggressive actions
by Satellite forces in other areas of the world. 6' (u)
ORE analysts quickly concluded, however, that Chinese interven-
tion was not likely. They reasoned that, although a North Korean defeat
would "have obvious disadvantages" for the Soviet Union, "the com-
mitment of Chinese Communist forces would not necessarily prevent
such a defeat and a defeat under these circumstances would be far more
disastrous, not only because it would be a greater blow to Soviet pres-
tige throughout the world, but because it would seriously threaten Sovi-
et control over the Chinese Communist regime." Moreover, if the
Chinese were to emerge victorious, "the presence of Chinese Commu-
nist troops in Korea would complicate if not jeopardize Soviet direction
of Korean affairs; Chinese Communist prestige, as opposed to that of
the USSR, would be enhanced; and Peiping might be tempted as a result
of success in Korea to challenge Soviet leadership in Asia." Finally, the
analysts believed that Chinese intervention was unlikely because "the
use of Chinese Communist forces in Korea would increase the risk of
global war, not only because of possible UN or US reaction but because
the USSR itself would be under greater compulsion to assure a victory
in Korea, possibly by committing Soviet troops."66 (u)
" Ibid.; Weekly Summary, 30 June 1950. (u)
Weekly Summary, 7 July 1950. Three days after the war began, ORE analysts assured
President Truman that "No evidence is available indicating Soviet preparations for mil-
itary operations in the West European theater...." Nevertheless, the analysts cautioned,
"Soviet military capabilities in Europe make it possible for the USSR to take aggressive
action with a minimum of preparation or advance notice." Daily Summary, 28 June
1950. (u)
66 Weekly Summary, 14 July 1950. (u)
4ret-
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7.
The Weekly Summary of 15 September 1950 briefly described the
evidence that suggested Chinese intervention was likely but still con-
cluded that Beijing would not risk war with the United States:
Numerous reports of Chinese Communist troop movements in
Manchuria, coupled with Peiping's recent charges of US aggres-
sion and violations of Chinese territory, have increased specula-
tion concerning both Chinese Communist intervention in Korea
and disagreement between the USSR and China on matters of mil-
itary policy. It is being argued that victory in Korea can only be
achieved by using Chinese Communist (or Soviet) forces, that the
USSR desires to weaken the US by involving it in a protracted
struggle with China, and that the Chinese Communists are blam-
ing the USSR for initiating the Korean venture and thus postpon-
ing the invasion of Taiwan. Despite the apparent logic of this
reasoning, there is no evidence indicating a Chinese-Soviet dis-
agreement, and cogent political and military considerations make
it unlikely that Chinese Communist forces will be directly and
openly committed in Korea.� (u)
The first Chinese warnings of intervention in the war if UN forces
crossed the 38th parallel were published in the Daily Summary on 30
September without comment, perhaps because they were downplayed
by the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, to whom others in the Mos-
cow diplomatic corps had passed the warnings." On 3 October, the an-
alysts drew on a similar report from the US Embassy in London to state
that "CIA estimates... that the Chinese Communists would not consider
it in their interests to intervene openly in Korea if, as now seems likely,
they anticipate that war with the UN nations [sic] would result." 69 In the
same article, the analysts warned, as they had before and would again,
that "The Chinese Communists have long had the capability for military
intervention in Korea on a scale sufficient to materially affect the course
of events." Nevertheless, in eight subsequent Daily Summaries, CIA
analysts restated their belief that China would, first, not intervene, and
then�as the intervention got under way�that it would not develop into
a large scale attack. The last Summary containing this judgment came
"7 Weekly Summary, 15 September 1950. For the contemporary research on this issue,
see, for example, John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 77-82. (u)
'8 Daily SUMMary, 30 September 1950. (u)
69 Daily Summary, 3 October 1950. (u)
70 Ibid. (u)
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on 17 November, three weeks after the first Chinese troops, wearing
Korean uniforms, entered combat in far northern Korea.7' (u)
The Danger of Subversion in Europe (u)
Throughout this period, ORE analysts were far more concerned
about Soviet use of local Communist parties to subvert pro-Western
governments than they were about the possibility of armed aggression
by the USSR or one of its Communist allies. As ORE expressed it in
September 1947, "The USSR is unlikely to resort to open military ag-
gression in present circumstances. Its policy is to avoid war, to build up
its war potential, and to extend its influence and control by political,
economic, and psychological methods."" (U)
CIG had reached a very similar conclusion about the first serious
postwar confrontation with the Soviet Union�its refusal to withdraw
its forces from northern Iran and its subsequent support for the break-
away Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan.'" After the worst
of the Iran crisis had passed, the first Weekly Summary warned that the
Soviets, having recognized that their policy toward Iran was "heavy-
handed and over-hasty" would rely on "gradual penetration." It de-
clared that "the Soviets clearly feel that 'time is on their side' in Iran and
that the general economic backwardness of the country and the unpop-
ular labor policy of the British oil companies will forward their cause."74
"Their cause" was identified as "gaining control over Iranian oil and
blocking closer military ties between Iran and the West."75 (u)
ORE tracked the gradual but inexorable consolidation of Commu-
nist power across Eastern Europe, as brought about through a combina-
tion of political manipulation by local Communists and pressure from
the Soviet occupation forces. The political and economic undermining
of the prospects for democracy in Eastern Europe reinforced the ana-
lysts' conclusion that this type of subversion was the greatest danger
from the Soviet Union. The analysts observed that Moscow's objective
Daily Summaries, 9 October 1950; 16 October 1950, 20 October 1950, 28 October
1950,30 October 1950,31 October 1950,2 November 1950, 17 November 1950. (U)
71 Review of the World Situation, CIA 1, 26 September 1947, (u)
In December 1945, Iranian rebels under the protection of Soviet forces proclaimed an
independent Azerbaijan and an independent Kurdish People's Republic. The govern-
ment of Iran protested this Soviet interference in its internal affairs before the UN Se-
curity Council in January 1946. (U)
74 Weekly Summary, 14 June 1946. (u)
" Weekly Summary, 18 March 1949. (u)
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in the region was to "establish permanent safeguards for their strategic,
political, and economic interests, including ..stable and subservient, or
at least friendly, regime[s]."76 (u)
The analysts were most troubled by the consolidation of Commu-
nist power in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, judging that it would
diminish:
the possibility of a compromise in Europe between the ideologies
of the Kremlin and the principles of western democracy and indi-
vidual freedom. Such a compromise had apparently been achieved
in Czechoslovakia.... The coup...reflects the refusal of the Com-
munists to settle for anything less than complete control and their
conviction that such dominance could never have been achieved
under a freely operating parliamentary form of government." (u)
On Germany, ORE anticipated that Stalin would use subversive
tactics to try to create a unified German state from the occupied ruins of
the Third Reich: "A German administration strongly centralized in Ber-
lin will be much more susceptible than a loose federation to Soviet pres-
sures.... Posing thus as the champions of German nationalism and
rehabilitation, the Soviets can attempt to discredit the policy of the
western powers and to facilitate the Communist penetration of their
zones."" The analysts warned that the removal of zonal barriers would
place the Soviets in a "position to launch a vigorous campaign to com-
munize the Western zone." (u)
After the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) conference in Mos-
cow in the spring of 1947 failed to reach agreement on Germany's fu-
ture, ORE analysts advised that the Soviets may be trying to (1)
"prolong the unsettled conditions in Europe conducive to Communism;
and (2) to encourage the US to expend its patience and energy in a vain
quest for agreement until forced by its internal economic and political
conditions to curtail its foreign commitments and to leave Europe to the
USSR by default."'" (u)
" Weekly Summary, 5 July 1946. The quotation refers specifically to Bulgaria, but the
same point was repeated about other East European countries as well. Weekly Summary,
19 July 1946, hit- example, contains a piece on Hungary that notes the "Soviet desire to
establish the control of the minority Communist Party in anticipation of the peace set-
tlement and the ultimate withdrawal of Soviet troops." (u)
" Weekly Summary, 27 February 1948. (u)
" Weekly Summary, 19 July 1946. (u)
79 Weekly Summary, 2 August 1946. (u)
m Weekly Summary, 2 May 1947. (u)
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ORE noted that Soviet efforts to penetrate the Western zones of
Germany focused on attempts to "extend the SED [Socialist Unity Par-
ty, the Communist's stalking horse in the Eastern zone] political struc-
ture to the West, while, simultaneously, efforts are made to establish
Communist front organizations, such as the Freie Deutsche Jugend
(FDJ), and to penetrate Western Zone labor unions."81 ORE warned that
if "Soviet efforts at the [November 1947] CFM fail to achieve a united
Germany on Soviet terms, the USSR will attempt to blame the Western
Powers for failure of the conference. At the same time, the Kremlin may
announce the recognition of a 'German Republic' east of the Elbe and
attempt to secure the removal of the Western allies from Berlin."" (U)
Once the first signs of the Berlin blockade emerged in April 1948,
ORE analysts advised that Stalin wanted "a negotiated settlement.. .on
terms which would permit ultimate Soviet control of Berlin and Com-
munist penetration of Western Germany."" After the blockade was lift-
ed in the spring of 1949, CIA assessed that Soviet objectives in
Germany remained unchanged: "Soviet agreement to lift the Berlin
blockade and enter into four-power discussions on Germany does not
represent any change in the Soviet objective to establish a Germany
which will eventually fall under Soviet domination."84 (U)
The analysts also highlighted the Communist threat in France and
Italy. Both countries had emerged from the war with widespread devas-
tation and strong Communist parties sharing power in coalition govern-
ments. After the French and Italian prime ministers expelled the
Communist ministers from their governments in the spring of 1947,
ORE predicted that:
The Kremlin apparently proposes for countries such as France and
Italy: (1) intensive agitation against their present governments and
against non-Communist liberals; and (2) the development of
highly-disciplined Communist cores which, at the proper
moment, could assume control. Such a program is well-adapted to
the current situation in France where, [now] relieved of govern-
mental responsibility, the Communists are in a position to threaten
(by propaganda, subversion, and trade-union agitation) the stabil-
ity of the present Government. Where Communism is less power-
ful, the Kremlin desires to concentrate on gaining control of trade
unions and other liberal organizations." (u)
81 Weekly Summary, 5 September 1947. (u)
" Ibid. (u)
" Weekly Summary, 5 November 1948. (0
84 Weekly Summary, 6 May 1949. (u)
" Weekly Summary, 9 May 1947. (u)
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ORE warned in September 1947 that "the sudden overthrow of the
De Gasperi Government [in Italy] by Communist-sponsored armed
force, following [the December 1947] withdrawal of Allied troops,"
was "within the realm of possibility" because of the Italian Army's
weakness. But the analysts thought that outcome was unlikely. They
wrote that "the USSR is unwilling to support directly such a step be-
cause it might involve war with the US" and because the potential fail-
ure of the much-anticipated European Recovery Program (better known
today as the Marshall Plan) could deliver Italy into the hands of the
Communists in the April 1948 elections. ORE worried more that a
Communist-inspired general strike could paralyze the important north-
ern Italian industrial area; such an event could "defeat the operation of
the European recovery program and eventually throw not only Italy into
the Soviet orbit, but possibly France as well."86 (u)
A Special Evaluation published on 13 October 1947 concluded
that Moscow's establishment of the Communist Information Bureau in
September 1947:
suggests strongly that the USSR recognizes that it has reached a
point of diminishing returns in the attempts of the Communist
parties of Western Europe to rise to power through parliamentary
means and that, consequently, it intends to revert to subversive
activities, such as strikes and sabotage, in an effort to undermine
the stability of Western European governments. This move like-
wise tends to substantiate the contention that the USSR considers
international subversive and revolutionary action, rather than mili-
tary aggression, as the primary instrument for obtaining its world-
wide objectives." (U)
ORE concluded that, "In its efforts to sabotage the European re-
covery program, which is the USSR's immediate and primary target,
the Kremlin will be willing even to risk the sacrifice of the French and
Italian Communist Parties" by ordering them to use sabotage and vio-
lence against the Marshall Plan. "If these Parties are defeated and driven
underground, the USSR will have lost no more than it would lose by the
success of the European recovery program. CIA believes that the unex-
pectedly rapid progress of the [proposed] Marshall program has upset
" Weekly Summary, 12 September 1947. (u)
" "Implications of the New Communist Information Bureau," Special Evaluation 2/,
13 October I 947. (u)
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the timetable of the Kremlin and forced this desperate action as the last
available countermeasures." (u)
The unexpectedly severe defeat of the Italian Communists in the
April 1948 national election considerably eased the concerns of ORE' s
analysts. Noting that the election results had "vastly improved the mo-
rale and confidence of the anti-Communists in both Italy and France,"
the analysts predicted that "for the immediate future, Communist activ-
ities in western Europe are likely to be directed toward rebuilding the
popular front rather than an early or determined bid for power." Never-
theless, "the Communists are not expected to relax their efforts to pre-
vent recovery in Europe.... Strikes and industrial sabotage...therefore
can be expected." (u)
The civil war in Greece, which had begun in 1946, received rela-
tively little attention in the current intelligence publications until the
British Government announced in early 1947 that it would have to with-
draw its forces from the country and significantly reduce its assistance
to Greece's non-Communist government. The Weekly Summary of 28
February, published seven days after the British announcement, sum-
marized the dire situation facing Greece:
Alone, Greece cannot save itself. Militarily, the country needs aid
in the form of equipment and training. Politically, Greece's
diehard politicians need to be convinced of the necessity of a
housecleaning, and the prostrate Center.. requires bolstering.
Economically, it needs gifts or loans of commodities, food, for-
eign exchange, and gold to check inflation. Of these needs, the
economic are the most vital.... Without immediate economic
aid.. .there would appear to be imminent danger that the Soviet-
dominated Left will seize control of the country, which would
result in the loss of Greece as a democracy." (u)
ORE analysts believed the chain of command for the Communist
forces in Greece started in Moscow and ran through Yugoslav leader
Josip Broz-Tito to Bulgaria and Albania before reaching the Greek
" Daily Summary, 4 December 1947. (u)
" Weekly Summary, 23 April 1948. (u)
9' Weekly Summary, 28 February 1947. (Li)
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Communists." Nevertheless, they rejected the possibility that armies of
those countries would assist the Greek guerrillas, despite numerous ru-
mors to the contrary:
CIG considers direct participation by the Albanian, Yugoslav, and
Bulgarian armies unlikely. Such action would obviously have far-
reaching international repercussions and might even involve the
USSR in a world war for which it is unprepared. The likelihood of
direct participation by Soviet troops in Greece or Turkey at this
time is so remote that it need not seriously be considered." (u)
In July 1948, ORE advised the President that Tito's rift with
Stalin, which appeared in March, would considerably lessen the pres-
sure against Greece." it soon followed with a report of slackening Bul-
garian support for the guerrillas, although ORE was unable to specify
the cause of the change." (0)
The Threat From Revolution in the Far East (U)
In their coverage of the Chinese civil war in the late 1940s, ORE
analysts noted that "the Soviet Union has scrupulously avoided identi-
fying the Chinese Communist Party with Moscow, and it is highly im-
probable that the Soviet leaders would at this time jeopardize the
Chinese Communist Party by acknowledging its connection with the
world Communist movement."'" They later affirmed that the USSR had
"given renewed indications that it is not ready to abandon its 'correct'
attitude toward the Nanking Government in favor of open aid to the
Communists in China's civil war."9" Moreover, "Because of the intense-
ly nationalistic spirit of the Chinese people.. .the [Chinese] Communists
are most anxious to protect themselves from the charge of Soviet dom-
inance."97 (0)
Not until the end of 1948 did ORE analysts begin to worry about
what a Communist victory in China might mean for the global balance
of power: "A tremendously increased Soviet war potential in the Far
Weekly Summary, 15 August 1947. (u)
" Daily Summary, 5 September 1947. (u)
93 Weekly Summary, 9 July 1948. (u)
91 Weekly Summary, 23 July 1948. (u)
Weekly Summary, 19 December 1947. (u)
" Weekly Summary, 9 January 1948. (U)
97 Weekly Summary, 27 February 1948. (u)
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East may result eventually from Communist control of Manchuria and
north China."98 At the same time, the analysts began warning that "Re-
cent statements from authoritative Chinese Communist sources empha-
size the strong ideological affinity existing between the USSR and the
Chinese Communist party...and indicate that Soviet leadership, espe-
cially in foreign affairs, will probably be faithfully followed by any
Communist-dominated government in China."99 (U)
After the Communists' final victory over Chiang Kai-shek's
Nationalist regime in the autumn of 1949, the analysts doubted that
Mao's protracted stay in Moscow, which began in December 1949 and
lasted for nine weeks, was a sign of potential trouble in the alliance:
"Although the length of Mao's visit may be the result of difficulties in
reaching agreement on a revised Sino-Soviet treaty... it is unlikely that
Mao is proving dangerously intractable. Mao is a genuine and orthodox
Stalinist, [and] is in firm control of the Chinese Communist Party."10�
The analysts believed that "The USSR can be expected to gradually
strengthen its grip on the Chinese Communist Party apparatus, on the
armed forces, on the secret police, and on communications and informa-
tional media."1�1 (U)
ORE initially devoted little attention to the French struggle in In-
dochina against the Viet Minh independence movement led by Ho Chi
Minh�in fact, the office devoted much more coverage to the problems
the Dutch were having in their colony in Indonesia. Although most of
ORE' s information came from French officials, the analysts were skep-
tical that Paris would be able to put down the rebellion.'�' They conclud-
ed that "Any Vietnam government which does not include Ho Chi Minh
or his more moderate followers will...be limited in scope of authority
by the perimeters of French military control and will be open to wide-
spread popular opposition and sabotage."�3 (U)
Ho was not at first portrayed by ORE as either a Communist or
a Soviet ally. The analysts referred to him as "President Ho."�4 The
first mention of a tie to Moscow, made in May 1948, was a grudging
one: "Ho Chi Minh.. .is supported by 80% of the population and.. .is
allegedly loyal to Soviet foreign policy."105 As late as September 1949,
" Weekly Summary, 12 November 1948. (u)
" Weekly Summary, 3 December 1948. (u)
Weekly Summary, 13 January 1950. (u)
Weekly Summary, 17 February 1950. (u)
102 Weekly Summary, 10 January 1947. (u)
1" Weekly Summary, 14 March 1947. (u)
I" Weekly Summary, 24 October 1947. (u)
Weekly Summary, 14 May 1948. (u)
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analysts wrote that "Ho's relationship with the Kremlin and the Chi-
nese Communists remains obscure....Ho has stated his willingness to
accept military equipment from the Chinese Communists. On the oth-
er hand, Ho still maintains that neutrality between the US and the
USSR is both possible and desirable." " (u)
Moscow's recognition of Ho's government on 31 January 1950
prompted the analysts to change their stance dramatically, however."
They saw the likelihood of a series of regional governments falling in
turn under Soviet influence:
If France is driven from Indochina, the resulting emergence of an
indigenous Communist-dominated regime in Vietnam, together
with pressures exerted by Peiping and Moscow, would probably
bring about the orientation of adjacent Thailand and Burma
toward the Communist orbit. Under these circumstances, other
Asian states Malaya and Indonesia, particularly�would
become highly vulnerable to the extension of Communist influ-
ence.... Meanwhile, by recognizing the Ho regime, the USSR has
revealed its determination to force France completely out of
Indochina and to install a Communist government. Alone, France
is incapable of preventing such a development."' (u)
The analysts concluded that, although only the United States could
help France avoid defeat, the "Asian nations... would tend to interpret
such US action as support of continued Western colonialism."" (u)
Soviet Aims in Israel (u)
Like many in the State Department and elsewhere in the US Gov-
ernment, ORE, worried by reports that the Soviets were funneling arms
and money to Zionist guerrillas, suggested that the creation of Israel
could give the USSR a client state in the Middle East."�
Formation of a Jewish state in Palestine will enable the USSR to
intensify its efforts to expand Soviet influence in the Near East
and to perpetuate a chaotic condition there.... In any event, the
'" Weekly Summary, 9 September 1949. (u)
107 Communist China had recognized Ho's government on 18 January 1950. (u)
Daily Summary, 1 February 1950. (Li)
Ibid. (u)
"" Daily Summary, 25 June 1948. (u)
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flow of men and munitions to Palestine from the Soviet bloc can
be expected to increase substantially. The USSR will undoubtedly
take advantage of the removal of immigration restrictions to
increase the influx of trained Soviet agents from eastern and cen-
tral Europe into Palestine where they have already had consider-
able success penetrating the Stern Gang, Irgun, and, to a lesser
extent, Haganah.'" (u)
Not until November 1948, five months after Israel declared its in-
dependence and defeated a coalition of Arab opponents, did ORE sug-
gest that events might turn out otherwise: "There is some evidence that
Soviet.. enthusiasm for the support of Israel is diminishing." "2 ORE
later suggested that the change in attitude stemmed from a Soviet esti-
mate "that the establishment of Israel as a disruptive force in the Arab
world has now been accomplished and that further military aid to a
country of basically pro-western sympathies would ultimately prove
prejudicial to Soviet interests in the Near East."3 (U)
Conclusion (u)
ORE met its end shortly after Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith and
William H. Jackson, of the Dulles-Jackson-Correa survey team, arrived
in late 1950 as Director of Central Intelligence and Deputy Director, re-
spectively. They abolished ORE that November and replaced it with
three new units: the Office of National Estimates, the Office of Re-
search and Reports, and the Office of Current Intelligence. These steps
finally ended the confusion over the analytical mission, primarily by
splitting the competing functions of national, current, and basic intelli-
gence into three offices. (u)
Much maligned by insiders and outsiders alike, ORE' s record is
perhaps not as bad as its reputation. Its analysis holds up well when
compared to both the views held by other agencies at the time and our
current understanding of events in that period. Of course, ORE, like all
intelligence organizations in all eras, had its failures. Dramatic, sweep-
ing events, such as wars and revolutions, are far too complex to predict
or analyze perfectly. Even with the benefit of unprecedented access to
Russian and Chinese sources, for example, contemporary historians are
Weekly Summary, 14 May 1948. (u)
1" Weekly Summary, 12 November 1948. (u)
I" Weekly Summary, 17 December 1948. (u)
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unable to conclusively pinpoint when and why Mao decided to inter-
vene in the Korean War. "4 (u)
Gaps also exist in our knowledge about what intelligence Presi-
dent Truman saw, understood, believed, and used. Judging the impact
of intelligence on policy is difficult always, and especially so from a
distance of fifty years. On many issues, such as the Communist threat
to Italy, ORE's work tended to reinforce what many policymakers in the
Administration and officials in the field already believed. (u)
It does seem fair to conclude, however, that ORE' s repeated, cor-
rect assurances that a Soviet attack in Europe was unlikely must have
had a steadying influence when tensions were high and some feared a
Soviet onslaught. In this, the analysts of ORE served President Truman
well, and their accurate assessment ultimately must be considered
ORE' s most important contribution in those early, fearful years of the
Cold War. (u)
(This essay is Unclassified.)
The two sets of sources appear to be at least partially contradictory. See the discus-
sion in Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War, pp. 65-69, and in John
Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 77-80. (U)
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NOFORN
The First Star:
Douglas Mackiernan in China and Tibet (C)
Nicholas Dujmovic
"Don't shoot," called Douglas Mackiernan, American vice consul.
Moments later, he was dead, killed in a fusillade of bullets fired by ner-
vous guards on the border between China and then independent Tibet.
It was April, 1950. Mackiernan received posthumous honors from the
Secretary of State, and his name would grace the State Department's
memorial to fallen Foreign Service officers. (U)
Forty seven years later and half a world away, Acting Director of
Central Intelligence George J. Tenet stood in front of CIA's Memorial
Wall, with its seventy stars. He spoke before a large audience that had
packed the lobby of CIA's Original Headquarters Building for the an-
nual Memorial Ceremony. To the hushed crowd, which included Mac-
kiernan's widow, Acting Director Tenet acknowledged Mackiernan as
the first CIA officer to die in the line of duty: "He is the first star on that
Wall, and the space in the book where his name should be is blank...
but we claim Doug Mackiernan as one of our own.. .now, in a sense,
we've brought him home." (s)
The story of Douglas (Mack) Mackiernan is the story of a brave
and resourceful officer working for his country in a desolate, isolated
foreign land undergoing a Communist revolution. It demonstrates the
continuity of US foreign intelligence from the War Department's
Strategic Services Unit, through the Central Intelligence Group, to the
' The earliest account of Mackiernan's death was told by the American who survived
the attack, Frank Bessac, "This Was the Perilous Trek to Tragedy," Life, 13 November
1950. Other well known sources include Heinrich Harrer, Seven Years in Tibet (Lon-
don: Hart-Davis, 1953), pp 237-38; Godfrey Lias, Kazak Exodus (London: Evans,
1956), pp. 170-72; and Fred Donner, "Overland from China," Foreign Service Journal,
April 1985, pp. 38-41. All these accounts preserved cover for both Mackiernan and
Bessac. Last year, however, a Tibet scholar published a history that exposes their CIA
affiliation; see Warren W. Smith, Jr., The Tibetan Nation (Boulder: Westview, 1996),
pp. 278-79. More recently, Mackiernan's widow cooperated with a Washington Post re-
porter: Ted Gup's article, "Star Agents: Covert Lives and Covert Deaths at the CIA"
(The Washington Post Magazine, 7 September 1997), is replete with errors but tells the
main part of Mackiernan's story all too correctly that he was a CIA officer operating
under cover in far western China from 1947 through 1949. (u)
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The First Star
Central Intelligence Agency. It shows an early friction between the
practice of intelligence and the world of diplomacy. It illuminates the
fears held by US officials during the initial stages of the Cold War.
Above all, it reminds us of the peculiar kind of secrecy demanded by in-
telligence, which insists that the heroic mission of Doug Mackiernan,
who died in the service of this country far from home, should remain in
a shroud of secrecy even after five decades. (s)
An Extremely Capable Operative (u)
Douglas Mackiernan was born in 1913, attended high school in
Stoughton, Massachusetts and studied physics at the Massachusetts In-
stitute of Technology. He was an expert in both radio and meteorology;
he was fluent in Spanish and had proficiency in French, German, and
Russian. In April 1942, Mackiernan became a US Army meteorologist,
which allowed him to serve his country while indulging his love of trav-
el. He deployed to Greenland, Alaska, and then China. Mackiernan
spent almost two and a half years with the US Army's 10th Weather
Squadron in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province in far western China,
on the Soviet border.2 In the spring of 1946, Mackiernan headed home
for his discharge from the Army.' (0)
But Mackiernan wanted to return to Urumqi. He found the Xin-
jiang province�with its extremes of desert and mountain, its volatile
ethnic mix, and its frontier character�fascinating. The War Depart-
ment's Strategic Services Unit (SSU�which housed remnants of the
OSS) expressed an interest in Mackiernan' s talents and knowledge.4
SSU was particularly interested in Xinjiang province because it was
widely believed that local uprisings against Nationalist Chinese author-
ity in the Sino-Soviet border region were instigated by Moscow.' Soviet
influence and inroads were believed to stem in part from a desire to con-
trol important mineral deposits of the region�especially uranium. It
Names and spellings are problematic for this region. For this article I use the current
Chinese "pinyin" usage for Urumqi and Xinjiang, rather than the older forms Urumchi
and Sinkiang. Complicating matters is the fact that Mackiernan and his contemporaries
called Urumqi, the ancient Uighur name for the provincial capital, by its Chinese name,
Tihwa or Tihua. DO records reflect all these usages and more. (u)
See Linda Benson, The Ili Rebellion: The Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in
Xinjiang, 1944-1949 (London: Sharpe, 1990), passim. (u)
7Cet
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also made sense for Moscow to keep tabs on the nationalist and inde-
pendence movements of Xinjiang, as these could affect minorities in
neighboring Soviet Central Asia. All this was speculation; what was
known for sure was that the Soviets had five consulates in the province.
What American intelligence needed was an astute observer on the
ground, and Mackiernan seemed ideal. (s)
SSU officers interviewed Mackiernan in China and judged him a
trainable intelligence officer ideally suited to operations in Xinjiang. Be-
sides his knowledge of radio, he knew a lot about photography. He already
spoke Russian, and be was also studying Chinese and Mongolian.' (S)
On his arrival in Washington, SSU made an employment offer,
and
1946.
Expectations regarding Mackiernan were high
Indeed, the highest intelligence priority concerned
Soviet activities and influence in Xinjiang, especially intelligence relat-
ed to Soviet efforts to construct an atomic bomb. Mackiernan was di-
rected to discover where the Soviets might find uranium in the province,
whether they were mining it, and whether any "atomic recearrh" w2C
being conducted on Chinese territory.
He was
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also to find out what he could regarding Soviet diplomatic, military,
economic, and intelligence activities; Soviet military aid tn unrin 1Q eth-
nic factions; and the spread of Communist propaganda
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
Almost as soon as he returned to China in October 1946, Mac-
kieman became one of the select number of SSI T officers whn rhnde
the transition to the Central Intelligence Group.
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
on his own initiative got the State
Department to hire him as a clerk for the US Consulate General (here-
inafter referred to as the US Consulate) in Urumqi.
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
He requested through
CIG channels to be made vice consul. (DCI Hillenkoetter made the for-
mal request to the State Department on 20 August 1947.)'� (s)
(b)(1)
At that time, the Embassy in Nanking sent him (b)(3)
Urumqi overland�a distance of 2,400 miles. Mackiernan and a young
Foreign Service Officer named Edwin Martin (later Ambassador to
Burma) took a jeep, an Army truck and trailer, and four tons of supplies.
They barged their convoy across the Yangtze, spent ten days on freight
trains to Xi'an in central China, then drove the remaining 1700 miles to
Urumqi, arriving on 12 June." (s)
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
" Edwin Martin, "Overland Again, Foreign Service Journal, September 1985, p. 8. I
am indebted to Fred Donner for this reference. (U)
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Mackiernan was immediately thrown into a fast-moving situation
that provided a wealth of important intelligence. Border clashes be-
tween Nationalist border guards and troops of Soviet satellite Mongolia
erupted into serious fighting in mid-June 1947. 12 Nationalist China pub-
licly accused Moscow of supporting Mongolian raids into Xinjiang.
12 See The New York Times stories on the fighting, 11-13, 18 9 June 1947. (u)
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In May of 1948, the State Department formally granted CIA's re-
auest for Mackiernan' s aunointment as vice consul in I Jrnmai
Mackiernan was to focus
his efforts on Xinjiang, especially what CIA's Office of Reports and Es-
timates called "the most difficult puzzle" in Xinjiang: Soviet intentions,
capabilities, and activities in the province. Intelligence on Soviet min-
ing, military and intelligence activities, and Soviet influence in the rebel
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districts was especially sought after.
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-the gathering of intelligence on Soviet development of an
atomic bomb�received assistance and enhanced capability from the
US Air Force. While still in Shanghai in September 1947, Mackiernan
had been approached by the Air Force about setting up a station in
Urumqi that would monitor signs of a Soviet nuclear explosion. The Air
Force did not know Mackiernan was a CIA officer but apparently be-
lieved the Army meteorological experience of the young State Depart-
ment employee made him ideal for this project. The initial phase of the
plan, as further developed in Washington in mid-1948, was to place
barographic, seismographic, and radiological equipment, provided by
the Air Force and disguised as a weather station, under Mackiernan' s
supervision at the Urumqi consulate. Later, more sophisticated equip-
ment would be sent. Mackiernan told CIA the Air Force wanted an im-
mediate report, "should an unmistakable indication of an atomic
explosion be recorded."24 (S)
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The new provincial government was powerless to stabilize the
now-chaotic economy or calm ethnic tensions; its incapacity further dis-
credited the dying Nationalist Chinese regime. Rumors began to circu-
late in Urumqi that the province was prepared either to cede Xinjiang's
mineral resources to the USSR or to surrender to the Chinese Commu-
nists. Mackiernan himself believed that Xinjiang would align itself with
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Mao's Communists in order to gain protection against Soviet hegemo-
ny, but that this realignment would take some time.32 (s)
Flight From Urumqi (U)
The rapid advance of Mao Zedong's army toward northwest China
led Secretary of State Acheson to decide in late July 1949 to close the
Consulate in Urumqi.34 CIA and State agreed to leave Mackiernan in
place for approximately three months to continue intelligence gathering.
Mackiernan cabled CIA that he was "willing [to] remain here last long as
needed,
" Benson, Ili Rebellion, pp. 172-76. (U) The possibility that the USSR would actually
annex portions of Xinjiang was raised in an April 1949 CIA estimate; CIA believed
Moscow favored "the formation of an autonomous territory of Xinjiang, possibly with
a view to creating a new Soviet Union Republic at some time in the future." ORE 29-
49, "Prospects for Soviet Control of a Communist China," in Michael Warner, ed., The
CIA under Harry Truman (W-ozhino-tnn C � CIA Hictnry qtaff 1 QCIA.1 nn 9R1 155
Nee tne aispatcnes trom w astungton, canton, and Nanking, 22-29 July 1949, in
FRUS, 1949, volume VIII, The Far East: China, pp. 1303-06. (0)
85
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(S)
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The Air Force, for its part, made it known that it wanted Mackier-
nan to continue monitoring for signs of a Soviet atomic test. In response
to a query from Headquarters, Mackiernan cabled on 11 August that his
Air Force equipment was in operation and that his instructions were to
make a report only for an "unusual event of which none so far."36 (s)
On the morning of 16 August, Consul General Paxton, his wife,
and several Consulate employees left Urumqi on an arduous journey
that would take them west across Xinjiang and into India by late Octo-
ber; Paxton would make it back to the United States in mid-November."
As Vice Consul and the only American presence left in Urumqi, Mac-
kiernan proceeded to destroy the Consulate's files and turn US property
over to the British Consulate Genera1.38 (S)
The doors to Mackiernan's future began to shut. On 25 August, he
cabled to Headquarters that the western route to India had been closed
by the provincial government. On 3 September, Mackiernan reported
that Nationalist Chinese forces were beginning to evacuate Urumqi, and
the city was in a panic." CIA cabled back, saying that under no circum-
stances should Mackiernan remain in Urumqi if a Communist takeover
was imminent.40 Mackiernan then heard that the main mountain passes
from western Xinjiang into both India and Afghanistan had been sealed.
For a possible return to Urumqi, Mackiernan spent many of his remain-
ing days in the area caching equipment, cipher material, supplies, and
gold reserves (b)(1)
(b)(3)
(b)(1)
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" On Paxton's journey, see Lisagor and Higgins, Overtime in Heaven, pp. 173-206. (u)
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Amidst this activity, CIA sent Mackiernan the
following cable: "Report priority all info and rumors on atomic explo-
sion supposed to have occurred on Asiatic mainland last half August
1949. Handle with greatest discretion." (S)
The Soviet Union, of course, had exploded its first atomic device
in neighboring Kazakhstan, about 650 miles to the north west of Urum-
qi, on 29 August. For reasons unknown, the Air Force equipment had
not registered anything unusual. It is likely that Mackiernan' s equip-
ment�which the Air Force had intended primarily for baseline
barographic, seismic, and radiological readings for the region and
which was supposed to be replaced with more sophisticated equip-
ment�was not sufficiently sensitive to detect the changes produced by
the Soviet explosion. Through no fault of his own, Mackiernan had
missed his chance to become part of the history of the nuclear arms race.
On 15 September he ceased monitoring and destroyed the equipment.42
(s)
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On 25 September, Mackiernan learned that the Xinjiang provin-
cial government had decided to sever all ties with the Nationalists the
following day and to accept the authority of the Communist government
in Beijing.44 Word reached Mackiernan that foreigners would be
prevented from leaving Urumqi along the likely escape route soutl(b)( 1)
ward. He cabled CIA on 27 September, "Am taking to hills (b)(3)
They would
go on a route east and south, toward western Qinghai province, that the
Communists probably would not expect them to use.45 That was the last
me sage from CIA's Urumai station. (s)
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
44 Vice Consul at Tihwa [Urumqi] Mackiernan to Secretary of State of 25 September
1997 in FRI'S' 1949 vol IX n 1062 (th
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The Mackiernan party in early March 1950 prepared for its jour-
ney to India
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The Final Journey (U)
through the mountain passes to Lake Ayyakum. From there,
it was a relatively easy
matter to navigate due south toward Tibet. Mackiernan carried a hand
drawn map of the route On March 29th, CIA
requested the State Department to get Tibet's clearance for the safe ar-
rival of the Mackiernan party. State passed the information to the Em-
bassy in New Delhi the following day, and the Indian Government was
urged to get the necessary clearances in Lhasa. Between the second and
fifth of April, Tibetan messengers left Lhasa for all border outposts to
warn them of the imminent arrival of the Mackiernan party.61 (s)
During these last weeks of Mackiernan's life, he and the party he
led traversed some of the wildest, most beautiful and austere territory
on earth. Today, the entire region is a nature preserve of the People's
Republic of China. Then, it was known simply as the Tibetan Plateau,
an area with altitudes of 15,000 to 22,000 feet, dotted with a myriad of
lakes and rivers, snow-covered peaks and treacherous passes
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On the morning of 29 April 1950, at a place in northern Tibet
called Shigarhung Lung, the Mackiernan party came upon a Tibetan
nomad family tending their sheep. The nomads, who were armed,
quickly retreated to a small rock shelter, ready to fire. Anxious to dem-
onstrate that the newcomers were not Kazakhs intent on stealing sheep,
Mackiernan ordered the party to pitch camp in the open near a small
stream. Suddenly, a separate group of six armed Tibetans in what ap-
peared to be uniforms appeared on horseback.
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
The Tibetan patrol, which
had fired from behind an embankment, got up and walked toward the
unarmed party. Then, apparently, one of the Tibetans panicked ane
fired.
Tibetans opened fire. Douglas Mackiernan,
then all th(b)(3)
were killed.
were taken prisoner. The Tibetans mutilated the bodies (b)(1)c
the dead men and looted their belongings for two days before setting ot(b)(3)
for the town of Shentsa with their prisoners. On the journey, on May
4th, they met the government messenger from Lhasa on his way to in-
form the soldiers to welcome Mackiernan and his party. He was five
days too late.� (s)
It is clear that CIA had delayed initiating its request for Tibeta(b)(1 )
clearance. (b)(3)
because CIA feared for the
party's safety should Tibet defect to or be invaded by the Chinese
(b)(1)
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Communists. What is less clear is whether this delay mattered in
Mackiernan's death. In Lhasa, the Tibetan Government told
that all Tibetan outposts received the message about the party by mid-
April all except the outpost at Shigarhung Lung, due to the failure of
one messenger to pass the information.64 (s)
A greater factor in the tragedy was probably Mackiernan's own
misjudgment. Believing himself to be farther north than he actually
was, he may have been less cautious about the endemic violence in the
region about which Headquarters had warned him.65 Mackiernan was
perhaps a victim of his own naivete about Tibetans, who are often
viewed romantically by Westerners as peaceful and gentle, but who can
be as brutal and capricious as any other people. Mackiernan, knowing
he could shoot his way out of a difficult situation, gambled on a peaceful
approach and lost. In the end, it was an accident, a tragic happenstance
that took the life of the first CIA officer to die in the line of duty. (s)
The bodies of Mackiernan and his companions were
buried at Shigarhung Lung by a contrite Tibetan Government, horrified
at the tragedy. three crosses that were built in Lhasa
and sent back to stand over their graves. A photograph of the site was
supposed to be taken and provided to the US Embassy at New Delhi, but
there is no record that this happened. Douglas Mackiernan's grave, for
all we know, is unmarked as well as forgotten. (s)
The question asks itself: could his remains be found? If so, does
the Agency owe Doug Mackiernan the effort to locate his grave and
bring his remains back to the United States? The US Government
mounts extraordinary efforts to find and return the remains of US sol-
diers, sailors and airmen who are lost in the most distant lands. Though
it would be difficult logistically, not to mention politically, to succeed
in bringing Doug Mackiernan back home to the country he served so
faithfully, the effort would seem appropriate for all he gave. (s)
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CIA and TPAJAX: The Tension Between
Analysis and Operations (S)
Scott A. Koch
In the summer of 1953, the US Government saw what it thought
were unmistakable signs that Iran was about to fall behind the Iron Cur-
tain. Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mossadeq had broken off negoti-
ations with Britain concerning compensation for the assets of the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which Iran nationalized in 1951.
Mossadeq, having ridden to power on a wave of nationalism, exploited
the anti-British sentiment of the population and made political and
diplomatic overtures to the Soviet Union. To Washington's alarm, he
considered taking members of the Tudeh (Iranian Communist Party)
into his Eovernment (u)
Washington's view changed when Dwight Eisenhower took
the Presidential oath of office in January 1953. Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles did not think Mossadeq was a guarantor of political sta-
bility, and events bore him out. Mossadeq's popular political support
was almost gone by the summer of 1953. His allies in the Iranian Par-
liament (the Majlis) had deserted him to protest his increasingly dicta-
torial behavior. The Iranian economy was in shambles as the effects of
a British boycott on Iranian oil took hold. The Prime Minister seemed
unwilling or unable to exert the authority of the central government
against growing crowds of Tudeh-inspired demonstrators. The State
Department thought Mossadeq vulnerable to Tudeh subversion or even
' Mossadeq's negotiating style baffled most Westerners. He frequently wept, fainted,
and conducted business while in his pajamas. British author L.P. Elwell-Sutton captured
the attitude of British foreign policy officials when he wrote, "Really, it seemed hardly
fair that dignified and correct western statesmanship should be defeated by the antics of
incomprehensible Orientals." L.P. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil: A Study in Power Poli-
tics (London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd., 1955), p. 258. (u)
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CIA and TPAJAX
a coup. No one in Washington was willing to watch Iran fall behind the
Iron Curtain. (U)
CIA's role in Mossadeq's fall quickly became an open secret and
attracted the attention of the scholarly community.
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
The Office of National Estimates and TPAJAX (s)
The Board of National Estimates (BNE) in the Office of National
Estimates (ONE) was CIA's analytical component responsible for pro-
ducing long-range appraisals of world events. These appraisals, known
as National Intelligence Estimates, ideally represented the Intelligence
Community's best thinking on a particular topic. Under the leadership
first of Harvard historian William Langer, and then Yale historian Sher-
man Kent, ONE took the long view and did not concern itself with day-
to-day events or crises. Instead, it concentrated on trends and probable
future courses of action of other nations. Primarily because the Soviet
Union was the focus of its attention, ONE paid little attention to Iran.
These priorities changed when Mossadeq's Iran became a critical issue
in US foreign policy.' (U)
2 Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1979). (u)
For a discussion of Sherman Kent and ONE, see Donald P. Steury, ed., Sherman Kent
and the Board of National Estimates: Collected Essays (Washington, DC: CIA History
Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1994). (u)
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ONE did not always have the cooperation of the clandestine ser-
vices when drafting an estimate. In 1951, the year before DCI Walter
Bedell Smith merged the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC, the of-
fice responsible for covert action) and the Office of Special Operations
(OSO, the office responsible for espionage) into the new Directorate of
Plans, Dr. William Langer, head of BNE, asked OSO for its views for
an upcoming national intelligence estimate on Iran. OSO management
resisted the request on several grounds: (1) OSO had too many similar
requests from ONE, (2) OSO personnel "were not paid to 'estimate,' but
to produce facts," and (3) OSO personnel could barely keep up with
their assigned duties, much less help ONE do its job.4 OSO clearly was
not interested in dialogue with analytical components for the purpose of
producing a superior analytical product. (s)
ONE' s ability to produce accurate national intelligence estimates
on Iran in the early 1950s suffered because the office knew next to noth-
ing about the Tudeh.
(s)
the OSO Iranian desk officer, admitted that his field
people had only a handful of low-level contacts within the Tudeh Party
Hewitt did not think the absence ot intelligence on the ludeh
reflected OSO' s lack of interest; as he explained to Kent, that office had
been preoccupied almost exclusively with the Soviet Union and could
not divert scarce resources to working the Iranian problem. Even if OSO
had turned immediately to Iran, the office faced significant obstacles
recruiting Iranian informants who could provide the sort of high-level,
reliable information ONE needed.
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Yet in March 1953 it was clear that
I
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
had made giant strides in collecting information from Iranian sources.
Acting Division Chief Miles Copeland assured Deputy Director (Plans)
Frank Wisner that "when we report on the activities of an important in-
dividual such as Mossadegh or the Shah, we are in almost all cases get-
ting our information directly from a dependable espionage agent in
intimate contact with the individual reported upon."' Copeland's mem-
orandum noted that intelligence reporting on Iran had greatly improved
but did not mention whether the analytical components were receiving
these reports. In all likelihood the analysts never saw most of them,
which helps explain why ONE found it difficult to draft satisfactory
NIEs on Iran. (c)
The Office of Current Intelligence and TPAJAX (S)
The tension between ONE and the clandestine services was unfor-
tunate but not potentially crippling to American policymakers during
fast-breaking events. ONE concentrated on larger perspectives that
were not sensitive to daily crises. The Office of Current Intelligence
(OCI), on the other hand, analyzed events as they happened. OCI ana-
lysts could help shape policymakers' views and decisions during crises.
Their writing could have an immediate impact. (u)
In the summer of 1953, OCT was responsible for keeping the Pres-
ident informed about daily events that might affect US foreign policy.
Analyst in OCI prepared "all- (b)(3)
source current intelligence reports and items for OCT publications" and
provided "briefing and other current intelligence support for other CIA
components."8 (s)
(b)(1)
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OCI initially conducted its analysis of the unfolding events in Iran
ignorant of the developing American role.
wrote that Mossadeq had been faced
with many plots in the past but had always defeated them, and that there
was no reason to believe that he would not do so again.9 (C)
The day be bre DDP executed the operation someone finally
called oes not remember who), said that there was an im-
minent covert action, "and on this side of the house your analysts are
saying there's no chance that it'll work." At this point analysts (b)(3)
finally received a briefing about the operation. "From an analytical
point," says, "this changed the situation completely. This was a
major piece of information that we didn't have, and that if we had
known it ahead of time, we would have phrased things differently, or
maybe simply kept our mouth shut about it until it went off."i� (C)
After TPAJAX tried to develop closer personal ties with his
counterparts in the DDP. He did not expect the operators in the Iran
Branch to tell him what was going on all the time, but he wanted to de-
velop a relationship so that "they would trust me enough that they might
tell me things that otherwise wouldn't get on paper, and so on. And by
the same token to demonstrate to them that we could help them."" (S)
gradually built a rapport with DDP officers that he says paid
off for both sides. Nonetheless, he thinks that more cooperation could
have improved the intelligence product immensely. When he trans-
ferred to the DDP in 1957 "and started clawing through the files, one
thing that struck me was how much useful intelligence information was
in the operational files but had never made it out into intelligence
reports because the reports officer or whoever had just not spotted it as
intelligence report material." 12 (C)
(b)(3) is philosophical about the limited contact that he and the oth-
er analysts in his branch had with the people on the Iranian desk in the
Directorate of Plans. There was, he says, "indeed a very deep gulf,
institutionally, and policywise," and he speculates that the reason lay in
differences between overt and covert employees. He and his fellow
analysts were overt; many DDP employees were covert. From the
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DDP's perspective, overt employees were not sufficiently sensitive to
security issues. "There was a measure of distrust," believes, "on
the DDP side against these overt analysts who probably had loose
tongues and if we [in DDP] talk too much they'll [OCI analysts] go
blabbing around town."" (c)
John Waller makes the
same assessment of the relationship between the analysts and operators.
In a July 1995 interview, Waller suggested two additional reasons for
the unofficial separation between the two directorates. First, most Irani-
an specialists in the DDP were OSS veterans who had spent substantial
amounts of time in the Middle East. They had acquired their knowledge
from practical experience and thought that knowledge acquired this way
was superior to the academic knowledge that Directorate of Intelligence
(DI) analysts prized. Second, the DDP officers' relationships with the
DI analysts were informal. "There was a lot of time," Waller said,
"before you sort of had a wiring diagram that put us [DDP] together
with the DI. It was all based on if you need their help, go get it, but
you'd better know who you were talking to. There's no point in talking
to a man who's only read the books you've read."4 (u)
Bureaucratic differences probably played an important part in
reinforcing the separation between the DDP and the DI. DDP officers
may have thought that if the DI were included in covert action planning,
analysts would begin to challenge DDP' s preeminence in covert opera-
tions. Similarly, DI analysts may have feared that DDP operators would
question their analytical preeminence and that close association with a
covert action would raise questions about their objectivity. Philosophi-
cal, organizational, and physical separation ensured that these kinds of
issues seldom touched off bureaucratic warfare. (u)
At least in the case of TPAJAX, the relationship between the DDP
and the DI contrasted sharply with the relationship between DDP and
the State Department. After the operation, John Stutesman, former
Second Secretary of the American Embassy in Tehran, wrote to Roy
Melbourne, First Secretary of the Embassy in Tehran, telling him of the
close personal relationship he had developed with CIA's John Waller
and Roger Goiran. "John Waller and (b)(1)
Roger Goiran are men," Stutesman wrote, "upon whose judgment we (b)(3)
can all rely without qualification and Arthur Richards [Director of the
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Office of Greek, Turkish, and Iranian Affairs, Department of State] and
I have been happy to observe that they go out of their way to maintain
friendly and close relations with us, asking our advice often upon sub-
jects which their organization might not normally discuss with working
levels in the Department."5 (s)
Allen Dulles's Personal Directorate of Intelligence (U)
The highest levels of management in CIA did nothing to discour-
age the estrangement of the Directorate of Plans and the Directorate of
Intelligence, and in fact reinforced it. Allen Dulles ignored the Agen-
cy's analytical arm during TPAJAX, preferring to use personal acquain-
tances as sources of information. I6 He had numerous contacts across the
world and throughout American society from his prewar days as an
attorney and his wartime service in the Office of Strategic Services.
Personal relationships were important to Dulles, and he tended to trust
the information he got from people he knew. On Iran, much of this in-
formation came from Brig. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and Max
Thornburg, an oil industry consultant. There is no evidence that Dulles
ever passed on information from these sources to analysts in ONE or
OCI. (S)
Schwarzkopf had spent considerable time in Iran, had trained the
Iranian Gendarmerie during World War II, and knew the Shah well.
Through his work with this police force, which maintained a presence
in all the provinces, Schwarzkopf became a storehouse of knowledge
about Iran and was happy to share it with Dulles." (0)
Max Thornburg ran Overseas Consultants, Inc., a firm that
advised Middle Eastern governments on oil and economic questions. In
1950 he was in Iran as a consultant to the government, advising Iranian
officials about the country's seven-year economic plan.
ft Peter Grose's biography of Dulles captures this characteristic well. "Institutional ties
never inhibited Allen from nurturing his own private networks of diverse colleagues and
friends, many dating back decades, upon whom he would call in his regular trips to Eu-
rope for civilized exchanges among men and, increasingly, women of the world." Peter
Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994),
p.319. (u)
Waller interview. (c)
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Thornburg gained unusual access to then-Deputy Director (Plans)
Allen Dulles and key State Department officials. He maintained a
steady correspondence with both CIA and State about events in the
Middle East. Thornburg was not shy about telling "Allen" what he
thought should be done, and consistently urged that the United States
had to change the psychological climate in the Middle East. He also ar-
gued that the Shah was not weak, but only "young, beaten-down and un-
derstandably skeptical about any real support coming from the United
States or Britain."19 Thornburg sat in on several sessions with Dulles
and drafted some papers for CIA. (5)
The Operation (U)
(b)(3)
The initial plan depended upon a military coup to remove Mossa-
deq. Planners in CIA's Iran Branch in the Near East and Africa Division
of the Directorate of Plans (DDP, the forerunner of the current Director-
ate of Operations), hoped that Mossadeq's arrest would lead to a blood( b)(1 )
less change of leadership. After prompting from (b)(3)
Americans, such as Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf2� and NEA Divison
Chief Kermit Roosevelt, the Shah signed orders dismissing Mossadeq
and replacing him with Zahedi. With the Shah's signed decrees, or fir-
mans, in hand, Col. Nematollah Nassiri of the Shah's Imperial Guard ar-
rived at Mossadeq' s Tehran home on the night of 15/16 August 1953.
Mossadeq, however, had been tipped off that Nassiri was coming and
(b)(3)
19 Letter, Max W. Thornburg to Allen Dulles, 10 February 1953, Office ot the Director
of Central Intelligence Records, Job 80-R01731R, Box 13, ARC. (s)
(b)(3)
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was prepared. When Nassiri attempted to deliver the papers, troops
loyal to Mossadeq arrested him.21
Early in the morning of the 16th, Radio Tehran broadcast the news
that a military plot against the government had been uncovered and
foiled. It appeared that Mossadeq had triumphed, for the anti-Mossadeq
officers' resolve melted as soon as Nassiri was arrested. They failed to
seize their assigned objectives and many simply hid, hoping the whole
thing would blow over. It did not. The Shah left his summer palace in
the suburbs of Tehran and flew to Baghdad. The Iranian Communist
Party took to the streets challenging the authority of Mossadeq's gov-
ernment, demanding the Shah's life, and toppling statutes of the Shah's
father. Mossadeq stood by and did nothing to suppress the Communist
mobs." (ti)
Kermit Roosevelt, who had arrived in Tehran to take field com-
mand of the operation, was momentarily at a loss. Nassiri's arrest forced
him to improvise and he beaan by 2etting in touch with his assets.
(S)
On the night of 18 August 1953, Mossadeq finally ordered securi-
ty forces to clear the streets of Tudeh demonstrators. Some did so with
a will, and forced the bloodied Iranian Communists to shout pro-Shah
slogans as they were being beaten. On Wednesday morning, 19 August,
the tide began to turn irreversibly against Mossadeq. A small pro-Shah
demonstration-
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-began at about 0900 in the bazaar of Tehran.
The crowd milled aimlessly until several people went into a small print
shop and returned with copies of the Shah's firmans. The firmans were
the spark the crowd needed. Eager hands reached for copies and the
supply soon ran out.25 (S)
At this point members of Iranian Zuhrkaneh (exercise clubs) ap-
peared at the head of the crowd. Weightlifters, tumblers, and acrobats i
exercised in unison while shouting pro-Shah slogans. (b)(1)
(b)(3)
iThe enthusiasm was infectious, and
spread quickly. The crowds surged toward the offices of the pro-Mos-
sadeq and anti-American newspaper Bakhtar Emruz and destroyed
them as security forces watched.26 (s)
During this time the military had remained quiet. Although many
members of the officer corps opposed Mossadeq, they hesitated to move
against the Prime Minister until they saw which way public opinion
would swing. By 1130 there was no longer any doubt about Tehran's
pro-Shah sentiment, and truckloads of soldiers sped through the streets
waving the monarch's picture. Radio Tehran fell into royalist hands and
at 1530 was broadcasting what Roosevelt later called "deliriously pro-
Zahedi" messages. Tanks from the Imperial Guard escorted Fazlollah
Zahedi to Radio Tehran, where he declared that he was the legitimate
Prime Minister. By the late afternoon of the 19th, Zahedi had consoli-
dated his hold on the government, Mossadeq was under arrest, and forc-
es loyal to the former leader were in jail or in hiding. The Shah returned
to a tumultuous welcome in Tehran on 22 August 1953, where he re-
mained until the Iranian revolution and establishment of the Islamic
Republic in 1979.27 (u)
The Consequences of Analytical Exclusion (u)
TPAJAX illustrates the philosophical tension inherent in planning
covert operations. Preparation must balance the need for fully informed
decisionmaking with the need for strict operational security. The former
requires that those with knowledge relevant to the operation be
intimately involved from the start, while the latter requires that the
number of people involved be kept to a minimum. (s)
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CIA and TPAJAX Nitret
An ideal operation is at neither extreme and acknowledges the in-
evitability of tradeoffs. Covert actions might have to be planned on im-
perfect knowledge to ensure that they remain covert, and there may
have to be compromises on absolute security in order to take advantage
of relevant available expertise. How to balance these conflicting re-
quirements has been a recurring issue throughout the history of CIA's
covert operations. TPAJAX offers some clues on how this tension
might be resolved in some cases. (S)
TPAJAX was planned and executed with far greater concern for
operational security than for ensuring that the planners had all relevant
information. There is no evidence that operators in the Iran Branch of
Kermit Roosevelt's Near East and Africa Division consulted either
ONE or OCT at any stage of the operation. ONE and OCT might not have
been able to provide much help because they had chronic difficulty get-
ting intelligence reporting from DDP (the component responsible for
espionage and covert action)�a problem that itself reflects poor com-
munication between the analysts and collectors. (S)
The consequences of the analysts' exclusion from TPAJAX can be
examined from its effect on analysis itself (product and process), and on
the preparation and execution of the operation. Exclusion damaged the
analytical product because it prevented OCT analysts from basing their
judgments on complete information. Exclusion harmed the analytical
process because it impeded the creation of a valid framework for assess-
ing future developments. (5)
Had they been apprised of the US role in deposing Mossadeq, an-
alysts probably would have been more circumspect in concluding that,
because the Iranian Prime Minister had turned back coup attempts in the
past, he was likely to prevail again. Knowledge that this time the United
States was supporting Mossadeq' s opponents with extraordinary mea-
sures might have changed or tempered this judgment. Inclusion in TPA-
TAX planning might have made analysts more inclined to recognize the
operation's potential for success. (s)
Whether the segregation of analysis from operational planning af-
fected the conception and execution of TPAJAX is less certain. The
analysis was essentially incompati-
ble with the planned covert political action, but did
not dissuade the President, the Secretary of State, and the DCI from
executing TPAJAX. Under these circumstances, one can make a strong
argument that analytical exclusion had negligible consequences for
TPAJAX. (s)
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Fully informed analysis, nevertheless, might have enhanced the
operation. The Dl's more scholarly and detached perspective and its
methodology for assessing a dynamic situation perhaps could have
helped NEA clarify the assumptions upon which TPAJAX was based,
and how changes in those assumptions might affect the operation. (s)
The operation's initial failure on 15 August 1953 provides the
most conspicuous evidence that the absence of analytical expertise may
have been detrimental. When Col. Nematollah Nassiri of the Shah's
Imperial Guard arrived at Mossadeq's home to arrest him, Mossadeq
arrested him. The Prime Minister had been informed that an attempt to
depose him was underway, and had acted vigorously to head off the
threat by calling on troops loyal to him. Col. Nassiri's arrest disheart-
ened the other anti-Mossadeq officers, and the military challenge to
Mossadeq melted away. Headquarters wanted to call off the operation.
Had operational planning taken into account the possibility�even the
likelihood�that segments of the Iranian military would react this way,
DDP could have prepared contingency plans. (u)
Incorporating analytical products into the planning for TPAJAX
might not have guaranteed success�which owed much to Kermit
Roosevelt's flexibility and initiative�but it would have forced the op-
erators to question their assumptions and recognize that things might go
wrong. If someone other than Roosevelt had been on the scene, things
might have gone differently. (s)
Advances in collection technology have given today's analysts ac-
cess to an almost bewildering array of sources inconceivable to their
colleagues of 44 years ago. The exponential growth of information from
signals intelligence, imagery, and exotic collection platforms supple-
ments but cannot replace clandestine reporting. Analytical products will
be much richer if they add clandestine reporting to these sources; in
turn, clandestine operators will have analysis that is fully informed and
therefore more useful (u).
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Closing the Missile Gap (U)
Leonard F. Parkinson and Logan H. Potter
The search for information on the Soviet missile program became
the most critical and elusive intelligence problem and the most demand-
ing in terms of approach and management of the many substantive issues
encountered in the first 20 years of strategic research at CIA. The Agen-
cy drafted its first national intelligence estimate on Soviet guided missile
development in 1954. Nonetheless, it was not until 1957 that American
policymakers, military planners, and intelligence analysts began to wor-
ry that the Soviet missile program had outstripped US development ef-
forts. TASS' announcement of a successful flight test of an
intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in August 1957, followed in the
next few weeks by the launches of Sputniks I and II�the world's first
artificial satellites�prompted the Intelligence Community to draft its
fourth estimate of the Soviet missile program in as many years. Special
National Intelligence Estimate 11-10-57 can be considered the begin-
ning of the "missile gap" controversy; its judgment that the Soviet SS-6
ICBM flight test program had "an extremely high priority.., if indeed it
is not presently on a 'crash' basis," would be reconsidered and hotly
debated for several more years.' At the heart of the dispute was an infor-
mation gap of major proportions that was closed in late 1961 by those
sources that at the beginning were thought to have the greatest prom-
ise clandestine, communications, and photographic intelligence. (S)
Soviet Missile Development (U)
At the end of World War Ii, the Soviets began to exploit Hitler's
missile effort, including the removal of missiles, missile equipment, and
' Director of Central Intelligence, Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 11-10-
57, The Soviet ICBM Program, 10 December 1957, (declassified). All of the NIEs (as
well as SNIEs and SEs) mentioned in this essay are declassified and available in Record
Group 263 (Central Intelligence Agency) at the National Archives and Records Admin-
istration. Many of the NIEs cited are reprinted in Donald P. Steury, editor, Intentions
and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950-1983 (Washington: Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency, 1996). (u)
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400 German scientists and technicians to the USSR. Using this German
base, the USSR created a large research and development program for
rockets of all types, including ballistic missiles. Almost all of the indus-
trial effort supporting this activity was obscured from the West by high-
ly effective security procedures. (0)
On 5 February 1959 Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev an-
nounced to the world that the Soviet Union "now has the means to de-
liver a blow to aggressors in any part of the world. It is not just rhetoric
when we say that we have organized the mass production of interconti-
nental ballistic missiles; nor do we say this as a threat to anyone, but to
make clear the real situation."' US analysts had watched Soviet missile
development for years, and this was not the first of Khrushchev's many
boasts. Nonetheless, his new threat, along with others in the winter of
1958-59, had commanded the attention of DCI Allen Dulles and the
new United States Intelligence Board (USIB) of the National Security
Council. USIB assigned the drafting of an assessment for the DCI to the
Guided Missiles Branch of the Directorate of Intelligence's Office of
Research and Reports (ORR). The task of reevaluating the evidence fell
to Roland Inlow, Chief of ORR' s Guided Missiles Branch. His branch's
report that winter noted that only limited new evidence on Soviet ICBM
development had appeared, and was still being evaluated.' (s)
Meanwhile, interest in Soviet ICBM statements continued at a
high level through the first half of 1959, a period in which Khrushchev's
first Berlin campaign withered away in the face of NATO's united re-
sponse to his six-month deadline for a one-sided German peace treaty.
In February or March, Inlow requested an analysis of Moscow's rocket
claims from the DDI' s Radio Propaganda Branch of the Foreign Broad-
cast Information Division (FBID). In June, at the request of DDI Robert
Amory, Edward Proctor and Inlow collaborated on a paper assessing
FBID's assessment of the Soviet statements. The June paper, like In-
low's January memorandum for the White House, accepted as fact the
assertion that the USSR had commenced mass production of interconti-
nental ballistic missiles.4 (C)
'Quoted in NIB 11-5-59, Soviet Capabilities in Guided Missiles and Space Vehicles, 3
November 1959. (u)
'Roland Inlow, Chief, Guided Missiles Branch, to Edward W. Proctor, Chief, Industrial
Division, Office of Research and Reports, "Monthly Report, December 1958," 6 Janu-
ary 1959 (hereinafter cited as IDERA Monthly Reports), (S); Otto E. Guthe, Assistant
Director for Research and Reports, to Robert Amory, Deputy Director for Intelligence,
"Soviet ICBM Production Under Certain Assumptions," 29 June 1959; both documents
reside in Office of Russian and European Analysis Job 79R01001A, Box 4, (S). It was
not possible to locate accurate job and box numbers for every document cited in this
study. All box citations, however, are to Job 79R01001A. (s)
a IDERA Monthly Reports, June 1959, Box 4. (s)
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In response to White House and Congressional concern that de-
ployment and series production were under way somewhere in the
USSR, CIA scheduled three major estimates for late 1959 on the Soviet
program. In retrospect, these stood as the crucial NIEs of the entire mis-
sile controversy; they established a realistic forecast for the beginning
of deployment of the first operational missiles. Two estimates projected
numbers of launchers, and, for the first time, subordinated total numbers
of missiles to the militarily more important number of launchers.
Finally, the same two NIEs marked the beginning of the Intelligence
Community's internal controversy over the intended size and pace of
the Soviet ICBM program. (u)
Controversy With the Air Force (u)
Sherman Kent, chairman of the Board of National Estimates,
asked that Edward Proctor be made available to work full time on the
three estimates. Proctor was detailed to the Office of National Estimates
(ONE) in South Building that August. In the meantime, the interagency
Guided Missile and Astronautics Intelligence Committee (GMAIC), the
Office of Scientific Intelligence's (OSI) Guided Missile Division, and
ORR' s Guided Missiles Branch spent all of August preparing contribu-
tions. Supplementary contributions for the estimates and memoranda on
ICBM production for senior officials in the Eisenhower administration
and for DCI Allen Dulles took the rest of the year. (C)
To support this research and analysis, Dulles called on the
"Hyland panel" to try to answer a more refined set of questions.' The
panel comprised Laurence Hyland of Hughes Aircraft, Charles R. Irvine
of Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Brig. Gen. Osmond J. Rit-
land of the Air Force's Ballistic Missile Division. These holdovers from
the previous year's three-day meeting were joined by Maj. Gen. John B.
Medaris of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, OSI' s consultant Dr. W.
H. Pickering of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Rear Adm. William F.
Raborn, Jr., Director of Navy's Special Projects (Raborn, then working
on the Polaris nuclear submarine program, would become DCI in 1965),
Dr. Albert D. Wheelon of Space Technology Laboratory, and Dr.
William J. Perry of Sylvania Electronics Defense Laboratory. (C)
The panel convened on 24 August 1959. After listening to brief-
ings on Soviet strategic requirements, production and deployment, U-2
The Hyland Panel first convened in 1954 to critique NIE 11-6-54, Soviet Capabilities
and Probable Programs in the Guided Missile Field, 5 October 1954. The Panel's mem-
bership varied at its several meetings in the 1950s and early 1960s. (c)
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The U-2 "spy plane." The U-2 was instrumental in proving
the so-called "missile gap" did not exist. (It)
photographic coverage, range activities, and telemetry, the panel turned
its attention to some critical questions:
� At what priority is the USSR developing an ICBM system and
what progress toward development of an operational weapon
system are the Soviets likely to have made to date from test
activities at Tyura Tam?6 Is there evidence of support to this
program in activities at Kapustin Yar?
� What is the likelihood that the program has already been suc-
cessful enough to permit the USSR to establish an initial opera-
tional capability? What characteristics might an operational
ICBM system have at present?
� What is the likelihood that the Soviets have or are now flight
testing more than one generation of ICBM?
� Is there any evidence to support the present existence of or
preparation for an operational ICBM capability in the USSR?
Or a production program for ICBMs and system equipment?
Would such evidence be detectable by current US collection
capabilities?
6"Tyuratam" was the subsequent spelling. (u)
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� What is the likelihood that the USSR is emphasizing space
flight at the expense of ICBM development and that many of
the tests, now evaluated as ICBMs, may in reality be develop-
ment of space vehicle propulsion systems?
� What changes, if any, are required in the panel's November 1958
report regarding ICBM production quantities and timing?' (S)
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The panel came up with some tentative answers. The members
correctly concluded that the SS-6 weighed about 500,000 pounds, and
came close to the mark with an estimate of 750,000 pounds of initial
thrust (its thrust was one million pounds). On the basis of continued SS-
6 testing and the lack of evidence of the development of a second--
generation ICBM, the panel members did not doubt that the SS-6 would
be deployed. They had doubts, however, regarding the configuration of
the missile, and could not choose between a "parallel stage" or a "one-
and-a-half stage." Like the rest of the contemporary Intelligence
Community, the panel was right in its estimation of a 6,000-pound
warhead.' (s)
The Hyland panel's conclusion that the pace of the Soviet program
was "deliberate" was a sharp turn from the community's earlier belief
in a crash program. This key conclusion was largely based on the small
number of tests that the USSR had conducted since the panel's last
meeting in November 1958. Up to that time, 10 tests had taken place at
Tyuratam. The panel expected 20 to 30 more would be conducted by
July 1959, but by the time the panel met in August, the Soviets had test-
ed only 15 more. Thus, the total was 25, instead of the panel's anticipat-
ed 30 to 40. In light of this limited testing, the panel concluded that the
only short-term development could be a deployment of 10 ICBMs. The
operational site the panel picked was at Polyarnyy Ural in northern Rus-
sia. The Intelligence Community had detected construction activity at
this site similar to that at Tyuratam.9 (s)
' "Agenda, Director of Central Intelligence Ad Hoc Panel on Soviet ICBM Program,
Barton Hall, Room 1521, 24, 25, 26 August 1959," (S). See also John A. White, Secre-
tary, DCI Ad Hoc Panel on Soviet ICBM Program, "Meeting of Director of Central In-
telligence Ad Hoc Panel on Soviet ICBM Status," 11 August 1959, (S). Both in Box 4.
(s)
'Charles M. Townsend, Deputy Executive Secretary, USIB, memorandum for the Unit-
ed States Intelligence Board, "Notes on Discussion Between the US Intelligence Board
and the Hyland Panel," 8 September 1959, Box 4, (TS Daunt). (s)
9 Ibid. (TS Daunt). The Soviets may have intended to deploy an SS-6 ICBM complex at
Polyarnyy Ural, but for reasons still obscure, construction activity was abandoned dur-
ing 1959. The construction of the Plesetsk SS-6 complex also began in 1959, but it was
not firmly identified as such until a satellite photographic mission in 1962. (s)
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The premise of a deliberate pace in the Soviet testing program led the
panel to conclude that the Soviets would deploy no more than 400 to 500
missiles and that these could be operational by late 1962.'0 This premise
and conclusion had a major impact on the next three national intelligence
estimates. The first was NIE 11-5-59, a reference aid designed to display
all available intelligence data on the capabilities of Soviet missiles and
space vehicles. The estimate formally endorsed the panel's premise�
based on a smaller number of tests than had been anticipated�that the So-
viet ICBM program was proceeding in an orderly fashion. Initial opera-
tional capability would be, the NIE assumed for planning purposes, 1
January 1960. But the estimate did not restate the panel's conclusion on
operational ICBM levels; it made no effort to project force levels." (S)
NIE 11-8-59 did and, in so doing, formally inaugurated the Intelli-
gence Community controversy. For the first time, missiles on launchers
became the central measure of force levels. But in the range of projec-
tions, the low side was directly keyed to the output of a single plant, the
high side to two plants. Army and Navy opted for the low side; State, Air
Force, and the Pentagon chose the high side out to mid-1961. Beyond that
period, a formal dissent from the Air Force's Assistant Chief of Staff, In-
telligence, Maj. Gen. James H. Walsh, provided still higher figures (see
table below).
Soviet ICBMs Deployed as
Projected in NIE 11-8-59
Intelligence
Community
Jan 1960 (IOC) 10
Air Force
Footnote
10
Actual Number
of Launchers a
Mid-1960
35
35
4
Mid-1961
140-200
185
4
Mid-1962
250-350
385
38
Mid-1963
350-450
640
91
a Sources: NIE 11-8-59, Soviet Capabilities for Strategic Attack Through Mid-1964, 9
February 1960. Analysis of the entire Soviet ICBM program in the 1960s produced the
actual number of launchers. (u)
This table is Unclassified.
i� Ibid., (TS Daunt). (s)
" NIE 11-5-59, Soviet Capabilities in Guided Missiles and Space Vehicles, 3 November
1959, and Annex A. (u)
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The Air Force did not object to the community's new conclusion
that the Soviet ICBM effort was "not a crash program." Rather, Walsh
attacked the idea that "The goal of the [Soviet ICBM] program is prob-
ably an ICBM force as large as Soviet planners deem necessary to
provide a substantial deterrent and preemptive attack capability." In his
view, the Soviet Union was trying to attain decisive military superiority
over the United States and would not be satisfied either with deterrence
or a preemptive attack capability. 12 (u)
NIE 11-4-59 followed 11-8-59, although formal USIB concur-
rence for both came on 9 February 1960. NIE 11-4-59 differed sharply
from the Air Force's belief that the Soviet program was aimed at all-out
superiority. The estimate held that, while the USSR would build a
"substantial long-range missile force," uncertainties, risks, and high
economic costs would prevent it from constructing a force powerful
enough to "permit them to plan attacks on Western retaliatory forces
with the degree and certainty of success required to insure that the
USSR could win a general war without incurring unacceptable dam-
age." n (U)
Of the three estimates, NlE 11-8-59 was by far the most important,
because of the controversy surrounding its quantitative projections of
ICBM force levels. Its major flaw was the lack of knowledge of the So-
viet decision to limit deployment of SS-6 ICBMs, an analytical mistake
that the Intelligence Community made on the basis of the strongest
evidence available�the continued testing of the SS-6. NIE 11-8-59 was
mainly Proctor's effort, and DDI Robert Amory and ONE' s Sherman
Kent commended him for it. Proctor briefed DCI Dulles in December
on the draft estimate. The NIE became the basis for Dulles' s testimony
in the acrimonious joint Senate committee hearing on Friday, 29
January 1960.'4 (C)
Allen Dulles Goes Before the Senate (U)
The January Senate hearing was the roughest "missile-gap" pro-
ceeding on record and underscored the problems of strategic research be-
fore satellite reconnaissance. The next two missile NIEs and an important
(though temporary) consolidation of CIA's missile-intelligence expertise
'2 NIE 11-8-59, Soviet Capabilities for Strategic Attack Through Mid-1964. (u)
'3 NIE 11-4-59, Main Trends in Soviet Capabilities and Policies, 1959-64, 9 February
1960. (0
14 IDERA Monthly Reports, 1959. (s)
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followed the hearing. DCI Dulles appeared as the prime witness before
the Senate's Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences and the Pre-
paredness Investigating Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Ser-
vices, both chaired by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX). (u)
Johnson called the committees to order and announced that its
members intended to "interrogate (Allen Dulles) not only as to the na-
ture and magnitude of the threat, but also to determine why the yardstick
for measuring this threat was changed, and the extent to which it has
been changed." Johnson noted that Secretary of Defense Neil H. McEl-
roy had testified the previous year that the Soviets "could have a 3-to-1
missile superiority in the near future." In a January 1960 hearing only a
week before Dulles's testimony, the new Secretary of Defense, Thomas
S. Gates, Jr., said that there was no "missile gap" because the analytical
assumptions had changed. According to Gates, the US Intelligence
Community now looked at the issue from the perspective of what the
Soviets intended to do rather than what they could do. '5 (s)
In his testimony on 29 January, DCI Dulles repeatedly explained
that the latest estimate did not rely exclusively on a "new yardstick," but
that as more and more evidence on the Soviet ballistic-missile program
came into CIA, Agency analysts were able to get a hold on Soviet pro-
gramming decisions.16 (s)
Dulles used a chart to point out that 15 of the 21 successful Soviet
ICBM firings to 3,500 nautical miles or more had taken place in 1959.
"Somewhere in the range of 20 percent" of the tests failed after launch,
but the CIA did not know the number of failures before launch.17 The
DCI then discussed the more recent tests, and concluded that the Soviet
Union had made "very real progress in ballistic missiles during 1959,"
with a measured and orderly test-firing program. "For planning purpos-
es," he said, the USSR had an initial operating capability of "a few, say
ten" operational ICBMs at completed launching facilities. is (s)
15 US Senate, "Hearing Held before Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences and
Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, Brief-
ing by Allen Dulles, Director, Central Intelligence Agency," 29 January 1960, (Ts).
Hereafter cited as "Senate Hearing." Secretary Gates's testimony was in a closed ses-
sion of the House Committee on Armed Services, "Hearings before the Committee on
Armed Services," 22 January 1960. (s)
'6 Senate Hearing, p. 73, (TS). (s)
'7 Ibid., pp. 14-15. Senator Symington asked: "Does that mean that you do know it, that
you do not want to say it, or you just don't know it?" Dulles: "No, I meant that presen-
tation about failures was sensitive. It is sensitive to distinguish the sources that are used
to learn about failures. They are highly sensitive sources.... But we don't get enough
intelligence with regard to (failures before launching). It is just (that) they never get off
the pad at all. We never get much information." (s)
's Ibid., pp. 17-18, (TS). (s)
49tet-
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After a brief treatment of the community's reexamination of Sovi-
et ICBM accuracy and reliability, Dulles turned to the projected ICBM
force goals over the next two years, using another chart to explain the
changes from the 1958 estimate. He observed that such deployments
could be accomplished by the middle of the next year without apprecia-
bly hindering other Soviet military programs or civil programs relating
to the goals of the USSR's Seven-Year Plan. At this point, Dulles
acknowledged that there was a conflict with Air Force Intelligence,
which "believes that the growth of the missile force, particularly after
1962, will be considerably greater than this."'" (s)
Dulles then spelled out the Intelligence Community's generally
agreed position on Soviet strategic intentions. The figures he used
assumed that the Soviets were not engaged in a "crash" ICBM develop-
ment program and were not subordinating everything else to it. Dulles
explained that Khrushchev was persuaded that he had the ability to take
over the Free World without war, and "therefore he is straining his
resources and his capabilities in many ways to promote his ability to
take over the free world in this way."2" (S)
Dulles had to endure a vigorous cross-examination from Special
Counsel Edwin L. Weisl, lasting until the hearing recessed at 1735. The
Senate's skeptical response to Dulles's testimony at this hearing would
influence the next several national estimates as well as Edward Proc-
tor's and Roland Inlow's work days (and nights) in ways that they and
about 30 other CIA officers would long remember. (s)
The Guided Missile Task Force (U)
Angry over the course and tone of the Senate hearing, Dulles im-
mediately intensified CIA's intelligence effort against Soviet ICBMs.
He ordered a briefing to learn in detail the activities of each component
in the Intelligence Community dealing with the enigma of Soviet ICBM
deployment. (U)
Within CIA, the onus was initially on Inlow, who reported to
Dulles by 5 February 1960 not only on ORR' s but also on OSI' s activ-
ities related to the problem of deployment. With time only to complete
'9 Ibid., pp. 22-23, (TS). (s)
2" Ibid., pp. 37-38, 39. (TS). In the afternoon session, Senator Jackson appeared to take
exception to Dulles's view of Khrushchev's plans. "Well, I think that Mr. Khrushchev,
if he can get a war�get one going in which he can destroy the enemy and that is the
only way he can do it and survive himself, he will do it." Ibid., p. 154. (s)
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a rough draft, Inlow's defense emphasized that not a single Soviet
ICBM launch site had yet been identified. He reported that NIE 11-8-59
was controversial mainly because USIB member agencies could not
agree about their views on the Soviet ICBM goal: military superiority,
a high level of deterrence, or a modest capability with the principal
emphasis on space. Because of the paucity of data on intentions and
capabilities, most of the DDI activity, Inlow wrote, "had been focused
on stimulating and guiding collection activity."" (s)
Inlow's briefing described the analytic effort of the past two years.
He highlighted twelve major research areas, described their results, and
noted the number of manhours committed to the projects thus far." The
total DDI analytical manpower allocated directly or indirectly to the
specific problem of ICBM deployment probably represented no more
than 10-to-12 full-time research analysts. Moreover, it had only been
since mid-1959 that ORR had as many as five or six analysts working
exclusively on deployment of the 15 or so Soviet missile systems CIA
believed operational. Resource limitations, extremely heavy demands
for intelligence support of all kinds, and the complexity of the problem
made it impossible to ensure systematic and comprehensive exploita-
tion of all of the material already available in the community. On the
other hand, doubling or tripling the analytical resources devoted to the
problem probably would not materially improve the rate of progress in
the next year or two. (s)
Dulles responded to Inlow' s briefing by ordering USIB members
to cooperate in a reexamination of deployment data and to resolve the
differences between the Air Force and the rest of the community. In
February, USIB once again directed the GMAIC to rework the evidence
on production and deployment. To accomplish this "highest priority"
task as quickly as possible, USIB approved temporary working groups
on production and deployment. GMAIC appointed Inlow chairman of
the Production Working Group, and assigned an Army officer the chair
on the Deployment Working Group." (s)
The specific question before GMAIC was whether NIE 11-8-59
had accurately estimated the pace of the Soviet ICBM program.
2' Memorandum for Assistant Director for Research and Reports, from Roland S. Inlow,
Chief of the Guided Missiles Branch, "ORR-OSI Activities Concerning Soviet ICBM
Deployment," 18 February 1960. (S)
" Ibid. (S)
" IDERA Monthly Reports, 1959 and 1960, (Secret), Earl McFarland, Jr., Chairman,
Guided Missiles and Astronautics Intelligence Committee [GMAIC], memorandum for
Chairman, United States Intelligence Board, "Re-examination of NIE 11-8-59," 2
March 1960. (S)
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GMAIC' s two new working groups were to evaluate the evidence on
every potential launch site and production facility, and each working-
group member was required to divulge the evidence his intelligence
component held. For the effort, Inlow committed about half of the ana-
lysts in his branch plus the support of three other branches in ORR.24 (S)
At issue was a closely held, extensive Air Force list of suspected
ICBM launch sites. A dispute arose when Air Force, probably in late
February 1960, briefed US1B on its isolated position. Because data
backing up this briefing had not been made available to GMAIC, Col.
Earl F. McFarland, Jr., USAF, reported to USIB that he had served, in
effect, a summons on his own career component: GMAIC requested a
written version of the briefing, with graphics, that the Air Force gave
USIB.25 (S)
Air Force eventually supplied the list, and by 4 April 1960 the
Deployment Working Group completed its report. Judging from a later
GMAIC study, the group had evaluated about 95 potential launch loca-
tions and divided these into six categories: one confirmed site
(Tyuratam), no probable sites, and four possible sites (Kapustin Yar,
Plesetsk, Polyarnyy Ural, and Ust' -Ukhta). Twelve other locations were
undetermined and the remainder fell into the doubtful or negative cate-
gories. Outside the test range, not a single operational ICBM could be
conclusively identified.2" (s)
For Proctor and lnlow the substantive problem was baffling. They
had evidence of continuing testing, but no evidence on deployment. The
latter could be (and was) explained away with the argument that large
areas of the USSR still had not been covered by the U-2 program. The
absence of telltale signs of a substantial program, however, could not be
explained away. US contractors had informed Proctor, Inlow, and Clar-
ence Baier of the numerous factors involved in US missile deployment,
and these DDI officers had, in turn, used this information to determine
the features of a substantial Soviet ICBM program (defined, as early as
SNIE 11-10-57, as 500 operational missiles). The analogy suggested
that the number of workers and telltale signals would have to be almost
astronomical. Inlow assessed that hundreds of thousands�up to
500,000 construction workers and numerous manufacturing plants
" IDERA Monthly Reports, 1960, (Secret); McFarland, "Re-examination of NIE 11-8-
59." (S)
" Ibid.; Amory to Dulles, "Memorandum to DCI Dated 16 February 1960, Subject: 'In-
telligence Activities Directed Against ICBM Deployment," 8 July 1960, Box 4. (s)
26 Report of the GMAIC Deployment Working Group, "Soviet Surface to Surface Mis-
sile Deployment," I September 1960, (TS Daunt Chess); Authors' interview of John G.
Godaire, 3 June 1971, transcript in Box 8. (s)
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would have to be involved in a support effort to acquire this substantial
operational ICBM capability at the times projected in the NIEs." (s)
For the Air Force, the substantive problem was simple: the Intel-
ligence Community's collection efforts were missing critical evidence
of a substantial Soviet ICBM program. Air Force generals, like Thomas
S. Powers of the Strategic Air Command, publicly asserted that the
USSR could destroy US retaliatory forces, frequently challenged the
Eisenhower Administration's defense policy, and even more frequently
received congressional support from influential Senators, including
Stuart Symington, Henry Jackson, Lyndon Johnson, and John Kennedy.
Thus, when new estimates would be made later in the year, the Air
Force would increase its projections of deployed Soviet ICBM launch-
ers while the rest of the community would make substantial reduc-
tions�although even these overestimated the scope of the Soviet
deployment program." (s)
To ensure that it had not missed something, CIA undertook the
first DDI consolidation of missile research in the Agency's history. In
February 1960, DDI Amory suggested the idea of establishing an ad hoc
DDI Guided Missile Task Force (GMTF), and DCI Dulles promptly
agreed to his proposal. A single temporary component with Proctor as
chief and Inlow as his deputy included OSI and ORR expertise. Not
only did this arrangement reflect Agency senior officials' confidence in
Proctor and Inlow, it also gave de facto recognition to ORR that it had
the primary responsibility for CIA intelligence analysis on the building
and fielding of rockets (with OSI retaining responsibility for analysis of
research and development).29 (C)
The GMTF included about 30 analysts when it began operations
in April 1960. The Task Force dispensed with standard administrative
chores and occupied itself with substantive and methodological prob-
lems. Even the title of the group did not apparently concern its admin-
istrators. It was, for example, sometimes referred to in its own reports
as the "DD/I Task Force on Long-Range Ballistic Missiles," or the
"DD/I Task Force on Ballistic Missiles," or just the "DD/I Task Force."
(C)
" Edward W. Proctor, Chief, Guided Missile Task Force, to Amory, "Status of Guided
Missile Task Force Research," 15 October 1960, Box 4, (TS Daunt); Godaire interview,
(S); see also SNIE 11-10-57, The Soviet ICBM Program, (declassified). (s)
" Godaire interview. (s)
29 Ibid., (S); Amory, "Memorandum to DCI Dated 16 February 1960, Subject: 'Intelli-
gence Activities Directed Against ICBM Deployment," 8 July 1960, (S); IDERA
Monthly Reports, 1960. (s)
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Proctor's and Inlow's GMTF produced detailed and comprehen-
sive reports on both ICBM production and deployment. The principal
objectives of the task force were spelled out in Proctor's first six-month
status report the following October:
� The allocation of adequate personnel resources and their inte-
gration into an effective research team on the problems of pro-
duction and deployment of long-range ballistic missiles.
� A more intensive focusing of the research effort on the substan-
tive areas most likely to yield definite results.
� Assurance that all available evidence is being thoroughly and
systematically exploited.
� Development of new approaches to both research and collection
problems. (s)
His summation of the results of the first six months was honest, his
forecast for a breakthrough (a view which apparently reflected his con-
cern about the trouble-plagued CORONA project) was pessimistic, and
his strategy was simply to try harder: "The fact that we have not
achieved and cannot yet anticipate major breakthroughs," Proctor not-
ed, "has further increased our sense of urgency in seeking solutions to
this critical problem."'" (s)
The "missile gap" controversy that Spring led directly to a spec-
tacular failure�the Soviet shootdown of Francis Gary Powers's U-2 on
1 May 1960. The primary targets for the Powers mission were
Tyuratam, Severodvinsk, and the suspect ICBM complexes at Plesetsk
and Yur'ya. The planned mission would have identified launch facili-
ties at Plesetsk and Yur'ya. More importantly, Yur'ya and Complex C
at Tyuratam could have been identified with a second-generation
ICBM, thereby questioning the basis of the NIEs that had opened the
dispute in the first place. But the U-2's crash and Powers's capture
marked the abrupt end of the U-2 program over the USSR, and contrib-
uted to Proctor's forecast that major breakthroughs could not be antici-
pated.'' (c)
The seemingly unpromising future of overhead photography
prompted the task force and GMAIC' s two working groups to reexam-
ine all the evidence to ensure that the Intelligence Community had not
" Proctor, "Status of Guided Missile Task Force Research," 15 October 1960, (TS
Daunt). (s)
'' National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), NPIC/R-1/61, Photographic In-
terpretation Report, "Yur'ya ICBM Launch Complex," July 1961, (TS Chess); Proctor,
"Status of Guided Missile Task Force Research," 15 October 1960, (TS Daunt). (s)
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overlooked anything. In June, GMAIC' s ad hoc Production Working
Group completed a 109-page supplement to its earlier evaluation of po-
tential ICBM production plants.32 The supplement supported earlier
findings that the Scientific Research Institute (NII 88) in Kaliningrad
"probably" fabricated ICBMs for the test range (it did) and that Design
Bureau (OKB) Plant 456 in Chimki "very probably" developed the en-
gines used in the Soviet ICBMs (as it did as well). Four categories of
missile production (airframe, production and final assembly, propul-
sion, and ground-rail transport) and some 50 individual plants had been
evaluated in the process of preparing the group's supplement. The De-
ployment Working Group used this study as part of its review (which
could confirm only Tyuratam as an ICBM launch area), completed in
September." (s)
The two GMAIC reports formed the base for the extensive support
the GMTF provided on NIE 11-8-60. The task force took four major ap-
proaches. First, GMTF Deployment Group attempt- (b)(3)
ed to determine the most likely Soviet concepts for ICBM deployment.
In this endeavor, the group used data from the Soviet test ranges, infor-
mation on missile characteristics, and (with support from Space Tech-
nology Laboratory) relevant analogies from the US missile business.
Second, Baier' s GMTF Production Group reviewed Soviet long-range
missile programs to identify the kinds of activity taking place at various
phases of each program and to determine the extent of interrelation-
ships. Third, Baier' s group tried to develop a methodology for estimat-
ing the production capacity of a final assembly plant. Finally, the same
group prepared a detailed analysis of the major ballistic missile proto-
type production centers located in the Moscow area. 34 (s)
None of the GMTF studies was complete by the time the Intelli-
gence Community published NIE 11-8-60, but then none was expected
to improve the projection on ICBM deployment because U-2 photo-
graphs were no longer available." Consequently, the community
" GMAIC, Supplemental Report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on ICBM Production,
"Evaluation of Evidence on Soviet ICBM Production," 17 June 1960, (TS Daunt). (s)
" GMAIC, "Soviet Surface-to-Surface Missile Deployment," 1 September 1960, (TS
Daunt Chess); NPIC, Photographic Interpretation Report, "Chronology of Moskva Mis-
sile and Space Propulsion Development Center IChimki 456, USSR," February 1968,
(TS Chess); ATIC, "Kaliningrad Guided Missile Plant and Experimental Station NII-88
and Kaliningrad Arms Plant 88 (55�55'N-37�49'E)," June 1958. (s)
" Proctor, "Status of Guided Missile Task Force Research," 15 October 1960, (TS
Daunt). (S)
" Ibid.; Authors' interview with Edward W. Proctor, 15 December 1970, transcript in
Box 8, (TS Daunt); Interview with Roland Inlow, January 1971, transcript in Box 8, (TS
Daunt). (s)
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controversy over Soviet ICBMs got out of hand and the NIE of 1960
increased rather than reduced uncertainty. (U)
The End of the Dark Era (U)
With the circulation of NIE 11-8-60 on 1 August 1960, the contro-
versy over Soviet ICBMs hit an historic level of acrimony. Unable to re-
solve any significant differences regarding projected force levels, the
estimate illustrated individual departmental and agency positions in a
chart. Program "A," estimating a Soviet force of 400 ICBMs by mid-
1963, was the DCP s pick as the nearest approximation of the actual So-
viet program. The Air Force's Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, ar-
gued for the more ambitious program "B," estimating a Soviet force of
700 ICBMs by mid-1963, and complained in a footnote that the rates of
increase shown in its projection should be continued through 1965. The
Director of Intelligence and Research of the State Department, the As-
sistant to the Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, and the Di-
rector for Intelligence of the Joint Staff picked an undefined area within
the "A-B" range. The Army's and Navy's intelligence services believed
that program "C" (a Soviet force of 200 ICBMs by mid-1963) most
nearly reflected the actual Soviet effort. Most participants agreed, how-
ever, that the Soviet Union had only "a few�say 10" deployed
ICBMs.36 (U)
Thirty-six dissenting departmental footnotes to the estimate sup-
ported the short-term interests of the individual services. The estimate's
summary highlighted that the threat programs "A" and "B" posed was
practically the same through the end of 1960; that is, before the year's
end, either projection would give the Soviets the capability to destroy
major US metropolitan areas. At the beginning of the next year, "A" or
"B" would pose a threat to SAC' s operational airbase system. By mid-
1961, the Air Force's projection would give Soviet planners "high as-
surance" of being able to damage most of the SAC airbase system in an
initial salvo, whereas CIA' s projected program would reach this hypo-
thetical capability late in the year. Navy's and Army's low projection
for 1961 (which in fact was too high) gave the Soviets the capability to
inflict massive destruction only on US urban areas. NIE 11-8-60
NIE 11-8-60, Soviet Capabilities For Long Range Attack Through Mid-1965, 1 Au-
gust 1960. (u)
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concluded, with objections only from the Air Force, that none of the
above catastrophes was imminent." (U)
Shortly after the dissemination of this extraordinarily dissent-
ridden NIE, a series of closely spaced breakthroughs marked the begin-
ning of the end of the "missile gap" controversy. The first involved CO-
RONA. After months in a standdown, a successful diagnostic flight test
of Discoverer XIII took place on 10 August 1960. Discoverer XIV,
launched a week later, carried a camera and 20 pounds of film. This
mission gave the Intelligence Community its first usable satellite pho-
tographic coverage of the USSR. Although the photographs did not pro-
vide direct evidence on ICBM deployment, the next mission, launched
on 10 December, provided the first coverage of an ICBM site. The res-
olution was much lower than that obtained from the U-2' s cameras, but
the area of coverage was much greater and the interpretability of the
product soon improved. This source of overhead reconnaissance would
provide masses of highly classified information on Soviet development
programs and deployments, but was modestly�and appropriately�
codenamed "KEYHOLE." Proctor and Inlow's task force prepared the
first report based on KEYHOLE photography. "An Assessment of an
Installation at Plesetsk, USSR, as an ICBM Site" represented the first of
the all-source, in-depth studies that would become a standard item in the
new era. (S)
The second break involvecj (b)(1)
a second( b)(3)
generation Soviet ICBM exploding during its launch from Tyuratam.
ICBM analysts knew almost immediately that something odd had hap-
pened, but could piece together only gradually the extent and signifi-
cance of the tragedy. The Soviet press never mentioned the incident."
(s)
On 25 October 1960, Moscow Radio reported the death ("as the
result of an air crash" on the 24th) of Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, the
Commander in Chief of the recently formed Soviet Strategic Rocket
Forces. Later analysis in the GMTF confirmed that beginning on the
25th an unusually large number of aircraft from Moscow and Dnepro-
petrovsk had flown into the Tyuratam area. These flights could not be
" Ibid. (u)
" Kenneth E. Greer, "Corona," reprinted in Kevin C. Ruffner, editor, CORONA: Amer-
ica's First Satellite Program (Washington: Central Intelligence Agency, 1995), p. 26.
(u)
" Proctor to Amory, "Major Soviet Missile Disaster in October 1960," 25 September
1961, Box 10, (TS Dinar). (s)
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Col. Oleg Penkovsky, GRU
logically associated with any subsequent test event because the range
went into a standdown for a three-month period. In succeeding months,
clandestine sources told of an explosion and of the death or injury of
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hundreds of important officials and range personnel at the test center.
The flights in late October were, most likely, filled with caskets, con-
sultants, and medical personne1.4� (s)
When all the data were assembled, the disaster appeared to result
from a malfunction of a quite different ICBM undergoing its initial range
test. Data on ICBM launches on 2 February and 3 March 1961 confirmed
that a new missile, later designated the SS-7, had entered the test-range
phase. Beginning in June 1961, improved KEYHOLE photography
exposed the progress of SS-7 deployment. Then data from a launch on 9
April confirmed the arrival of another new missile, the SS-8. The Soviets
had two second-generation ICBMs under development. (s)
The third breakthrough involved Soviet Col. Oleg Vladimirovich
Penkovskiy. In August 1960, Penkovskiy, a high-ranking official in the
Chief Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Red Army General Staff,
established contact with the CIA and the British. The case would cover
the period of August 1960 through August 1962 and provide more than
8,000 pages of translated reporting, the bulk of which carried the code-
name IRONBARK. Most of these reports constituted highly classified
Soviet Ministry of Defense documents. During this period, three series
of lengthy debriefing and briefing sessions were held with Colonel Pen-
kovskiy. According to Richard Helms, then the Deputy Director for
Plans, "Every Western intelligence requirement of any priority was
covered with him during this time and all aspects of his knowledgeabil-
ity and access were explored." Over 90 percent of the approximately
5,000 pages of Russian-language documentary information provided by
Penkovskiy concerned military subjects. Roughly half of this informa-
tion came from the Chief Intelligence Directorate library, while the re-
mainder he photographed either in the missile and artillery headquarters
of Marshal Varentsov or at the Dzerzhinskiy Academy.41 (s)
The IRONBARK documents gave strategic researchers their first
comprehensive look into Soviet strategic thinking. They also provided
a wealth of information on Soviet ballistic missiles. The top secret pub-
lication of the Soviet's newly formed Strategic Rocket Forces, The
Information Bulletin of the Missile Troops, permitted Agency analysts
to learn the organization and structure of the USSR's strategic missile
units, the functions of the various staffs in each unit, how these units
were linked to the military high command in Moscow, and the activities
of missile units at different levels of combat readiness. Through three
sessions with Colonel Penkovskiy in England and France, sessions
4) Ibid., (TS Dinar). (s)
4' Richard Helms, Deputy Director for Plans, to John A. McCone, Director of Central
Intelligence, "Essential Facts of the Penkovskiy Case," 31 May 1963. (s NF)
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which, when written up in clandestine reports, generally carried the
innocent-sounding codename CHICKADEE, Agency analysts received
detailed technical information on the missiles themselves, the yields of
their warheads, targeting methods, and targets.42 (C)
In April 1961, Penkovskiy had his first face-to-face sessions with
his British and American case officers. In an Information Report of 16
May 1961, Penkovskiy described the "missile gap" as a hoax. Khrus-
chev, he said, was more interested in fostering the impression that the
Soviet Union already had a tremendous ICBM program when in fact it
was practically nonexistent. Penkovskiy cautioned that the USSR
would eventually have many missiles because "millions of men's ef-
forts are directed to this work," and the "entire economy of a nation is
directed by a one-party system to which all is subordinate."43 (S)
Penkovskiy's testimony alone was not enough to close the "mis-
sile gap," but it tentatively supported the almost heretical argument for
a limited Soviet ICBM program. Inlow's reaction to the first CHICKA-
DEE report was to recognize that, after all the urgent collection efforts
of the past three years, the evidence on ICBM production, deployment,
and training "really hadn't been much."44 (s)
Force projections in the previous estimates had been based on the
empirically supported assumption that the Soviets would widely deploy
the SS-6. Penkovskiy's report, following the tape of the SS-7 missile di-
saster, weakened this assumption.45 (c)
The SS-6, though a good rocket, was in the later words of the Hyland
Panel "a large and difficult-to-handle missile." The SS-6 used cryogenic
fuel, which could not be stored in the missile for long. Built in Kalinin-
grad's Nil 881, the SS-6 system was reliable and no doubt met original
design specifications, and it remained the prime booster for the Soviet
space program. But from a technical standpoint, the inability to store fuel
on the SS-6 (and the enormous amount of support facilities it required)
made the cryogenic technology less desirable for military applications.
42 For a discussion of later uses of IRONB ARK and CHICKADEE, see Leonard F. Par-
kinson, "Penkovskiy's Legacy and Strategic Research," Studies in Intelligence 16
(Spring 1972). This article has been declassified and can be found in Record Group 263
(Central Intelligence Agency), National Archives and Records Administration. (u)
43 After Penkovskiy's apprehension in late 1962, the DDP circulated this report as
CSDB No. 3/652, 800, "The Soviet ICBM Program," 21 February 1963, Box 5. (s)
" Godaire interview. (s)
45 Except for the Air Force, which dissented from NIE 11-8/1-61, asserting that the So-
viets would deploy the SS-6 as an interim measure until second-generation missiles be-
came available. The Air Force also predicted that accelerated deployment would follow
at a far faster pace and larger scale than did the majority of the Intelligence Community.
NIE 11-8/1-61, Strength and Deployment of Soviet Long Range Ballistic Missile Forc-
es, 21 September 1961. (u)
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The smaller SS-7, built at the Dnepropetrovsk Missile Development and
Production Center, used storable liquid fuel and did not require anywhere
near the support facilities of the first-generation system. 46
With new information derived from virtually every area of the
classic and modern intelligence collection spectrum, the majority
USIB' s NIE 11-8-61 of June 1961, Soviet Capabilities For Long-Range
Attack, started to close the "gap" by substantially reducing projected
force levels. But not all the revolutionary findings had been fully appre-
ciated. Only hinting that fundamental improvements in collection were
within grasp, the estimate cautiously concluded that the evidence at
hand was not sufficient to "establish with certainty even the present
strength of the ICBM force." Thus the range of projection remained
wide, but most of the estimates (save the Air Force's) were reasonable,
and the Army's and Navy's came close to the mark (see table below).
Soviet ICBMs Deployed as
Projected in NIE 11-8-61
NIE 11-8-61 State's
Footnote
Army's and
Navy's
Footnote
Air Force's
Footnote
Mid-1961
50 to 100
75 to 125
"a few"
"at least 120"
Mid-1962
100 to 200
150 to 300
50 to 100
300
Mid-1963
150 to 300
200 to 450
100 to 200
550
Mid-1964
200 to 400
150 to 300
850
Mid-1965
1150
Mid-1966
1450
This table is Unclassified
The estimate, in a veiled reference to KEYHOLE photography of
Plesetsk, noted that US intelligence, "through intensive collection ef-
forts by all available means," had achieved partial coverage of the re-
gions best suited to the deployment of Soviet ICBMs.� (u)
4' USIB-D-33.8/7, "Working Notes on 6 June 1962 Meeting With USIB Ad Hoc Panel
on Status of Soviet ICBM Program," 14 June 1962, Box 5, (TS Dinar); CIA, FMSAC-
STIR/TCS/71-21, SR IR 71-16, "The SS-9 ICBM Program: Organizational Aspects of
Soviet Decision Making," September 1971, (TS Umbra). (S)
NIE 11-8-61, Soviet Capabilities For Long-Range Attack, 7 June 1961 (with later
USIB action completed on 13 June 1961). State's footnote seemed to reject the "new
yardstick" of estimating on the basis of programming information that DCI Dulles had
defended before the two Senate committees on 29 January 1960. Thus the Director of
Intelligence and Research Roger Hilsman argued in his footnote that the NIE "should
include an estimate of the largest ICBM force which the USSR could have in mid-
1961... and the probable Soviet force level in mid-1961. (Emphasis in original.) (0)
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Most importantly, NIE 11-8-61 formally opened up the case for
limited near-term deployment. Its authors were not sure whether "The
inadequacy of confirming evidence regarding deployment is attribut-
able either to (a) the limitations of our coverage, combined with the suc-
cess of Soviet security measures, or (b) the fact that deployment has
been on a relatively small scale to date." 48 (U)
The Hyland Panel reconvened to try to clarify the uncertainty. The
members for the panel's third meeting included Hyland and Perry (the
only carryovers from the 1959 meeting); Dr. Hendrik W. Bode, the Vice
President of Bell Telephone Laboratories; Lt. Gen. Howell M. Estes,
the Deputy Commander of Air Force's Aerospace Systems; Dr. George
B. Kistiakowsky from Harvard (by then a veteran in the missile contro-
versy who, from July 1959 to January 1961, had succeeded Killian as
the President's Special Assistant for Science and Technology); Arthur
E. Raymond, RAND Corporation's Vice President and its Director of
Research; and Navy's Special Projects Technical Director, Rear Adm.
Levering Smith. In early September 1961 the members heard briefings
on the new data leading up to the new estimate and on recent determi-
nations that KEYHOLE photography of June and July 1961 had identi-
fied two ICBM complexes.4" (s)
After considering all the evidence, the panel members decided
that, while "there may be as many as 50 ICBM launch pads under con-
struction or in use in the USSR," there were no more than 25 operational
launching pads. The panel concluded that the threat to the United States
from Soviet ICBMs should be materially downgraded, and that the mis-
siles did not represent an adequate first strike capability.50 (S)
The "missile-gap" issue was over, but it required an NIE to put it
to final rest. NIE 11-8/1-61 of 21 September 1961 did just that in its two
opening sentences. "New information, providing a much firmer base for
estimates on Soviet long-range ballistic missiles, has caused a sharp
downward revision in our estimate of present Soviet ICBM strength,"
Ibid. (u)
" Harry J. Thompson, Acting Executive Secretary, USIB, "Report of USIB Ad Hoc
Panel on Status of Soviet ICBM Progress," 8 September 1961, (TS); NPIC/R-1/61,
"ICBM Complex Yin' ya, USSR," (TS Chess); NPIC/B-18/61, "Possible ICBM Launch
Site Near Kostroma, USSR," August 1961 (TS Chess). (s)
5" Thompson, "Report of USIB Ad Hoc Panel," (TS). Terms were soon needed to dis-
tinguish among the three ICBMs. The Intelligence Community adopted the designation
"Category A" for the SS-6. Because it was not possible to tell which of the remaining
ICBMs had come next, the panel could only describe the SS-7 as the "Category B or C"
vehicle. The SS-8 was described, for a time, as the "Category C or B" missile. (s)
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the NIE said. "We now estimate that the present Soviet ICBM strength
is in the range of 10-to-25 launchers from which missiles can be fired
against the US, and that this force level will not increase markedly dur-
ing the months immediately ahead." The "dark era" in strategic research
was over, thanks to CORONA and KEYHOLE.51 (u)
51 NIE 11-8/1-61, Strength and Deployment of Soviet Long-Range Ballistic Missile
Forces, 21 September 1961. Four days later, columnist Joseph Alsop (who had actively
pushed the "missile gap") leaked the main thrust of NIE 11-8/1-61: "Prior to the recent
recalculation the maximum number of ICBMs that the Soviets were thought to have at
this time was on the order of 200�just about enough to permit the Soviets to consider
a surprise attack on the United States. The maximum has now been drastically reduced,
however, to less than a quarter of the former figure�well under 50 ICBMs and, there-
fore, not nearly enough to allow the Soviets to consider a surprise attack on this coun-
try"; "Facts About the Missile Balance," The Washington Post, 25 September 1961. (u)
�setzet--
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NOFORN-
The Construction of the Original
Headquarters Building (U)
Peyton F. Anderson and Jack B. Pfeiffer
The Central Intelligence Agency inherited its original quarters
from its wartime predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services. The effort
to provide CIA with a headquarters building�acquisition, planning,
construction, and occupancy stretched over a period of about 15 years
(1947-62), during which Agency components in the Washington area
were stuffed, crammed, or otherwise deployed in a variety of structures
that never quite became "home." Congress appropriated money in 1951
for a headquarters facility, but it still took four more years to pick a site.
By then the funds appropriated earlier were insufficient. In the Summer
of 1955 Congress authorized $51.5 million for the purchase of land in
Langley, Virginia, for the extension of the George Washington Parkway,
and the planning and construction of the new building. Once the archi-
tectural and engineering contractor was selected in July 1956, responsi-
bility for the Agency's new headquarters fell to the Real Estate and
Construction Division (RECD) of the Office of Logistics in the Director-
ate of Support (now the Directorate of Administration). For much of the
construction phase, RECD was succeeded in this task by the Building
Planning Staff (BPS), an ad hoc group operating directly under James A.
Garrison, Director of the Office of Logistics.' The entire planning, con-
struction, and moving effort also benefited from the close attention of
Deputy Director for Support Lawrence K. White.
Construction Begins (u)
The first significant construction contract was for the clearing and
grubbing of the site. This meant the removal of trees and brush from
about half of the acreage and the clearing or removal of dead trees and
underbrush from the rest of the tract. The contract bid opening date was
12 September 1957. Morrison and Johnson, Inc., of Bethesda,
' BPS�to which RECD contributed several key personnel was subsumed back into
RECD in July 1960. X
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Maryland, had the low bid: $31,450.2 Work was started in October 1957
and completed in March 1958. By this time another contract had been
let for grading the site to bring it to the proper elevations determined by
the site planners and for the installation of site drainage structures to
carry off the accumulation of surface water. Under this contract, prelim-
inary roads, site parking, and storage areas were being graded and given
a gravel-surface treatment to accommodate the building contractor's
supplies and equipment. (c)
The summer and fall of 1957 were marked by long dry spells for
construction work, but almost as soon as the clearing and grubbing op-
erations started, heavy rains began to fall. The weather continued to be
unfavorable through most of the winter of 1957-58, although perhaps
not unfavorable enough to block completely the public relations ploy
that the Deputy Director for Support Lawrence K. White had in mind:
I also told him [H. S. Chandler] that I wanted to make every possi-
ble effort not only to let the grading contract as soon as possible,
but to have some grading actually done before Congress returns to
town on the first of January.'
Although snowstorms were the worst for the Washington area in
many years and the spring and summer rainfall in 1958 was well above
normal, the grading and drainage contract was substantially finished by
October 1958. The excavation and foundation contract, with a base bid
of $2,289,000, was opened on 9 October 1958; and on 21 October 1958,
the notice to proceed was issued to the Roscoe Engineering Corporation
and the Ajax Construction Co., Inc. of Washington, D.C., as a joint ven-
ture.
Up to this point the contracting work had been performed on the
site as a whole. Now the job of excavating and pouring the massive con-
crete foundations for the Headquarters Building itself was split into
three separate contracts, saving perhaps nine months to a year. While
the work was in progress, the chief architects and engineers at Harrison
and Abramovitz (H&A) in New York worked with BPS to pr pare the
complex and detailed plans required for the main building.
The high bid was $102,000! Col. Lawrence K. "Red" White, Deputy Director for Sup-
port, for many years kept a detailed log of his activities, which the authors relied on ex-
tensively in the preparation of this analysis. The relevant extracts from White's log,
hereafter cited as Diary Notes, reside in History Staff Source Collection, HS/HC-849,
History Staff Job 84-00499R, Box 1. The citation above is at Diary Notes, 12 September
57. (g5
The low and high bids for grading and drainage were $460,000 and $1,113,000, re-
spectively. The low figure was less than half the amount ($1,030,000) that had been al-
located. Ibid., 19 December 1957. SO
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Even as the plans and work proceeded, Agency representatives
were frequently harassed by Defense Department and civil defense of-
ficials about the need to incorporate expensive features intended to en-
hance protection from atomic blast and fallout. The Deputy Director of
Support personally endured considerable badgering for his reluctance to
take drastic steps to "harden" to facility against nuclear attack�such as
the idea that the Agency should mine a deep shelter in the basalt bed-
rock beneath the foundation�but Colonel White held firm in his refusal
to complicate the project any further. 4
Additional work began at about the same time in the area of the
Langley compound. The new four-lane George Washington Memorial
Parkway leading to the site's north gatehouse entrance had been com-
pletely graded. Piers for the several bridges on this parkway were com-
pleted. The entire parkway project was paved and ready for use early in
1960, well in advance of CIA's actual moving date; and as early as July
1958 construction work had been started to widen Virginia Route 123
leading to the south gatehouse entrance.
The negotiations related to the access roadway situation�partic-
ularly the problems of the George Washington Parkway and the Cabin
John bridge�were complex. The Agency was involved with the De-
partment of the Interior, the Bureau of Public Roads, the National Park
Service, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the highway commis-
sions and engineers of the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia,
and Fairfax County.' Some of the difficulties were ironed out by the
"old school tie": Colonel White did not hesitate to draw on his broad net
of military acquaintances to influence the various engineering contin-
gents, many of which were headed by former Army officers. At other
times he found opportunities for some quid pro quo. In March of 1961,
for example, he noted:
General Clarke, the District Engineer, and Mr. Aitken, his High-
way Supervisor, were over for lunch; however, General Clarke
and Mr. Aitken are very much concerned about the traffic problem
in connection with getting to and from our new building. They
feel that the selection of Chantilly particularly is going to jam up
the roads very much and that we may have some congestion. They
are looking for some support to get the Chain Bridge double-
decked and to get another bridge built at the Three Sisters Island
4 Ibid., 19 December 1961. (c)
Ibid., 17,24 January 1955; 7-8 February 1955; 19,21-25 November 1955; 23-26 July
1956; 2 February 1959. X
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location. I told them that we would certainly give them full sup-
port and that this was in our interest, but they should not put us in
the position of not having made an adequate transportation study
at the time we selected this site. Gen. Clarke and Mr. Aitken said
they both fully appreciated this and that their emphasis would all
be on developments since the site was selected.
Fairfax County officials were proceeding with the plans for ex-
tending water and sewer lines, and the pumping stations required for
these facilities were under construction. Plans for the electric power
substation to supply the Headquarters Building were well along by the
spring of 1959. ,Ter)
The problems of physical security during the construction of the
new building were complex. A contract had been let for the erection of
the security fence in August 1958, and by the middle of November the
site was under security patrol and badges had been issued to the contrac-
tors.8 Between the fall of 1958 and February 1961, bona fides were
obtained for about 15,000 construction workers�this in addition to the
requirements to plan building security, badging, guard force, and the
host of other security projects with which the Office of Security was
charged.9f,reri
The main building contract�that is, the superstructure contract�
had been advertised on 18 December 1958, and bids were opened on 25
February 1959. Thirteen bids were received, and on 25 March the con-
tract was awarded to the Charles H. Tompkins Co. and the J. A. Jones
� In the fall of 1961 Clarke requested�and received�a letter from the Agency in sup-
port of his position on the need for a bridge at Three Sisters Island. Ibid., 16 November
1961. SA.T
' In addition to the supply of electric power from the Virginia Electric and Power Co.,
Agency planners also modified the plans to include a diesel emergency generator. White
authorized a change order in August 1960, noting that it would cost about $50,000.
Ibid., 4 August 1960. Ski
$ Draft Outline, DDS Support Services Bulletin, 1 August 1958, (S). It was not possible
to locate all of the authors' sources for this article. Several, including this one, were ap-
parently held in files of the Building Planning Staff, Office of Logistics, and are here-
after sourced as "BPS/OL."X
9 It was not until after the building was occupied, however, that serious attention was
paid to the potential security risk posed by the four privately owned tracts of land adja-
cent to the new building area. Shortly after he became DCI, John A. McCone ordered
that a study of the feasibility of purchase be undertaken; Diary Notes, 15, 19 November,
and 14, 21 December 1962, feg). Consequently, White appointed a committee to review
this matter; and their findings disclosed that the building was vulnerable to penetration
by surveillance. Photographs taken in the wooded area adjacent to the front of the build-
ing indicated the feasibility of identifying personnel, with the possibility of identifying
documents. After considerable coordination by the DDS and the DCI�with Congres-
sional committees, the Fairfax County Executive, and the Bureau of the Budget�acqui-
sition of the perimeter property was ccomplished by the mid-1960s at a cost of
approximately half a million dollars.
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Construction Co. The low bid was $33,287,600, somewhat less than had
been expected.ikj
The contract had gone on the construction market at an opportune
time, in the midst of a nationwide economic recession. Business
conditions were favorable to the Government and to the Agency. In-
deed, the money saved was soon put to good use. Of the $54,500,000
appropriated, $8.5 million was transferred to the National Park Service
for the extension of the George Washington Parkway to the site. The su-
perstructure and site work contract ($33,287,600), the contract with the
Otis Elevator Co. ($1,122,669), plus other fees and contingency re-
quirements, approximated $43 million, leaving an unobligated balance
of approximately $3 million. This amount was considered "no year
funds," and used to purchaseoproperties adjoining the site and to con-
struct the new printing plant.
Superstructure work started in May 1959. The contractor's first ef-
forts were directed toward organizing his work forces and executing the
numerous subcontracts required for the project. Shop drawings�com-
pletely detailed plans based on the contract drawings and used for fab-
ricating and installing structural steel, duct work, plumbing, and
electrical and mechanical facilities were being prepared. The forms
for the ground-floor concrete walls and for the first-floor slab of the
north half of the building were nearly completed by midsummer. Gov-
ernment and H&A representatives were on the site every working day
and checked each step in the construction. They also reviewed all shop
drawings, along with samples of the materials to be used."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the site in November
1959 for the ceremonial laying of the building's cornerstone. A US Air
Force band and the Chaplain of the US Senate also graced the occasion,
and DCI Allen Dulles made certain beforehand that a large contingent
of the Agency's female employees had reserved seats "in order to high-
light the vital role which women play in the Agency." Accompanied by
Dulles and a host of Washington dignitaries, the President briefly
wielded an engraved silver trowel to set the stone in place:2 Inside the
1" Walter Pforzheimer, Curator, Historical Intelligence Collection, to Jack B. Pfeiffer,
Support Services Historical Officer, 10 February 1971, HS/HC-849./
" Draft Outline, DDS Support Services Bulletin, 7 August 1959, BPS/OL file.
12 Before the event DCI Dulles had let Col. White know that he wanted to see "some of
the women employees of the Agency in attendance [in the ceremony's reserved seating
areal." See White to Executive Officer, Office of the DCI, "Reserved Seats for Corner-
stone Ceremony," 27 October 1959, HS/HC-849.
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cornerstone went a box containing various acts and executive orders
authorizing the Agency and the new facility, along with speeches, mi-
crofilmed newspapers, a CIA seal, and an aerial photograph of the
site�but no classified documents. 3
Steady Progress (u)
The contract called for completion of the building by the middle
of 1961, but a reasonable amount of delay�frequently caused by con-
ditions beyond the contractor's control�was expected on a project such
as this. For example, there was a strike in the steel industry in August
1959. Had this strike lasted much longer, it would have delayed con-
struction. There was every reason to believe, however, that the building
would be completed some time during the last half of 1961. Meanwhile,
BPS was reviewing space layout plans for the purpose of adjusting them
to fit changes in the Agency's requirements.
As of 31 March 1960 the contractor was slightly behind schedule,
even though the winter weather had been reasonably favorable. There
had been a considerable number of relatively small change orders, and
it did not appear that completion of the contract would be extended ma-
terially. In fact, such excellent progress was being made that a portion
of the concrete roof of the north penthouse had been poured. As was
customary when the highest point on the construction project was
reached, the workmen held an impromptu flag-raising ceremony, and
for a day or two a flag flew from this rooftop. (0)
In May, progress was marred by the only serious accident that
occurred during the entire course of the construction. In the words of
Colonel White:
There was an accident today at Langley; apparently a cable broke
allowing the scaffolding at the power building to fall. Ten people
were hurt, seven of them very seriously. At this point one of the
ten has died and another remains on the critical list. fjel
Workers had been removing wooden forms from the power plant's
concrete ceiling when one of three cables suspending the scaffolding
snapped, tumbling the men and the forms to the boiler room floor
'3 The cornerstone and its "time capsule" were finally placed their permanent loca-
tions on 2 November 1960; Diary Notes, 9 November 1960.
'4 C/BPS to C/F'S/OL, 6 October 1959, sub: Killian Committee Report, BPS/OL
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Original Headquarters Building under construction, 1950-60 /
25 feet below. Joseph A. Wood, 56, of Northeast Washington was dead
on arrival at Arlington Hospital, but fortunately he was the only fatali-
ty.15.0er
By spring, work had been started on the excavation for the audito-
rium building, which was a separate hemispheric structure near the front
of the main building but connected to it by a tunnel. Structural steel had
also been delivered to the site for the curved roof of the cafeteria build-
ing. 6 Plantings for the three large and two small court areas enclosed by
the building had been completed. This landscape and planting contract
was undertaken early in the project so that all threes and shrubs requiring
Diary Notes, 4 May 1960, (S). "1 Killed, 8 Hurt as Staging Falls," The Washington
Post, 5 May 1960.4�)
16 Walter Pforzheitner recalled:
The curved roof of the cafeteria. ..brings to mind an interesting highlight arising out
of the Washington Evening Star sending periodic flights over the building to photo-
graph the progress in its construction as a newsworthy item. In their issue of 13 June
1960, they printed one of these early views and caused us some laughing embarrass-
ment by their caption, which noted, "The crescent-shaped objects at left are decora-
tive waterfalls." Actually they were the curved steel girders, not yet installed, which
hold up the roof of the cafeteria!
Pforzheimer to Pfeiffer, 10 February 1971. f$1
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large balls of dirt would be set in place before the courts were entirely
enclosed. Throughout the construction Agency officers sought to pre-
serve the campus-like feel of the grounds�to the point where in one in-
stance it added $60,000 to the bill. I8 (C)
By the end of September 1960 the superstructure contractor had
completed 54 percent of his work. The contractor was slightly behind
schedule, but this was mainly a continuance of the earlier delays. The
north half of the building was expected to be ready for occupancy by
September 1961. It was almost completely enclosed, and plastering of
the interior walls was progressing on the lower floors. Except for the
seventh-floor roof of wings 1 and 2, and the penthouse roof, all of the
structural slabs had been poured for the south half of the building, and
precast concrete window panels had been installed up to the fourth-floor
level. The structural steel covering for the cafeteria roof had been erect-
ed and installed.
Plans were being developed with the telephone company to begin
installing equipment for the north half of the building. Space layouts
were being used by Agency components to plan requirements for unit-
ized furniture, location of floor outlets, and determination of the neces-
sary types of telephone service:9 Normal telephone installation was
complicated by the additional requirements for a secure internal system
and an intercom among the offices of the Director, the Deputy Direc-
tors, and the Office/Division Chiefs.2�
The superstructure contract was 78 percent complete as of 31
March 1961. The work had been delayed because of bad weather, but
occupancy of the north half of the building would not be delayed appre-
ciably. The entire building was now enclosed, and plastering had been
completed in the north half. The dome for the auditorium had been
17 Draft Outline, DDS Support Services Bulletin, 25 May 1960, BPS/OL files. /
'8 White recorded in his Diary Notes:
Met with Jim Garrison and H. S. Chandler to discuss landscaping changes at the new
building. There are three large areas in which trees are growing in a considerable de-
pression. Water collects to such an extent that drains are plugged up; consequently,
the areas are not only unsightly but in all probability the trees are going to die before
we move into the building. . . . It is now estimated that it will cost some $60,000 to
rectify it, especially in view of the fact that there is not sufficient dirt available to fill
in all three of the holes. I authorized H. S. Chandler to go ahead and negotiate to fill
in one of them�for which we do have ample dirt�and to contemplate, at least for
the moment, on filling in the other two if and when we construct an auxiliary build-
ing, at which time we will again have plenty of "fill" available without buying it.
Diary Notes, 3 May 1960.
19 C/BPS to C/PS/OL, 3 October 1960, sub: Killian Committee Report, BPS/OL
" Diary Notes, 20 October, 2 and 15 November, 14 and 20 December 1960; 4 January
1961.X
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erected, and the floor slab had been poured. BPS had revised contract
drawings involving partition revisions, medical, X-ray, and projection
equipment, and the instantaneous generator for the signal centers. The
floorplans were retemplated from standard to unitized furniture.
Telephone service orders and wiring diagrams were completed for 50
percent of the north half of the building.- The building was ready for its
first occupants.
Moving Days Xri
The Headquarters Building was originally scheduled to be com-
pleted by the spring of 1962, but sufficient progress had been made on
the north half of the building to permit the first phase of the move�that
of some DDI elements to begin on 19 September 1961. This permitted
all components housed in Washington in the vicinity of the Theodore
Roosevelt Bridge to be moved by 21 October. Three separate Federal
Works Agency contracts were let to accommodate the move of CIA fur-
nishings and equipment to the new headquarters. Merchants Transfer
and Storage Co. was awarded two, and the Roy M. Hamilton Co. of
Cincinnati, Ohio, won the third. Xiiefj
The planners must have breathed a collective sigh of relief once
the DDI elements began to move into the new building. Beginning in
1957 and continuing even after the completion of the move, the Deputy
Director for Intelligence Robert Amory engaged the planners in a series
of disputes over the space allocations and floorplans for the DDI area.
Amory had legitimate grounds for objecting to the location and the lay-
out of the library, but he was less justified in his vacillating over deci-
sions to include or exclude various other DDI components in the new
building. Amory's indecision disrupted Colonel White's equanimity.
White noted at one point:
21
Had a discussion both on the squawk box and later in the day with
Bob Amory about the new building. Bob is, in my judgment,
somewhat irrational about his desires to close up the library deal,
put the Office of Basic Intelligence back into the building, etc. At
his suggestion that we thrash the whole thing out with [DCI
Dulles] I readily agreed, at which point he backed water
considerably. I told him that I was fed up with his threatening to
Memo, AC/BPS for C/PS/OL, 4 April 1961, sub: Killian Report on Fl Activities 1
October 1960-31 Mar 1961, /). BPS/OL
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go to the Director at any time he didn't get what he wanted in con-
nection with the new building and that I wanted him to understand
fully that I was prepared to meet with him and the Director at any
hour of the day or night, without any advance notice, on his or any
aspect of the building. I also told him that the DD/I area was
slower than any other component in supplying the information
that we needed to pass on to the architect and that unless we got
his information very soon it would be necessary to stop work on
the building again.n (u)
The Construction
Amory also complained to White�and in some cases even to DCI
Dulles�about plans for ground floor windows, about the use of asphalt
tile rather than more expensive flooring in the library, about the morn-
ing rush hour traffic pattern over Key Bridge, about the temperature in
the new building, about the empty vending machines, and about the
hours of the credit union. 23
Other directorates had their own complaints at the time of the
planned move to the new building. The question of adequate space for
the Directorate of Plans (DDP�now the Directorate of Operations)
contingent was the subject of serious discussion from 1959 until the ac-
tual move. The basic problem was to determine the actual number of
bodies that were to be accommodated and whether or not the entire DDP
should be moved into the new building, even at the expense of space for
the DDI or DDS. 24 DCI Dulles and the President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board decided in June 1961 that the Directorate of Plans
would not, in fact, be moved in its entirety to the new building.
As components moved into their new quarters, they found that
new unitized furniture had replaced all Class C furniture, and had been
pre-positioned with telephones in place ready to be cut over to the new
numbers.25 For mechanical and security reasons, certain facilities
(principally the pneumatic tube and conveyor systems) were not
available until the entire building was occupied. Although incinerator
22 Diary Notes, 15 April 1957. (s)
" Ibid., 29 October 1957; 9, 21 November 1960; 6, 30 Mar, 3, 6, 20, 27 November
1961.
" Perhaps because Colonel White was in charge of the overall planning for the Head-
quarters construction activity, space and other problems of the DDS components appear
infrequently in the Diary Notes. In January of 1961 a request from General McClelland,
Director of the Office of Communications, for additional space was rejected. Ibid., 8
January 1961. <
" As a result of year-end savings during 1960 and 1961, these funds (totaling
$1,298,900) were applied along with $340,000 obtained from the Director's Special
Projects Fund (subject to DDS recommendation and DCI approval) for procurement of
unitized furnishings.
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chutes were being made available for depositing classified trash during
the period of interim occupancy, the material could not be burned in the
building until later.2'
Concurrent with the start of the move�on the night of 18 Septem-
ber 1961�the new headquarters telephone switchboard facility was put
into service. The operators were instructed to answer incoming calls
with "Central Intelligence Agency" instead of "Executive 3-6115." This
change in procedure attracted attention; extensive publicity was already
being given by the news media to the CIA relocation, and this departure
from secrecy was grist for the journalistic mills. The previous method
of answering calls was resumed after a few weeks.
By 13 November 1961 the move into the north half of the building
was completed, and by 15 May 1962 the entire move had been accom-
plished. Problems of winter weather, security escorts, communications,
transportation, supplies and supply operations, had largely been over-
come!' Decorating and decor, including the planned sculptures for the
main entrance area, and office and hallway colors, hangings, and the
like, were a continuing problem.:' Heating, ventilating, and air condi-
tioning also presented problems. (u)
Mail and courier deliveries posed special difficulties because of
widespread confusion over the address of the new Agency building.
"Langley" was and is the local name for a part of Fairfax County and
has no political or corporate identity. Some mail addressed to Langley,
particularly when posted in the Washington Metropolitan area, would
be sent by the Postal Service to McLean, Virginia�the nearest post of-
fice. The McLean postmaster reported, however, that most "Langley
Mail" went first to Langley Air Force Base at Hampton Roads, Virginia,
and was then forwarded to McLean. Relocation Bulletin No. 33 correct-
ed the problem.
The cafeteria was not completed until 28 February 1962, but in
October 1961 necessary kitchen facilities, operated by Guest Services,
Inc., were available to permit a limited operation in the table-service
area. Vending machine rooms were put into operation on the floors be-
ing occupied, and the Virginia Society for the Blind was granted per-
mission to operate two snack bars. The combination of ongoing
26 Draft Outline, DDS Support Services Bulletin, 2 October 1961. BPS/OL files. c4
" Authors' conversation with the Chief, Telephone Facility Branch, 20 October '1970.
" Project Officer to Deputy Chief, BPS/OL, 13 November 1961 to 15 May 1962, sub:
Hq Move, BPS/OL
" Diary Notes, 7 October, 4 November 1959; 22 January, 21 March, 8 June 1960;
9 January, 15 March, 5 April, 9 October 1961; 29 November 1962.X
" White to Garrison, 12 June 1962, sub: Hq Bldg. Heating, Ventilating, and A/C
Systems.X
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Aerial view, Main Entrance, circa 1963 /
construction and ad hoc dining arrangements soon fathered an unfore-
seen problem. Walter Pforzheimer recalled:
At the time of the first move, I think the far end of the DDP part of
the building was still partially open so that heavy equipment could
be brought in.... As cold weather approached...the building
became infested with the cutest collection of field mice you [will]
ever see. In the course of serious dictation, soberminded DDI'ers
would be interrupted by piercing shrieks [sic] from their secretar-
ies which would herald the fact that another mouse had just
appeared. In the Historical Intelligence Collection we were con-
tinually setting mousetraps with devastating effect, including the
fact that the Curator's extremely squeamish secretaries would not
empty them, and that task fell on the Curator himself. Not only
was the building open at the far end, but the cafeteria was not yet
open, and everyone was eating out of the vending machines or
"brown bagging it." Thus the mice had a never-ending supply of
food. The mice also had the habit of chewing through telephone
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wires and once chewed their way through the special gray [secure]
phone wires, creating a security problem which resulted in having
to have the mice cleared!''
When the move was in its initial stages, the presence of the DCI-
designate John A. McCone�who was not noted as a particularly patient
or tactful individual�provided an added fillip for the planners and
movers. Reportedly "very well pleased with the building" on his first
visit to the site, he began to throw his weight around even before his
swearing in and taking over as DCI on 29 November 1961.32 Furniture
had to be switched; he wanted a closed circuit television link with the
White House; he asked for comparative construction costs with the new
Atomic Energy Commission and Department of State headquarters
buildings; and he complained that the movers were defacing the walls.33
The new DCI and his staff moved to the new building on the day he was
sworn in. He occupied temporary quarters on the third floor until his
seventh-floor suite was ready in the first week of March 1962.- (u)
The HSLA office at the building site was closed on 2 February
1962; the auditorium roof tile installation was finally completed during
May 1963; and the final payment for architectural and engineering ser-
vices was made to H&A on 24 October 1963. The total construction
time for the project, including change orders, corrections, and omis-
sions, was six years and one month, from October 1957 to November
1963. At a total cost of about $43.7 million, the Agency had acquired a
new, modern building with just over 1.3 million gross square feet of
space, including some 837,000 net square feet of "office-type" space. In
the spring of 1963, the new building housed nearly personnel, and
at least more remained quartered in 13 other buildings in the
Washington area.35 (C)
3' Pforzheimer to Pfeiffer, 10 February 1971./
"2 Diary Notes, 26 September 1961. (s)
33 Ibid., 18, 21, 28, 29 November 1961.
"4 Project Officer Report, February 1962, BPS/OL files.
3' These figures were included in data provided to the authors by the Office of Logistics
on 10 November 1972; the data are contained in HS/HC-849./
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John A. McCone, Bud Wheelon, and the
Wizards of Langley:
The Creation of the DS&T and the
Battle Over Spy Satellites (U)
David Robarge
CIA officers and intelligence scholars widely regard John A.
McCone' s tenure as Director of Central Intelligence during 1961-1965
as among the most effective in the Agency's history. His term is partic-
ularly notable for its two main achievements in science and technology:
the creation of a directorate dedicated to those fields, and the protection
of the CIA's role in satellite reconnaissance from takeover by the De-
fense Department. McCone's background as an engineer and manager
of large technology, military, and energy organizations in the private
and public sectors well suited him to reorganize the Agency's melange
of scientific and technical offices. He believed strongly that to compete
with an aggressive Air Force in the area of space reconnaissance, the
CIA had to strengthen its scientific and technical capabilities. He and
his first Deputy Director of Science and Technology (DDS&T), Albert
Wheelon, gave the new Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T)
the personnel, budget, and mission to assert influence inside the Agency
and the Intelligence Community. By successfully carrying out the larg-
est rearrangement of human, financial, and material resources of his
tenure, McCone�with Wheelon's indispensable help�went far
toward regaining for the CIA the stature it had lost after the Bay of Pigs
disaster. The two technically minded outsiders also initiated a change in
the Agency's culture that diluted the influence of clandestine operators
and Eastern-educated intellectuals and raised the profile of experts in
esoteric disciplines who entered the secret world from outside the usual
social and professional circles. (c)
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Edwin H. Land (u)
The Seeds of the DS&T (U)
The idea that the CIA needed a separate science and technology
component originated with a little known but influential study group
called the Technological Capabilities Panel (TCP), convened in 1954
by President Dwight Eisenhower out of concern that the United States
was vulnerable to a Soviet surprise nuclear attack. He authorized the
president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, James R. Kil-
lian, to organize a group of experts to study the problem. One of the
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1-17
group's subcommittees, headed by Polaroid's chairman Edwin Land,
investigated the nation's intelligence capabilities. The TCP report, enti-
tled "Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack," declared up front that "We
obtain little significant information from classical covert operations in-
side Russia.... We cannot hope to circumvent these elaborate [Soviet se-
curity] measures in an easy way. But we can use the ultimate in science
and technology to improve our intelligence take." The TCP recom-
mended "adoption of a vigorous program for the extensive use, in many
intelligence procedures, of the most advanced knowledge in science and
technology.. .a research program producing a stream of new intelligence
tools and techniques." Land's subcommittee encouraged construction
of a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, a proposal that soon led to the
development of the U-2. ' (s)
The CIA responded to the TCP's recommendation by forming a
Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) comprising mainly former members
of the TCP. The board, which came to be called the Land Panel after its
chairman, substantially influenced the Agency's scientific and technical
activities, especially in the area of overhead reconnaissance. Adminis-
tratively, the SAB was attached to the office of the DCP s Special As-
sistant for Planning and Coordination, Richard Bissell. Bissell ran the
Development Projects Staff and oversaw the U-2, CORONA, and OX-
CART programs. He was the CIA's point man in exploiting science and
technology for collection purposes and got along well with the SAB.2
Nonetheless, the Agency did not have a distinct entity to coordinate sci-
entific and technical intelligence activities that the three existing direc-
torates were pursuing independently. DC1 Allen Dulles did not act on a
proposal made in 1957 to create a science and technology directorate�
probably because it got no support from Bissell, who wanted to keep
tight control over his projects and opposed any such consolidation as
long as he remained at the Agency.' (s)
When Bissell became Deputy Director of Plans (DDP) in 1958, he
took the Development Projects Staff with him, renamed it the Develop-
ment Projects Division, and used it�along with the Technical Services
' Donald E. VVelzenbach, "Science and Technology: Origins of a Directorate," Studies
in Intelligence, 30;2 (Summer 1986), pp. 13-16 (S); Helen H. Kleyla, "The Directorate
for Science and Technology, 1962-1970," 5 vols., DDS&T Historical Series no. 1,
1972, 1:3-4 (TS; material used classified S). Even before the TCP's report was released
in February 1955, Land privately urged DCI Allen Dulles to "assert your right to pio-
neer in scientific techniques for collecting intelligence." Land and Killian were also in-
strumental in promoting the joint CIA-Air Force reconnaissance satellite program,
CORONA, a few years later. (s)
2 Welzenbach, "Science and Technology," pp. 16, 22. (s)
Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 1:4-5. (s)
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John A. McCone (II)
Staff�to support espionage and covert action operations. This rear-
rangement upset Land and Killian, who believed the CIA's technologi-
cal research and development should stay separate from its clandestine
activities. They were especially distressed to learn that Bissell had used
the U-2 during the Bay of Pigs operation�to them a perilous extension
of the aircraft's primary mission of gathering strategic and tactical
military intelligence. In his final months as DDP, Bissell found himself
in a tussle with Land and Killian�the two most influential members of
the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), a panel
of eminent private citizens that counseled the President on the perfor-
ma9ce and problems of the Intelligence Community, At Land's and
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7�
Killian's urging, the PFIAB strongly advocated centralizing all CIA sci-
entific and technical programs in one component and separating
scientific collection from covert operations. Bissell resisted, but his
position grew untenable after his chief ally, DCI Dulles, was forced to
resign in December 1961 and was replaced by John A. McCone.4 (S)
The DCI With a Slide Rule Mind (U)
John A. McCone was better prepared than any previous DCI to
lead the Agency fully into the realm of science and technology because
he had experience managing large engineering and transportation enter-
prises and US military and energy bureaucracies. President John
Kennedy chose McCone, a wealthy Republican from California, to be
DCI because of his reputation as a decisive executive who could control
farflung organizations, and his connections to the GOP that would help
protect the CIA from attacks by the Administration's critics in
Congress. McCone had graduated from the University of California's
College of Engineering in 1922. Classmates regarded him as hard-
working and humorless; one of them described him as "a man with a
slide-rule mind." After working for the next 15 years in the steel indus-
try, he and fellow California graduate Stephen Bechtel formed the engi-
neering firm Bechtel-McCone and designed and built factories,
refineries, and power plants. Astute investments in shipbuilding, lucra-
tive war contracts, and hard-driving management made McCone a mil-
lionaire by 1945, and as of the late 1940s, he was one of the world's
premiere shipping magnates.' (U)
Nonetheless, McCone found himself, in his own words, "a little
restless" and increasingly attracted to government work�particularly
involving national security and technology. In 1947 he accepted an in-
vitation to serve on the presidential Air Policy Commission, charged
with devising ways to revive the moribund postwar aircraft industry.
McCone wrote the military recommendations in the Commission's re-
port, published in January 1948 with the attention-grabbing title
4 Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The Central Intelligence Agency and
Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974 (Washington,
D.C.: CIA History Staff, 1992), pp. 191-92; Welzenbach, "Science and Technology," p.
22.(s)
Laton McCartney, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story: The Most Secret Corpo-
ration and How It Engineered the World. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 52;
Current Biography, 1959, s.v. "McCone, John A(lex)," pp. 272-74; "Atomic Energy's
McCone: A Private Dynamo in the Public Service," Time, 71(16 June 1958) 'p. 16. (u)
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"Survival in the Air Age." He suggested that American aviation scrap
the piston engine and convert to jet propulsion, and that the United
States start stockpiling nuclear weapons.6 (u)
McCone's brief tenure as Under Secretary of the Air Force (1950-
51) helped him learn how to run a public organization, but the bureau-
cratic controversy and personal tension he engendered demonstrated the
limits of his brusque leadership style. His dealings as a defense contrac-
tor during World War II enabled him to exert some control over the Air
Force's byzantine procurement system and public works budget. He
pushed for intensive research and development in missiles and wanted
to reorganize the armed services' separate missile programs according
to a Manhattan Project model under the direction of a "missile czar."
McCone overreached with this proposal, however; interservice rivalries
precluded it, and President Truman rejected it. Moreover, McCone, who
saw his primary role as the Air Force Secretary's general manager, ran-
kled Air Force officials and commanders when he tried to employ the
same strict administrative techniques he used to run his own companies.
According to one assistant secretary, McCone was guilty of "throwing
his weight around," and a senior member of the Air Staff regarded him
as a "know-it-all" who treated high-ranking officers with contempt.
McCone returned to the private sector after less than a year-and-a-half,
ostensibly for personal reasons. Presumably he took with him some les-
sons about how, and how not, to shake up a federal bureaucracy.' (U)
McCone's technical background and conservative Republican
credentials recommended him to the Eisenhower Administration for the
post of Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), vacated by
the controversial Lewis Strauss in early 1958. Strauss had battled con-
tinually with New Deal Democrats in Congress over issues ranging
from public development of nuclear energy to a nuclear test ban. The
Administration saw McCone as a strong-willed pacificator who would
espouse the GOP's pro-business policies without antagonizing congres-
sional Democrats. Like Strauss, McCone preferred that the private
sector take the lead in developing nuclear power, but he was not as doc-
trinaire or pugnacious as his predecessor. He viewed the Commission's
business largely in technical and economic terms, sought ideas from
many sources, and successfully avoided most of the political and per-
sonal controversies that marked Strauss's tenure. According to the de-
finitive study of the AEC during the 1950s, McCone "made significant
'Ibid.; McCartney, Friends in High Places, pp. 97-98; George M. Watson, Jr., The
Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, 1947-1965 (Washington, D.C.: Center for
Air Force History, 1993), p. 106. (u)
'Ibid., pp. 110-11, 114-15, 124-27. (u)
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strides in in bringing systematic evaluation and planning to bear on the
Commission's amorphous and inflated programs." He also directed the
AEC's scientists to conduct applied research that advanced the Com-
mission's objectives instead of investigating pet ideas and projects. The
AEC study notes that:
lais an engineer, McCone tended to take a jaundiced view of sci-
entists...he understood the indispensable role that scientists
played in establishing the base for technological innovation, but
he did not quite accept the idea that turning scientists loose in the
laboratory to pursue their own interests in basic research was
always a good investment for the federal government.' (u)
McCone's attitude would prove useful in ensuring that the CIA di-
rected its scientific and technical efforts toward intelligence collection
and operational support. By the time he became DCI, traditional forms
of intelligence collection�covert agents and clandestine operations�
were losing their primacy to technical means. The CIA's achievements
with the U-2 and CORONA in targeting the Soviet Union and Cuba
demonstrated the value of technical collection and underscored the lim-
itations of HUMINT. McCone knew little about espionage and counter-
intelligence, doubted the efficacy of covert action, and delegated more
responsibility to his deputies in those areas than in any others. In con-
trast, he regarded technical systems as more vital to the Agency's mis-
sion and set out to overhaul the CIA' s scientific and technical programs,
which he regarded as inefficiently organized and suffering from poor
management by Agency leaders captivated by clandestine operations.
His preference for technical intelligence fit neatly with the White
House's predisposition after the Cuban missile crisis to trust "hard in-
telligence," such as photographs and signals intelligence, more than hu-
man sources and experts' assessments.9 (u)
Corbin Allardice and Edward R. Trapnell, The Atomic Energy Commission (New York:
Praeger Publishers, 1974), p. 176; Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace
and War, 1953-1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1989), eh. 18 passim, quotes at pp. 514, 522-23. (u)
'John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1986), p. 415. (u)
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James R. Killian (u)
Confronting Bureaucratic Resistance (u)
When McCone took office, pressure from the PFIAB to consoli-
date the CIA's scientific and technological capabilities had peaked.
Killian and Land were particularly concerned that the post-Bay of Pigs
shakeup would damage the Agency's technical collection programs.'�
McCone's own agenda conformed closely with Land's and Killian's,
and he had the White House's general endorsement to make major
Transcript of Albert Wheelon lecture at CIA Headquarters, 19 September 1984, p. 13,
CIA History Staff. (s)
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changes at Langley. As an outsider taking over at a time of leadership
disarray and low morale, however, he had to act with due deliberation.
Land and Killian could remain above the fray, expressing dissatisfac-
tion at the pace with which McCone implemented their ex cathedra
recommendations, but the DCI knew he had to move cautiously to pre-
serve his authority. (s)
McCone found the CIA' s scientific and technological operations
scattered among several offices. The reconnaissance program was in the
Directorate of Plans (DDP) under the Development Projects Division
(DPD). The Technical Services Division (TSD),
was also part of the DDP, as was
The Office of Scien-
tific Intelligence (OS I) in the Directorate of Intelligence (DDI) analyzed
foreign research. Under McCone' s original conception, a new director-
ate for scientific research would pull together all of these components
in one place where the Agency's technical talent could exchange ideas
and information, interact with private industry and other government
agencies, and serve as a large organizational "magnet" to attract highly
qualified personnel to careers in technical intelligence." (S)
In one of his first meetings with the PFIAB, McCone heard Killian
and Land strongly express their concern that continued association with
the DDP would harm the CIA's scientific and technical development
programs. After this meeting, McCone set up the Working Group on
Organization and Activities, chaired by Inspector General Lyman Kirk-
patrick, to review the Agency's structure and activities. The Working
Group gave special attention to the idea of setting up a new directorate
of research and development. The DCI asked all deputy directors to
comment on the idea. Bissell vehemently opposed it. Among other
points, he argued that
the DDP
by the DDP. Bissell might have felt embold-
ened to resist because McCone, depressed and uncertain whether he
would remain as DCI after his wife of many years died in December
"McCone to McGeorge Bundy, 12 February 1962, National Security Files, Depart-
ments and Agencies, Box 27, "Central Intelligence Agency, General, 1/62-2/61," JFK
Library (C); McCone, "Discussion with Attorney General Robert Kennedy," 27 De-
cember 1961, P. 1, DCI Files, Job 87-01032R, Box 2(S); Walter Elder, "John McCone
as Director of Central Intelligence," manuscript dated 1973, 1:173, DCI Files, Job 87-
01032R, Box 4. (s)
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1961, had asked Bissell to delay resigning�indicating that the new DCI
needed the veteran DDP's judgment and influence. 12 (S)
McCone soon decided to stay on, however, and in late January�
unconvinced and undaunted by Bissell's dissent�he told PFIAB that
he intended to appoint a new deputy director to supervise technical col-
lection and consolidate CIA's scientific activities. Bissell sent the DCI
additional objections in early February that, along with those he had
raised earlier, presaged the internal opposition McCone would soon
face. The DDP now criticized the proposed movement of the OSI and
the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) from the DDI
to the new directorate. He also contended that activities that appropri-
ately could be taken from the DDP and DDI�aerial and space recon-
naissance�could be assigned to a special assistant and did not require
the attention of a deputy director. Responding to McCone's earlier re-
quest that he run the new directorate, Bissell now said that accepting the
offer "would mean a long step backward," and he resigned from CIA in
mid-February. '3 (S)
On 16 February, McCone issued a Headquarters Notice creating
the Directorate of Research (DDR), effective on the 19th. He appointed
Herbert "Pete" Scoville, then Assistant Director of the OSI, as the first
Deputy Director for Research. Before joining CIA in 1955, Scoville had
been a senior scientist at Los Alamos and technical director of the
Armed Forces Special Weapons Project; colleagues considered him one
of the nation's leading experts on warheads. He lacked Bissell's force-
ful character and bureaucratic clout, however, and soon found himself
in the middle of an organizational conflict without the means or support
to wage it effectively.'4 (s)
McCone' s 16 February notice stated "other activities in Research
and Development will be placed under DD/R as appropriate." What "as
appropriate" meant soon became apparent when Scoville circulated a
draft proposal describing the responsibilities and structure of the new
directorate. He recommended placing three types of activity in the
DDR: research and development on technical collection and data reduc-
tion systems, production of intelligence on foreign scientific and tech-
nical capabilities, and operations that used either technical collection
'2 Welzenbach, "Science and Technology," p. 22; Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and
Technology," 1:7. (s)
'3 Ibid. (s)
'4 HN 1-9, 16 February 1962, in Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 3:
Appendix A, tab 2; biographic profile of Scoville in ibid., 3: Appendix B, tab 26;
Welzenbach, "Science and Technology," p. 24. (s)
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methods or human assets collecting on science and technology targets.
Scoville specifically wanted the DDR to take over the Special Projects
Branch of the DDP's Development Projects Division; the research,
development, and laboratory component of the DDP's Technical Ser-
vices Division; the DDI's Office of Scientific Intelligence; all ELINT
activities; and the Office of Communication's research and develop-
ment work on COMINT and agent communications.'s (S)
McCone's notice establishing the DDR and Scoville's proposed
restructuring evoked such intense reactions from several senior Agency
managers that the DCI had to curtail the pace and scope of his plan. The
most vigorous resistance came from DDI Robert Amory and his succes-
sor, Ray Cline. They opposed the transfer of the OSI, maintaining that
jurisdiction for intelligence assessments of foreign countries�particu-
larly the Soviet Union�should not be subdivided, and that another of-
fice would have to be created to replace the OSI' s intelligence
production and contributions to estimates. Cline, well known for his
bluntness, contended later that McCone wanted to put the OSI in the
DDR "to give some warm bodies and an appearance of bulk to the Di-
rectorate," and that because of the shift, "CIA advocacy of its own sci-
entific collection techniques became mixed up with its objective
analysis of all scientific and technical developments. The appearance of
objectivity was hard to maintain when analysis and collection were su-
pervised by the same staff." After the reorganization went into effect,
Cline fought what he called a "rearguard action" to regain the OSI' s an-
alytic function. Kirkpatrick's Working Group also weighed in on the is-
sue in its report in early April, recommending that the DDI keep the OSI
but give up NPIC to the new directorate. IS (s)
McCone's new DDP, Richard Helms�known in the Agency as a
calculating intellicrat apparently saw early compromise as the best
tactic. He agreed to relinquish elements of the TSD
but fought tenaciously to retain those that
did. Helms may have figured that McCone contrary to the Kirkpatrick
'5 FIN 1-9, 16 February 1962, in Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 3:
Appendix A, tab 2; ibid., 1:10. (s)
Ibid., 1:11-13; Ray S. Cline, Secrets, Spies, and Scholars: Blueprint of the Essential
CIA (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1976), pp. 199-200; Ray S. Cline interview
with Mary S. McAuliffe, tape recording, Washington, D.C., 30 June 1989, pp. 3-4, CIA
History Staff. (s)
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Group's recommendation that the DDR be given some operational re-
sponsibilities�would defer to his judgment on this issue as on others
related to clandestine activities. � (S)
After three months of high-level opposition, Lyman Kirkpatrick,
the new Executive Director, recommended to McCone that he accept
less than a full measure of success. Kirkpatrick had spent several
fruitless weeks working with Scoville on a draft Headquarters Notice
setting forth the DDR's terms of reference. In the face of the Amory-
Cline-Helms resistance, the Executive Director concluded that it was
"preferable to allow the DD/R to grow by evolution and accretion rather
than any drastic surgery on either DD/I or DD/P." Kirkpatrick's group
regarded OXCART, the projected successor to the U-2, as the DDR's
most important project and warned that the new directorate "must be re-
strained from taking on collateral activities so fast that OXCART will
suffer." (S)
A few more weeks of piecemeal progress followed. McCone ap-
proved personnel allocations for the DDR staff and the appointment of
an Assistant Director, Col. Edward B. Giller. Giller was trained as an
engineer, worked on Air Force weapons projects in the 1950s, and most
recently was deputy chief of TSD. McCone and Scoville may have se-
lected Giller�his qualifications notwithstanding�as a way to placate
the DDP.'9 (S)
By this time, the DCI and the DDR wanted to get the new director-
ate up and running and deferred action on unresolved issues. McCone
later wrote that forcing the DDI and DDP to turn over the OSI and TSD,
respectively, "would incur great risk of impairing the [directorates'] fun-
damental missions." The long-awaited Headquarters Notice describing
the DDR' s mission and responsibilities came out in late July. The DDR
would have authority over scientific and technical research and develop-
ment that supported intelligence collection, but the DDP
The DDR would provide overall guidance of ELINT activities but would
not delve into related operational matters. Three new components were
Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 1:10-11; McCone, "Memorandum
for the Record," 29 March 1962, concerning Kirkpatrick Working Group report, Exec-
utive Registry Files, Job 80B01285A (hereafter referred to as McCone Papers), Box 2,
folder 1, tab 36; HN 1-15, 16 April 1962, in Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Tech-
nology," 3: Appendix 1, tab 3. (s)
18Ibid., 1:14-15; McCone, "Notes on Discussion.. Review of Report of the Kirkpatrick
Committee," 29 March 1962, p. 3, McCone Papers, Box 2. (s)
'9 Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 2:15-17; biographic profile of
Giller in ibid., 3: Appendix B, tab 13. (s)
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created: the Offices of Research and Development (ORD), Electronic
Collection (OEL), and Special Activities (OSA).2� (S)
McCone' s actions during the DDR' s several months of gestation
typified an important element of his leadership style. According to his
executive assistant, Walter Elder, McCone was much less interested in
the formal structure of the Agency than in the results it produced. As in
most of his prior management positions, he was content to lay down
general guidelines at the outset and leave administrative details�
especially jurisdictional conflicts�to others. McCone regarded this de-
tachment as consistent with his successful approach to running his
sprawling corporate enterprises and more appropriate to his function as
DCI. As an industrialist, he operated more in the manner of a chairman
of the board than a chief executive officer, delegating administration to
handpicked subordinates, and he adopted the same approach as DCI. He
took his responsibilities as head of the Intelligence Community very se-
riously and made sure soon after his appointment that President
Kennedy explicitly gave him all the authority he thought he needed to
be a true coordinator of national intelligence. According to an informal
time study conducted after he took office, McCone spent 80 percent of
his workday on Intelligence Community matters and only 20 percent on
subjects specific to the CIA. Consequently, he did not believe he should
involve himself in day-to-day administration of the Agency, including
the implementation of the DDR directive. Instead, as he told
Kirkpatrick, one of his management objectives was "assigning respon-
sibilities and then insisting that subordinates measure up."2 (s)
McCone was willing to take bureaucratic risks, but in a way that
helped contain potential damage. Creating the DDR inevitably would
be controversial because, as Elder later put it, "you could do it only by
carving it out of the flesh and blood of existing components."22 By del-
egating turf battles to his DDCI, Gen. Marshall Carter, and Kirkpatrick,
McCone gave the new directorate's critics, such as Cline and Helms,
opportunities to obstruct implementation and mobilize allies. However,
2" McCone personal memo, "Organization of DD/R," 24 July 1963, quoted in ibid.,
1:17; EN 1-23,30 July 1962, in ibid., 3: Appendix A, tab 4. The directorate's new com-
ponents are described in ibid., 1:19-29. Ironically, considering the importance the DCI
placed on the concept and the clamor it raised, the notice was issued under DDCI Mar-
shall Carter's signature, not McCone's. The DCI probably was busy preparing for his
upcoming wedding. (s)
2' Walter Elder interview with Mary S. McAuliffe, tape recording, Washington, D.C.,
14 April 1989, p. 13, CIA History Staff; Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr., The Real CIA (New
York: Macmillan, 1968), 240; Lyman Kirkpatrick interview with Mary S. McAuliffe,
tape recording, Middleburg, VA, 22 June 1989, p. 3, CIA History Staff, (s)
" Elder interview, pp. 12-13. (s)
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the DCI�belying his reputation as a brusque, heavy-handed boss�ap-
pears in this case to have concluded that a major organizational change
could best be achieved by letting bureaucratic politics and tempers run
their course instead of imposing the new arrangement by fiat. McCone
took a more guarded approach than in the management shuffle he quick-
ly carried out during his first hundred days because far more serious and
extensive equities now were at stake. (s)
Disarray, Distractions, and Disputes (U)
The new arrangement that McCone's deputies had worked out
soon proved unsatisfactory. Even with its more limited mandate, the
DDR as approved by McCone in July 1962 "never had a fighting
chance," a former CIA historian and DS&T officer has concluded.
"Pete Scoville's writ ran long on the tasks his new directorate was sup-
posed to accomplish and short on the manpower needed to achieve such
goals." Besides some officers in the OSA, which took responsibility for
the old DPD' s reconnaissance projects, most of the Agency's scientific
and technical talent remained in the OSI. In addition, delays in securing
enough space in the new Headquarters Building, transferring personnel
from other components, and setting up a new career service with a
special pay structure made the DDR seem like an organizational step-
child.23 (s)
Difficult, high-profile technical intelligence problems that arose
during the DDR's first months diverted McCone's and Scoville's time
and attention from building the new directorate. Most important was the
discovery of Soviet offensive missiles in Cuba in October 1962. The
DCI, the DDR, and the ADDR�along with NPIC director Arthur Lun-
dahl�were the primary Agency participants in numerous briefings and
discussions with the Kennedy Administration on the fast-breaking cri-
sis. A less well-known distraction was determining whether a newly
discovered Soviet missile installation near Tallinn, Estonia was intend-
ed to shoot down aircraft or missiles.24 (s)
" Welzenbach, "Science and Technology," pp. 23-24; Herbert Scoville, Jr., interview
with Donald Welzenbach, tape recording, McLean, Va., 27 January 1989, p. 17, CIA
History Staff (TS; material used classified S); Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Tech-
nology," 1:29-37. Years later, Scoville disparaged the OSA as an attempt "to try and
bring together some of the cats and dogs." The DDR career service finally was instituted
in February 1963. DDR Directive 20-1, 19 February 1963, in ibid., 3: Appendix A, tab
5.(s)
" Welzenbach, "Science and Technology," p. 24. (s)
S cret 160
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Moreover, throughout late 1962 and early 1963 McCone and
Scoville continually clashed with the Defense Department over control
of the recently created National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the
nature of the satellite reconnaissance program. The high-level, informal
collaboration between then-DDP Bissell and the Air Force�notably
with Under Secretary Joseph Charyk�that had existed during the first
years of the CORONA program ended with the establishment of the
NRO in September 1961 and the leadership changes at the CIA soon
after. The departure of Bissell, then-DDCI Charles Cabe11, and other
senior CIA officers removed the Agency's top representatives in the re-
connaissance area. Combined with the CIA's low prestige after the Bay
of Pigs, this situation gave the Air Force�which provided most re-
sources for the satellite program�a chance to seize the NRO and direct
space reconnaissance toward tactical military uses. McCone, however,
saw the NRO as a national strategic asset, not just as a military tool, and
he resolved to keep the CIA's hand in developing, tasking, and manag-
ing reconnaissance satellites and assessing their intelligence take. DDI
Ray Cline recalls that "only a few people really understood what [satel-
lite collection' was all about, but [McCone] understood it. He never lost
sight of it." Scoville, unaware of the personal involvement Bissell had
enjoyed with the Air Force, delegated Agency representation to depu-
ties who found themselves outmatched by their uniformed counterparts.
In the short term, the development of the new directorate and Scoville' s
standing with McCone suffered from this steadily escalating conflict
with the Defense Department." (S)
High-level Frustrations (u)
By late 1962 the halting development of the DDR and Scoville's
ineffectiveness plainly displeased McCone. He thought that the CIA's
entire scientific effort was unimaginative and sluggish, and that Scov-
ille was too passive in projecting the Agency's viewpoint in the Intelli-
gence Community. He thought, for example, that the DDR' s diffidence
" McCone, Memorandum for the File, 3 January 1962, concerning meeting with Gilpat-
ric and Charyk about NRO on 28 December 1961, McCone Papers, Box 2, folder 1, tab
7; Cline interview, p. 4; Gerald K. Haines, The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO):
Its Origins, Creation, & Early Years (Washington, D.C.: National Reconnaissance
Office, 1997), pp. 17-22; Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 2: chap. 5
passim. McCone later claimed that the intractability of the CIA-NRO dispute caused
Scoville nearly to have a nervous breakdown and prompted his resignation. Transcript
of McCone-Clifford telephone conversation, 6 April 1964, McCone Papers, Box 10. (s)
/ 161 S/ ret
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caused the White House to assign responsibility for evaluating Soviet
nuclear tests to an outside group of experts, the Bethe Panel, instead of
to Agency officers. The DDP' s and DDI' s footdragging over the reor-
ganization also annoyed McCone, and he complained that the two dep-
uty directors never raised scientific matters with him. He later said he
had told Helms and Cline:
If you would only come in and talk to me just once about science
I'd feel better about [the] scientific end of your business. But you
come in and talk to me about clandestine operations, and about
reports, and about studies, and about every other damn thing, but
you never come in and talk to me about science.... Ray [Cline]
will sit up all night and talk about history, but he won't talk about
[science].
For his part, Scoville was frustrated at what he regarded as McCone's
lack of support, and he was weary of all the turf battles. Some DDR staff
members considered Scoville "too gentlemanly" to be assertive in his
Agency and Intelligence Community roles, but he believed that
McCone had undercut his position by failing to resolve the feud with the
Air Force over the NRO. The DDR thought that he could not simulta-
neously represent the CIA's interests in governmentwide programs and
administer its own scientific and technical activities without the full
backing of the Agency's top managers, especially the DCI.26 (s)
Killian and Land of the PFIAB were not satisfied with the DDR ei-
ther and raised their concerns with McCone in January 1963. The DCI
explained that under current circumstances, the massive organization
Killian had in mind could not be brought about "unless by direct order
from me against the objections from [DDCI] General Carter and virtual-
ly the entire organization within CIA." Two months later, the PFIAB is-
sued a paper, "Recommendations on Technical Capabilities," which
criticized the Intelligence Community for inadequately exploiting sci-
ence and technology. Two of the board's many detailed proposals related
directly to the new directorate's shortcomings. Establishing "an admin-
istrative arrangement in the CIA whereby the whole spectrum of modern
science and technology can be brought into contact with major programs
and projects of the Agency," would remedy "present fragmentation and
" Transcript of McCone-Wheelon meeting, 16 July 1963, p. 7, McCone Papers, Box 7;
Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 1:38-39; Welzenbach, "Science and
Technology," 24; Jeffrey T. Richelson, "The Wizards of Langley: The CIA's Director-
ate of Science and Technology," Intelligence and International Security, 12:1 (January
1997), 86. (s)
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compartmentation." The board also called for "clear vesting of these
broadened responsibilities in the top technical official of the CIA, oper-
ating at the level of Deputy Director." In effect, Killian and Land were
telling McCone how to overhaul the Agency's scientific and technical
efforts. In April McCone responded to the PFIAB report through Presi-
dent Kennedy's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, Mc-
George Bundy. He could only make some general claims of progress but
declared that the "period of observation" of internal reaction "has now
lapsed," and that he would "move ahead with additional changes" that in-
cluded giving the DDR "expanded responsibilities."27 (S)
Ten days after McCone replied to the PFIAB, Scoville resigned. At
the time he cited the other deputy directors' intransigence and the DCI' s
indecisiveness. Years later, Scoville added that he left because McCone
held him responsible for the performance of scientific and technical
components over which he had no authority. "McCone would go around
town saying I was responsible for all scientific activity in the Agency,
and yet he refused to transfer to me the biggest scientific group, my old
group of people with whom I had worked [the �Si]." The DDR asked
that his resignation take effect 1 June (later extended to the 14th).28 (s)
McCone's New Chief Wizard (U)
McCone earlier had said he did not care who ran the DDR as long
as it was organized and managed properly, and after Scoville's resigna-
tion he moved to ensure that it was by asking Albert Wheelon, the acting
director of the OSI, to take charge of it. Wheelon, a technical wunder-
kind who earned a doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology at age 23, had worked as a space reconnaissance design
engineer at TRW and as a consultant to US Government scientific
boards before joining the Agency as the OSI' s deputy director in June
1962. He had impressed the Agency's leadership with briefings on the
nuclear test ban negotiations that he gave at morning staff meetings.
When asked to become DDR, the brilliant and brash, 34-year-old
" McCone, "Discussion with Dr. Killian, January 21st," memorandum dated 22 January
1963, McCone Papers, Box 2, folder 4; Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technolo-
gy," 1:42-46; Welzenbach, "Science and Technology," pp. 24-25. (s)
" Scoville interview, pp. 18-19; Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 1:46-
47. At the time Scoville resigned, he also was serving as Deputy Director of the NRO.
After he left the Agency, he became Deputy Director of the Arms Control and Disarma-
ment Agency. Welzenbach, "Science and Technology," p. 26; Kleyla, "Directorate of
Science and Technology," 2:213-15. (s)
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Albert Wheelon (t)
Wheelon told McCone that "we shouldn't screw a good light bulb into
a burned out socket"�i.e., he was not interested unless the directorate
controlled all of the CIA's scientific and technical efforts�and made
several demands before he would agree to serve. He did not want the
DDR to be a staff component, like the research and engineering compo-
nent of the Defense Department, but "a real honest-to-God line organi-
zation to carry out assigned responsibilities." He insisted on bringing
the OSI with him, wanted full authority over research and development,
and asked for a computer center and a missile intelligence center.
Wheelon may have believed that he could drive a hard bargain because
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the DCI' s aide, Walter Elder, had already assured him that McCone
would back him against the other deputy directors.29(s)
McCone saw "great advantages" in Wheelon' s general plan, which
fit his own preference for centralizing Agency scientific and technical
functions, but also "dangers...unless Cline, Helms, and [Deputy Direc-
tor for Support Lawrence K.] White are all aboard 100%." The DCI
again left the details and negotiations to the DDCI and the Executive
Director�Cline once more proved the most implacable�but by the end
of July an agreement was ready. Wheelon got most of what he initially
wanted, and a few other things besides. At his insistence the DDR would
be renamed the Directorate of Science and Technology, and the
PFIAB ' s March 1963 recommendations would constitute its charter of
operation. The reorganization went into effect on 5 August.3� (s)
In Wheelon, McCone had the hard-driving, steely infighter he
needed to make the new directorate work. Wheelon saw officials in the
Intelligence Community either as colleagues with whom he could coop-
erate or as adversaries against whom he must compete, and during his
rapid ascent through academe and the defense industry he had rarely ex-
perienced defeat. He consistently outmaneuvered his Agency rivals in
internal empire building. One colleague recalled that "When you take
on Bud Wheelon, you're taking on a bureaucratic master, and Bud
Wheelon ripped Ray [Cline] to shreds" in the dispute over the OSI.
Agency veterans viewed Wheelon as an upstart outsider, but he did not
seem to care. Before he joined the Agency, he told McCone and Kirk-
patrick that he did not plan to make a career at Langley and was not
bothered at the prospect of antagonizing colleagues at the Agency and
in the Intelligence Community. McCone, perhaps seeing some of his
own traits reflected in his assertive new deputy director, must have
judged that Wheelon's determination and intelligence outweighed his
faults and helped the intelligence process produce the results that he and
policymakers demanded always the DCI' s ultimate test of how well
programs or personnel worked. Wheelon, in turn, thought McCone had
2' Ibid., 1:40,47-50, 58-59; biographic profile of Wheelon in ibid., 3: Appendix B, tab
32; transcript of McCone-Wheelon meeting, 16 July 1963, pp. 4, McCone Papers,
Box 7; Wheelon lecture, p. 16; Welzenbach, "Science and Technology," p. 26; Elder
interview, p. 12. (S) In 1956 Wheelon was selected to assess the results of a "major
breakthrough of heretofore denied intelligence on the Soviet missile program"�U-2
photography of previously unknown facilities�for the NSC. Richelson, "Wizards of
Langley,' p. 88. (u)
3" Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 1:50-57; HN 1-36 and HN 20-111,
5 August 1963, in ibid., 3: Appendix. A, tabs 10 and 11. (s)
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"the finest analytical mind I had ever seen" and regarded him less as a
manager than as "an extraordinarily intelligent entrepreneur, accus-
tomed to changing course rapidly as events and opportunities presented
themselves."" (s)
Wheelon achieved several of McCone's goals during nearly two
years of service under him (McCone resigned in April 1965). Using the
DS&T's expanded charter and special pay scale, Wheelon fashioned
what possibly was the nation's most powerful development and
engineering establishment, which by the end of the decade would de-
sign, build, and deploy technical collection systems that gave the United
States a substantial intelligence advantage over its adversaries. During
his first year, Wheelon integrated the DDI's OSI and the DDS's Office
of Computer Support into his directorate; established a missile and
space analysis center over the vituperative opposition of powerful Air
Force commanders, including Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay; recruited
senior personnel, mostly from industry; acquired sufficient space and
budget during a period of fiscal stringency; organized a network of sci-
entific boards and panels; and produced a new internal publication on
current scientific intelligence, the Daily Surveyor. By 1964 the DS&T
comprised six offices: Computer Services, ELINT (renamed SIGINT
Operations in 1978), Research and Development, Special Activities (re-
named Development and Engineering in 1973), Scientific Intelligence,
and the Foreign Missile and Space Analysis Center. (The two principal
scientific and technical components still not included within the direc-
torate were the DDP's TSD and the DDI's NPIC.) DS&T personnel re-
spected Wheelon's brilliance, drive, and watchful oversight, but his
demanding and sometimes harsh management and zealous protection of
directorate prerogatives alienated many subordinates, officers else-
where in the Agency (especially in the DDI), and other Intelligence
Community components. McCone supported Wheelon' s ends (in the
same position he probably would have used most of the same means),
backed his DDS&T in most internal disputes, and favorably represented
Wheelon's accomplishments to the PFIAB.32 (s)
31 Ibid., 1:60; Ranelagh, The Agency, p.491; Wheelon lecture, pp. 13-14; Elder inter-
view, p. 10. (s)
32 Welzenbach, "Science and Technology," p. 26; Richelson, "Wizards of Langley," pp.
88-89; Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 1;61-75, 84-87, 97-100, 107-
23, 129-30; HN 20-115, HN 20-116, HN 1-39, and HN 20-125, dated 13 and 25 Sep-
tember and 7 and 13 November 1963, in ibid., 3: Appendix A, tabs 12, 13, 16, and 18;
Headquarters Regulation 20-24, 5 November 1964, in ibid., 3: Appendix. A, tab 26. (s)
Siiret 166
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The creation of the Foreign Missile and Space Analysis Center
(FMSAC) exemplifies McCone's resolute way of getting what he want-
ed. He was dissatisfied with the Intelligence Community's analysis of
foreign missile and space activity and in late 1962 discussed forming a
joint intelligence center with the Defense Department. The DCI partic-
ularly was irked because he first learned of a Soviet space event from a
wire service, not Agency intelligence sources. The Pentagon raised
jurisdictional objections, so after a few months McCone told Defense
officials that the CIA would establish its own all-source analysis facility
that would serve as a national component and not duplicate any other
organization's activities. The FMSAC came into existence on 7 Novem-
ber 1963 under the direction of Carl Duckett, who came to the Agency
from the Army's Redstone Arsenal. Not to be outdone, the DOD estab-
lished the Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center in April
1964, but McCone spurned McNamara' s suggestion that the two agen-
cies form a joint committee. By the following March, FMSAC operated
24 hours a day, and in 1965 it was elevated to Office status." (s)
Fight for the Sky Spies (U)
McCone, with Wheelon's assistance, turned back the Air Force's
attempt to take over space reconnaissance for tactical intelligence pur-
poses. According to Walter Elder, no issue besides Cuba and Vietnam
occupied more of McCone' s time as DCI than the protracted dispute
over managing the National Reconnaissance Program (NRP) and the
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). McCone regarded the CIA-Air
Force conflict as one of the low points of his tenure as DCI; he once de-
scribed the bureaucratic row as "confusing... and absolutely disgust-
ing." McCone and Wheelon hewed to the principle that overhead
reconnaissance is the responsibility of the DCI in the discharge of his
statutory duties. Moreover, they believed the fate of satellite reconnais-
sance�widely viewed then as the future foundation of US intelligence
collection�was at stake, and they were determined to overcome what
McCone termed the Air Force's "almost unbelievable phobia over [its]
position in space." The DCI was well-versed in the engineering areana
of the NRP, such as camera apertures and booster rocket thrust, and
" Ibid., 2:335-38. (s)
167 yiet
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sought to enhance the program's technical accomplishments as well as
its organizational protocols.34 (s)
By the time McCone became DCI, the Air Force was developing
its own reconnaissance satellite, the SAMOS, and working to establish
itself as the primary player in the field.35 From its perspective, the Air
Force saw much more at stake in the NRO controversy than control of
a single program: it was fighting for an essential primary mission. The
manned bomber was losing its importance in the age of intercontinental
ballistic missiles, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administra-
tion had been assigned at least a coequal role in space. The Air Force
was reluctant to have satellite reconnaissance taken away from it,
especially by a civilian agency, and feared losing the ability to use sat-
ellites to gather targeting intelligence for its strategic bombers. As Mc-
Cone later observed, "the Air Force, having suffered from being
removed from any space activities except military [ones]...had to scoop
up everything they could.. .and one of the things was to become a single
instrument in this [overhead reconnaissance] field."35 (s)
McCone's limited authority over the Intelligence Community
complicated the Agency's standing. McCone did not have the final say
over all intelligence matters, notwithstanding the power he believed
President Kennedy had given him in early 1962. He shared responsibil-
ity for space reconnaissance with the Defense Department. Under the
first NRP agreement in 1961, the Under Secretary of the Air Force and
the DDP jointly managed the program�an arrangement that Bissell's
" Walter Elder, "John McCone as Director of Central Intelligence, 1961-1965," manu-
script dated 1986, P. 95, CIA History Staff; Elder interview, p. 1; transcript of McCone
meeting with PFIAB members on 2 March 1964, p. 2, McCone Papers, Box 7; transcript
of McCone-McMillan meeting on 27 November 1963, p. 10, McCone Papers, Box 7. (s)
" The Air Force's mission-building carried over from satellites into aircraft reconnais-
sance. Arguing that the CIA's cover for the U-2 Cuban overflight program was weak, it
succeeded in taking over the flights in the days before the Cuban missile crisis. McCone
kept CIA control of overflights of other denied areas. In late 1962 and early 1963, the
Air Force pressed for surfacing a fighter version of the OXCART. At first the Agency
believed doing so would compromise its own reconnaissance version, but by early 1963
McCone had come to accept the Air force's arguments. Pedlow and Welzenbach, CIA
and Overhead Reconnaissance, pp. 292-94; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record,"
8 January 1963, concerning meeting with McNamara on same date, McCone Papers,
Box 2; McCone, "Memorandum for the Files�Various Activities," 3 January 1963,
McCone Papers, Box 2; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 4 June 1963, con-
cerning various discussions with Gilpatric, and McCone letter to Gilpatric, 11 June
1963, both in Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 4: Appendix D; Mar-
shall Carter letter to Eugene Fubini, 20 August 1963, in ibid. (s)
36 Haines, National Reconnaissance Office, p. 19; William E. Burrows, Deep Black:
Space Espionage and National Security, paperback ed. (New York: Berkeley Books,
1986), pp. 196, 201; Elder interview, p. 8; transcript of McCone-Land-Wheelon meet-
ing on 25 June 1964, p.10, McCone Papers, Box 7. (s)
"let
168
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departure in early 1962 rendered moot. In May 1962, McCone and Dep-
uty Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, who had known each other
since McCone's stint at the Pentagon over a decade earlier, signed a sec-
ond NRP agreement that more clearly enumerated the responsibilities of
the NRO and established a single NRO director (DNRO) to be appoint-
ed by the Secretary of Defense and the DCI. McCone regarded Under
Secretary of the Air Force Joseph Charyk as "unusually capable" and
consented to have him as the first DNRO, but he was reluctant to let any
successors come from the Defense Department. In exchange, McCone
demanded assurances that the CIA would continue to control research,
development, contracting, and targeting of the satellites. The new
agreement did not provide for a deputy director, which McCone appar-
ently thought would create a superfluous layer of management. Without
that position, however, the CIA had no senior representative at the
NRO. At first the Agency's position in the NRP seemed secure because
of its successes with the U-2, CORONA, and OXCART, but the DCI
soon recognized that the program's center of gravity was shifting to-
ward the Pentagon. McCone suggested to McNamara that the only way
to end the dispute was to remove the NRO from the purview of the
Under Secretary of the Air Force and put it under either the Deputy Sec-
retary of Defense for Research and Engineering or a new Assistant Sec-
retary of Defense for Intelligence. McNamara responded positively, but
nothing came of McCone' s ideas at that time.37 (s)
After DNRO Charyk set up several programs that appeared to lim-
it the CIA, McCone and Wheelon questioned the ability of the Air Force
and the NRO to run satellite reconnaissance. They pointed out that the
Air Force was responsible for most launch mishaps in the CORONA
program and had failed to develop the SAMOS. McCone accused Mc-
Namara and Gilpatric of being "entirely preoccupied" with defending
weapons systems on Capitol Hill instead of managing the complex
space intelligence program.35 Longstanding animosity between
" Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 2: ch. 5; Haines, National Recon-
naissance Office, pp. 21-22; McCone, "Memorandum for the File," 3 January 1962,
concerning meeting with Gilpatric and Charyk on 28 December 1961, McCone Papers,
Box 2, folder 1, tab 7; Walter Elder, "Memorandum for the Record," 2 July 1962, con-
cerning CIA meeting with Bureau of the Budget on 29 June 1962, McCone Papers, Box
2, folder 2, tab 59; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 15 December 1962, con-
cerning meeting with Gilpatric on 14 December 1962, McCone Papers, Box 2. (s)
" McCone had different working relationships with McNamara and Gilpatric. Gilpatric
recalled that McNamara "didn't like to deal with McCone unless he had to, because Mc-
Cone was another very strong-minded person who wasn't going to easily be overridden
by the Secretary of Defense. But with McCone, McNamara just left it up to me. I'd
worked for McCone, knew him very well, and we'd just, you know, sit down and nego-
tiate...a modus vivendi." Gilpatric oral history interview, 1970, JFK Library, p. 91. (u)
169 SiZet
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Wheelon and Brockway McMillan, Charyk's successor as Under Sec-
retary of the Air Force and DNRO, further roiled the waters. McMillan
came to the Pentagon in March 1963 from Bell Telephone Laboratories
determined to break the CIA's hold on designing and procuring satel-
lites; ultimately, he wanted to take over all management of space recon-
naissance. He proceeded to undercut DDR Herbert Scoville, with whom
he had served on Killian's Technological Capabilities Panel in the mid-
1950s, and then took on Wheelon after the embittered Scoville left.
McMillan and Wheelon�both smart, strong-willed, prideful, and am-
bitious�let an old disagreement about a technical subject grow into a
personal feud that distorted their perspective on the bureaucratic contro-
versy. Richard Bissell recalled Wheelon' s conflict with McMillan and
the Air Force:
Bud Wheelon, essentially, was battling to maintain the [A]gency's
influence in the reconnaissance programs, and also to have the
[Algeney designated by the NRO as the procurement agency for a
lot of the payloads. The Air Force was battling for the exact oppo-
site. They wanted to do as much as possible of the procurement
and have as much influence as possible on the technical decisions
and operational matters. And that was really the essence of Bud's
continuing battles. What kind of programs will receive what kind
of funding? Who will be the procurement agency for this or that?
And [the battles] went on, and on, and on....39 (s)
McCone's relationship with McMillan became just as acrimoni-
ous as Wheelon's and hampered implementation of the third NRP
agreement that McCone and Gilpatric had signed in March 1963. That
accord established a deputy director position (with the expectation that
a CIA officer would fill the slot)40 and gave both the DCI and Secretary
of Defense responsibility for managing the NRO, with the latter having
" Scoville memorandum to Carter, "Recent DD/R Problems with the DOD," 21 January
1963, in Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 4: Appendix D, tab 12; ibid.,
2:246-49; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 22 March 1963, concerning meet-
ing with McNamara and Gilpatric on same date, McCone Papers, Box 2, Haines, Na-
tional Reconnaissance Office, pp. 22-23; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 11
January 1963, concerning meeting with McGeorge Bundy on 10 January 1963, McCone
Papers, Box 2; Elder interview, pp. 6-7, 10; Burrows, Deep Black, pp. 199-200. At first
McCone did not know that the feud between Wheelon and McMillan went back so far
or was so deeply personal. (s)
" Eugene Kiefer of the DS&T's Office of Special Activities became DD/NRO in July
1963 but never was a significant player in CIA-NRO affairs and asked to be reassigned
after one year. Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 2:219, 266-67. (s)
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final authority over it. Personal and bureaucratic antagonism wors-
ened�Elder recalled the DCI accusing the DNRO of "lying.. .deceit
and fraud"�and caused disabling conflicts over contracting, funding,
and delegating tasks. McCone chastised McMillan for being too obedi-
ent to the Defense Department, turning the program into a "handmaid-
en" of the Air Force, failing to include CIA in decisionmaking, and
giving priority to development projects over intelligence collection. He
asserted that McMillan could not properly manage the NRO while serv-
ing simultaneously as Air Force Under Secretary and called one of the
DNRO' s management proposals "damned foolishness." After months
of futile infighting, McCone complained to the Deputy Secretary of
Defense for Research and Engineering, Eugene Fubini, that:
I never knew the first damn thing that's going on. I have yet to see
the 1NRO's] budget. (The NRP agreement] just isn't functioning
at all as I anticipated in any respect and as near as I can see the
whole thing is moving ever and ever closer and closer into becom-
ing an instrument of the Air Force.
McCone threatened to see Defense Secretary McNamara and the Presi-
dent about getting McMillan removed unless matters changed to his
(s)
The situation appeared to improve in January 1964 when McCone
agreed to Fubini's compromise proposal, under which CIA would have
responsibility for research, development, engineering, and early flights
of new reconnaissance payloads and then would turn over their opera-
tion to the Air Force. The DCI and the Secretary of Defense (through
the DNRO) would share authority over the satellite program. It was
soon evident, however, that the agreement was failing, largely because
personal rancor kept the principals apart. McMillan and Wheelon con-
tinued to blame each other for communication lapses. McCone lost his
temper in a phone conversation with Fubini, saying he was "just about
4' McCone, personal memorandum, 3 June 1963, in ibid., 4: Appendix D; transcript of
McCone-Fubini meeting on 22 July 1963, p. 10, McCone Papers, Box 7; transcript of
McCone-McMillan meeting on 11 September 1963, McCone Papers, Box 7; transcript
of McCone-McMillan telephone conversation on 7 June 1963, McCone Papers, Box 7;
transcript of McCone-McMillan telephone conversation on 29 October 1963, McCone
Papers, Box 10; transcript of McCone-McMillan meeting on 27 November 1963, p. 37,
McCone Papers, Box 7; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 11 February 1964,
concerning meeting with McMillan on same date, McCone Papers, Box 2; transcript of
McCone-McMillan meeting on 10 December 1963, p. 9, McCone Papers, box?; tran-
script of McCone-Fubini meeting on 17 August 1963, McCone Papers, Box?; transcript
of McCone-Fubini meeting on 16 October 1963, McCone papers, Box 7; Haines, Na-
tional Reconnaissance Office, pp. 23-24; Elder interview, pp. 10-11. (s)
171 Seiret
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ready to tell the Secretary of Defense and the President [that] they can
take NRO and shove it.. my patience is gone!" In a contentious meeting
with the DNRO, McCone called McMillan's failure to include Agency
officers in his investigation of recent CORONA failures "criminal" and
said the DNRO was "just grabbing for power.. .you don't want to work
with people�all you want to do is say, 'Give it to me and the hell with
you.'" 42 (s)
The PFIAB weighed into the controversy with an investigation,
begun in March 1964 and completed the following June. McCone usu-
ally regarded the board's monitoring activities as a nuisance, and, much
to his consternation, it did not reach the conclusions he had wanted.43
Although the board acknowledged the need for the DCI to have a voice
in NRO matters, it recommended that the Air Force receive substantial-
ly greater authority�relegating the DCI' s role "maybe to be advised
about something someplace along the line," as McCone deprecatingly
put it. He thought that implementing PFIAB' s conclusions would re-
duce the space reconnaissance program to "a single instrument resting
with the Air Force." He countered with his own set of recommenda-
tions, assigning program decisions and the allocation of responsibility
to the DCI and Secretary of Defense, and placing the DNRO organiza-
tionally under the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In June and July
McCone discussed his ideas with Bundy, McNamara, and the Deputy
Secretary of Defense, Cyrus Vance. They all supported his general po-
sition, but the latter two had reservations about the potential bureaucrat-
ic and political fallout of his proposals:" (S)
42 Transcript of McCone-Fubini meeting and Fubini's accompanying memorandum for
the record, 13 January 1964, McCone Papers, Box 7, folder 7, tab 111; transcript of Mc-
Cone-Fubini telephone conversation on 13 February 1964, McCone Papers, Box 10,
folder 5; transcript of McCone-McMillan meeting on 28 May 1964, pp. 12ff., McCone
Papers, Box 7. (s)
43 The previous June, the PFIAB had appeared more critical of the NRO. Edwin Land in
particular was perturbed to learn that the NRO staff consisted almost entirely of Air
Force personnel. Kleyla, "Directorate of Science and Technology," 2: 227-28. (s)
44 Ibid., 2:263-64; transcript of McCone-Fubini meeting on 19 June 1964, McCone Pa-
pers, Box 7; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 1 June 1964, concerning PFIAB
report, McCone Papers, Box 8; McCone, "Evolution of the National Reconnaissance
Organization and Certain Proposals," 17 June 1964, and "Memorandum for the
Record," 18 June 1964, concerning meeting with McNamara, 17 June 1964, both in Mc-
Cone Papers, Box 8; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 12 July 1964, concern-
ing meeting with Bundy and Vance on 9 July 1964, McCone Papers, Box 2. McCone
had known since at least late 1962 that Bundy agreed with his overall perspective vis-
a-vis the NRO. McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 11 January 1963, concerning
meeting with Bundy on 10 January 1963, McCone Papers, Box 2. The political fallout
Vance had in mind was "a possible flare-up by [Secretary of the Air Force Eugene]
Zuckert and [Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis] LeMay which would be some-
what embarrassing, and furthermore McMillan would quit." McCone, "Memorandum
for the Record," 12 July 1964, concerning meeting with Bundy and Vance on 9 July
1964, McCone Papers, Box 2. (s)
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Despite the policy-level concord on the need for change, nothing
had improved by mid-1964. The CIA and the NRO�the latter echoing
the Air Force's position�still differed fundamentally on the purpose of
satellite reconnaissance. McCone and Wheelon were concerned with
collecting strategic intelligence and husbanding the intelligence budget,
so they stressed lower cost, lower resolution systems. The DCI told the
DNRO that "left in the hands of the Air Force, [the space reconnais-
sance program] would not be taking a picture of the Soviet Union to-
day." McMillan and Fubini, less worried about funding and focused on
the military's tactical mission, argued for more expensive, higher reso-
lution satellites. They saw Wheelon's entry into developmental engi-
neering a field the Air Force had hitherto considered its own�as
especially threatening, and so McMillan tried even harder to limit CIA
involvement in space reconnaissance. The DCI became especially ran-
kled when he learned that the DNRO had obligated funds to meet the
military's requirements without discussing the matter with him. To
Land, he vented his frustration over his lack of authority to resolve these
wearisome bureaucratic battles:
Hell! I was the Director of the Standard Oil of California and we
had no problems of this type with that company. I was also Direc-
tor of Caltex, which is owned jointly by the Standard Oil of Cali-
fornia and the Texas Company, and there the Directors spent all
their time on allocating responsibilities: who's going to be respon-
sible for the sales in France.... Who's going to be responsible for
the next group of tankers? [Now] I can tell you in the six compa-
nies when we built the Boulder Dam, this is what we had to do:
who is going to be responsible for the gravel plant, is it going to
be Kaiser, is it going to be Shay? This is the kind of thing that the
Directors of the six companies had to deal with. Wherever you've
got an integrated company you don't have that problem. Manage-
ment can handle the problem." (s)
McCone finally ran out of patience in late June 1964 when Mc-
Millan told him that he wanted to transfer CORONA' s systems engi-
neering contract from Lockheed to an NRO-managed research center
Transcript of McConc-McMillan meeting on 11 February 1964, p. 39, McCone Pa-
pers, Box 7; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 14 January 1964, concerning
meeting with Gilpatric and Vance on same date, p. 1, and McCone, "Memorandum for
the Record," 11 February 1964, concerning meeting with McMillan on same date, both
in McCone Papers, Box 2; Fubini, "Memorandum for the Record," 13 January 1964,
and transcript of McCone-Fubini meeting on same date, both in McCone Papers, Box
7; transcript of McCone-McMillan-Fubini-Wheelon meeting on 26 June 1964, pp. 43-
48, McCone Papers, Box 7; transcript of McCone-Land-Wheelon meeting on 25 June
1964, p. 11, McCone Papers, Box 7. (S)
173 S7oZt
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called Aerospace. Claiming he was through trying to work with Fubini
and McMillan, the DCI went to McNamara and Vance to plead his case.
He charged that the DNRO ignored intelligence considerations, did not
communicate with the Agency or use the DDNRO meaningfully,
"lacked integrity," and exhibited "an element of dishonesty [that] made
him totally unsatisfactory." McNamara conceded that the DNRO' s be-
havior was "indefensible," and at last agreed to McCone's recommen-
dation to take NRO out of the Air Force and make it a coordinating
rather than a line organization. He told McCone, however, that he would
do nothing until after the November elections. Meanwhile, McMillan
temporarily backed down, suspending the transfer of the Lockheed con-
tract.46 (S)
Shortly afterward, in a last-ditch attempt to make the current ar-
rangement work, McCone, Vance, Fubini, McMillan, and DDCI Carter
began meeting weekly as an NRO Executive Committee�a format
McCone supported but which, he commented to Vance, would not be
necessary if "a properly oriented DNRO was running the show." At the
first meeting, it quickly became clear that McMillan and Fubini resent-
ed the DS&T's aggressive personnel recruitment and overall dynamism
under Wheelon; Fubini went so far as to insinuate that the CIA was "try-
ing to create another NASA." McCone tried to quell this suspicion, al-
though he conceded later that the Agency's growing in-house capability
seemed to be "worrying a lot of people around town." He informed the
committee that much of the CIA' s recent effort responded to PFIAB 'S
recommendations after the Cuban missile crisis. The DCI, however, lost
out on the transfer of the CORONA contract from Lockheed to Aero-
space when Vance and Fubini sided with McMillan. At a later meeting,
McCone�perhaps to highlight McMillan' s obstinacy�offered "any
ript -McMillan telephone conversation on 27 June 1964; cable
1423 o Director, 27 June 1964; and McCone, "Memorandum for
the Record," 29 June 1964, concerning meeting with McNamara and Vance on 29 June
1964, all in McCone Papers, Box 2; John McCone interview with Mary McAuliffe, 16-
18 May 1989, tape recording, Pebble Beach, CA, pp. 12-13,47, CIA History Staff. Clar-
ence "Kelly" Johnson of Lockheed appealed directly to McCone to work against the
transfer. Johnson to McCone, 6 July 1964, McCone Papers, Box 8. (s)
peret 174
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and all of CIA's technical capability," including Wheelon and his staff,
to assist the DNRO in finding out why the failure rate of CORONA
missions had increased recently. McMillan did not respond, as McCone
presumably had expected.''' (s)
Following the elections, McCone pushed for the idea, promised by
McNamara in August, of putting the NRO under the Defense Secre-
tary's office. Besides raising it with Vance, he also tried to gain support
on Capitol Hill, particularly from Congressman Mendel Rivers, the new
Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Vance was unre-
sponsive, however, and Rivers did not commit himself. By this time,
McCone had set a date for leaving the CIA and was preparing to turn
the problem over to his successor. He nevertheless continued to com-
plain about McMillan's actions to Vance and McNamara. In January
1965, for example, he told them that McMillan had released money to
a contractor without informing him and had warned the contractor not
to divulge the arrangement to the CIA. The DCI said this was the "last
straw" and that if the top two officials in the Defense Department would
not straighten out the NRO, he "intend[edl to take it to higher authori-
ty."" (s)
McCone had hoped that McMillan would become frustrated with
the infighting and leave, and, according to Walter Elder, did what he
could to bring that day closer. (Elder has denied, however, that McCone
and Vance agreed that Vance would fire McMillan if McCone fired
Wheelon.) As it turned out, the DNRO outlasted the DCI on the job.
McCone had most of the last word on the NRO, however, as his reorga-
nization scheme became the basis for a fourth, and much longer lasting,
NRP agreement signed in August 1965 by his successor, Vice Adm.
William Raborn, and Vance. It established the NRO as a separate agen-
cy within the Defense Department; designated the Secretary of Defense
as the executive branch agent of the space reconnaissance program; set
up a new Executive Committee, to include the DCI, that would manage
the program and report to the Secretary of Defense; and recognized the
17 McCone, "Memorandum or the Record," 12 August 1964, concerning NRO ExCom
meeting on 12 August 1964; McCone to Vance, 14 August 1964 (with penciled nota-
tion, "Not sent�discussed in meeting"), attached to McCone, "Memorandum for the
Record," 18 August 1964, concerning NRO ExCom meeting on same date, both in Mc-
Cone Papers, Box 2; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 17 December 1964, con-
cerning discussion with Vance on 16 December 1964, McCone Papers, Box 2; McCone,
"Memorandum for the Record," 23 October 1964, concerning meeting with NRO Ex-
Corn meeting on same date, McCone Papers, Box 2. (s)
McCone, "Discussion with Mr. Vance, 16 December 1964," 17 December 1964, p.2,
McCone Papers, Box 2; McCone, "Memorandum for the Record," 21 January 1965,
concerning meeting with Vance on same date, McCone papers, Box 2. (5)
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DCI' s right as head of the Intelligence Community to establish collec-
tion requirements for spy satellites. The DNRO and DDS&T were
excluded as voting members of the Executive Committee, and two per-
sonnel changes eliminated much of the rancor: Wheelon, although still
DDS&T, would no longer be the Agency's NRO representative, and
McMillan stepped down as DNRO in September 1965. The agreement,
a compromise between the CIA and the Air Force, led to their success-
ful cooperation on several satellite collection projects and worked well
as a decisionmaking structure. The two organizations still competed and
occasionally overreacted to real or perceived slights, and the Agency
still was underrepresented in the NRO. Despite the history of distrust,
however, the CIA and the Air Force gradually smoothed out the rough-
est spots in their relationship and avoided the internecine fighting and
personal clashes that had threatened to derail the US space reconnais-
sance effort. 49 (s)
McCone's and Wheelon's Legacy (U)
McCone resigned and returned to the private sector in 1965, and
Wheelon did so the next year. The CIA's "chairman of the board" and
his "chief technology officer" left it with a science and technology
directorate much like what Killian and Land had called for more than a
decade before: a bureaucratically formidable concentration of research,
development, collection, and analysis that secured the Agency's inter-
national preeminence in technical espionage and strategic assessment.
McCone's and Wheelon's organizational and administrative changes
proved vital to the development of generations of satellites that enabled
the Intelligence Community to monitor events in denied areas, provide
warning to policymakers, watch unfolding crises, and oversee arms
control. The styles and personalities of the DCI and the DDS&T�ac-
tivist and determined to their allies, aggressive and intractable to their
opponents�helped preserve the CIA's role in technical collection. It is
not at all clear that a more conciliatory approach would have accom-
plished as much against the concerted effort of the NRO and the Air
Force to take over the satellite reconnaissance program. (C)
" McCone interview, pp. 11-12; Haines, National Reconnaissance Office, p. 25; Elder
interview, pp. 10-11. Wheelon advised Rabom not to sign the agreement. Kleyla,
"Directorate of Science and Technology," 2: 254. (s)
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McCone and Wheelon, two technically minded outsiders, also ef-
fected a culture change at the Agency by diluting the influence of the
"bold Easterners," "prudent professionals," and Ivy League
intellectuals who dominated its clandestine and analytical components.
With the emergence of the DS&T, "New men, with family names un-
familiar to the Eastern establishment, began to move into positions of
prominence in the Agency," NPIC analyst Dino Brugioni has written.
"They were experts in such disciplines as optics, electronics, chemistry,
physics, engineering, and photography. Many were World War II vet-
erans educated under the provisions of the GI Bill." OSS veterans, ca-
reer spyhandlers, and graduates of elite liberal arts schools still set the
social and intellectual tone at Langley, but the growing emphasis on
technical collection ensured that the Agency would have a more diverse
cadre of experts than ever before.'" (c)
Looking back from the vantage point of nearly a quarter century,
McCone expressed some reservations about selecting Wheelon as his
head wizard: "I would have been more comfortable with a man that
could be more reasonably adjusted to changes." The structure they de-
veloped for the new directorate worked inside and outside the Agency,
however, and in 1973, when the DS&T acquired the TSD from the
Directorate of Operations and NPIC from the DI, it finally assumed the
shape its creators had envisioned years before.51 (s)
" Dino Bru