CHARTER AND AUTHORIZATION OF OPC

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00499R000500110010-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 28, 2004
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: July 14, 1952
• Content Type: MEMO

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The NSC wrestled with the problem of covert operations for more
than a year before ordering the establishment of OPC (under the name
of OSP; Office of Special Procedures). Half way through that period
of debate, NSC 4a, 17 December 147, directed the DCI to conduct co-
vert psychological opera-ti_ons. This assignment of mission. was based
on the argtunent that "The similarity of operational methods involved
in covert psychological and intelligence activities and the need to
ensure secrecy and obviate costly duplication renders CIA the logi-
cal agency to conduct such operations." The specific direction was
"to initiate and conduct, within the limits of available funds, co-
vert psychological operatiors to counteract Soviet and. Soviet-inspired
activities which constitute a threat to world peace and security or
are designed to discredit or defeat the US in its endeavors to promote
world peace and securi u y." The only restriction or direction as to
the manner of executing the mission was a requirement to ensure "that
such psychological operations are consistent with US foreign policy
and overt foreign infon?ia-'Iactivities", and that "appropriate agen-
cies of the US Governmcm-it, at home and abroad, are kept informed of
such operations as will directly affect them."
The directive assigning this broad field of activity spelled out
nothing with regard to the complex relationship with the Departments
of State and Defense which was obviously required. The literal text,
while it obviously reou_red CIA to go to the departments concerned in
order to be informed of the foreign policy and overt foreign informa-
tion activities with which its activities must be consistent, left to
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undertaking was thus consistent. Only through the cumbersome and in-
direct route through the T?SC, of which State and Defense were members
and CIA a creature, did those two departments have machinery in being
for passing upon. undertakings of CIA in this new field.
After NSC Ira was issued, the DCI, Admiral Hillenkoetter, sum-
moned the ADSO, Colonel Galloway, to a meeting to consider implemen-
tation of the directive. Galloway requested that the Chief, Foreign
Branch "S", Harry -Rozitske, attend the meeting as being more inti-
mately informed on the subject, and Rozitske in turn requested
II
together with
II
had been transferred from the psychological warfare compon-
ents of o,3S to SI/FSRQ/s:J by General Magruder for the express purpose
of preserving a nucleus of knowledge and experience in these fields.
These four representatives of CIA thereupon met with representatives
of the NSC, and as a result of this meeting
was assigned to draw
up a budget, recruit personnel, and institute operations. The new
undertaking was designated Special Procedures Group/050, and
II
was recruited as its chief. In its short life of six months,
the unit recruited about a dozen individuals, including three of sen-
ior agent types and placed these three and
himself in the field,
where several minor targets of opportunity were engaged. They also
launched substantial planning and research activities on
II
and radio broadcasting projects, which were later abandoned be-
cause of state apprehension over diplomatic complications together
with a leak to Drew Pearson in the case of the former. Both were of
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launching of pilot-scale operations would build up a base for more
comprehensive planning riore rapidly than an immediate start on large-
scale planning in a vacuuri, and this policy controlled the unit dur-
ing its brief existence. As a result, there was a nucleus of per-
,M ed IckWA
sonnel, a,m
,~, of experience, and a measure of concrete operational
background which UPC took over when it replaced SPGroup.
The evolution of NSC 10/2 is intimately tied to the position of
the State Depar-bnen t, which was the area of the Government with the
greatest and most immediate stake and responsibility in the large
field of which psychological warfare is only a part. It is clear
from the public record that the State Department did not immediately
recognize the USSR as the threat to the US and the rest of the anti-
Communist world that it has since so clearly proved to be. In this
the State Departcient was in full hax cony with the National Adminis-
tration, but not - itch a sual7l but intense group of government offic-
ials, most numerous in the military departxaents, who had had a realis-
tic and informed grasp of the significance of the USSR not only from
VJ-Day onward, but during World War II as well. It is easy to exag-
gerate the wisdom and size of this group in the light of hindsight.
I-t is equally easy to discount the force and momentum of the post-
war Roosevelt love feast today when the feeling of that time is so
cold and dead. But insofar as there were loyal and convinced lieu-
tenants in Government supporting the thesis that the USSR could be a
member of a benign and humane concert of nations, such lieutenants were,
in 1945 and 1946, more numerous in the State Department than anywhere
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State Department in general and its Policy Planning Staff in particu-
lar soon arrived at a definitive and realistic policy of opposition
to the USSR and prevent-'ion of its further expansion. However, this
policy was distinctly not an embrace of the opposite extreme and a
Vi
turning to extreme reaction and conservatism in the US attitude to-
A
ward the other nations of the world. It occurred at a time when the
strongest theory of government opposed to that of Soviet Communism in
Europe was socialism. The line was drawn between political democracy
on the one side and political totalitarianism on the other, rather
than between right and left, there being no confusion then as to
}noY .A n
whether of common interest lay with Atlee or with Franc.
What this adds up to is that the State Department was a late
comer in appraising the situation as between the US and the USSR, its
reaction was thorough and realistic, but since its reaction was not
characterized by the normal extremes of a swinging pendulum in popu-
lar feeling, its reorientation was in some measure suspect among those
who maintained that the entire political spectrum throughout its gra-
dations from left to right was pari passu a scale from evil tortr
virtue. 'Matching the distrust of State Department thinking in other
areas of the Government was a distrust on the part of the State De-
part-aent of the wisdom and judgement of any other area of the govern-
ment in matters of propaganda and the associated and interrelated
elements of psychological warfare. Also, at this period, the State
Department was supersensitive on matters of diplomatic propriety., in
considerable contrast to the bolder and more hard-boiled attitude to
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not confined to the preservation of its own empire, the State Depart-
ment had no intention of tolerating encroachment by others on its do-
main of foreign information, however much the scope of that domain
might shift and expand.
It was in this context that the State Department took the lea
in the NSC in early 194? in the development of a successor to NSC ).a.
This same mistrust of ocher agencies in matters pertaining to psycho-
logical warfare has remained a factor in all interdepartmental, and in-
teragency handling of the problem up to the present. There is no ques-
tion that the gaps and incompleteness of NSC lj.a called for a successor
paper, so State was in considerable degree moving into a vacuum. It
filled that vacuum in determined fashion. About the only element of
NSC 4a that was retained in NSC 10/2, 18 June '48, was the argnmenth
that led to selection of CIA as the place where covert psychological
operations should be centered. In addition to ensuring effective con-
trol of such operations by the State Department, that department made
a strong bid for the support of the Defense Department by including it
in the agencies from which the new office of CIA should derive its poli-
cies and gauidance, preserving for the time being at least the primacy
of State over Defense b.r ceding to the Defense Department the primary
interest in war time in return to acknowledgement of State primary in-
terest in peace time, which was the then status of world affairs. Thus
representatives of both departments were nominated for the assignment
of guiding the new office into conformity with US foreign and military
policy and overt activities. In addition, the power of nominating the
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nominee wast then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Occupied
Areas, Frank Wisner, who has headed CIA's covert operations ever
since.
Anything that was left unexplicit in NSC 10/2 in June was made
clearly explicit by August. On 12 August '48, George Kennan, Policy
Planning chief for the ; tate Department met with Admiral Souers for
NSC, Admiral Hillenkoetter for CIA, Robert Blum for the Defense De-
partment, and Wisner, i too had taken over the reins as Assistant Di-
rector for Policy Coordination. The record of this meeting is in the
form of a memorandum of interpretation prepared by Wisner. According
to this document, Kennan reviewed the terms of RISC 10/2 and then com-
mented that the head of CPC must take his direction from the Depart-
ments of State and Defense. Kennan himself, as the State Department
appointee, would give such direction, he said, and he would require
that he be kept informed. on all planning and on any operational mat-
ters that had policy implications, but he did not require that he be
informed of operational m:inutae and details. Hillenkoetter stated he
saw no great difficulty it Kennan's point of view, noted that 030 al-
ready enjoyed many special privileges and much autonomy, and noted
that his primary reauiruerit was that he be kept informed, and that
Wisner would be able to see to that. Thus, at a supra-agency level,
was born the divorce between operational responsibility and administra-
tive and logistic authority that remains to plague the covert compon-
ents of CIA today.
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